Lysis

For it is no longer neither bad nor good, but bad; and we found that bad was no friend to good. No, indeed. And consequently we may say that those who are already wise no longer love wisdom, whether they be gods or men; nor again can those be lovers of wisdom who are in such ignorance as to be bad: for we know that a bad and stupid man is no lover of wisdom. And now there remain those who, while possessing this bad thing, ignorance, are not yet made ignorant or stupid, but are still aware of not knowing the things they do not know. It follows, then, that those who are as yet neither good nor bad are lovers of wisdom, while all who are bad, and all the good, are not: for, as we found in our previous discussion, neither is opposite friend to opposite, nor like to like. You remember, do you not? To be sure we do, they both replied. So now, Lysis and Menexenus, I said, we can count on having discovered what is the friendly and what is not. For we say that, in the soul and the body and everywhere, just that which is neither bad nor good, but has the presence of bad, is thereby friend of the good. To this statement they said that they entirely agreed. And, beyond that, I was myself filled with delight, like a hunter, at the satisfaction of getting hold of what I was hunting; when somehow or other a most unaccountable suspicion came over me that the conclusion to which we had agreed was not true. So at once I exclaimed in vexation: Alack-a-day, Lysis and Menexenus! I fear our new-gotten riches are all a dream. How on earth is that? said Menexenus. I am afraid, I replied, that in our search for friendship we have struck up with arguments that are no better than a set of braggarts. How so? he asked. Just consider a moment, I said. When a man is a friend, is he friend to some one or not? He needs be, he replied. Then is he so for the sake of nothing and because of nothing, or for the sake of something and because of something? For the sake of something, and because of something. Is it a friend—that thing for whose sake he is a friend to his friend—or is it neither friend nor foe? I do not quite follow, he said. Naturally enough, said I; but perhaps you will keep up if we try it another way, and I expect that I too will better understand what I am saying. The sick man, we said just now, is a friend to the doctor; is not that so? Yes. Then is it because of disease, for the sake of health, that he is a friend of the doctor? Yes. And disease is a bad thing? Of course. But what is health? I asked: a good thing, or a bad, or neither?