Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/82

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wisdom stanc1s : he is not wi ;c, and yet not unwise, but he has	L;,sis. ignorance accidentally clinging to him, :rnd he yearns for wisdom ANALvs1s. as the cure of the evil. (Cp. Symp. 204.)

After this cxpl:mation has been received with triumphant accord,

219 a fresh dissatisfaction begins to steal over the mind of Socrates: Must not friendship he for the sake or some ulterior end? and what can that final cause or e11d of frienchhip be, other than the good? But the good is desired by us only as the cure of evil; and

220 therefore if there were no evil there would be no friendship. Some other explanation then has to be devised. May not desire

221 be the source of frirnclship? And desire is of what a man wants and of what is congenial to him. • Rut then the congenial cannot

222 be the same as the like; for like, as has been already shown, cannot be the friend oflike. Nor can the congenial be the good; for good is not the friend of good, as has heen also shown. The problem is unsolved, and the three friends, Socrates, Lysis, and Mcnexcnus, a1 e still unable to find out what a friend is.

Thus, as in the Charmidcs and Laches, and several of the other Dialogues ofl'lato (compare especially the Protagoras and Theaete­ tus), no conclusion is arrived at. Socrates maintains his character of a 'know nothing; ‘but the boys have already learned the lesson which he is unable to teach them, and they are free from the conceit of knowledge. (Cp. Charm. pp. I75, I76.) The dialogue is what would be called in the language of Thrasyllus tentative or inquisitive. The subject is continued in the Phaedrus and Symposium, and treated, with a manifest reference to the Lysis, in the eighth and ninth books of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. As in other writings of Plato (for example, the Republic), there is a progress from unconscious morality, illustrated by the friendship of the two youths, and also by the sayings of the poets ('who arc our fathers in wisdom,' and yet only tell us half the truth, and in this particular instance are not much improved upon by the philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This, however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates : First, the sense that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good. That friends are not necessarily either like or unhke, is also a truth confirmed by