Part 182

And I for my part was rejoicing exceedingly, like any hunter, in having just caught the prey that I was in chase of. And then, I know not from what quarter, a most strange suspicion came into my mind, that what we had assented to was not true. And immediately being distressed, I said, “Alas, Lysis and Menexenus, we seem to have grown rich in a dream.”

“Why so?” said Menexenus.

“I am afraid,” I replied, “that as if with braggart men, we have fallen in with some such false reasonings respecting a friend.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Let us consider it thus,” said I; “whether is he who is a friend, a friend to some one or not?”

“Necessarily so,” said he.

“Whether, therefore, for the sake of nothing, and on account of nothing, or for the sake of something, and on account of something?”

“For the sake of something and on account of something.”

“Whether is that thing friendly for the sake of which a friend is a friend to a friend, or is it neither friendly nor hostile?”

“I do not quite follow you,” said he.

“Probably,” said I. “But thus perhaps you will be able to follow me; and I think that I too shall better understand what I say. The sick man, we just now said, is a friend to the physician; is it not so?”

“Yes.”

“Is he not, then, a friend to the physician on account of disease, for the sake of health?”

“Yes.”

“But disease is an evil?”

“How not?”

“But what is health?” said I; “is it good or evil, or neither?”

“Good,” said he.

35. “We stated, then, as it seems, that the body, which is neither good, nor evil, on account of disease, that is on account of evil, is friendly to the medicinal art: but the medicinal art is a good; and the medicinal art acquires the friendship for the sake of health; and health is good: is it not?”

“Yes.”

“But is health a friend, or not a friend?”

“A friend.”

“And is disease an enemy?”

“Certainly.”

“That then which is neither evil nor good, on account of what is evil and an enemy, is a friend to the good, for the sake of what is good and a friend.”

“It appears so.”

“The friendly therefore is a friend for the sake of the friend, on account of that which is an enemy.”

“So it seems.”