Book 6
10
Now this faculty is not identical with Prudence, but Prudence implies it. But that eye of the soul of which we spokeSee 11.6 and cf. 1.6.12. cannot acquire the quality of Prudence without possessing Virtue. This we have said before, and it is manifestly true. For deductive inferences about matters of conduct always have a major premise of the form Since the End or Supreme Good is so and so (whatever it may be, since we may take it as anything we like for the sake of the argument); but the Supreme Good only appears good to the good man: vice perverts the mind and causes it to hold false views about the first principles of conduct. Hence it is clear that we cannot be prudent without being good.
1
We have therefore also to reconsider the nature of Virtue. The fact is that the case of Virtue is closely analogous to that of Prudence in relation to Cleverness. Prudence and Cleverness are not the same, but they are similar; and natural virtue is related in the same way to Virtue in the true sense. All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful. This at all events appears to be a matter of observation, that just as a man of powerful frame who has lost his sight meets with heavy falls when he moves about, because he cannot see, so it also happens in the moral sphere;
