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, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of
their friends. Yet how absurd, my dear friend, or indeed impossible is
this paradox of a man being 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, as in the preceding instance,
that a man may be the friend of one who is not his friend, or who
may be his enemy, when he loves that which does not love him or
which even hates him. And he may be the enemy of one who is not his
enemy, and is even his friend: for example, when he hates that which
does not hate him, or which even loves him.

  That appears to be true.

  But if the lover is not a friend, nor the beloved a friend, nor both
together, what are we to say? Whom are we to call friends to one
another? Do any remain?

  Indeed, Socrates, I cannot find any.

  But, O Menexenus! I said, may we not have been altogether wrong in
our conclusions?

  I am sure that we have been wrong, Socrates, said Lysis. And he
blushed as he spoke, the words seeming to come from his lips
involuntarily, because his whole mind was taken up with the
argument; there was no mistaking his attentive look while he was
listening.

  I was pleased at the interest which was shown by Lysis, and I wanted
to give Menexenus a rest, so I turned to him and said, I think, Lysis,
that what you say is true, and that, if we had been right, we should
never have gone so far wrong; let us proceed no further in this
direction (for the road seems to be getting troublesome), but take the
other path into which we turned, and see what the poets have to say;
for they are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of wisdom,
and they speak of friends in no light or trivial manner, but God
himself, as they say, makes them and draws them to one another; and
this they express, if I am not mistaken, in the following words:-

        God is ever drawing like towards like, and

               making them acquainted.

I dare say that you have heard those words.

  Yes, he said; I have.

  And have you not also met with the treatises of philosophers who say
that like must love like? they are the people who argue and write
about nature and the universe.

  Very true, he replied.

  And are they right in saying this?

  They may be.

  Perhaps, I said, about half, or possibly, altogether, right, if
their meaning were rightly apprehended by us. For the more a bad man
has to do with a bad man, and the more nearly he is brought into
contact with him, the more he will be likely to hate him, for he
injures him; and injurer and injured cannot be friends. Is not that
true?

  Yes, he said.

  Then one half of the saying is untrue, if the wicked are like one
another?

  That is true.

  But the real meaning of the saying, as I imagine, is, that, the good
are like one another, friends to one another; and that the bad, as
is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with
themselves; for they are passionate and restless, and anything which
is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union
or harmony with any other thing. Do you not agree?

  Yes, I do.