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?

NICIAS: Why, because he does not see that the physician's knowledge only
extends to the nature of health and disease: he can tell the sick man no
more than this. Do you imagine, Laches, that the physician knows whether
health or disease is the more terrible to a man? Had not many a man better
never get up from a sick bed? I should like to know whether you think that