[Side-note: Questions addressed to Lysis. Appeal to the maxims of the poets. Like is the friend of like. Canvassed and rejected.] Sokrates now takes up a different aspect of the question, and turns to Lysis, inviting him to consider what has been laid down by the poets, "our fathers and guides in respect of wisdom".[12] Homer says that the Gods originate friendship, by bringing the like man to his like: Empedokles and other physical philosophers have also asserted, that like must always and of necessity be the friend of like. These wise teachers cannot mean (continues Sokrates) that bad men are friends of each other. The bad man can be no one's friend. He is not even like himself, but ever wayward and insane:--much less can he be like to any one else, even to another bad man. They mean that the good alone are like to each other, and friends to each other.[13] But is this true? What good, or what harm, can like do to like, which it does not also do to itself? How can there be reciprocal love between parties who render to each other no reciprocal aid? Is not the good man, so far forth as good, sufficient to himself,--standing in need of no one--and therefore loving no one? How can good men care much for each other, seeing that they thus neither regret each other when absent, nor have need of each other when present?[14] [Footnote 12: Plato, Lysis, 213 E: [Greek: skopou=nta kata\ tou\s poiêta/s; ou(=toi ga\r ê(mi=n ô(/sper pate/res tê=s sophi/as ei)si\ kai\ ê(gemo/nes.]] [Footnote 13: Plato, Lysis, 214.] [Footnote 14: Plato, Lysis 215 B: [Greek: O( de\ mê/ tou deo/menos, ou)de/ ti a)gapô/| a)\n. . . . O(\ de\ mê\ a)gapô/|ê, ou)d' a)\n philoi=. . . . Pô=s ou)=n oi( a)gathoi\ toi=s a)gathoi=s ê(mi=n phi/loi e)/sontai tê\n a)rchê/n, oi(\ mê/te a(po/ntes potheinoi\ a)llê/lois--i(kanoi\ ga\r e(autoi=s kai\ chôri\s o)/ntes--mê/te paro/ntes chrei/an au)tô=n e)/chousi? tou\s dê\ toiou/tous ti/s mêchanê\ peri\ pollou= poiei=sthai a)llêlous?]] [Side-note: Other poets declare that likeness is a cause of aversion; unlikeness, of friendship. Reasons _pro_ and _con_. Rejected.]