the semblances of things? Do
you not provide such food and clothing and habitation as are suitable
to you? Why then do you confess that you want wisdom? In truth,
because you are often struck and disconcerted by semblances, and their
speciousness gets the better of you; and hence you sometimes suppose
the very same things to be good, then evil, and lastly, neither; and,
in a word, you grieve, you fear, you envy, you are disconcerted, you
change. Is it from this that you confess yourself unwise? And are you
not changeable too in love? Riches, pleasure, in short, the very same
things, you sometimes esteem good, and at other times evil. And do you
not esteem the same persons too alternately as good and bad, at one
time treating them with kindness, at another with enmity; at one time
commending, and at another time censuring them?

"Yes. This too is the case with me."

Well, then; can he who is deceived in another be his friend, think
you?

"No, surely."

Or does he who loves him with a changeable affection bear him genuine
good-will?

"Nor he, neither."

Or he who now vilifies, then admires him?

"Nor he."

Do you not often see little dogs caressing and playing with each
other, so that you would say nothing could be more friendly? But to
learn what this friendship is, throw a bit of meat between them, and
you will see. Do you too throw a bit of an estate betwixt you and your
son, and you will see that he will quickly wish you under ground, and
you him; and then you, no doubt, on the other hand will exclaim, What
a son have I brought up! He would bury me alive! Throw in a pretty
girl, and the old fellow and the young one will both fall in love with
her; or let fame or danger intervene, the words of the father of
Admetus will be yours:

"You love to see the light. Doth not your father?
You fain would still behold it. Would not he?"

Do you suppose that he did not love his own child when it was little;
that he was not in agonies when it had a fever, and often wished to
undergo that fever in its stead? But, after all, when the trial comes
home, you see what expressions he uses. Were not Eteocles and
Polynices born of the same mother and of the same father? Were they
not brought up, and did they not live and eat and sleep, together? Did
not they kiss and fondle each other? So that any one, who saw them,
would have laughed at all the paradoxes which philosophers utter about
love. And yet when a kingdom, li