[214e]
So now we can tell what friends are; since our argument discloses that they are any persons who may be good. I quite think so, said he.And I also, said I; and yet there is a point in it that makes me uneasy: so come, in Heaven's name, let us make out what it is that I suspect. like friend to like in so far as he is like, and is such an one useful to his fellow? Let me put it another way: when anything whatever is like anything else, what benefit can it offer, or what harm can it do, to its like, which it could not offer or do to itself? Or what could be done to it that could not be done to it by itself?
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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