Short Fragments and Testimonia from Uncertain Works 93
Origen Against Celsus 1.24 (334 U) [1-102]
As to this, one should also say that a deep and arcane debate about
the nature of names emerged: are names conventional, as Aristotle thinks;
or natural, as the Stoics believe (for the first utterances imitate the things
the utterances are applied to, and accordingly they introduce [them] as
elements of a kind for etymology); or are names natural, as Epicurus
teaches-in a manner different from that of the Stoics, since the first
men burst forth with certain sounds which were applied to things?
Proclus Commentary on Plato's Cratylus 16,
17 (pp. 6 and 8-9 Boissonade, 335 U)
[1-103]- That Pythagoras and Epicurus shared the view of Cratylus, while
Democritus and Aristotle shared that of Hermogenes. - That [names are] natural in four senses. For either [they are natural]
as the substances of animals and plants are (both their parts and the
wholes), or as their activities and powers are (for example, the lightness
and heat of fire), or as shadows and reflections in mirrors are, or as crafted
images which resemble their own archetypes are. Epicurus, then, thought
that names were natural in the first^34 sense, as being primary functions
of nature: as the voice and vision and as seeing and hearing [are natural],
in the same way naming [is natural]. So that names too are natural in
the sense of functions of nature. But Cratylus [says that names are natural]
in the second sense; that is why he says that each thing has its own
proper name, since it was given specifically [to that thing] by the first
name-givers in a craftsmanlike fashion based on an understanding [of
that thing]. For Epicurus said that these men [the first name-givers] did
not give names based on an understanding of things, but because they
were moved in a natural fashion, like those who cough and sneeze and
bellow and bark and lament.
Aetius 4.7.4 = Dox.Gr. p. 393 (336 U) [1-104]
Democritus and Epicurus [said that the soul] is mortal and perishes
with the body.
Sextus M 9.25 (353 U) [1-105]
Epicurus thinks that men have derived the conception of god from
presentations [received] while asleep. For, he says, since large anthropo-
- Usener emends this to 'second'; but from the larger context it seems clear that Proclus
rather sloppily groups the first two senses together as a new 'first sense', and is equally
sloppy in his reference to Cratylus' use of the 'second' sense.