Lysis

of it, may deceive us, and that that first thing may be the one which is in truth a friend. For let us think of it this way: whenever someone sets great store by something, as a father sometimes values his son above all the rest of his wealth, would such a man, for the sake of holding his 219e son above everything, also set great store by something else? For instance, if he perceived that the boy had drunk hemlock, would he set great store by wine, if he believed that this would save his son?” — “What else?” he said. — “And also by the vessel the wine was in?” — “Very much so.” — “Then does he at that time set no greater store by an earthenware cup than by his own son, nor by three half-pints¹ of wine than by his son? Or is it somehow like this: all such earnestness is not spent on these things, the things provided for the sake of something, but on that for the sake of which all 220a such things are provided. Not that we do not often say that we set great store by gold and silver; but it may be that the truth is no whit the more so for that, and that what we set above everything is that, whatever it shows itself to be, for the sake of which gold and everything that is provided are provided. Shall we say so?” — “Very much so.” — “Then does the same argument hold for the friend too? For all the things that we say are friends to us for the sake of 220b some other friend, we evidently say it in word only;² but it looks as if what is really a friend is that very thing in which all these friendships, as they are called, end.” — “It looks as if it is so,” he said. — “Then what is really a friend is not a friend for the sake of some friend?” — “True.”

“This, then, is settled: that the friend is not a friend for the sake of some friend. But is the good a friend?” — “It seems so to me.” — “Then is the good loved because of the bad, 220c and is it like this: if, of the three we were speaking of a moment ago, good and bad and neither good nor bad, the two were left,³