Still, however, Sokrates is not fully satisfied with this hypothesis, but passes on to another. If we love anything, we must love it (he says) for the sake of something. This implies that there must exist, in the background, a something which is the primitive and real object of affection. The various things which we actually love, are not loved for their own sake, but for the sake of this _primum amabile_, and as shadows projected by it: just as a man who loves his son, comes to love by association what is salutary or comforting to his son--or as he loves money for the sake of what money will purchase. The _primum amabile_, in the view of Sokrates, is _Good_; particular things loved, are loved as shadows of good. [Side-note: Statement by Plato of the general law of mental association.] This is a doctrine which we shall find reproduced in other dialogues. We note with interest here, that it appears illustrated, by a statement of the general law of mental association--the calling up of one idea by other ideas or by sensations, and the transference of affections from one object to others which have been apprehended in conjunction with it, either as antecedents or consequents. Plato states this law clearly in the Phædon and elsewhere:[41] but he here conceives it imperfectly: for he seems to believe that, if an affection be transferred by association from a primitive object A, to other objects, B, C, D, &c., A always continues to be the only real object of affection, while B, C, D, &c., operate upon the mind merely by carrying it back to A. The affection towards B, C, D, &c., therefore is, in the view of Plato, only the affection for A under other denominations and disguises.[42] Now this is doubtless often the case; but often also, perhaps even more generally, it is not the case. After a certain length of repetition and habit, all conscious reference to the primitive object of affection will commonly be left out, and the affection towards the secondary object will become a feeling both substantive and immediate. What was originally loved as means, for the sake of an ulterior end, will in time come to be loved as an end for itself; and to constitute a new centre of force, from whence derivatives may branch out. It may even come to be loved more vehemently than any primitive object of affection, if it chance to accumulate in itself derivative influences from many of those objects.[43] This remark naturally presents itself, when we meet here for the first time, distinctly stated by Plato, the important psychological doctrine of the transference of affections by association from one object to others. [Footnote 41: Plato, Phædon, 73-74. It is declared differently, and more clearly, by Aristotle in the treatise [Greek: Peri\ Mnê/mês kai\ A)namnê/seôs], pp. 451-452.]