Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [380]
I shall be happy, I said, to let you have a share. Here is Lysis, who doesnot understand something that I was saying, and wants me to ask Menexenus,who, as he thinks, is likely to know.
And why do you not ask him? he said.
Very well, I said, I will; and do you, Menexenus, answer. But first I musttell you that I am one who from my childhood upward have set my heart upona certain thing. All people have their fancies; some desire horses, andothers dogs; and some are fond of gold, and others of honour. Now, I haveno violent desire of any of these things; but I have a passion for friends;and I would rather have a good friend than the best cock or quail in theworld: I would even go further, and say the best horse or dog. Yea, bythe dog of Egypt, I should greatly prefer a real friend to all the gold ofDarius, or even to Darius himself: I am such a lover of friends as that. And when I see you and Lysis, at your early age, so easily possessed ofthis treasure, and so soon, he of you, and you of him, I am amazed anddelighted, seeing that I myself, although I am now advanced in years, am sofar from having made a similar acquisition, that I do not even know in whatway a friend is acquired. But I want to ask you a question about this, foryou have experience: tell me then, when one loves another, is the lover orthe beloved the friend; or may either be the friend?
Either may, I should think, be the friend of either.
Do you mean, I said, that if only one of them loves the other, they aremutual friends?
Yes, he said; that is my meaning.
But what if the lover is not loved in return? which is a very possiblecase.
Yes.
Or is, perhaps, even hated? which is a fancy which sometimes is entertainedby lovers respecting their beloved. Nothing can exceed their love; and yetthey imagine either that they are not loved in return, or that they arehated. Is not that true?
Yes, he said, quite true.
In that case, the one loves, and the other is loved?
Yes.
Then which is the friend of which? Is the lover the friend of the beloved,whether he be loved in return, or hated; or is the beloved the friend; oris there no friendship at all on either side, unless they both love oneanother?
There would seem to be none at all.
Then this notion is not in accordance with our previous one. We weresaying that both were friends, if one only loved; but now, unless they bothlove, neither is a friend.
That appears to be true.
Then nothing which does not love in return is beloved by a lover?
I think not.
Then they are not lovers of horses, whom the horses do not love in return;nor lovers of quails, nor of dogs, nor of wine, nor of gymnastic exercises,who have no return of love; no, nor of wisdom, unless wisdom loves them inreturn. Or shall we say that they do love them, although they are notbeloved by them; and that the poet was wrong who sings--
'Happy the man to whom his children are dear, and steeds having singlehoofs, and dogs of chase, and the stranger of another land'?
I do not think that he was wrong.
You think that he is right?
Yes.
Then, Menexenus, the conclusion is, that what is beloved, whether loving orhating, may be dear to the lover of it: for example, very young children,too young to love, or even hating their father or mother when they arepunished by them, are never dearer to them than at the time when they arebeing hated by them.
I think that what you say is true.
And, if so, not the lover, but the beloved, is the friend or dear one?
Yes.
And the hated one, and not the hater, is the enemy?
Clearly.
Then many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, andare the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends. Yethow absurd, my dear friend, or indeed impossible is this paradox of a manbeing an enemy to his friend or a friend to his enemy.
I quite agree, Socrates, in what you say.
But if this cannot be, the lover will be the friend of that which is loved?
True.
And the hater will be the enemy of that which is hated?
Certainly.
Yet we must acknowledge in this,