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13. We have therefore also to reconsider the nature of Virtue. The fact is that the case of Virtue is closely analogous to that of Prudence in relation to Cleverness. Prudence and Cleverness are not the same, but they are similar; and natural virtue is related in the same way to Virtue in the true sense. All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful. This at all events appears to be a matter of observation, that just as a man of powerful frame who has lost his sight meets with heavy falls when he moves about, because he cannot see, so it also happens in the moral sphere; [2] whereas if a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence,1 then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions2 there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence. [3] Hence some people maintain that all the virtues are forms of Prudence; and Socrates' line of enquiry was right in one way though wrong in another; he was mistaken in thinking that

1 νοῦς here means φρόνησις as a whole: see 11.4, third note.

2 See first note on 5.8.

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