Lysis, or Friendship - 10
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | >10< And shall we further say that the good is congenial, and the evil
uncongenial to every one? Or again that the evil is congenial to the
evil, and the good to the good; and that which is neither good nor
evil to that which is neither good nor evil?
They agreed to the latter alternative.
Then, my boys, we have again fallen into the old discarded error;
for the unjust will be the friend of the unjust, and the bad of the
bad, as well as the good of the good.
That appears to be the result.
But again, if we say that the congenial is the same as the good,
in that case the good and he only will be the friend of the good.
True.
But that too was a position of ours which, as you will remember, has
been already refuted by ourselves.
We remember.
Then what is to be done? Or rather is there anything to be done? I
can only, like the wise men who argue in courts, sum up the
arguments:-If neither the beloved, nor the lover, nor the like, nor
the unlike, nor the good, nor the congenial, nor any other of whom
we spoke-for there were such a number of them that I cannot remember
all-if none of these are friends, I know not what remains to be said.
Here I was going to invite the opinion of some older person, when
suddenly we were interrupted by the tutors of Lysis and Menexenus, who
came upon us like an evil apparition with their brothers, and bade
them go home, as it was getting late. At first, we and the
bystanders drove them off; but afterwards, as they would not mind, and
only went on shouting in their barbarous dialect, and got angry, and
kept calling the boys-they appeared to us to have been drinking rather
too much at the Hermaea, which made them difficult to manage we fairly
gave way and broke up the company.
I said, however, a few words to the boys at parting: O Menexenus and
Lysis, how ridiculous that you two boys, and I, an old boy, who
would fain be one of you, should imagine ourselves to be
friends-this is what the by-standers will go away and say-and as yet
we have not been able to discover what is a friend!
-THE END-
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