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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: all that class of things which, as we say, are neither good nor evil in
themselves;--would the good be of any use, or other than useless to us?
For if there were nothing to hurt us any longer, we should have no need of
anything that would do us good. Then would be clearly seen that we did but
love and desire the good because of the evil, and as the remedy of the
evil, which was the disease; but if there had been no disease, there would
have been no need of a remedy. Is not this the nature of the good--to be
loved by us who are placed between the two, because of the evil? but there
is no use in the good for its own sake.
I suppose not.
Then the final principle of friendship, in which all other friendships
Lysis |
