Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Who is in charge of you, then?”

  “My guardian here.”

  “He’s a slave, isn’t he?”

  “What else? He’s ours, anyway.”

  “Pretty strange, a free man directed by a slave. How does this guardian direct you; I mean, what does he do?”

  “Mostly he takes me to school.”

  ”And your schoolteachers, they’re not in charge of you too, are they?”

  “They sure are!”

  [d] “It looks like your father has decided to put quite a few masters and dictators over you. But what about when you come home to your mother, does she let you do whatever it takes to make you happy, like playing with her wool or her loom when she’s weaving? She doesn’t stop you from touching the blade or the comb or any of her other wool-working tools, does she?”

  [e] “Stop me?” he laughed. “She would beat me if I laid a finger on them.”

  “Good gracious!” I said. “You must have committed some kind of terrible offense against your father or mother.”

  “No, I swear!”

  “Then why in the world do they so strangely prevent you from being happy and doing what you like? And why are they raising you in a perpetual condition of servitude to someone or other, day in and day out? Why do you hardly ever get to do what you want to do? The upshot is, [209] it seems, that your many and varied possessions do you no good at all. Everybody but you has charge of them, and this extends to your own person, which, well-born though it is, somebody else tends and takes care of—while you, Lysis, control nothing, and get to do nothing you want to do.”

  “Well, Socrates, that’s because I haven’t come of age yet.”

  “That can’t be it, son of Democrates, since there are some things, I imagine, that your father and mother trust you with without waiting for you to come of age. For instance, when they want someone to read or write for [b] them, I’ll bet that you, of everyone in the household, are their first choice for the job. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And nobody tells you which letter to write first and which second, and the same goes for reading. And when you take up your lyre, I’ll bet neither your father nor mother stop you from tightening or loosening whatever string you wish, or from using a plectrum or just your fingers to play.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Then what’s going on? What’s the reason they let you have your way [c] here, but not in all the cases we’ve been talking about?”

  “I suppose it’s because I understand these things but not those.”

  “Aha!” I said. “So your father isn’t waiting for you to come of age before he trusts you with everything; but come the day when he thinks that you know more than he does, he’ll trust you with himself and everything that belongs to him.”

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “Well, then,” I said, “what about your neighbor? Would he use the same rule of thumb as your father about you? When he thinks you know more [d] about managing his estate than he does, will he trust you to do it, or will he manage it himself?”

  “I suppose he will trust me to do it.”

  “And how about the Athenians? Do you think they will trust you with their affairs when they perceive that you know enough?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Well, by Zeus, let’s not stop here,” I said. “What about the Great King? Would he trust his eldest son, crown prince of Asia, to add whatever he [e] likes to the royal stew, or would he trust us, provided we went before him and gave him a convincing demonstration of our superior culinary acumen?”

  “Why, us, of course.”

  “And he wouldn’t let his son put the least little bit into the pot, but we could throw in fistfuls of salt if we wanted to.”

  “Right.”

  [210] “What about if his son had something wrong with his eyes, would he let him treat his own eyes, knowing he wasn’t a doctor, or would he prevent him?”

  “Prevent him.”

  “But, if he thought we were doctors, he wouldn’t stop us even if we pried his eyes open and smeared ashes in them, because he would think we knew what we were doing.”

  “True.”

  “So … he would trust us, rather than himself or his son, with all his business, as long as we seemed to him more skilled than either of them.”

  “He would have to, Socrates,” he said.

  “Then this is the way it is, my dear Lysis: in those areas where we [b] really understand something everybody—Greeks and barbarians, men and women—will trust us, and there we will act just as we choose, and nobody will want to get in our way. There we will be free ourselves, and in control of others. There things will belong to us, because we will derive some advantage from them. But in areas where we haven’t got any understanding, no one will trust us to act as we judge best, but everybody will do [c] their best to stop us, and not only strangers, but also our mother and father and anyone else even more intimate. And there we are going to be subject to the orders of others; there things are not going to be ours because we are not going to derive any advantage from them. Do you agree this is how it is?”

  “I agree.”

  “Well, then, are we going to be anyone’s friend, or is anyone going to love us as a friend in those areas in which we are good for nothing?”

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “So it turns out that your father does not love you, nor does anyone love anyone else, so far as that person is useless.”

  “It doesn’t look like it.”

  [d] “But if you become wise, my boy, then everybody will be your friend, everybody will feel close to you, because you will be useful and good. If you don’t become wise, though, nobody will be your friend, not even your father or mother or your close relatives.”

  “Now, tell me, Lysis, is it possible to be high-minded in areas where one hasn’t yet had one’s mind trained?”

  “How could anyone?” he said.

  “And if you need a teacher, your mind is not yet trained.”

  “True.”

  “Then you’re not high-minded either—since you don’t have a mind of your own.”

  “You’ve got me there, Socrates!”

  [e] Hearing his last answer I glanced over at Hippothales and almost made the mistake of saying: “This is how you should talk with your boyfriends, Hippothales, cutting them down to size and putting them in their place, instead of swelling them up and spoiling them, as you do.” But when I saw how anxious and upset he was over what we were saying, I remembered how he had positioned himself so as to escape Lysis’ notice, so I bit my tongue. In the middle of all this, Menexenus came back and sat down [211] next to Lysis, where he had been before. Then Lysis turned to me with a good deal of boyish friendliness and, unnoticed by Menexenus, whispered in my ear: “Socrates, tell Menexenus what you’ve been saying to me.”

  I said to him: “Why don’t you tell him yourself, Lysis? You gave it your complete attention.”

  “I certainly did,” he said.

  “Then try as hard as you can to remember it, so that you can tell it all [b] to him clearly. But if you forget any of it, ask me about it again the next time you run into me.”

  “I will, Socrates; you can count on it. But talk to him about something else, so I can listen too until it’s time to go home.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to, since it’s you who ask. But you’ve got to come to my rescue if he tries to refute me. Or don’t you know what a debater he is?”

  “Sure I do—he’s very much one. That’s why I want you to have a discussion with him.”

  “So that I can make a fool of myself?”

  “No, so you can teach him a lesson!”

  “What are you talking about? He’s very clever, and Ctesippus’ student at that. And look, Ctesippus himself is here!”

  “Never mind about anybody else, Socrates. Just go on and start discussing with him.”

  “Discuss we
shall,” I said.

  Our little tête-à-tête was interrupted by Ctesippus’ asking: “Is this a private party between you two, or do we get a share of the conversation?”

  “Of course you get a share!” I said. “Lysis here doesn’t quite understand [d] something I’ve been saying, but he says he thinks Menexenus knows and wants me to ask him.”

  “Why don’t you ask him then?”

  “That’s just what I’m going to do,” I said. “So, Menexenus, tell me something. Ever since I was a boy there’s a certain thing I’ve always wanted to possess. You know how it is, everybody is different: one person wants to own horses, another dogs, another wants money, and another fame. [e] Well, I’m pretty lukewarm about those things, but when it comes to having friends I’m absolutely passionate, and I would rather have a good friend than the best quail or gamecock known to man, and, I swear by Zeus above, more than any horse or dog. There’s no doubt in my mind, by the Dog, that I would rather possess a friend than all Darius’ gold, or even than Darius himself. That’s how much I value friends and companions. [212] And that’s why, when I see you and Lysis together, I’m really amazed; I think it’s wonderful that you two have been able to acquire this possession so quickly and easily while you’re still so young. Because you have in fact, each of you, gotten the other as a true friend—and quickly too. And here I am, so far from having this possession that I don’t even know how one person becomes the friend of another, which is exactly what I want to question you about, since you have experience of it.

  [b] “So tell me: when someone loves someone else, which of the two becomes the friend of the other, the one who loves or the one who is loved? Or is there no difference?”

  “I don’t see any difference,” he said.

  “Do you mean,” I said, “that they both become each other’s friend when only one of them loves the other?”

  “It seems so to me,” he said.

  “Well, what about this: Isn’t it possible for someone who loves somebody not to be loved by him in return?”

  “Yes, it’s possible.”

  “And isn’t it possible for him even to be hated? Isn’t this how men are [c] often treated by the young boys they are in love with? They are deeply in love, but they feel that they are not loved back, or even that they are hated. Don’t you think this is true?”

  “Very true,” he said.

  “In a case like this, one person loves and the other is loved. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then which is the friend of the other? Is the lover the friend of the loved, whether he is loved in return or not, or is even hated? Or is the loved the friend of the lover? Or in a case like this, when the two do not both love each other, is neither the friend of the other?”

  [d] “That’s what it looks like anyway,” he said.

  “So our opinion now is different from what it was before. First we thought that if one person loved another, they were both friends. But now, unless they both love each other, neither is a friend.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So nothing is a friend of the lover unless it loves him in return.”

  “It doesn’t look like it.”

  “So there are no horse-lovers unless the horses love them back, and no quail-lovers, dog-lovers, wine-lovers, or exercise-lovers. And no lovers of [e] wisdom, unless wisdom loves them in return. But do people really love them even though these things are not their friends, making a liar of the poet who said,

  Happy the man who has as friends his children and solid-hoofed horses,

  his hunting hounds and a host abroad?”1

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Then you think he spoke the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what is loved is a friend to the person who loves it, or so it seems, Menexenus, whether it loves him or hates him. Babies, for example, who [213] are too young to show love but not too young to hate, when they are disciplined by their mother or father, are at that moment, even though they hate their parents then, their very dearest friends.”

  “It seems so to me.”

  “So by this line of reasoning it is not the lover who is a friend, but the loved.”

  “It looks like it.”

  “And so the hated is the enemy, not the hater.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Then many people are loved by their enemies and hated by their friends, and are friends to their enemies and enemies to their friends—if the object [b] of love rather than the lover is a friend. But this doesn’t make any sense at all, my dear friend, in fact I think it is simply impossible to be an enemy to one’s friend and a friend to one’s enemy.”

  “True, Socrates, I think you’re right.”

  “Then if this is impossible, that would make the lover the friend of the loved.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “And the hater the enemy of the hated.”

  “That must be.”

  “Then we are going to be forced to agree to our previous statement, [c] that one is frequently a friend of a nonfriend, and even of an enemy. This is the case when you love someone who does not love you, or even hates you. And frequently one is an enemy to a nonenemy, or even to a friend, as happens when you hate someone who does not hate you, or even loves you.”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “Then what are we going to do,” I said, “if friends are not those who love, nor those who are loved, nor those who love and are loved? Are there any other besides these of whom we can say that they become each other’s friends?”

  “By Zeus,” he said, “I certainly can’t think of any, Socrates.”

  “Do you think, Menexenus,” I said, “that we may have been going about [d] our inquiry in entirely the wrong way?”

  “I certainly think so, Socrates,” said Lysis. And as he said it, he blushed. I had the impression that the words just slipped out unintentionally because he was paying such close attention to what was being said, which he clearly had been all along.

  Well, I wanted to give Menexenus a break anyway, and I was pleased with the other’s fondness for philosophy, so I turned the conversation [e] towards Lysis, and said: “I think you’re right, Lysis, to say that if we were looking at things in the right way, we wouldn’t be so far off course. Let’s not go in that direction any longer. That line of inquiry looks like a rough road to me. I think we’d better go back to where we turned off, and look [214] for guidance to the poets, the ancestral voices of human wisdom. What they say about who friends are is by no means trivial: that God himself makes people friends, by drawing them together. What they say goes something like this:

  God always draws the like unto the like2

  [b] and makes them acquainted. Or haven’t you come across these lines?”

  He said he had.

  “And haven’t you also come across writings of very wise men saying the same thing, that the like must always be friend to the like? You know, the authors who reason and write about Nature and the Universe?”

  “Yes, I have,” he said.

  “And do you think what they say is right?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Maybe half of it,” I said, “maybe even all of it, but we don’t understand [c] it. To our way of thinking, the closer a wicked man comes to a wicked man and the more he associates with him, the more he becomes his enemy. Because he does him an injustice. And it’s impossible for those who do an injustice and those who suffer it to be friends. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then that would make half the saying untrue, if we assume the wicked are like each other.”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “But what I think they’re saying is that the good are like each other and [d] are friends, while the bad—as another saying goes—are never alike, not even to themselves. They are out of kilter and unstable. And when something is not even like itself and is inconsistent with itself, it can hardly be like som
ething else and be a friend to it. Don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, I do,” he said.

  “Well, my friend, it seems to me that the hidden meaning of those who say ‘like is a friend to like’ is that only the good is a friend, and only to the good, while the bad never enters into true friendship with either the good or the bad. Do you agree?”

  He nodded yes.

  [e] “So now we’ve got it. We know what friends are. Our discussion indicates to us that whoever are good are friends.”

  “That seems altogether true to me.”

  “To me also,” I said. “But I’m still a little uneasy with it. By Zeus, let’s see why I’m still suspicious. Is like friend to like insofar as he is like, and as such is he useful to his counterpart? I can put it better this way: When something, anything at all, is like something else, how can it benefit or harm its like in a way that it could not benefit or harm itself? Or what could be done to it by its like that could not be done to it by itself? Can [215] such things be prized by each other when they cannot give each other assistance? Is there any way?”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “And how can anything be a friend if it is not prized?”

  “It can’t.”

  “All right, then, like is not friend to like. But couldn’t the good still be friend to the good insofar as he is good, not insofar as he is like?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What about this, though? Isn’t a good person, insofar as he is good, sufficient to himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a self-sufficient person has no need of anything, just because of [b] his self-sufficiency?”

  “How could he?”

  “And the person who needs nothing wouldn’t prize anything.”

  “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “What he didn’t prize he wouldn’t love.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “And whoever doesn’t love is not a friend.”

  “It appears not.”

  “Then how in the world are the good going to be friends to the good? They don’t yearn for one another when apart, because even then they are sufficient to themselves, and when together they have no need of one another. Is there any way people like that can possibly value each other?”