ALBERTUS MAGNUS: DE BONO, TRACTATUS iv, QUAESTIO ii “DE PARTIBUS PRUDENTIAE”

Next, the properties of prudence are investigated. And we follow the three categories of three philosophers, namely Tullius [Cicero], Macrobius, and Aristotle.

First Tullius says at the end of his First Rhetoric [De inventione]: “there are three parts to prudence: memory, intelligence, foresight.” Macrobius, however, says in his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio: “the knowledge of prudence lies in intellect, circumspection, foresight, a willingness to learn, and caution.” And Aristotle at the end of the first Book of his Ethics says that the intellectual virtues are prudence [sapientia], phronēsis, and intelligence [intelligentia].

ARTICLE ONE: WHAT MEMORIA MIGHT BE

Let us inquire first concerning the word memoria, which Tullius only mentions. And we will inquire in two ways, namely concerning what it might be in itself, and concerning the art ofmemory which Tullius teaches. First therefore let us examine what memory is. Tullius says that ‘‘memory is the faculty by which the mind recalls things that were in the past’’ [De invent. II. 53, 160].