And he is in want of that of which he is deprived?

Certainly.

Then love, and desire, and friendship would appear to be of the natural
or congenial. Such, Lysis and Menexenus, is the inference.

They assented.

Then if you are friends, you must have natures which are congenial to
one another?

Certainly, they both said.

And I say, my boys, that no one who loves or desires another would ever
have loved or desired or affected him, if he had not been in some way
congenial to him, either in his soul, or in his character, or in his
manners, or in his form.

Yes, yes, said Menexenus. But Lysis was silent.

Then, I said, the conclusion is, that what is of a congenial nature must
be loved.

It follows, he said.

Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be
loved by his love.

Lysis and Menexenus gave a faint assent to this; and Hippothales changed
into all manner of colours with delight.

Here, intending to revise the argument, I said: Can we point out any
difference between the congenial and the like? For if that is possible,
then I think, Lysis and Menexenus, there may be some sense in our
argument about friendship. But if the congenial is only the like, how
will you get rid of the other argument, of the uselessness of like to
like in as far as they are like; for to say that what is useless is
dear, would be absurd? Suppose, then, that we agree to distinguish
between the congenial and the like--in the intoxication of argument,
that may perhaps be allowed.

Very true.

And shall we further say that the good is congenial, and the evil
uncongenial to every one? Or again that the evil is congenial to the
evil, and the good to the good; and that which is neither good nor evil
to that which is neither good nor evil?

They agreed to the latter alternative.

Then, my boys, we have again fallen into the old discarded error; for
the unjust will be the friend of the unjust, and the bad of the bad, as
well as the good of the good.

That appears to be the result.

But again, if we say that the congenial is the same as the good, in that
case the good and he only will be the friend of the good.

True.

But that too was a position of ours which, as you will remember, has
been already refuted by ourselves.

We remember.

Then what is to be done? Or rather is there anything to be done? I can
only, like the wise men who argue in courts, sum up the arguments:--If
neither the beloved, n