[214b]
and so brings them acquainted; or have you not come across these verses? Yes, I have, he replied. And you have also come across those writings of eminent sages, which tell us this very thing—that like must needs be always friend to like? I refer, of course, to those who debate or write about nature and the universe.1 Quite so, he said. Well now, I went on, are they right in what they say? Perhaps, he replied. Perhaps in one half of it, I said; perhaps in even the whole; only we do not comprehend it. We suppose that the nearer a wicked man
1 The attraction of like for like was an important force in the cosmology of Empedocles (c. 475-415 B.C.)
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