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.