[Footnote 35: Plato, Lysis, 216 A.: [Greek: oi( pa/nsophoi a)/ndres oi( a)ntilogikoi/], &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. ([Greek: Pro\s Kapi/tôna]), p. 418, Dindorf, [Greek: e)pei\ kai\ Pla/tôn to\ a)lêthe\s a(pantachou= tima=|, kai\ ta\s e)n toi=s lo/gois sunousi/as a)phormê\n phili/as a)lêthinê=s u(polamba/nei.]] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 37: Plato, Lysis, 216 D. [Greek: le/gô toi/nun a)pomanteuo/menos], &c.] [Footnote 38: Plato, Lysis, 216-217.]