[Side-note: Sokrates dissatisfied. He originates a new suggestion. The Primum Amabile, or object originally dear to us, _per se_: by relation or resemblance to which other objects become dear.] The two young collocutors with Sokrates welcome this explanation heartily, and Sokrates himself appears for the moment satisfied with it. But he presently bethinks himself, and exclaims, Ah! Lysis and Menexenus, our wealth is all a dream! we have been yielding again to delusions! Let us once more examine. You will admit that all friendship is on account of something and for the sake of something: it is relative both to some producing cause, and to some prospective end. Thus the body, which is in itself neither good nor evil, becomes when sick a friend to the medical art: on account of sickness, which is an evil--and for the sake of health, which is a good. The medical art is dear to us, because health is dear: but is there any thing behind, for the sake of which health also is dear? It is plain that we cannot push the series of references onward for ever, and that we must come ultimately to something which is dear _per se_, not from reference to any ulterior _aliud_. We must come to some _primum amabile_, dear by its own nature, to which all other dear things refer, and from which they are derivatives.[20] It is this _primum amabile_ which is the primitive, essential, and constant, object of our affections: we love other things only from their being associated with it. Thus suppose a father tenderly attached to his son, and that the son has drunk hemlock, for which wine is an antidote; the father will come by association to prize highly, not merely the wine which saves his son's life, but even the cup in which the wine is contained. Yet it would be wrong to say that he prizes the wine or the cup as much as his son: for the truth is, that all his solicitude is really on behalf of his son, and extends only in a derivative and secondary way to the wine and the cup. So about gold and silver: we talk of prizing highly gold and silver--but this is incorrect, for what we really prize is not gold, but the ulterior something, whatever it be, for the attainment of which gold and other instrumental means are accumulated. In general terms--when we say that B is dear on account of A, we are really speaking of A under the name of B. What is really dear, is that primitive object of love, _primum amabile_, towards which all the affections which we bear to other things, refer and tend.[21] [Footnote 20: Plato, Lysis, 219 C-D. [Greek: A)=r' ou)=n ou)k a)na/gkê a)peipei=n ê(ma=s ou(/tôs i)o/ntas, kai\ a)phike/sthai e)pi/ tina a)rchê\n, ê)\ ou)ke/t' e)panoi/sei e)p' a)/llo phi/lon, a)ll' ê(/xei e)p' e)kei=no o(/ e)sti _prô=ton phi/lon_, ou(= e(/neka kai\ ta)/lla phame\n pa/nta phi/la ei)=nai?]]