SOCRATES: Come then, Nicias, and do what you can to help your friends, who are tossing on the waves of argument, and at the last gasp: you see our extremity, and may save us and also settle your own opinion, if you will tell us what you think about courage. NICIAS: I have been thinking, Socrates, that you and Laches are not defining courage in the right way; for you have forgotten an excellent saying which I have heard from your own lips. SOCRATES: What is it, Nicias? 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. SOCRATES: How so?