Part 178

“What shall we do, then,” said I, “if neither those who love are to be friends, nor those who are loved, nor yet those who both love and are loved? Shall we say that some others besides these become friends to each other?”

“By Jupiter, Socrates,” said he, “I don’t well know what answer to make.”

24. “Have we not, then, Menexenus,” said I, “conducted our enquiries altogether right?”

“To me it appears not, Socrates,” said Lysis; and as he said this he blushed: for his remark appeared to me to escape from him involuntarily through his earnest attention to the conversation: and he was plainly most attentive while he was listening.

I then, wishing that Menexenus should cease speaking, and being delighted with the other’s love of wisdom, accordingly turned round and directed my discourse to Lysis, and said, “Lysis, you seem to me to say truly, that if we had conducted our enquiries properly, we should never have wandered in this manner. But let us proceed no longer in this way, (for the investigation appears to me to be difficult as if it were a road,) but it seems to me that we should proceed by the road to which we turned aside, and conduct our enquiries after the poets; for they are to us, as it were, fathers of wisdom and guides. They speak however, I imagine, so as not to give a mean account of such as happen to be friends, but they say that God himself makes them friends, by conducting them to each other. They express themselves as I think somehow as follows: ‘God ever conducts like to like,’ and makes them known; have you not met with this verse?”

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Footnote 173:

Homer, Odyss. xvii. 218.

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“I have,” said he.

25. “Have you not met, too, with the writings of the wisest of men that say the very same things, that like must ever needs be friendly to like? But these are they who discourse and write about nature and the universe.”

“You say truly,” he replied.

“Whether, then,” said I, “do they say well?”

“Perhaps so,” said he.

“Perhaps,” said I, “the half is true, and perhaps the whole, but we do not understand it: for the wicked man, by how much nearer he approaches, and is more intimate with a wicked man, seems to us to become so much the more hostile to him; for he injures him; but, surely, it is impossible for those who injure and are injured to be friends: is it not so?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Thus, then, the half of this saying will not be true, since the wicked are like each other?”

“You say true.”

“But they seem to me to say that the good are like each other and friends, but that the bad, as it is said of them, are never alike even to themselves, but are inconstant and unstable. But that which is unlike and at variance with itself, can scarcely be like or friendly to another; does it not seem so to you too?”

“To me it does,” said he.

26. “They intimate this, then, my friend, as it seems to me, when they say that like is friendly to like, that the good man only is a friend to the good man only, but that the bad man never arrives at true friendship, either with a good or a bad man: does it seem so to you also?”

He nodded assent.

“We have now discovered, then, who are friends, for our argument shews that it must be those who are good.”

“It certainly seems so,” said he.

“And I think so too,” said I. “Nevertheless, I find some difficulty in it. Come then, by Jupiter, let us see what it is I suspect. The like, in so far as he is like, is a friend to the like, and such an one is useful to such an one: or rather thus: can any thing that is like confer any benefit on or do any harm to any thing that is like, which it cannot also do to itself; or suffer any thing which it cannot also suffer from itself? But how can such things be held in regard by each other when they are unable to afford any assistance to each other? is it possible?”

“It is not possible.”

“But how can that which is not held in regard be a friend?”

“In no way.”