Lysis

I said. “It has appeared, then, that it is necessary for us to love what is akin by nature.” — “It seems so,” he said. — “Then it is necessary for the genuine lover, and not the pretended one, to be loved by his darling.” — 222b Lysis and Menexenus nodded, somehow, just barely; but Hippothales, from pleasure, turned colors of every kind.

And I said, wanting to look into the argument, “If what is akin differs in some way from what is like, we would be saying something, it seems to me, Lysis and Menexenus, about the friend, what it is; but if like and akin are in fact the same, it is not easy to throw out our earlier argument, as though like were not useless to like by way of likeness; and 222c to agree that the useless is a friend is out of tune. Do you want us, then,” I said, “since we are drunk, as it were, with the argument,¹ to grant and say that what is akin is something different from what is like?” — “Very much so.” — “Then shall we also set down that the good is akin to everything, and the bad alien? Or that the bad is akin to the bad, the good to the good, and what is neither good nor bad to what is neither good nor bad?” — They both said that this was how it seemed to them: each to each was 222d akin. — “Then we have fallen back, boys,” I said, “into the arguments about friendship that we threw out at first; for the unjust man will be a friend to the unjust and the bad man to the bad no less than the good man to the good.” — “It seems so,” he said. — “What then? If we say that the good and the akin are the same, will the good man not be a friend to the good alone?” — “Very much so.” — “But this too we thought we had refuted ourselves; or don’t you remember?” — “We remember.”

222e“What then could we still do with the argument? Or is it plain that we could do nothing? So I need, like the wise men in the law courts, to count over everything that has been said. For if neither those who are loved nor