In truth, no one general solution is attainable, such as Plato here professes to search for.[29] In one of the three Xenophontic dialogues wherein the subject of friendship is discussed we find the real Sokrates presenting it with a juster view of its real complications.[30] The same remark may be made upon Aristotle's manner of handling friendship in the Ethics. He seems plainly to allude to the Lysis (though not mentioning it by name); and to profit by it at least in what he puts out of consideration, if not in what he brings forward.[31] He discards the physical and cosmical analogies, which Plato borrows from Empedokles and Herakleitus, as too remote and inapplicable: he considers that the question must be determined by facts and principles relating to human dispositions and conduct. In other ways, he circumscribes the problem, by setting aside (what Plato includes) all objects of attachment which are not capable of reciprocating attachment.[32] The problem, as set forth here by Plato, is conceived in great generality. In what manner does one man become the friend of another?[33] How does a man become the object of friendship or love from another? What is that object towards which our love or friendship is determined? These terms are so large, that they include everything belonging to the Tender Emotion generally.[34] [Footnote 29: Turgot has some excellent remarks on the hopelessness of such problems as that which Plato propounds, here well as in other dialogues, to find definitions of common and vague terms. We read in his article Etymologie, in the Encyclopédie (vol. iii. pp. 70-72 of his Oeuvres Complets): "Qu'on se répresente la foule des acceptions du mot _esprit_, depuis son sens primitif _spiritus, haleine_, jusqu'à ceux qu'on lui donne dans la chimie, dans la littérature, dans la jurisprudence, _esprit acide_, esprit de Montaigne, _esprit des loix_, &c.--qu'on essaie d'extraire de toutes ces acceptions une idée qui soit commune à toutes--on verra s'évanouir tous les caractères qui distinguent _l'esprit_ de toute autre chose, dans quelque sens qu'on le prenne. . . . La multitude et l'incompatibilité des acceptions du mot _esprit_, sont telles, que personne n'a été tenté de les comprendre toutes dans une seule _définition_, et de définir l'esprit en général. Mais le vice de cette méthode n'est pas moins réel lorsqu'il n'est pas assez sensible pour empêcher qu'on ne la suive.