Kitap 6
1
The term Wisdom is employed in the arts to denote those men who are the most perfect masters of their art, for instance, it is applied to Pheidias as a sculptor and to Polycleitus as a statuary. In this use then Wisdom merely signifies artistic excellence.
2
But we also think that some people are wise in general and not in one department, not wise in something else,The sense rather requires wise in some particular thing, but the expression is assimilated to the quotation. as Homer says in the Margites: Neither a delver nor a ploughman him The Gods had made, nor wise in aught beside. Hence it is clear that Wisdom must be the most perfect of the modes of knowledge.
3
The wise man therefore must not only know the conclusions that follow from his first principles, but also have a true conception of those principles themselves. Hence Wisdom must be a combination of Intelligence and Scientific KnowledgeSee 6.1, 2.: it must be a consummated knowledgeLiterally knowledge having as it were a head, a phrase copied from Plato, Plat. Gorg. 505d. of the most exaltedSee 7.4, 5, and, for the technical sense of τίμιος, Bk. 1.12. objects. For it is absurd to think that Political Science or Prudence is the loftiest kind of knowledge, inasmuch as man is not the highest thing in the world.
4
And as wholesome and good mean one thing for men and another for fishes, whereas white and straight mean the same thing always, so everybody would denote the same thing by wise, but not by prudent; for each kind of beings will describe as prudent, and will entrust itself to, one who can discern its own particular welfare; hence even some of the lower animals are said to be prudent, namely those which display a capacity for forethought as regards their own lives.
