Kitap 6
2
If on the other hand we are to say that Prudence is useful not in helping us to act virtuously but in helping us to become virtuous, then it is of no use to those who are virtuous already. Nor is it of any use either to those who are not, since we may just as well take the advice of others who possess Prudence as possess Prudence ourselves. We may be content to do as we do in regard to our health; we want to be healthy, yet we do not learn medicine.
3
Moreover it would seem strange if Prudence, which is inferior to Wisdom, is nevertheless to have greater authority than Wisdom: yet the faculty that creates a thingSee 13.8, where it is implied that Prudence stands in the same relation to Wisdom as medicine to health: it provides the conditions for its development. governs and gives orders to it.
3
Let us now therefore discuss these difficulties, which so far have only been stated.
4
First then let us assert that Wisdom and Prudence, being as they are the virtues of the two parts of the intellect respectively, are necessarily desirable in themselves, even if neither produces any effect.
5
Secondly, they do in fact produce an effect: Wisdom produces Happiness, not in the sense in which medicine produces health, but in the sense in which healthiness is the cause of health. For Wisdom is a part of Virtue as a whole, and therefore by its possession, or rather by its exercise, renders a man happy.
6
Also Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of man’s proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.
