 In any case, having dwelt at length on the insatiability of the base desire for riches, Dante addresses the question of whether our desire for knowledge, too, since it continues to grow as knowledge is acquired, is not similarly base. Dante begins his answer by asserting that “the supreme desire of each thing, the primal one given by its nature, is to return to its principle” or cause, and he illustrates this proposition by the images of a traveller on an unfamiliar road, who imagines each house he encounters to be the inn he seeks, and the desires of youth, which focus first on an apple or a pet bird, then evolve to encompass love and prosperity [Conv. 4.12.14–16]. But while this may seem to evoke Thomas’s view of a single desire which seeks to grow continuously toward union with God, Dante’s point is that the path to fulfillment involves multiple desires and the attainment of multiple perfections [Conv. 4.13.1–2]: