ke of getting rid of
the evil. In this intermediate 'indifferent' position the philosopher or
lover of wisdom stands: he is not wise, and yet not unwise, but he has
ignorance accidentally clinging to him, and he yearns for wisdom as the
cure of the evil. (Symp.)

After this explanation has been received with triumphant accord, a fresh
dissatisfaction begins to steal over the mind of Socrates: Must not
friendship be for the sake of some ulterior end? and what can that final
cause or end of friendship be, other than the good? But the good is
desired by us only as the cure of evil; and therefore if there were no
evil there would be no friendship. Some other explanation then has to
be devised. May not desire be the source of friendship? And desire is of
what a man wants and of what is congenial to him. But then the congenial
cannot be the same as the like; for like, as has been already shown,
cannot be the friend of like. Nor can the congenial be the good; for
good is not the friend of good, as has been also shown. The problem is
unsolved, and the three friends, Socrates, Lysis, and Menexenus, are
still unable to find out what a friend is.

Thus, as in the Charmides and Laches, and several of the other Dialogues
of Plato (compare especially the Protagoras and Theaetetus), no
conclusion is arrived at. Socrates maintains his character of a 'know
nothing;' but the boys have already learned the lesson which he is
unable to teach them, and they are free from the conceit of knowledge.
(Compare Chrm.) The dialogue is what would be called in the language
of Thrasyllus tentative or inquisitive. The subject is continued in the
Phaedrus and Symposium, and treated, with a manifest reference to
the Lysis, in the eighth and ninth books of the Nicomachean Ethics of
Aristotle. As in other writings of Plato (for example, the Republic),
there is a progress from unconscious morality, illustrated by the
friendship of the two youths, and also by the sayings of the poets ('who
are our fathers in wisdom,' and yet only tell us half the truth, and
in this particular instance are not much improved upon by the
philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This,
however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear
to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:--First, the sense
that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the
higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake