Lysis | Page 5

in the Symposium, that
he is ignorant of all other things, but claims to have a knowledge of the
mysteries of love. There are likewise several contrasts of character; first
of the dry, caustic Ctesippus, of whom Socrates professes a humorous
sort of fear, and Hippothales the flighty lover, who murders sleep by
bawling out the name of his beloved; there is also a contrast between
the false, exaggerated, sentimental love of Hippothales towards Lysis,
and the childlike and innocent friendship of the boys with one another.
Some difference appears to be intended between the characters of the
more talkative Menexenus and the reserved and simple Lysis. Socrates
draws out the latter by a new sort of irony, which is sometimes adopted
in talking to children, and consists in asking a leading question which
can only be answered in a sense contrary to the intention of the
question: 'Your father and mother of course allow you to drive the
chariot?' 'No they do not.' When Menexenus returns, the serious
dialectic begins. He is described as 'very pugnacious,' and we are thus
prepared for the part which a mere youth takes in a difficult argument.
But Plato has not forgotten dramatic propriety, and Socrates proposes
at last to refer the question to some older person. SOME QUESTIONS
RELATING TO FRIENDSHIP. The subject of friendship has a lower
place in the modern than in the ancient world, partly because a higher
place is assigned by us to love and marriage. The very meaning of the
word has become slighter and more superficial; it seems almost to be
borrowed from the ancients, and has nearly disappeared in modern
treatises on Moral Philosophy. The received examples of friendship are
to be found chiefly among the Greeks and Romans. Hence the
casuistical or other questions which arise out of the relations of friends

have not often been considered seriously in modern times. Many of
them will be found to be the same which are discussed in the Lysis. We
may ask with Socrates, 1) whether friendship is 'of similars or
dissimilars,' or of both; 2) whether such a tie exists between the good
only and for the sake of the good; or 3) whether there may not be some
peculiar attraction, which draws together 'the neither good nor evil' for
the sake of the good and because of the evil; 4) whether friendship is
always mutual,--may there not be a one-sided and unrequited friendship?
This question, which, like many others, is only one of a laxer or stricter
use of words, seems to have greatly exercised the minds both of
Aristotle and Plato. 5) Can we expect friendship to be permanent, or
must we acknowledge with Cicero, 'Nihil difficilius quam amicitiam
usque ad extremum vitae permanere'? Is not friendship, even more than
love, liable to be swayed by the caprices of fancy? The person who
pleased us most at first sight or upon a slight acquaintance, when we
have seen him again, and under different circumstances, may make a
much less favourable impression on our minds. Young people swear
'eternal friendships,' but at these innocent perjuries their elders laugh.
No one forms a friendship with the intention of renouncing it; yet in the
course of a varied life it is practically certain that many changes will
occur of feeling, opinion, locality, occupation, fortune, which will
divide us from some persons and unite us to others. 6) There is an
ancient saying, Qui amicos amicum non habet. But is not some less
exclusive form of friendship better suited to the condition and nature of
man? And in those especially who have no family ties, may not the
feeling pass beyond one or a few, and embrace all with whom we come
into contact, and, perhaps in a few passionate and exalted natures, all
men everywhere? 7) The ancients had their three kinds of friendship,
'for the sake of the pleasant, the useful, and the good:' is the last to be
resolved into the two first; or are the two first to be included in the last?
The subject was puzzling to them: they could not say that friendship
was only a quality, or a relation, or a virtue, or a kind of virtue; and
they had not in the age of Plato reached the point of regarding it, like
justice, as a form or attribute of virtue. They had another perplexity: 8)
How could one of the noblest feelings of human nature be so near to
one of the most detestable corruptions of it? (Compare Symposium;
Laws). Leaving the Greek or ancient point of view, we may regard the

question in a more general way. Friendship is the union of two persons
in mutual affection and remembrance of one another. The friend can do
for his friend what