[222d]
I said, we have dropped into the very statements regarding friendship which we rejected at first; for now the unjust will be as much a friend of the unjust, and the bad of the bad, as the good of the good.1 So it seems, he said. And what is more, if we say that the good and the belonging are the same, we cannot avoid making the good a friend only to the good. To be sure. But this again, you know, is a view of which we thought we had disabused ourselves; you remember, do you not? We do.
1 The word “belonging” seems to throw some light on “friend,” but even if we distinguish it from “like” it turns out to be just as indifferent to good and bad, and therefore just as remote from the moral significance of “friend.”
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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