What the lover wants

238e239aSocratesWell, my excellent friend, we have said and defined what it is that we must decide about. Let us keep it in view and go on to ask what benefit or harm a man in love and a man not in love are each likely to bring to one who grants them his favour. A man ruled by desire and enslaved to pleasure must surely make his beloved as pleasant to himself as possible. A sick person enjoys everything that offers no resistance; he hates anyone who is stronger or even equal. Thus a lover will never willingly tolerate a beloved who is superior or his equal. He constantly makes him weaker and less than himself. The ignorant are less than the wise, the cowardly than the brave, the inarticulate than the rhetorician and the slow-witted than the quick.