Plato on being friends without knowing what friendship is

“‘Shall we assume, then, that … the bad is akin to the bad; the good to the good; and what is neither good nor bad to what is neither good nor bad?’

They said they thought it was so: each was akin to its counterpart.

‘In that case, boys,’ I said, ‘haven’t we fallen back into those first statements of ours about friendship, which we rejected, since one unjust man will be a friend to another unjust man, a bad man to another bad man, no less than one good man to another good man?’

‘It would appear so,...