Title: Laches
Author: Plato


INTRODUCTION.

Lysimachus, the son of Aristides the Just, and Melesias, the son of
the elder Thucydides, two aged men who live together, are desirous of
educating their sons in the best manner. Their own education, as often
happens with the sons of great men, has been neglected; and they are
resolved that their children shall have more care taken of them, than
they received themselves at the hands of their fathers.

At their request, Nicias and Laches have accompanied them to see a man
named Stesilaus fighting in heavy armour. The two fathers ask the two
generals what they think of this exhibition, and whether they would
advise that their sons should acquire the accomplishment. Nicias and
Laches are quite willing to give their opinion; but they suggest that
Socrates should be invited to take part in the consultation. He is a
stranger to Lysimachus, but is afterwards recognised as the son of his
old friend Sophroniscus, with whom he never had a difference to the
hour of his death. Socrates is also known to Nicias, to whom he had
introduced the excellent Damon, musician and sophist, as a tutor for his
son, and to Laches, who had witnessed his heroic behaviour at the battle
of Delium (compare Symp.).

Socrates, as he is younger than either Nicias or Laches, prefers to
wait until they have delivered their opinions, which they give in a
characteristic manner. Nicias, the tactician, is very much in favour of
the new art, which he describes as the gymnastics of war--useful when
the ranks are formed, and still more useful when they are broken;
creating a general interest in military studies, and greatly adding to
the appearance of the soldier in the field. Laches, the blunt warrior,
is of opinion that such an art is not knowledge, and cannot be of any
value, because the Lacedaemonians, those great masters of arms, neglect
it. His own experience in actual service has taught him that these
pretenders are useless and ridiculous. This man Stesilaus has been seen
by him on board ship making a very sorry exhibition of himself. The
possession of the art will make the coward rash, and subject the
courageous, if he chance to make a slip, to invidious remarks. And now
let Socrates be taken into counsel. As they differ he must decide.

Socrates would rather not decide the question by a plurality of votes:
in such a serious matter as the education of a friend's children, he
would consult the one skilled person who has had masters, and has works
to show as evidences of his skill. This is not himself; for he has never
been able to pay the sophists for instructing him, and has never had
the wit to do or discover anything. But Nicias and Laches are older
and richer than he is: they have had teachers, and perhaps have made
discoveries; and he would have trusted them entirely, if they had not
been diametrically opposed.

Lysimachus here proposes to resign the argument into the hands of the
younger part of the company, as he is old, and has a bad memory. He
earnestly requests Socrates to remain;--in this showing, as Nicias says,
how little he knows the man, who will certainly not go away until he
has cross-examined the company about their past lives. Nicias has often
submitted to this process; and Laches is quite willing to learn from
Socrates, because his actions, in the true Dorian mode, correspond to
his words.

Socrates proceeds: We might ask who are our teachers? But a better and
more thorough way of examining the question will be to ask, 'What is
Virtue?'--or rather, to restrict the enquiry to that part of virtue
which is concerned with the use of weapons--'What is Courage?' Laches
thinks that he knows this: (1) 'He is courageous who remains at his
post.' But some nations fight flying, after the manner of Aeneas in
Homer; or as the heavy-armed Spartans also did at the battle of Plataea.
(2) Socrates wants a more general definition, not only of military
courage, but of courage of all sorts, tried both amid pleasures and
pains. Laches replies that this universal courage is endurance.
But courage is a good thing, and mere endurance may be hurtful and
injurious. Therefore (3) the element of intelligence must be added. But
then again unintelligent endurance may often be more courageous than
the intelligent, 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 scene; the Laches has more play
and development of character. In the Lysis and Charmides the youths are
the central figures, and frequent allusions are made to the place of
meeting, which is a palaestra. Here the place of meeting, which is also
a palaestra, is quite forgotten, and the boys play a subordinate part.
The seance is of old and elder men, of whom Socrates is the youngest.

First is the aged Lysimachus, who may be compared with Cephalus in the
Republic, and, like him, withdraws from the argument. Melesias, who is
only his shadow, also subsides into silence. Both of them, by their
own confession, have been ill-educated, as is further shown by the
circumstance that Lysimachus, the friend of Sophroniscus, has never
heard of the fame of Socrates, his son; they belong to different
circles. In the Meno their want of education in all but the arts of
riding and wrestling is adduced as a proof that virtue cannot be taught.
The recognition of Socrates by Lysimachus is extremely graceful; and his
military exploits naturally connect him with the two generals, of
whom one has witnessed them. The characters of Nicias and Laches are
indicated by their opinions on the exhibition of the man fighting in
heavy armour. The more enlightened Nicias is quite ready to accept the
new art, which Laches treats with ridicule, seeming to think that this,
or any other military question, may be settled by asking, 'What do the
Lacedaemonians say?' The one is the thoughtful general, willing to avail
himself of any discovery in the art of war (Aristoph. Aves); the other
is the practical man, who relies on his own experience, and is the
enemy of innovation; he can act but cannot speak, and is apt to lose his
temper. It is to be noted that one of them is supposed to be a hearer of
Socrates; the other is only acquainted with his actions. Laches is the
admirer of the Dorian mode; and into his mouth the remark is put that
there are some persons who, having never been taught, are better than
those who have. Like a novice in the art of disputation, he is delighted
with the hits of Socrates; and is disposed to be angry with the
refinements of Nicias.

In the discussion of the main thesis of the Dialogue--'What is Courage?'
the antagonism of the two characters is still more clearly brought out;
and in this, as in the preliminary question, the truth is parted between
them. Gradually, and not without difficulty, Laches is made to pass on
from the more popular to the more philosophical; it has never occurred
to him that there was any other courage than that of the soldier; and
only by an effort of the mind can he frame a general notion at all. No
sooner has this general notion been formed than it evanesces before the
dialectic of Socrates; and Nicias appears from the other side with the
Socratic doctrine, that courage is knowledge. This is explained to mean
knowledge of things terrible in the future. But Socrates denies that the
knowledge of the future is separable from that of the past and present;
in other words, true knowledge is not that of the soothsayer but of the
philosopher. And all knowledge will thus be equivalent to all virtue--a
position which elsewhere Socrates is not unwilling to admit, but which
will not assist us in distinguishing the nature of courage. In this part
of the Dialogue the contrast between the mode of cross-examination which
is practised by Laches and by Socrates, and also the manner in which
the definition of Laches is made to approximate to that of Nicias, are
worthy of attention.

Thus, with some intimation of the connexion and unity of virtue and
knowledge, we arrive at no distinct result. The two aspects of courage
are never harmonized. The knowledge which in the Protagoras is explained
as the faculty of estimating pleasures and pains is here lost in an
unmeaning and transcendental conception. Yet several true intimations of
the nature of courage are allowed to appear: (1) That courage is
moral as well as physical: (2) That true courage is inseparable from
knowledge, and yet (3) is based on a natural instinct. Laches exhibits
one aspect of courage; Nicias the other. The perfect image and harmony
of both is only realized in Socrates himself.

The Dialogue offers one among many examples of the freedom with which
Plato treats facts. For the scene must be supposed to have occurred
between B.C. 424, the year of the battle of Delium, and B.C. 418, the
year of the battle of Mantinea, at which Laches fell. But if Socrates
was more than seventy years of age at his trial in 399 (see Apology), he
could not have been a young man at any time after the battle of Delium.
