The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: already refuted by ourselves.
We remember.
Then what is to be done? Or rather is there anything to be done? I can
only, like the wise men who argue in courts, sum up the arguments:--If
neither the beloved, nor the lover, nor the like, nor the unlike, nor the
good, nor the congenial, nor any other of whom we spoke--for there were
such a number of them that I cannot remember all--if none of these are
friends, I know not what remains to be said.
Here I was going to invite the opinion of some older person, when suddenly
we were interrupted by the tutors of Lysis and Menexenus, who came upon us
like an evil apparition with their brothers, and bade them go home, as it
 Lysis |