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Section 115

Socrates. For you are prophetic. Tell me: do you say that some just things are advantageous, while some are not?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. What then? Are some of them beautiful, and some not?

Alcibiades. How do you mean this?

Socrates. Has anyone ever seemed to you to act basely, yet justly?

Alcibiades. Not to me.

Socrates. But are all just things also beautiful?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. What again about beautiful things? Are they all good, or some good and some not?

Alcibiades. I think, Socrates, that some beautiful things are bad.

Socrates. And also that some base things are good?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. Do you mean things such as this: many who have come to the aid of a comrade or relative in war have received wounds and died, while those who did not help, though they ought to have, came away healthy?

Alcibiades. Very much so.

Socrates. You say that such aid is beautiful in respect to the attempt to save those whom one ought to save, and this is courage, is it not?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. But it is bad in respect to the deaths and wounds, isn't it?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. Are not courage and death different things?

Alcibiades. Very much so.

Socrates. Therefore, helping one's friends is not beautiful and bad in the same respect?

Alcibiades. It appears not.

Socrates. See then if, insofar as it is beautiful, it is also good, just as it is here. For you agreed that the aid was beautiful in respect to courage; consider this itself, then: is courage good or bad? Consider it this way: which would you choose to have, good things or bad?

Alcibiades. Good things.

Socrates. And the greatest goods most of all?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. And you would least of all choose to be deprived of such things?

Alcibiades. How could I not?

Socrates. What then do you say about courage? For how much would you choose to be deprived of it?

Alcibiades. I would not even accept life if I were a coward.

Socrates. Cowardice, then, seems to you to be the extreme of evils.

Alcibiades. To me it does.

Socrates. On a par with dying, as it seems.

Alcibiades. I agree.

Socrates. Are not life and courage most opposed to death and cowardice?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. And would you most of all wish to have the former, and least of all the latter?

Alcibiades. Yes.

Socrates. Is this because you think the former are the best, and the latter the worst?

Alcibiades. Very much so.

Socrates. Then you consider courage to be among the best things, and death among the worst.