Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/120

Laches.
Analysis.

to be solved? Socrates and Laches are not set 'to the Dorian mode 'of words and actions; for their words are all confusion, although their actions are courageous. Still they must 'endure' in an argument about endurance. Laches is very willing, and is quite sure that he knows what courage is, if he could only tell.

¹⁹⁴ Nicias is now appealed to; and in reply he offers a definition which he has heard from Socrates himself, to the effect that (1) 'Courage is intelligence.' Laches derides this; and Socrates enquires, 'What sort of intelligence?' to which Nicias replies, ¹⁹⁵ 'Intelligence of things terrible.' 'But every man knows the things to be dreaded in his own art.' 'No they do not. They may predict results, but cannot tell whether they are really terrible; only the courageous man can tell that.' Laches draws ¹⁹⁶ the inference that the courageous man is either a soothsayer or a god.

Again, (2) in Nicias' way of speaking, the term 'courageous' must be denied to animals or children, because they do not know ¹⁹⁷ the danger. Against this inversion of the ordinary use of language Laches reclaims, but is in some degree mollified by a compliment to his own courage. Still, he does not like to see an Athenian statesman and general descending to sophistries of this sort. ¹⁹⁸ Socrates resumes the argument. Courage has been defined to be intelligence or knowledge of the terrible; and courage is not all ¹⁹⁹ virtue, but only one of the virtues. The terrible is in the future, and therefore the knowledge of the terrible is a knowledge of the future. But there can be no knowledge of future good or evil separated from a knowledge of the good and evil of the past or present; that is to say, of all good and evil. Courage, therefore, is the knowledge of good and evil generally. But he who has the knowledge of good and evil generally, must not only have courage, ²⁰⁰ but also temperance, justice, and every other virtue. Thus, a single virtue would be the same as all virtues (cp. Protagoras, 350 foil.). And after all the two generals, and Socrates, the hero of Delium, are still in ignorance of the nature of courage. They ²⁰¹ must go to school again, boys, old men and all.

Introduction.

Some points of resemblance, and some points of difference, appear in the Laches when compared with the Charmides and Lysis. There is less of poetical and simple beauty, and more of dramatic interest and power. They are richer in the externals