in Ethics, may be defined an ability of judging what is best, in the choice both of ends and of 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 takes prudentia to be a contraction of providentia, or foresight. Plato calls this the leading virtue; and Juvenal observes, that where prudence is present no divinity is absent.

The extremes of prudence are craft or cunning on the one hand, and folly on the other.