Lysis

And in a case where one person desires another, my boys, or loves him, he would never be desiring or loving or befriending him, unless he somehow belonged to his beloved either in soul, or in some disposition, demeanor or cast of soul. Yes, to be sure, said Menexenus; but Lysis was silent. Very well, said I: what belongs to us by nature has been shown to be something we needs must befriend. It seems so, he said. Then the genuine, not the pretended, lover must needs be befriended by his favorite. To this Lysis and Menexenus gave but a faint nod of assent; while Hippothales, in his delight, turned all manner of colors. So then, with the design of reviewing the argument, I proceeded: If there is any difference between what belongs and what is like, it seems to me, Lysis and Menexenus, that we might give some account of the meaning of friend. But if like and belonging are the same, it is not easy to get rid of our former statement, that the like is useless to the like in so far as they have likeness; and to admit that the useless is friendly would be a gross mistake. So how if we agree now, I said, since our argument has made us quite tipsy, to say that the belonging and the like are two different things? By all means. Then shall we maintain that the good itself belongs to every one, while the bad is alien? Or does the bad belong to the bad, the good to the good, and what is neither good nor bad to what is neither good nor bad? They agreed that the last three pairs belong together. So here again, boys, I said, we have dropped into the very statements regarding friendship which we rejected at first; for now the unjust will be as much a friend of the unjust, and the bad of the bad, as the good of the good. [*](The word belonging seems to throw some light on friend, but even if we distinguish it from like it turns out to be just as indifferent to good and bad, and therefore just as remote from the moral significance of friend.) So it seems, he said. And what is more, if we say that the good and the belonging are the same, we cannot avoid making the good a friend only to the good. To be sure. But this again, you know, is a view of which we thought we had disabused ourselves; you remember, do you not? We do. So what more can we do with our argument? Obviously, I think, nothing. I can only ask you, accordingly, like the professional pleaders in the law courts, to perpend the whole of what has been said. If neither the loved nor the loving, nor the like nor the unlike, nor the good nor the belonging, nor all the rest that we have tried in turn—they are so many that I, for one, fail to remember any more—well, if none of these is a friend, I am at a loss for anything further to say.