Summary and Analysis
Book III: Chapter VI
Summary
Courage is a mean between fear and recklessness. All objects of fear are fearful things, and generally they are evil also, so fear is defined as the expectation of evil. It is right and proper to fear some evils, but wrong to fear those which are not within one's control as an agent. The truly courageous man is concerned only with the most terrible of evils — death — and in particular with death in the most noble of circumstances, war. The real test of courage is how a man behaves in the face of dangers that are to some extent within his control.