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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: 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
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