Book 6
6
for experience is the fruit of years.The Greek looks like a buried verse quotation. (One might indeed further enquire why it is that, though a boy may be a mathematician, he cannot be a metaphysician or a natural philosopher.The three divisions of the subject matter of Wisdom. Perhaps the answer is that Mathematics deals with abstractions, whereas the first principles of Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy are derived from experience: the young can only repeat them without conviction of their truth,Immelmann’s emendation gives can only take them on credit from others. whereas the formal concepts of Mathematics are easily understood.)
7
Again, in deliberation there is a double possibility of error: you may go wrong either in your general principle or in your particular fact: for instance, either in asserting that all heavy water is unwholesome, or that the particular water in question is heavy.
8
And it is clear that Prudence is not the same as Scientific Knowledge: for as has been said, it apprehends ultimate particular things, since the thing to be done is an ultimate particular thing.Cf. 8.2 above, 7.7, and 3.3.12.
