Lysis

Tell me, I beg of you, I went on, if evil is abolished, will it be impossible any longer to feel hunger or thirst or other such conditions? Or will hunger exist, so long as men and animals exist, but without being hurtful? Thirst, too, and all other desires—will these exist without being bad, because the bad will have been abolished? Or is this a ridiculous question—as to what will exist or not exist in such a case? For who can tell? Yet this, at all events, we do know—that, as things are now, it is possible for a man to feel hunger as a hurt, and also to be benefited by it. You agree? Certainly. And so, when a man feels thirst or any other desire of the sort, he may have that desire sometimes with benefit, sometimes with harm, and sometimes with neither? Quite so. Now if evil things are abolished, is there any reason why the things that are not evil should be abolished along with the evil? None. So that those desires which are neither good nor bad will exist even when the bad things are abolished. Apparently. Now is it possible for a man, when he desires and loves, to have no friendly feeling towards that which he desires and loves? I think not. Thus certain things will continue to be friendly, it seems, when evil things are abolished. Yes. It cannot be that, if evil were the cause of a thing being friendly, one thing should be friendly to another when evil is abolished. For when a cause is abolished, that thing can no longer exist, I presume, which had this as its cause. You are right. Now we have agreed that the friend has a friendly feeling for something and because of something; and we supposed, just then, that it was because of evil that what was neither good nor bad loved the good. True. But now, it seems, we make out a different cause of loving and being loved. It seems so. Can it really be then, as we were saying just now, that desire is the cause of friendship, and the desiring thing is a friend to what which it desires, and is so at any time of desiring; while our earlier statement about friends was all mere drivel, like a poem strung out for mere length? It looks like it, he said. But still, I went on, the desiring thing desires that in which it is deficient, does it not? Yes. And the deficient is a friend to that in which it is deficient? I suppose so. And it becomes deficient in that of which it suffers a deprivation. To be sure. So it is one’s own belongings, [*](i.e. things that are proper or congenial to one.) it seems, that are the objects of love and friendship and desire; so it appears, Menexenus and Lysis. They both agreed. Then if you two are friends to each other by some natural bond you belong to one another. Precisely, they said.