wisdom stands: he is not wise, and yet not unwise, but he has ignorance accidentally clinging to him, and he yearns for wisdom as the cure of the evil. (Cp. Symp. 204.)
After this explamation 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 end of friendship 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 friendship? And desire is of what a man wants and of what is congenial to him. But then the congenial cannot 222 be the same as the like; for like, as has been already shown, cannot be the friend of like. Nor can the congenial be the good; for good is not the friend of good, as has been also shown. The problem is unsolved, and the three friends, Socrates, Lysis, and Menexenus, are still unable to find out what a friend is.
Thus, as in the Charmides and Laches, and several of the other Dialogues of Plato (compare especially the
Protagoras and Theaetetus), 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. 175,
176.) 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 unlike, is also a truth confirmed by