  The dialogue’s final argument (439b–440d) implicitly identifies the Forms as the objects that require that unmediated study in pursuit of knowledge. Even Cratylus, by now a passionate partisan of flux, can see the point that something should remain stable through the change. For even so self-guaranteeing a statement as the self-predication ‘The Beautiful itself is beautiful’ could not be truly utterable unless the Form referred to endured long enough for the predicate to be attached to it. Worse, knowledge would not be possible if, during the process of our learning about its object, that object were already changing into something else. With these arguments spelt out, Socrates allows himself definitively to deny the truth of the universal-flux thesis, while Cratylus, disregarding Socrates’ warnings, reaffirms his own commitment to it.