“Laches” - Plato
LACHES: Indeed, Socrates, I am sure that we are LACHES: To what extent and what principle do not right.
you mean?
SOCRATES: Then according to your statement, SOCRATES: The principle of endurance. We too you and I, Laches, are not attuned to the Dorian must endure and persevere in the enquiry, and then mode, which is a harmony of words and deeds; for courage will not laugh at our faint-heartedness in our deeds are not in accordance with our words.
searching for courage; which after all may, very likely, Any one would say that we had courage who saw be endurance.
us in action, but not, I imagine, he who heard us talking about courage just now.
LACHES: I am ready to go on, Socrates; and yet I am unused to investigations of this sort. But the LACHES: That is most true.
spirit of controversy has been aroused in me by what has been said; and I am really grieved at being thus SOCRATES: And is this condition of ours satisfac-unable to express my meaning. For I fancy that I do tory?
know the nature of courage; but, somehow or other, she has slipped away from me, and I cannot get LACHES: Quite the reverse.
hold of her and tell her nature.
SOCRATES: Suppose, however, that we admit the SOCRATES: But, my dear friend, should not the principle of which we are speaking to a certain ex-good sportsman follow the track, and not be lazy?
tent.