“Laches” - Plato
LACHES: Certainly, he should.
NICIAS: I have often heard you say that ‘Every man is good in that in which he is wise, and bad in SOCRATES: And shall we invite Nicias to join us?
that in which he is unwise.’
he may be better at the sport than we are. What do you say?
SOCRATES: That is certainly true, Nicias.
LACHES: I should like that.
NICIAS: And therefore if the brave man is good, he is also wise.
SOCRATES: Come then, Nicias, and do what you can to help your friends, who are tossing on the SOCRATES: Do you hear him, Laches?
waves of argument, and at the last gasp: you see our extremity, and may save us and also settle your LACHES: Yes, I hear him, but I do not very well own opinion, if you will tell us what you think about understand him.
courage.
SOCRATES: I think that I understand him; and NICIAS: I have been thinking, Socrates, that you he appears to me to mean that courage is a sort of and Laches are not defining courage in the right wisdom.
way; for you have forgotten an excellent saying which I have heard from your own lips.
LACHES: What can he possibly mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: What is it, Nicias?
SOCRATES: That is a question which you must 32
“Laches” - Plato
ask of himself.
NICIAS: I mean to say, Laches, that courage is the knowledge of that which inspires fear or confidence LACHES: Yes.
in war, or in anything.
SOCRATES: Tell him then, Nicias, what you mean LACHES: How strangely he is talking, Socrates.
by this wisdom; for you surely do not mean the wisdom which plays the flute?
SOCRATES: Why do you say so, Laches?
NICIAS: Certainly not.
LACHES: Why, surely courage is one thing, and wisdom another.
SOCRATES: Nor the wisdom which plays the lyre?
SOCRATES: That is just what Nicias denies.
NICIAS: No.
LACHES: Yes, that is what he denies; but he is so SOCRATES: But what is this knowledge then, and silly.
of what?
SOCRATES: Suppose that we instruct instead of LACHES: I think that you put the question to him abusing him?
very well, Socrates; and I would like him to say what is the nature of this knowledge or wisdom.
NICIAS: Laches does not want to instruct me, Socrates; but having been proved to be talking non-33
“Laches” - Plato
sense himself, he wants to prove that I have been NICIAS: Yes, he is saying something, but it is not doing the same.
true.
LACHES: Very true, Nicias; and you are talking SOCRATES: How so?
nonsense, as I shall endeavour to show. Let me ask you a question: Do not physicians know the dan-NICIAS: Why, because he does not see that the gers of disease? or do the courageous know them?
physician’s knowledge only extends to the nature or are the physicians the same as the courageous?
of health and disease: he can tell the sick man no more than this. Do you imagine, Laches, that the NICIAS: Not at all.
physician knows whether health or disease is the more terrible to a man? Had not many a man bet-LACHES: No more than the husbandmen who ter never get up from a sick bed? I should like to know the dangers of husbandry, or than other crafts-know whether you think that life is always better men, who have a knowledge of that which inspires than death. May not death often be the better of them with fear or confidence in their own arts, and the two?
yet they are not courageous a whit the more for that.
LACHES: Yes certainly so in my opinion.
SOCRATES: What is Laches saying, Nicias? He NICIAS: And do you think that the same things appears to be saying something of importance.
are terrible to those who had better die, and to those who had better live?