§ 1. Prudence is a habit of acting with true reason concerning those things which are good or evil for a human being (Aristotle, book 6 of the Ethics, chapter 1, and St. Thomas, Summa theologiae II–II, question 47).
He calls it right reason concerning things to be done, τῶν πρακτέων. Clearer is the definition of others derived from Cicero: knowledge of things to be done and to be omitted. For this definition comes to the same thing: knowledge of things to be sought and to be avoided; or: knowledge of things good, evil, and neutral. Prudence therefore extends most widely and is occupied in the actions of all the virtues; like a blameless mistress, it sets for all of them certain boundaries and a measure,
Beyond or short of which what is right cannot stand.
It is therefore the eye, cynosure, and leader of all the virtues; for neither temperance, nor justice, nor fortitude exists unless prudence moderates it. Οὐκ οἷόν τε ἀγαθὸν εἶναι κυρίως ἄνευ φρονήσεως: nothing can properly be good without prudence, Aristotle teaches in book 6 of the Ethics, chapter 5. For since every virtue consists in a mean, in choice, and in measure, without that ruler and dispenser the mean cannot be chosen nor the measure found; without this plumb line nothing but a ruin is built up. That magnet directs the course of navigation, unmoved, toward the goal of happiness and carries a torch before it; when this is extinguished, all things are in darkness. Hence let the commonwealth pursue a ray of divine light through so great a darkness with unclosed eyes. “For where there is no prudent governor, the people will fall; but safety is where there are many counsels” (Proverbs 5).
§ 2. Perfect prudence must hold first place in all affairs: ἅπαντα δὲ διὰ τὸ φρονεῖν καθίσταται; all things obey prudence.
Its functions are to investigate a matter by counsel and in that counsel to understand and select what is right and to reject what is harmful; to determine what, above all, must be done out of many things, and whether anything must be done at all. The most ingenious of poets expressed this:
You have a right hand useful in war; Yours is a talent that needs our direction. You bear strength without mind; mine is the care of the future. You can fight; with me Atreides chooses The times for fighting. You avail only in body, We in mind; and by as much as he who steers the ship surpasses The oarsman’s office, by as much as a leader is greater than a soldier, By so much do I surpass you.
If, therefore, the commonwealth, senate, or prince is without this, what else shall we say it is than an eyeless Cyclops, which pours out its mighty strength upon the wind, dashes it against the rocks, and at last overwhelms itself with its own mass?
§ 3. The parts of prudence are innumerable—namely, as many as there are kinds of virtues and of things to be done. Nevertheless, for the sake of order and discipline, it is customarily divided into certain species. One is discerned in individual and private actions and extends most widely, for it embraces all duties that pertain to the ordering and adornment of the mind. The office of another is to administer the family property and the household, which they call economic prudence. But that which is most excellent is called political prudence, which presides over peace and war, kingship, aristocracy, polity, and laws. He who governs that most difficult animal, the human being, needs to know, take up, and arrange as many affairs—so great and so dissimilar—as political prudence moderates and brings to their ends. The human being’s nature is greedy for liberty, and command is so troublesome to it that it obeys grudgingly even when useful and just things are commanded benignly: οἱ ἄρχοντες μισοῦνται· φιλελεύθερον γὰρ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον, says the scholiast on Thucydides. Rulers are hated because the human race loves liberty.
§ 4. Eight parts constitute complete prudence: memory, docility, reason, understanding, quick-wittedness, foresight, circumspection, and caution. Consideration of these has great force in all actions, for they generally concur in giving counsel. First, certainly, for pronouncing an opinion in public affairs or giving counsel, I require memory of many things, and a vivid recollection—acquired either by learning or experience—of outcomes and causes. He who is ignorant of the things done before him is always a child. So many and such varied things have been written that they could instruct even a blockhead; but such is the weakness of human talent that, when people read adverse and prosperous events, they take good omens for themselves and believe the flattering things. Although I admire the memory of Caesar or Mithridates, I do not demand it in a prince. I nevertheless judge that prudence must consider the outcomes of notable affairs, not only ancient but also recent. Memory is not indeed worthy of the name of prudence; nevertheless, we read of certain exceedingly prudent men who were distinguished by memory. Mithridates of Pontus addressed twenty-two nations, each in its own language; Cyrus could repeat the names of his soldiers, and Lucius Scipio those of the Roman people; on the day after he had come to Rome, Cineas addressed the senate and the equestrian order by name. Hadrian, Seneca, Porcius Latro, and others were strong in an excellent memory. But those marvels have scarcely appeared once in individual ages; I set before my prince those things which can come into use.
Let prudence and reflection upon useful things be in him. When food retains its own nature and floats undigested upon the stomach, it is a burden and irritates and oppresses health; when it has passed into the blood, it supplies strength and fills the veins. In the same way, knowledge of affairs ought not merely to reside in the memory but to pass into the understanding, and with its wholesome juice to strengthen and support the firmness and constancy of counsels. Nothing harms prudence more than the unconsidered rashness of inexperienced men, who either possess no part of human affairs or have lightly touched history without meditation; yet I have observed that these men most frequently display themselves in citations. I judge them like Calvisius Sabinus, and altogether his twins. In him, amid the greatest poverty of a poor little memory and utter thoughtlessness, there was a most greedy desire for glory, Seneca relates in Epistle 27:
“In our memory Calvisius Sabinus was a rich man: he had both the estate of a freedman and the character of a freeborn man. I have never seen a man more indecently happy. His memory was so bad that now the name of Ulysses escaped him, now that of Achilles, now that of Priam—men whom he knew as well as we know our schoolmasters. No aged nomenclator, who does not return names but imposes them, ever saluted the tribes as wrongly as he did the Trojans and Achaeans. Nevertheless he wished to appear learned. And so he devised this shortcut: for a great sum he bought slaves, one who should possess Homer, another Hesiod; in addition, he assigned one slave to each of the nine lyric poets. There is no reason for you to marvel that he bought them at a great price: he had not found them ready-made, so he contracted for them to be made. After this household had been procured for him, he began to harass his dinner guests. He had these men at his feet, and, when from time to time he requested verses from them to repeat, he often failed in the middle of a verse.
“Satellius Quadratus—a gnawer at foolish rich men and, what follows from that, a grinner at them, and, what is joined to both of these, a mocker—advised him to keep grammarians as excerpt-readers. When Sabinus had said that each slave cost him one hundred thousand sesterces, he replied: ‘You could have bought as many book chests for less.’ He nevertheless was of the opinion that he himself knew whatever anyone in his household knew. The same Satellius began to urge him to wrestle, though he was a sickly, pale, thin man. When Sabinus answered, ‘And how can I? I scarcely live,’ he said: ‘Please, do not say that; do you not see how many very strong slaves you have?’”
Far more troublesome than Calvisius are those who have scraped together varied stories from commonplace collections and recite them without order, without regard to time, and without decorum or prudence.
§ 5. Memory is not always, but nevertheless frequently, accompanied by a second aid to the actions of prudence, εὐμάθεια, or docility, which in this place I restrict to the actions of prudence. It is the mark of a great mind, since it does not possess all things from itself, to learn without shame—not only from books, which arrogance does more readily, because it is conscious of its own ignorance, but also from colleagues in the senate chamber and in the prince’s council: to hear and judge their opinions, even those of younger men, and to exchange the opinion you have pronounced for a better one. In this part prudent men often err most seriously, while they stubbornly urge not what is best to be done, but what they themselves have judged best.
§ 6. More excellent than docility, but rarer, is quick-wittedness, ἀγχίνοια, by which, through a swift movement of the mind, the rationale and means of resolving a difficulty is found. For it settles arduous affairs suddenly and in a short time, and procures reputation and authority. By such fortunate quick-wittedness Solomon adjudicated the most intricate affair of all, in which neither witnesses nor other proofs were present; without threats and tortures he elicited the litigants’ secrets. For when he had ordered the disputed infant to be divided by the sword and a part to be given to each woman, true affection immediately revealed the mother, and cruelty the stranger.
§ 7. The fourth part is reason or intelligence, which is a habit—the faculty of knowing and judging other things from things known and thoroughly perceived. For it is necessary that he who has learned very many things bring them into use, when there is need, by a discursive movement and activity of mind, and bring them toward the public advantage. The Crotoniats were at war against the Sybarites. The horses of the latter, as men utterly ruined by luxury, had been trained so that at certain measures of the trumpet they would leap and turn to dances. Since the Crotoniats had learned their disposition and this training, they turned it to their own advantage. For, having imitated the melody of the Sybarite dance, they easily crushed the dancing and disordered cavalry: the beasts of burden, upon hearing the accustomed song, were so impelled toward their usual sport that neither the ranks could be preserved nor the battle line governed.
§ 8. That reason chiefly looks to three things: first, that it act with foresight; second, with circumspection; third, with caution.
Foresight, therefore, is the part of prudence which looks ahead to future things and orders present things toward them. For when it foresees future things, it disposes present things so that the former may readily be met; when it looks upon present things, it easily conjectures what is to come and, by its care and solicitude, acts either so that evils may be averted or may fall most gently, or so that good things may be most opportune. Πρόνοια, foresight concerning future things before they occur, has never been sufficiently praised and ought to be the sole care in the commonwealth. For although our acts of foresight are timid and uncertain, nevertheless the wisest of all human beings truly admonishes us: “The cunning man sees evil and hides himself; the little ones pass on and sustain losses” (Proverbs 22); and: “The shrewd man sees danger and is hidden; the simple break through and suffer harm.” It was the utterance of a wicked but nevertheless provident king when he declared Rome to be for sale if it should find a buyer: from present conditions he foresaw the outcome, and the buyers were already threatening. After Greece and Carthage had been conquered, Scipio foresaw the destruction of Rome, and therefore judged that luxury must be resisted; but morals conquered care, and the conqueror of nations fell through her own delights and left the spoils of the world to the fiercest of barbarians. Thus Hannibal the enemy judged better concerning Fabius the Delayer than did his friends at Rome. For when all interpreted his delay as a reproach, Hannibal alone feared him and foretold that the cloud hanging upon the mountain would someday bring forth storms.
In this comparison and ordering of present and future affairs, judgment and action must be circumspect and cautious.
§ 9. Prudence has as its proposed end a good end, and as proposed means those things that lead to the end and are good or indifferent. But it is too little to have these rightly unless all the adjuncts and the things that surround the affair are also surveyed. This part of prudence is called circumspection. Images of emperors were formerly honored with civil reverence; this could seem a duty, but because images of the gods were joined to those statues, the crime of idolatry was connected with the veneration of lawful magistracy. It therefore belonged to prudence to look around, lest, while they honored the emperor, they should worship a demon. Macrinus, raised to the imperial office, recognized that military discipline had fallen and resolved to repair and restore it by crosses and unaccustomed punishments. He had a right end proposed, but neglected a circumstance; for he ought to have considered what was the principal circumstance—namely, the long-established and strengthened license of the camps, which must never be torn out by a single assault, but little by little. The deed was one of great constancy, but nevertheless it increased the calamities.
When Julian was reigning, an idol-serving temple attendant sprinkled Valentinian, then a tribune and afterward made emperor, with lustral water. Valentinian both gave him a slap and cut off the part of his garment upon which a drop had fallen, and so incited the tyrant to persecution. I praise the zeal; I require circumspection. I praise more highly the Christians of Antioch, who at first, during that time, prudently abstained from things sacrificed to idols according to the custom of the Church; but when Julian abused that law for their disgrace and deprivation and polluted all the food in the marketplace with sacrifices, they freely ate the food and mocked the idols while eating. For the tyrant’s malice and the insults of the Gentiles brought it about that Christ was worshiped with ingenuous liberty rather than with anxiety.
§ 10. In pursuing goods, caution against evils also has great importance. For many advantages in the commonwealth, even those received in practice and even those long blameless, must be abandoned so that the evils customarily following them may be avoided. What obstructs virtue must always be considered, lest the whole labor perish by a single accident. Written bonds and contracts are full of precautions; our life is almost empty of them. With how many formulas do buyers protect themselves, and what little word dearer than gold is inserted in the records? Is the commonwealth, exposed to so many evils, treated negligently? First the strength of the enemy and all obstacles are brought into counsel. When Antiochus looks upon his resources and golden arms, he anticipates victory in his mind; Hannibal, who knew the military practice of the Romans, judges that all those things will pass into plunder. This part of virtue rarely accompanies even the most perfect men. Cassius and Brutus endeavor to free their fatherland from tyranny; because the disposition of Antony and of others who rejoiced in civil blood had not been sufficiently perceived, they imposed three most cruel tyrants upon their fatherland in place of one moderate one.
§ 11. The final thing that pertains to true prudence is understanding, or a true estimation of moral principles, from which the rules and actions of prudence are deduced. For just as all sciences have certain principles of their own, from which they derive conclusions by certain and true reasoning, so also prudence rests upon certain general principles which all judge true when they have apprehended them at first sight. They are these: God is to be worshiped, one must act justly, magistracy must be obeyed,
and the other things which all by consensus judge true. Therefore those in whose minds so great a darkness of vices has settled that they tremble and are blinded at so clear a light lack not only the virtue itself but the principles of prudence. This is exceedingly rare even in the worst people, for almost all seek honorable pretexts even while they contrive crimes.
§ 12. And these things I establish generally concerning prudence in this manner. I commend it to the prince and senate and generally hand down its laws.
The first: Let them esteem as small nothing in the commonwealth which can be the decisive point of a greater advantage or danger. “The unforeseen force of death has seized, and will seize, nations”—indeed, a force that has been despised. The Romans fear the Parthian, and a poorly girded boy will rule over those who fear foreign things. Ishbosheth fears David, but is killed by brigands. Philip is armed against the Persians and is slaughtered by Pausanias.
The second: Just as good physicians skillfully forestall the causes of disease, let all who administer the commonwealth prudently, not by impulse, anticipate all dangers. It is easy to support a tottering column; to raise one that lies fallen is laborious. And so let them always look upon the corpses of other commonwealths—such as the Athenian, Corinthian, Spartan, Tyrian, and Carthaginian—the scars of others, and ἰάματα, “remedies,” so that they may guard against living wounds.
The third: It must be established with certainty by all kings, commonwealths, and peoples that all kingdoms which have hitherto perished have perished through imprudence in wars and seditions. For although accumulated iniquities drew down deserved punishment, nevertheless all counsels were corrupted so that the enemy could not be resisted. I freely appeal to all histories: among so many changes of kingdoms, overthrows of states, destructions and migrations of peoples, I seek one ἔνστασιν, “counter-instance,” and find none; nor, reader, will you find one. Let us look at the Western Empire. The emperors were unwarlike and inconsiderate; the commanders of the army were barbarians—Stilicho, Arbogast, Aetius. For what shadows of emperors were Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Severus, Anthemius, Olybrius, Glycerius, Nepos, and Augustulus? All were subject to the barbarians. And lest any assistance should be present, Aetius was killed, and indeed by the hand of Emperor Valentinian. Eudocia summoned Genseric to Rome. Theodoric killed the Suevi in Aquitania. Ricimer conspired against his master; Basiliscus, having set out for Africa, surrendered the fleet of the Constantinopolitan emperor to Genseric in order to win the favor of Aspar and Ardaburius. Orestes and Odoacer were summoned for vengeance. But those times were such that all, as though by agreement, made and killed emperors in sport; and administration under the tyranny of the prefects was so intolerable that, according to the testimony of Salvian in book 4, the inhabitants of the Roman Empire fled from its cities to the barbarians and preferred hard servitude to a wretched liberty.
The fourth: The supreme law of prudence is not to trust oneself, but gladly to hear others.
The fifth: No commonwealth has ever been governed with so great a wisdom that wise men and the people have not found much wanting in it. Let the rulers of peoples certainly persuade themselves of this: that they rule amid great complaints from their subjects. For they rule over many wicked people, and over very many desiring contrary things; and they themselves also often stray.
The sixth: Let no one among the subjects complain against the magistracy unless he is one who has administered his house without the complaint of his household, inhabited a city without offense to his neighbors, and entered upon an inheritance without disputes with his kinsmen. For if those men raise so great storms in a little lake, what wonder is it if tempests arise upon a vast ocean, where the winds are free to fight?