laches,-or-courage   

which inspires fear or confidence in war, or in anything.
La. How strangely he is talking, Socrates.
Soc. Why do you say so, Laches?
La. Why, surely courage is one thing, and wisdom another.
Soc. That is just what Nicias denies.
La. Yes, that is what he denies; but he is so.
Soc. Suppose that we instruct instead of abusing him?
Nic. 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.
La. 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?
Nic. Not at all.
La. 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.
Soc. What is Laches saying, Nicias? He appears to be saying something
of importance.
Nic. Yes, he is saying something, but it is not true.
Soc. How so?
Nic. 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?
La. Yes certainly so in my opinion.
Nic. And do you think that the same things are terrible to those who
had better die, and to those who had better live?
La. Certainly not.
Nic. And do you suppose that the physician or any other artist knows
this, or any one indeed, except he who is skilled in the grounds of
fear and hope? And him I call the courageous.
Soc. Do you understand his meaning, Laches?
La. Yes; I suppose that, in his way of speaking, the soothsayers are
courageous. For who but one of them can know to whom to die or to live
is better? And yet Nicias, would you allow that you are yourself a
soothsayer, or are you neither a soothsayer nor courageous?
Nic. What! do you mean to say that the soothsayer ought to know the
grounds of hope or fear?
La. Indeed I do: who but he?
Nic. Much rather I should say he of whom I speak; for the soothsayer
ought to know only the signs of things that are about to come to pass,
whether death or disease, or loss of property, or victory, or defeat
in war, or in any sort of contest; but to whom the suffering or not
suffering of these things will be for the best, can no more be decided
by the soothsayer than by one who is no soothsayer.
La. I cannot understand what Nicias would be at, Socrates; for he
represents the courageous man as neither a soothsayer, nor a
physician, nor in any other character, unless he means to say that he
is a god. My opinion is that he does not like honestly to confess that
he is talking nonsense, but that he shuffles up and down in order to
conceal the difficulty into which he has got himself. You and I,
Socrates, might have practised a similar shuffle just now, if we had
only wanted to avoid the appearance of inconsistency. And if we had
been arguing in a court of law there might have been reason in so
doing; but why should a man deck himself out with vain words at a
meeting of friends such as this?
Soc. I quite agree with you, Laches, that he should not. But perhaps
Nicias is serious, and not merely talking for the sake of talking. Let