stand.

SOCRATES: As the argument proceeds, my boy, I dare say that the meaning
will become clearer.

PROTARCHUS: Very likely.

SOCRATES: Here are two new principles.

PROTARCHUS: What are they?

SOCRATES: One is the generation of all things, and the other is essence.

PROTARCHUS: I readily accept from you both generation and essence.

SOCRATES: Very right; and would you say that generation is for the sake
of essence, or essence for the sake of generation?

PROTARCHUS: You want to know whether that which is called essence is,
properly speaking, for the sake of generation?

SOCRATES: Yes.

PROTARCHUS: By the gods, I wish that you would repeat your question.

SOCRATES: I mean, O my Protarchus, to ask whether you would tell me
that ship-building is for the sake of ships, or ships for the sake of
ship-building? and in all similar cases I should ask the same question.

PROTARCHUS: Why do you not answer yourself, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I have no objection, but you must take your part.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial,
material, are given to us with a view to generation, and that each
generation is relative to, or for the sake of, some being or essence,
and that the whole of generation is relative to the whole of essence.

PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.

SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for the sake
of some essence?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And that for the sake of which something else is done must
be placed in the class of good, and that which is done for the sake of
something else, in some other class, my good friend.

PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.

SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, will be rightly placed in
some other class than that of good?

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: Then, as I said at first, we ought to be very grateful to him
who first pointed out that pleasure was a generation only, and had no
true being at all; for he is clearly one who laughs at the notion of
pleasure being a good.

PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.

SOCRATES: And he would surely laugh also at those who make generation
their highest end.

PROTARCHUS: Of whom are you speaking, and what do they mean?

SOCRATES: I am speaking of those who when they are cured of hunger or
thirst or any other defect by some process of generation are delighted
at the process as if it were pleasure; and they say that they would not
wish to live without th