Though Aristotle contains but little to the purpose, the case is different with Plato; nor would it be possible to omit a detailed examination of the Platonic doctrine on the topic, or to neglect the attempt he made to analyse and purify a passion, capable, according to his earlier philosophical speculations, of supplying the starting-point for spiritual progress. The first point to notice in the Platonic treatment of paiderastia is the difference between the ethical opinions expressed in the _Phædrus_, _Symposium_, _Republic_, _Charmides_, and _Lysis_, on the one hand, and those expounded in the _Laws_ upon the other. The _Laws_, which are probably a genuine work of Plato's old age, condemn that passion which, in the _Phædrus_ and _Symposium_, he exalted as the greatest boon of human life and as the groundwork of the philosophical temperament; the ordinary social manifestations of which he described with sympathy in the _Lysis_ and the _Charmides_; and which he viewed with more than toleration in the _Republic_. It is not my business to offer a solution of this contradiction; but I may observe that Socrates, who plays the part of protagonist in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, and who, as we shall see, professed a special cult of love, is conspicuous by his absence in the _Laws_. It is, therefore, not improbable that the philosophical idealisation of paiderastia, to which the name of Platonic love is usually given, should rather be described as Socratic. However that may be, I think it will be well to deal first with the doctrine put into the mouth of the Athenian stranger in the _Laws_, and then to pass on to the consideration of what Socrates is made to say upon the subject of Greek love in the earlier dialogues. The position assumed by Plato in the _Laws_ (p. 636) is this: Syssitia and gymnasia are excellent institutions in their way, but they have a tendency to degrade natural love in man below the level of the beasts. Pleasure is only natural when it arises out of the intercourse between men and women, but the intercourse between men and men, or women and women, is contrary to nature.[152] The bold attempt at overleaping Nature's laws was due originally to unbridled lust.