Surely not all endurance (rejoins Sokrates)? You admit that courage is a fine and honourable thing. But endurance without intelligence is hurtful and dishonourable: it cannot therefore be courage. Only intelligent endurance, therefore, can be courage. And then what is meant by intelligent? Intelligent — of what — or to what end? A man, who endures the loss of money, understanding well that he will thereby gain a larger sum, is he courageous? No. He who endures fighting, knowing that he has superior skill, numbers, and all other advantages on his side, manifests more of intelligent endurance, than his adversary who knows that he has all these advantages against him, yet who nevertheless endures fighting. Nevertheless this latter is the most courageous of the two.[15] Unintelligent endurance is in this case courage: but unintelligent endurance was acknowledged to be bad and hurtful, and courage to be a fine thing. We have entangled ourselves in a contradiction. We must at least show our own courage, by enduring until we can get right. For my part (replies Lachês) I am quite prepared for such endurance. I am piqued and angry that I cannot express what I conceive. I seem to have in my mind clearly what courage is: but it escapes me somehow or other, when I try to put it in words.[16]
[14] Plato, Lachês, 192 B. καρτερία τις τῆς ψυχῆς.
[15] Plato, Lachês, 192 D-E. ἡ φρόνιμος καρτερία … ἴδωμεν δή, ἡ εἰς τί φρόνιμος· ἢ ἡ εἰς ἅπαντα καὶ τὰ μεγάλα καὶ τὰ σμικρά;
[16] Plato, Lachês, 193 C, 194 B.
Sokrates now asks aid from Nikias. Nikias. — My explanation of courage is, that it is a sort of knowledge or intelligence. Sokr. — But what sort of intelligence? Not certainly intelligence of piping or playing the harp. Intelligence of what?
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]
[17] Plato, Lachês, 195 A. τὴν τῶν δεινων καὶ θαῤῥαλέων ἐπιστήμην καὶ ἐν πολέμῳ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν. Lachês. — Ὡς ἄτοπα λέγει! — χωρὶς δή που σοφία ἐστὶν ἀνδρείας.
It appears from two other passages (195 E, and 198 B) that θαῤῥάλεος here is simply the negation of δεινὸς and cannot be translated by any affirmative word.
[18] Plato, Lachês, 195-196.