Dialogue

 1 Lysis|         to the question, ‘What is Friendship?’ any more than in the Charmides
 2 Lysis|          a new question: ‘What is friendship? You, Menexenus, who have
 3 Lysis|        and unlikeness of love and friendship; and they too adduce the
 4 Lysis|        mind of Socrates: Must not friendship be for the sake of some
 5 Lysis|        that final cause or end of friendship be, other than the good?
 6 Lysis|         no evil there would be no friendship. Some other explanation
 7 Lysis|           desire be the source of friendship? And desire is of what a
 8 Lysis|      morality, illustrated by the friendship of the two youths, and also
 9 Lysis|           comprehensive notion of friendship. This, however, is far from
10 Lysis|   Socrates:—First, the sense that friendship arises out of human needs
11 Lysis|           higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake
12 Lysis|    against which no definition of friendship would be able to stand.
13 Lysis|        the childlike and innocent friendship of the boys with one another.
14 Lysis|        SOME QUESTIONS RELATING TO FRIENDSHIP.~The subject of friendship
15 Lysis|        FRIENDSHIP.~The subject of friendship has a lower place in the
16 Lysis|          The received examples of friendship are to be found chiefly
17 Lysis|         with Socrates, 1) whether friendship is ‘of similars or dissimilars,’
18 Lysis|           of the evil; 4) whether friendship is always mutual,—may there
19 Lysis|          one-sided and unrequited friendship? This question, which, like
20 Lysis|           Plato.~5) Can we expect friendship to be permanent, or must
21 Lysis|          vitae permanere’? Is not friendship, even more than love, liable
22 Lysis|      elders laugh. No one forms a friendship with the intention of renouncing
23 Lysis|       some less exclusive form of friendship better suited to the condition
24 Lysis|          had their three kinds of friendship, ‘for the sake of the pleasant,
25 Lysis|           they could not say that friendship was only a quality, or a
26 Lysis|   question in a more general way. Friendship is the union of two persons
27 Lysis|        secret of their lives; (in friendship too there must be reserves;)
28 Lysis|        same. The greatest good of friendship is not daily intercourse,
29 Lysis|         disturb the equability of friendship. The alienation of friends,
30 Lysis|          friends.~We may expect a friendship almost divine, such as philosophers
31 Lysis|        more often mar than make a friendship. It is most likely to be
32 Lysis|        which it would cease to be friendship.~Another question 9) may
33 Lysis|            may be raised, whether friendship can safely exist between
34 Lysis| difference any more than in their friendship; the memory of an old attachment,
35 Lysis|          a few of the Problems of Friendship, some of them suggested
36 Lysis|           Compare Bacon, Essay on Friendship; Cic. de Amicitia.)~
37 Lysis|                         LYSIS, OR FRIENDSHIP~PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
38 Lysis|        the friend; or is there no friendship at all on either side, unless
39 Lysis|         never attains to any real friendship, either with good or evil.
40 Lysis|           place then is there for friendship, if, when absent, good men
41 Lysis|           and the most unlike, of friendship. For the poor man is compelled
42 Lysis|        language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars
43 Lysis|          to say that the greatest friendship is of opposites?~Exactly.~
44 Lysis|     possible.~And yet, I said, if friendship goes by contraries, the
45 Lysis|          not all these notions of friendship be erroneous? but may not
46 Lysis|          there be such a thing as friendship or love at all, we must
47 Lysis|         takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which
48 Lysis|           was supposed to have no friendship with the evil?~None.~And
49 Lysis|          discovered the nature of friendship— there can be no doubt of
50 Lysis|      there can be no doubt of it: Friendship is the love which by reason
51 Lysis|           that the argument about friendship is false: arguments, like
52 Lysis|    medicine has entered into this friendship for the sake of health,
53 Lysis|           some first principle of friendship or dearness which is not
54 Lysis|        there is the true ideal of friendship. Let me put the matter thus:
55 Lysis|          or ultimate principle of friendship is not for the sake of any
56 Lysis|         done with the notion that friendship has any further object.
57 Lysis|       Then the final principle of friendship, in which all other friendships
58 Lysis|          some elements of love or friendship?~Yes.~But not if evil is
59 Lysis|           if evil is the cause of friendship: for in that case nothing
60 Lysis|       must be some other cause of friendship?~I suppose so.~May not the
61 Lysis|       that desire is the cause of friendship; for that which desires
62 Lysis|        Then love, and desire, and friendship would appear to be of the
63 Lysis|       sense in our argument about friendship. But if the congenial is