[Side-note: Confusion. New answer given by Nikias. Courage is a sort of intelligence--the intelligence of things terrible and not terrible. Objections of Lachês.] _Nikias._--Courage is intelligence of things terrible, and things not terrible, both in war and in all other conjunctures. _Lachês._--What nonsense! Courage is a thing totally apart from knowledge or intelligence.[17] The intelligent physician knows best what is terrible, and what is not terrible, in reference to disease: the husbandman, in reference to agriculture. But they are not for that reason courageous. _Nikias._--They are not; but neither do they know what is terrible, or what is not terrible. Physicians can predict the result of a patient's case: they can tell what may cure him, or what will kill him. But whether it be better for him to die or to recover--_that_ they do not know, and cannot tell him. To some persons, death is a less evil than life:--defeat, than victory:--loss of wealth, than gain. None except the person who can discriminate these cases, knows what is really terrible and what is not so. He alone is really courageous.[18] _Lachês._--Where is there any such man? It can be only some God. Nikias feels himself in a puzzle, and instead of confessing it frankly as I have done, he is trying to help himself out by evasions more fit for a pleader before the Dikastery.[19] [Footnote 17: Plato, Lachês, 195 A. [Greek: tê\n tô=n deinôn kai\ thar)r(ale/ôn e)pistê/mên kai\ e)n pole/mô| kai\ e)n toi=s a)/llois a(/pasin.] _Lachês._--[Greek: Ô(s a)/topa le/gei!--chôri\s dê/ pou sophi/a e)sti\n a)ndrei/as.] It appears from two other passages (195 E, and 198 B) that [Greek: thar)r(a/leos] here is simply the negation of [Greek: deino\s] and cannot be translated by any affirmative word.] [Footnote 18: Plato, Lachês, 195-196.] [Footnote 19: Plato, Lachês, 196 B.] [Side-note: Questions of Sokrates to Nikias. It is only future events, not past or present, which are terrible; but intelligence of future events cannot be had without intelligence of past or present.]