“As it seems, then, love, friendship, and desire, respect that which
belongs to a man; so it appears, Menexenus and Lysis?”
They both assented.
“If, therefore, you two are friends to each other, you must, in a
manner, by nature belong to each other?”
“Assuredly,” they both replied.
“If, then,” said I, “any one desires or is fond of another, my boys, he
could never desire, or be fond of, or be a friend, unless he, in a
manner, belonged to the object of his love, either as to his soul, or as
to some habit of the soul, or disposition, or form?”
“Certainly,” said Menexenus, but Lysis was silent.
“Well, then,” said I, “it has proved necessary for us to love that which
by nature belongs to us?”
“It seems so,” said he.
“It is necessary, then, for a genuine, and not a pretended lover, to be
beloved by his favourite?”
To this Lysis and Menexenus scarcely nodded assent, but Hippothales,
through delight, exhibited all sorts of colours. And I, being willing to
examine the matter, said, “If there is any difference between that which
belongs to us and that which is like, we shall be able to say, as it
seems to me, Lysis and Menexenus, respecting a friend, what he is, but
if the like and that which belongs are the same, it is not easy to get
rid of our former conclusion, that the like is useless to the like, as
regards similitude; but to admit that what is useless can be friendly is
absurd. 42. Are you willing, then,” I added, “since we are, as it were,
intoxicated by the discussion, that we should grant and affirm that that
which belongs is different from that which is like?”
“Certainly.”
“Whether, then, shall we admit that good belongs to every thing, but
that evil is foreign? or that evil belongs to evil, good to good, and
that which is neither good nor evil, to that which is neither good nor
evil?”
They both said, that so it appeared to them, that each belongs to each.
“Again, therefore,” said I, “my boys, we have fallen upon those
conclusions which we at first rejected respecting friendship. For the
unjust will be no less a friend to the unjust, and the evil to the evil,
than the good to the good.”
“So it seems,” he said.
“But what? if we should say that the good and that which belongs are the
same, will not the good only be a friend to the good?”
“Certainly.”
“But in this too we thought we had confuted ourselves; do you not
remember?”
“We do remember.”
“In what way, then, can we still deal with the subject; is it not clear,
in no way at all? I require, then, like skilful pleaders in the law
courts, to sum up all that has been said; for if neither those that are
loved, nor those that love, nor the like, nor the unlike, nor the good,
nor those that belong to us, nor any others that we have described, (for
I do not remember them any further, on account of their number,) but if
no one of these is a friend, I have nothing more to say.”
43. When I had said this, I purposed to stir up some one of the older
men; but just then, like evil spirits, the pedagogues of Lysis and
Menexenus approaching us, having hold of their brothers by their hand,
called to them, and bade them go home, for it was already late. At
first, then, both we and the bystanders drove them away; but when they
paid no attention to us, but murmured in their barbarous dialect, and
desisted not from calling them, and seemed to us, from having drunk too
much at the Hermæan festival, to be difficult to manage, we yielded to
them, and dissolved the conference. However, as they were just going
away, I said, Lysis and Menexenus, we have made ourselves ridiculous,
both I, an old man, and you; for those who are now leaving us will say,
that we think ourselves to be each other’s friends, (for I reckon myself
among you,) but that we have not yet been able to discover what a friend
is.