[219c]
if we are not to find our present argument a mere deception. Medicine, we say, is a friend for the sake of health. Yes. Then is health a friend also? Certainly. And if it is a friend, it is so for the sake of something. Yes. And that something is a friend, if it is to conform to our previous agreement. Quite so. Then will that something be, on its part also, a friend for the sake of a friend? Yes. Now are we not bound to weary ourselves with going on in this way, unless we can arrive at some first principle which will not keep leading us on from one friend to another, but will reach the one original friend, for whose sake all the other things can be said
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.
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