Lysis

for the opposite was food for its opposite, as the like could have no enjoyment of its like. And I must say, my good friend, his argument seemed a smart one, for he expressed it well. But you, I asked—how does it strike you? It sounds all right, said Menexenus, at least on the moment’s hearing. Then are we to say that the opposite is most friendly to its opposite? Certainly. Well, I exclaimed, is it not monstrous, Menexenus? Why, at once these all-accomplished logic-choppers will delightedly pounce on us and ask whether hatred is not the most opposite thing to friendship. And what answer shall we give them? Shall we not be forced to admit that what they say is true? We shall. So then, they will demand, is a hating thing friend to the friendly thing, or the friendly to the hating? Neither, he replied. But is the just a friend to the unjust, or the temperate to the profligate, or the good to the bad? I do not think that could be so. But yet, I urged, if one thing is friend to another on this principle of opposition, these things too must needs be friends. They must. So neither is like friend to like, nor opposite friend to opposite. It seems not. But there is still this point to consider; for perhaps we are yet more mistaken, and the friendly has really nothing to do with all this: it may rather be something neither good nor bad that will prove after all to be what we call friend of the good. How do you mean? he asked. For the life of me, I said, I cannot tell: the fact is, I am quite dizzy myself with the puzzle of our argument, and am inclined to agree with the ancient proverb that the beautiful is friendly. [*](The proverb, of course, used φίλον in the sense of dear.) It certainly resembles something soft and smooth and sleek; that is why, I daresay, it so easily slides and dives right into us, by virtue of those qualities. For I declare that the good is beautiful: do you not agree? I do. Then I will be a diviner for once, and state that what is neither good nor bad is friendly to what is beautiful and good; and what it is that prompts me to this divination, you must now hear. My view is that there are three separate kinds, as it were—the good, the bad, and what is neither good nor bad; and what is yours? Mine is the same, he replied. And that neither is the good friendly to the good, nor the bad to the bad, nor the good to the bad; so much our previous argument already forbids. One view then remains: if anything is friendly to anything, that which is neither good nor bad is friendly to either the good or what is of the same quality as itself. For I presume nothing could be found friendly to the bad. True. Nor, however, can like be friendly to like: this we stated just now, did we not? Yes. So what is neither good nor bad can have no friendship with the same sort of thing as itself. Apparently not.