Note 30 — Chapter XX · LYSIS.

See Xenophon, Memor. ii. 4-5-6. In the last of these three conversations (s. 21-22), Sokrates says to Kritobulus Ἀλλ’ ἔχει μὲν ποικίλως πως ταῦτα, ὦ Κριτόβουλε· φύσει γὰρ ἔχουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὰ μὲν φιλικά· δέονται τε γὰρ ἀλλήλων, καὶ ἐλεοῦσι, καὶ συνεργοῦντες ὠφελοῦσι, καὶ τοῦτο συνιέντες χάριν ἔχουσιν ἀλλήλοις, τὰ δὲ πολεμικά· τά τε γὰρ αὐτὰ καλὰ καὶ ἡδέα νομίζοντες ὑπὲρ τούτων μάχονται, καὶ διχογνωμονοῦντες ἐναντιοῦνται· πολεμικὸν δὲ καὶ ἔρις καὶ ὀργή· καὶ δυσμενὲς μὲν ὁ τοῦ πλεονεκτεῖν ἔρως, μισητὸν δὲ ὁ φθόνος.

This observation of Sokrates is very true and valuable — that the causes of friendship and the causes of enmity are both of them equally natural, i.e. equally interwoven with the constant conditions of individual and social life. This is very different from the vague, partial, and encomiastic predicates with which τὸ φύσει is often decorated elsewhere by Sokrates himself, as well as by Plato and Aristotle.