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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: NICIAS: And do you think that the same things are terrible to those who
had better die, and to those who had better live?
LACHES: Certainly not.
NICIAS: And do you suppose that the physician or any other artist knows
this, or any one indeed, except he who is skilled in the grounds of fear
and hope? And him I call the courageous.
SOCRATES: Do you understand his meaning, Laches?
LACHES: Yes; I suppose that, in his way of speaking, the soothsayers are
courageous. For who but one of them can know to whom to die or to live is
better? And yet Nicias, would you allow that you are yourself a
soothsayer, or are you neither a soothsayer nor courageous?
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