in ethics, may be defined an ability of judging what is best, in the choice both of ends and means. According to the definition of the Roman moralist, *De Officiis*, lib. i. cap. 43, prudence is the knowledge of what is to be desired or avoided. Accordingly, he makes prudentia (*De Legibus*, lib. i.) to be a contraction of providentia, or foresight. Plato (*De Legibus*, lib. iii.) calls this the leading virtue; and Juvenal, Sat. x. observes,

*Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia.*

The idea of prudence includes *vis*, or due consultation; that is, concerning such things as demand consultation in a right manner, and for a competent time, that the resolution taken up may be neither too precipitate nor too slow; and *sagitta*, or a faculty of discerning proper means when they occur: and to the perfection of prudence, these three things are farther required; viz. *sagitta*, or a natural sagacity; *vis*, presence of mind, or a ready turn of thought; and *experientia*, or experience. The extremities of prudence are craft or cunning on the one hand, which is the pursuit of an ill end by direct and proper though not honest means; and folly on the other, which is either a mistake, both as to the end and means, or prosecuting a good end by foreign and improper means. Grove's Moral Philosophy, vol. ii. chap. ii.