Lysis

— “None.” — “Then the desires that are neither good nor bad will exist even if the bad things perish.” — “Apparently.” — “Now, is it possible for one who desires and is in love not to love what he desires and is in love with?” — “It doesn’t seem so to me.” — “Then there will be, 221c even when the bad things have perished, it seems, some things that are friends.” — “Yes.” — “There would not, if the bad were the cause of anything’s being a friend: if that had perished, one thing would not be a friend to another. For when a cause has perished, it is impossible, I take it, for that to exist any longer of which this was the cause.” — “You speak rightly.” — “Now, it has been agreed by us that the friend loves something, and because of something; and we thought then that it was because of the bad that what is neither good nor bad loves the good?” — “True.” — 221d “But now, it seems, some other cause of loving and being loved appears.” — “It seems so.” — “Then is it really, as we were saying just now, desire that is the cause of friendship, and is what desires a friend to that which it desires, and at the time when it desires it; and was what we were calling a friend before some idle talk, like a long poem put together?” — “It looks like it,” he said. — “But surely,” I said, “what desires 221e desires what it lacks. Isn’t that so?” — “Yes.” — “Then is what lacks a friend of that which it lacks?” — “It seems so to me.” — “And it comes to lack whatever is taken away from it.” — “Of course.” — “Then it is of what is akin, it seems, that love and friendship and desire are in fact, apparently, Menexenus and Lysis.” — They both agreed. — “Then if you two are friends to each other, you are by nature in some way akin to each other.” — “Absolutely,” they both said. — “And so, if one person desires another,” I said, 222a “boys, or is in love with him, he would never desire him, or be in love, or love, unless he were in fact in some way akin to his beloved, either in his soul, or in some character of his soul, or in his ways, or in his figure.” — “Very much so,” said Menexenus; but Lysis was silent. — “Very well,”