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and inasmuch as one cannot deliberate about things that are of
necessity, it follows that Prudence is not the same as Science. Nor can it be the same as
Art. It is not Science, because matters of conduct admit of variation; and not Art,
because doing and making are generically different,1 since making aims at an end distinct from
the act of making, whereas in doing the end cannot be other than the act itself: doing
well2 is in itself the end.
[4]
It remains therefore that it is a truth-attaining
rational quality, concerned with action in relation to things that are good and bad for
human beings.
[5]
Hence men like Pericles are deemed prudent, because they possess a faculty of discerning
what things are good for themselves and for mankind and that is our conception of an
expert in Domestic Economy or Political Science.
(This also accounts for the word Temperance,3
which signifies ‘preserving prudence.’
[6]
And Temperance does in fact preserve our belief as to our own good; for pleasure and
pain do not destroy or pervert all beliefs, for instance, the belief that the three angles
of a triangle are, or are not, together equal to two right angles, but only beliefs
concerning action. The first principles of action are the end to which our acts are means;
but a man corrupted by a love of pleasure or fear of pain, entirely fails to discern any
first principle,4 and cannot see that he ought to choose and do everything as a means
to this end, and for its sake; for vice tends to destroy
1 The words ‘since . . . itself the end’ in the mss. follow 5.4 ‘for human beings.’
2 See note on 1.4.2.
3 σωφροσύνη, the quality of the σώφρων ( σῶσ-φρήν) or ‘sound-minded’ man, Aristotle derives from σώζειν and φρόνησις. Cf. 8.8.4.
4 Or ‘to one corrupted by pleasure or pain this end does not seem to be a first principle at all.’