Chapter 88
Prudence and practical wisdom; deliberation, foresight and good counsel in action.
862 passages · 260 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Prudence is the virtue of acting well in a world one cannot fully know. It covers deliberation before a choice, foresight of what may follow, the seeking and weighing of counsel, the timing of action, and the management of a household, a ship, an army or a state. It is a great idea for these books because nearly every one of them, epic, chronicle, fable, essay or treatise, shows people deciding what to do. Odysseus holding back his sword from the sleeping Cyclops is a lesson in prudence1. So is Drake hiding his ship in the Sound of Darien2, and so is Lincoln waiting for the moment to act3. The idea is also contested. Some of these authors make it the first of the virtues, others a mere skill, and others a counterfeit of virtue.
The most explicit attempt at definition comes from Hobbes. For him prudence is foresight drawn from past experience of like events. The more experience a man has, the more prudence he has, but it remains fallible conjecture4. It differs from science as dexterity in fencing differs from a sure method5. It is uncertain because no one can observe every circumstance6. Since it is only experience, equal time gives it equally to all men7. It is the wit to see how things conduce to a design, and governing a family differs from governing a kingdom only in the business governed8. Rousseau places its origin even lower, in the mechanical precautions early man learned by comparing one thing with another9.
Kant separates prudence from morality altogether. Prudence is skill in choosing the means to one’s own well-being. Its precepts are counsels, not commands10. They cannot be more than empirical counsels of frugality and courtesy, because no one can know with certainty what will make him happy11,12. Whether a false promise is prudent is therefore a different question from whether it is right13. Being prudent for one’s interests is not the same as being virtuous14. Penn, writing earlier, unites what Kant divides: even a just act, if done imprudently, is not advisable15. Burke goes furthest, calling prudence the first of virtues and the proper limit on popular claims of right16. Lowell finds that rank embodied in Lincoln’s forecast and presence of mind17.
A second division separates a higher prudence from a worldly one. Luke’s dishonest steward secures his future shrewdly, and the worldly are wiser in their generation than the children of light18. Bunyan’s Worldly Wiseman offers the pilgrim a safe, easy remedy in place of the dangerous way19, and By-ends waits for wind and tide20. Pascal holds that no step is taken with sense unless it is regulated by a view of the ultimate end21. In the Buddhist parable, a wounded man who demands the history of the arrow before treatment dies first22. The moderns turn this distinction into polemic. Emerson calls the false prudence that dotes on health and wealth the butt of heroism23. He praises a “sublime prudence” that postpones the present hour to the whole life24, and he says the highest prudence is the lowest prudence25. Whitman dismisses thrift and money-making as a fraud. The poet’s prudence, he says, concerns the soul and immortality26,27. Stevenson sees in respectable religion a worldly prudence that makes the best of both worlds without courage28.
Is prudence a matter of age? Cicero answers plainly. Great affairs are done by deliberation, not strength. Rashness is the note of youth and prudence of old age, as the steersman sits still while others climb the rigging29,30. Without old men’s reason states would not exist31. Hume agrees that in matters of conduct experienced men are trusted over talented novices, because prudence depends on minute circumstances32,33. Bacon would mix young and old in employments so that each corrects the other’s defects34. Franklin admits his father was right about youth and discretion, though a governor remarks that discretion does not always come with years35. Sheridan’s Sir Oliver dislikes prudence that clings to youth like ivy on a sapling36. If prudence comes from experience, can it be taught? Locke thinks it is needed in every station yet neglected in teaching37. He calls history “the great mistress of prudence”38, and he asks above all for a prudent tutor39. Polonius offers the classic string of precepts40. Franklin thinks private incidents can supply rules that let men become wise by foresight rather than by suffering41.
Deliberation is where prudence is most visibly at work. The Gospel counsels counting the cost before building a tower or going to war42. Epictetus says to test a course from every side and consider what one’s nature can bear43,44. Homer’s hero weighs each danger in turn, whether to land on the crags or swim on45, whether to fight the wooers alone or seek allies46. Circe teaches the harder arithmetic of losing six men to Scylla rather than all to Charybdis47. Hobbes gives the principle: the man with the surest prospect of a long chain of consequences deliberates and counsels best48. Descartes adds a necessary qualification. When action cannot wait and truth is unknown, one must act on the most probable course and then treat it as certain49.
Against haste the voices are many. The barber of the Thousand and One Nights says haste is from the Devil50. Euripides condemns Theseus for loosing his curse without waiting on time51. More’s Utopians defer debate so that men will not have to defend a first foolish opinion out of shame52. Goethe’s doctor counsels making haste slowly53, and Lincoln reminds the nation that nothing valuable is lost by taking time54. Yet a counter-tradition holds that foresight can cripple action. Hobbes’s Prometheus is tormented by looking too far ahead55. Pascal would not extend foresight beyond the present day56. Goethe’s Egmont rejects warnings because the morrow can be neither foreseen nor controlled57. Grimm satirizes Elsie’s anxious foresight58, and Emerson scorns the half-measures of good people59. Even Hamlet suspects that rashness sometimes serves better than deep plots60.
Counsel is prudence shared, and Bacon calls it the greatest trust between men61. The greatest judgment, he says, lies in choosing persons, not matters62. Marcus Aurelius would take the best advisers when the right course is unclear63. Machiavelli agrees that a prince’s sagacity shows in his ministers64, but he insists that good counsel originates in the prince’s own prudence, and that a prince who is not wise cannot be well advised65,66. Bacon names the dangers of counsel: leaks, weakened authority, and unfaithful advisers67. Counsel taken piecemeal, he says, is like a physician who cures the disease and kills the patient68.
The literature is full of good counsel refused. Haemon warns Creon that unbending rigidity is like a mainsail drawn too tight69. Teiresias tells him that to err is common but to persist is not70, and Creon yields too late71. Olivier begs Roland to sound the horn72. Later he argues that valor and madness differ73. Alcibiades’s warning to the generals is disregarded74. Franklin foresees Braddock’s exposed line of march75. These scenes suggest that the failure of prudence is more often pride than ignorance.
Foresight proper, the anticipation of evils, is a theme on which ancients and moderns largely agree. Confucius says that without thought for far-off things trouble comes near at hand76. Aesop’s swallow urges destroying the danger at its root77, and the ant lays up stores for winter78. Joseph stores grain against the lean years79. Machiavelli gives the political version. Wise rulers detect the distempers of a state while they are remote, as physicians treat a hectic fever early80. Defenses built in calm weather, like weirs against a flood, limit fortune’s force81,82. Dana’s sailors overhaul their rigging in fine Pacific weather against Cape Horn83. Sydney Smith mocks those who wait for deaths before building parapets84. Improvidence has its emblems too: the trees that give the woodman his axe handle85, and the one-eyed doe shot from the side she thought safe86. Burke judges that the deliberations of calamity are rarely wise87. Yet Thomas à Kempis notes that no one can guard against all ills88. Burns’s mouse finds her careful nest in vain89.
Timing turns prudence from calculation into art. Bacon locates wisdom in the onsets of things: watch first, then act with secrecy and celerity90. Plutarch credits Themistocles’s victory to his choice of the moment91. Drake judges that in extremity all safety lies in seizing it92. Machiavelli presses the point to a disturbing conclusion. Methods succeed or fail as they accord with the times, and no man is prudent enough to change his nature93. That is why the impetuous Julius II succeeded where caution would have failed94. Plutarch’s Pericles, by contrast, refuses battle like a pilot ignoring frightened passengers, because lost men cannot be recovered95,96. Froissart’s experienced knights prefer losing a pennon to risking hundreds of knights97. Cicero defends changing course as a pilot tacks before a storm while keeping his aim98. Macaulay values Machiavelli’s precepts because they apply to real cases, whereas general maxims rarely prevent folly99.
Whether prudence justifies concealment and craft is the sharpest moral question in the outline. Concealment as such is widely approved. Odysseus keeps his return secret and demands silence of Eurycleia100,101. Cicero trusts nothing sensitive to ordinary letters102. Thomas à Kempis calls silence in an evil time no small prudence103. Bacon makes the judgment of what to reveal and hide an art of state and of life. He recommends openness in reputation, secrecy in habit and dissimulation in season104,105. Stratagem against the strong delights the storytellers, from Noman and the rams106,107 to Marjaneh’s chalk marks108 and Thumbling’s tricks109. Distrust is part of the same discipline. Aesop’s fox reads the tracks into the lion’s cave110, and Malcolm tests Macduff111.
The line is drawn at broken faith. Machiavelli says a prudent prince does not keep his word when it hurts him112, and he holds up Borgia’s dissimulation at Sinigaglia as a pattern113. Plutarch’s Aristides judges Themistocles’s plan to burn the allied fleet most politic but most dishonorable, and the Athenians reject it114. Raleigh holds that unrighteous subtlety yields no lasting fruit115. Dante’s Guido wins fame by fox-like ways but stands among the damned116. Franklin, characteristically, excuses a small cunning that doubled the donations117. Here Kant’s separation of prudence from duty looks less like pedantry than like a diagnosis of the danger.
In statecraft the moderns develop prudence into a doctrine of gradual change. For Burke political reason is a moral computing of goods and evils, not metaphysical truth118. Reform of sentient beings demands slow caution119, and the ancestors’ circumspection rested on awareness of their own fallibility120. The Declaration of Independence, unexpectedly, agrees that prudence forbids changing governments for light causes121. Sydney Smith allows a pause before altering institutions as common sense but calls the rest the exaggeration of fools122. Carlyle praises Cromwell for having Chancery examined rather than abolished123.
Compromise is the statesman’s characteristic act. More advises staying in the commonwealth and turning to less bad what cannot be made good124. Machiavelli defines prudence as knowing degrees of disadvantage and taking the lesser evil as good125. Mill learned to sacrifice the non-essential to keep the essential126. Lowell declares the rigid doctrinaire the most unsafe politician and statesmanship prudence applied to public business127,128. Franklin observes drily that the best public measures are forced by occasion, not adopted from foresight129. In economy the analogy of family and kingdom returns. Smith holds that what is prudent in a family cannot be folly in a kingdom130, and his banks pay dearly for imprudent over-issue131. Burke would have the revolutionaries value an estate before mortgaging it132.
Private prudence is the province of proverbs. Aesop prefers the sure small catch133 and the one ready plan over a hundred tricks134. Sancho would keep himself safe today for tomorrow135. Penn warns against hazarding much for much136,137. Franklin wins over a rival by borrowing his book138. The Edda counsels against drunken brawls and a foeman’s kin139. In love the tension sharpens. Goldsmith’s Miss Neville chooses prudence over passion140. Burns’s lovers scorn the censuring world141. Racine’s Hippolytus says prudence resists passion in vain142.
Two final doubts remain open. Burns contrasts sturdy prudence acting by rule with feeling and generosity, and calls it prudent but not good143. Manzoni’s Don Abbondio, whose creed of minding his own business is self-serving caution posing as wisdom144, shows how easily the word can be borrowed by cowardice. Cervantes, against both, gives prudence its noblest form: in irremediable events, the highest prudence is to conquer one’s own will145. Several questions are left unsettled by these books. Is prudence a skill or a virtue, experience or wisdom? Can it bind craft by justice? Can it look beyond the morrow without losing the courage to act? The books record these questions; they do not resolve them.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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