And friends they cannot be, unless they value one another?
Very true.
But see now, Lysis, whether we are not being deceived in all
this-are we not indeed entirely wrong?
How so? he replied.
Have I not heard some one say, as I just now recollect, that the
like is the greatest enemy of the like, the good of the good?-Yes, and
he quoted the authority of Hesiod, who says:
Potter quarrels with potter, hard with bard,
Beggar with beggar;
and of all other things he affirmed, in like manner, "That of
necessity the most like are most full of envy, strife, and hatred of
one another, and the most unlike, of friendship. For the poor man is
compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the
aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one
who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows." And indeed he
went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of
friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very
reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly;
for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike:
for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter
the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the
void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of
the opposite, whereas like receives nothing from like.
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