CRITO:

ON PRUDENCE AND PROSPERITY

SUCH IS THE MUTUAL RELATION of prudence and prosperity: prudence is explainable and reasonable, orderly and definite; prosperity is unexplainable and irrational, disorderly and indefinite. In origin and power, prudence is prior to prosperity, the former governing and defining, the latter being governed and defined; but they are mutually adjusting, concurring in the same thing. For that which limits and adjusts must be explainable and reasonable, while that which is limited and adjusted is naturally unexplainable and irrational. That is how the principles of the Indefinite nature and Limit subsist in all things. Indefinites are always naturally disposed to be limited and adjusted by things possessing reason and prudence, for in relation to the latter the former stands as matter and essence. But finite things are self-adjusted and self-limited, being causal and energetic.

The mutual adjustment of these natures in different things produces a variety of adjusted substances. For in the comprehension of the whole of things, the mutual adjustment of both the motive and the passive is the world. There is no other possible way of salvation for the whole and the universe other than through the adjustment of the things generated to the divine, and of the ever passive to the ever motive. The similar adjustment in man, of the irrational to the rational part of the soul, is virtue, for this cannot exist in cases of mutual strife between the two. So also in a city, the mutual adjustment of the governors to the governed produces strength and concord. Governing is the specialty of the better nature, while being governed is more suited to the subordinate part. To both are common strength and concord. A similar mutual adjustment exists in the universe and in the family, for allurements and erudition concur with reason, and likewise pains and pleasures, prosperity and adversity.

Man's constitution is such that he needs work and rest, sorrow and gladness, prosperity and adversity. Some things draw the intellect towards wisdom and industry and keep it there; others relax and delight, rendering the intellect vigorous and prompt. Should one of these elements prevail then man's life becomes one-sided, exaggerating sorrow and difficulty or levity and smoothness. Now all these should be mutually adjusted by prudence, which discerns and distinguishes in actions the elements of the Limited and the Indefinite. That is why prudence is the mother and leader of the other virtues. For it is prudence's reason and law which organizes and harmonizes all other virtues.

In summary: the irrational and explicable are to be found in all things; the latter defines and limits, the former is defined and bounded. That which consists of both is the proper organization of the whole and the universe.

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God fashioned man in a way such as to declare, not through the want of power or deliberate choice, that man is incapable of impulsion to beauty of conduct. In man was implanted a principle such as to combine the possible with the desirable; so that while man is the cause of power and of the possession of good, God causes reasonable impulse and incitation. So God made man tend to heaven, gave him an intellective power, implanted in him a sight called Intellect, which is capable of beholding God. For without God, it is impossible to discover what is best and most beautiful; and without Intellect we cannot see God, since every mortal nature's establishment implies a progressive loss of [immortal] Intellect. It is not God, however, who effected this, but generation, and that impulse of the soul which lacks deliberate choice.

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