The singular passage in Book vii., in which Plato describes life as a pastime, like many other passages in the Laws is imperfectly expressed.  Two thoughts seem to be struggling in his mind:  first, the reflection, to which he returns at the end of the passage, that men are playthings or puppets, and that God only is the serious aim of human endeavours; this suggests to him the afterthought that, although playthings, they are the playthings of the Gods, and that this is the best of them.  The cynical, ironical fancy of the moment insensibly passes into a religious sentiment.  In another passage he says that life is a game of which God, who is the player, shifts the pieces so as to procure the victory of good on the whole.  Or once more:  Tragedies are acted on the stage; but the best and noblest of them is the imitation of the noblest life, which we affirm to be the life of our whole state.  Again, life is a chorus, as well as a sort of mystery, in which we have the Gods for playmates.  Men imagine that war is their serious pursuit, and they make war that they may return to their amusements.  But neither wars nor amusements are the true satisfaction of men, which is to be found only in the society of the Gods, in sacrificing to them and propitiating them.  Like a Christian ascetic, Plato seems to suppose that life should be passed wholly in the enjoyment of divine things.  And after meditating in amazement on the sadness and unreality of the world, he adds, in a sort of parenthesis, ‘Be cheerful, Sirs’ (Shakespeare, Tempest.)

In one of the noblest passages of Plato, he speaks of the relation of the sexes.  Natural relations between members of the same family have been established of old; a ‘little word’ has put a stop to incestuous connexions.  But unnatural unions of another kind continued to prevail at Crete and Lacedaemon, and were even justified by the example of the Gods.  They, too, might be banished, if the feeling that they were unholy and abominable could sink into the minds of men.  The legislator is to cry aloud, and spare not, ‘Let not men fall below the level of the beasts.’  Plato does not shrink, like some modern philosophers, from ’carrying on war against the mightiest lusts of mankind;’ neither does he expect to extirpate them, but only to confine them to their natural use and purpose, by the enactments of law, and by the influence of public opinion.  He will not feed them by an over-luxurious diet, nor allow the healthier instincts of the soul to be corrupted by music and poetry.  The prohibition of excessive wealth is, as he says, a very considerable gain in the way of temperance, nor does he allow of those enthusiastic friendships between older and younger persons which in his earlier writings appear to be alluded to with a certain degree of amusement and without reproof (compare Introduction to the Symposium).  Sappho and Anacreon are celebrated by him in the Charmides and the Phaedrus; but they would have been expelled from the Magnesian state.