[34] See the chapter on Tender Emotion in Mr. Bain’s elaborate classification and description of the Emotions. ‘The Emotions and the Will,’ ch. vii. p. 94 seq. (3rd ed., p. 124).
In the Lysis, 216 C-D, we read, among the suppositions thrown out by Sokrates, about τὸ φίλον — κινδυνεύει κατὰ τὴν ἀρχαίαν παροιμίαν τὸ καλὸν φίλον εἶναι. ἔοικε γοῦν μαλακῷ τινι καὶλείῳ καὶ λιπαρῷ· διὸ καὶ ἴσως ῥᾳδίως διολισθαίνει καὶ διαδύεται ἡμᾶς, ἅτε τοιοῦτον ὄν· λέγω γὰρ τἀγαθὸν καλὸν εἶναι. This allusion to the soft and the smooth is not very clear; a passage in Mr. Bain’s chapter serves to illustrate it.
“Among the sensations of the senses we find some that have the power of awakening tender emotion. The sensations that incline to tenderness are, in the first place, the effects of very gentle or soft stimulants, such as soft touches, gentle sounds, slow movements, temperate warmth, mild sunshine. These sensations must be felt in order to produce the effect, which is mental and not simply organic. We have seen that an acute sensation raises a vigorous muscular expression, as in wonder; a contrast to this is exhibited by gentle pressure or mild radiance. Hence tenderness is passive emotion by pre-eminence: we see it flourishing best in the quiescence of the moving members. Remotely there may be a large amount of action stimulated by it, but the proper outgoing accompaniment of it is organic not muscular.“
That the sensations of the soft and the smooth dispose to the Tender Emotion is here pointed out as a fact in human nature, agreeably to the comparison of Plato. Mr. Bain’s treatise has the rare merit of describing fully the physical as well as the mental characteristics of each separate emotion.
Debate in the Lysis partly verbal, partly real. Assumptions made by the Platonic Sokrates, questionable, such as the real Sokrates would have found reason for challenging.
The debate in the Lysis is partly verbal: i.e., respecting the word φίλος, whether it means the person loving, or the person loved, or whether it shall be confined to those cases in which the love is reciprocal, and then applied to both. Herein the question is about the meaning of words — a word and nothing more. The following portions of the dialogue enter upon questions not verbal but real — “Whether we are disposed to love what is like to ourselves, or what is unlike or opposite to ourselves?” Though both these are occasionally true, it is shown that as general explanations neither of them will hold. But this is shown by means of the following assumptions, which not only those whom Plato here calls the “very clever Disputants,”[35] but Sokrates himself at other times, would have called in question, viz.: “That bad men cannot be friends to each other — that men like to each other (therefore good men as well as bad) can be of no use to each other, and therefore there can be no basis of friendship between them — that the good man is self-sufficing, stands in need of no one, and therefore will not love any one.”[36] All these assumptions Sokrates would have found sufficient reason for challenging, if they had been advanced by Protagoras or any other opponents. They stand here as affirmed by him; but here, as elsewhere in Plato, the reader must apply his own critical intellect, and test what he reads for himself.
[35] Plato, Lysis, 216 A.: οἱ πάνσοφοι ἄνδρες οἱ ἀντιλογικοί, &c. Yet Plato, in the Phædrus and Symposion, indicates colloquial debate as the great generating cause of the most intense and durable friendship. Aristeides the Rhetor says, Orat. xlvii. (Πρὸς Καπίτωνα), p. 418, Dindorf, ἐπεὶ καὶ Πλάτων τὸ ἀληθὲς ἁπανταχοῦ τιμᾷ, καὶ τὰς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις συνουσίας ἀφορμὴν φιλίας ἀληθινῆς ὑπολαμβάνει.
[36] Plato, Lysis, 214-215. The discourse of Cicero, De Amicitiâ, is composed in a style of pleasing rhetoric; suitable to Lælius, an ancient Roman senator and active politician, who expressly renounces the accurate subtlety of Grecian philosophers (v. 18). There is little in it which we can compare with the Platonic Lysis; but I observe that he too, giving expression to his own feelings, maintains that there can be no friendship except between the good and virtuous: a position which is refuted by the “nefaria vox,” cited by himself as spoken by C. Blossius, xi. 37.
Peculiar theory about friendship broached by Sokrates. Persons neither good nor evil by nature, yet having a superficial tinge of evil, and desiring good to escape from it.
It is thus shown, or supposed to be shown, that the persons who love are neither the Good, nor the Bad: and that the objects loved, are neither things or persons similar, nor opposite, to the persons loving. Sokrates now adverts to the existence of a third category — Persons who are neither good, nor bad, but intermediate between the two — Objects which are intermediate between likeness and opposition. He announces as his own conjecture,[37] that the Subject of friendly or loving feeling, is, that which is neither good nor evil: the Object of the feeling, Good: and the cause of the feeling, the superficial presence of evil, which the subject desires to see removed.[38] The evil must be present in a superficial and removable manner — like whiteness in the hair caused by white paint, not by the grey colour of old age. Sokrates applies this to the state of mind of the philosopher, or lover of knowledge: who is not yet either thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, — either thoroughly wise or thoroughly unwise — but in a state intermediate between the two: ignorant, yet conscious of his own ignorance, and feeling it as a misfortune which he was anxious to shake off.[39]