Lysis

218bunlearned, but still believe they do not know what they do not know. That is why those who are not yet either good or bad love wisdom, while those who are bad do not love wisdom, nor do the good; for neither opposite of opposite nor like of like appeared to us to be a friend in our arguments before. Or don’t you remember?” — “Very much so,” they both said. — “Now, then,” I said, “Lysis and Menexenus, we have most certainly found out what the friend is and what it is not. For we say that in the soul and in the 218c body and everywhere it is what is neither bad nor good that, because of the presence of bad, is a friend of the good.” — They both said and granted that this was altogether so.

And I myself, too, was very glad, like a hunter, having, if only just, what I had been hunting. And then, I don’t know from where, a most strange suspicion entered my mind that what we had agreed on was not true, and at once, vexed, I said, “Bless me, Lysis and Menexenus, it looks as if we have been rich in a dream.”

218d“Why, exactly?” said Menexenus.

“I am afraid,” I said, “that, as with impostors among men, we have come across arguments of that sort about the friend.”

“How so?” he said.

“Let us look into it like this,” I said. “Whoever is a friend, is he a friend to someone or not?” — “Necessarily,” he said. — “Then is he a friend 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 that thing, for the sake of which the friend is a friend to the friend, a friend, or neither friend nor enemy?” — 218e “I’m not quite keeping up,” he said. — “Naturally,” I said; “but perhaps you will keep up this way, and I think I too shall know better what I am saying. The sick man, as we said a moment ago, is a friend of the doctor; isn’t that so?” — “Yes.” — “Then because of disease and for the sake of health he is