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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But the love
of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is
uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much
noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good are
a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained
by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing their
affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bring a
reproach on love; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such
attachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them; for surely
nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured. Now
here and in Lacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing, but in most
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