Nicias: Certainly not.
Socrates: Nor the wisdom which plays the lyre?
Nicias: No.
Socrates: But what is this knowledge then, and of what?
Laches: I think that you put the question to him very well, Socrates; and I would like him to say what is the nature of this knowledge or wisdom.
Nicias: I mean to say, Laches, that courage is the knowledge of that which inspires fear or confidence in war, or in anything.
Laches: How strangely he is talking, Socrates.
Socrates: Why do you say so, Laches?
Laches: Why, surely courage is one thing, and wisdom another.
Socrates: That is just what Nicias denies.
Laches: Yes, that is what he denies; but he is so silly.
Socrates: Suppose that we instruct instead of abusing him?
Nicias: Laches does not want to instruct me, Socrates; but having been proved to be talking nonsense himself, he wants to prove that I have been doing the same.
Laches: Very true, Nicias; and you are talking nonsense, as I shall endeavour to show. Let me ask you a question: Do not physicians know the dangers of disease? or do the courageous know them? or are the physicians the same as the courageous?
Nicias: Not at all.
Laches: No more than the husbandmen who know the dangers of husbandry, or than other craftsmen, who have a knowledge of that which inspires them with fear or confidence in their own arts, and yet they are not courageous a whit the more for that.
Socrates: What is Laches saying, Nicias? He appears to be saying something of importance.
Nicias: Yes, he is saying something, but it is not true.
Socrates: How so?
Nicias: Why, because he does not see that the physician’s knowledge only extends to the nature of health and disease: he can tell the sick man no more than this. Do you imagine, Laches, that the physician knows whether health or disease is the more terrible to a man? Had not many a man better never get up from a sick bed? I should like to know whether you think that life is always better than death. May not death often be the better of the two?
Laches: Yes certainly so in my opinion.
Nicias: And do you think that the same things are terrible to those who had better die, and to those who had better live?
Laches: Certainly not.
Nicias: And do you suppose that the physician or any other artist knows this, or anyone indeed, except he who is skilled in the grounds of fear and hope? And him I call the courageous.
Socrates: Do you understand his meaning, Laches?