igent, the bad than the good. How is this contradiction 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.

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, '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 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 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. Socrates resumes the argument.
Courage has been defined to be intelligence or knowledge of the
terrible; and courage is not all 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,
but also temperance, justice, and every other virtue. Thus, a single
virtue would be the same as all virtues (compare Protagoras). And after
all the two generals, and Socrates, the hero of Delium, are still in
ignorance of the nature of courage. They must go to school again, boys,
old men and all.

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 of the sce