GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE ETHIC? OF SOCRATES AND PLATO 49
not the case that the brave man is never afraid. Every
man has a natural tendency to shrink from storming a
with which the
hill crowned by a line of machine-guns
enemy are sweeping its slopes. "There is only one universal
passion/' says Napoleon in Shaw's play, The Man ofDestiny,
"fear. Of all the thousand qualities a man may have,
the only one you will find as certainly in the youngest
drummer boy in my army as in me is fear. But," he
continues, "it is fear that makes men fight." For, in spite
of their fear, soldiers do in fact advance, rush the slopes
and capture the enemy's guns. Why do they? Because,
says Socrates, they are more afraid of some things, even
than they are of the guns of the enemy. Of what things?
Of such things, for example, as the doing of what is dis-
graceful, of feeling shame, of the reputation for cowardice,
of dishonouring the regiment, of betraying their comrades.
And in case these psychological fears should not be suffi-
cient, generals have taken care to ensure that they shall
be backed by a system of discipline, which trains every
soldier to carry constantly at the back of his mind the
thought of a court-martial for cowardice, if he runs away
in the face of the enemy. Thus, as somebody remarked
during the last war, "discipline is a device for substituting
the certainty of being shot if you don't -go 'over the top,'
for the possibility of being shot if you do", the result being
that soldiers go 'over the top/ However this may be, the
point upon which Socrates insists, in the Dialogue called
the Laches, is that the brave man no less than the coward
is afraid. Why, then, does he differ from a coward ? Because,
says Socrates, he is afraid of different things, and the
things he fears, the doing of what is disgraceful and so
on, are such as he ought to be afraid of. They are, that
is to say, truly formidable while the other things, the enemy's
guns, are such as ought to be faced. The brave
man in fact knows what is truly formidable, while the
coward does not ; thus the difference between the brave man
and the coward is one of knowledge or insight. One knows
what ought to be feared and the other does not.