Part 7

NICIAS: I have often heard you say that 'Every man is good in that in which he is wise, and bad in that in which he is unwise.'

SOCRATES: That is certainly true, Nicias.

NICIAS: And therefore if the brave man is good, he is also wise.

SOCRATES: Do you hear him, Laches?

LACHES: Yes, I hear him, but I do not very well understand him.

SOCRATES: I think that I understand him; and he appears to me to mean that courage is a sort of wisdom.

LACHES: What can he possibly mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: That is a question which you must ask of himself.

LACHES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Tell him then, Nicias, what you mean by this wisdom; for you surely do not mean the wisdom which plays the flute?

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.