Book 3
18
But nevertheless the courage of passion is in the highest degree natural; passion is a thing that does not know defeat, owing to which the young are the best fighters. Civic courage is due to law.
19
But none of these is truly courage, though they are all useful for encouragement in dangers.
20
Up to this point we have spoken about things formidable in general terms, but it will be better to define them more precisely. As a general term the formidable denotes what causes fear, and that is of a property of things that appear capable of causing pain of a destructive kind: for persons expecting some other pain might perhaps experience a different sort of pain and a different feeling, but will not have fear—for example if a man foresaw that he was going to feel the pain felt by the jealous, or the sort of pain felt by the envious or by those who are ashamed.
21
But fear only occurs in the case of pains that seem likely to be of the kind whose nature it is to destroy life. Hence some people who are even very soft about certain things are brave, and some who are hard and enduring are also cowardly.
22
Moreover it is thought to be almost a special property of courage to be of a certain disposition in regard to death and the pain of death; for if a man were such as to be capable of rational endurance in respect of heat and cold and pains of that sort that are not dangerous, but at the same time soft and excessively timid about death, not because of any other feeling but just because it brings destruction, while another man was soft in regard to those pains but impassive as regards death, the former would be thought a coward and the latter brave.
23
For we speak of danger only in the case of such formidable things as bring near to us what causes destruction of that sort, and when this appears near it appears to be danger.
