 Consider once more the view that “Socrates” means the teacher of Plato and Xenophon. Does it similarly predict a necessary relation between being Socrates and being the teacher of Plato and Xenophon? Is it committed to the impossibility of a Socrates who never taught? If so, the view would seem to be in trouble. For it appears a contingent fact—one that could have been otherwise—that Socrates taught Plato (Searle 1958: 172; Kripke 1980: 74). Socrates could, after all, have died in infancy; or else have lived, but declined to take on his most famous pupil.