Kitap 6
1
The term Wisdom is employed in the arts to denote those men who are the most perfect masters of their art, for instance, it is applied to Pheidias as a sculptor and to Polycleitus as a statuary. In this use then Wisdom merely signifies artistic excellence.
2
But we also think that some people are wise in general and not in one department, not wise in something else,The sense rather requires wise in some particular thing, but the expression is assimilated to the quotation. as Homer says in the Margites: Neither a delver nor a ploughman him The Gods had made, nor wise in aught beside. Hence it is clear that Wisdom must be the most perfect of the modes of knowledge.
3
The wise man therefore must not only know the conclusions that follow from his first principles, but also have a true conception of those principles themselves. Hence Wisdom must be a combination of Intelligence and Scientific KnowledgeSee 6.1, 2.: it must be a consummated knowledgeLiterally knowledge having as it were a head, a phrase copied from Plato, Plat. Gorg. 505d. of the most exaltedSee 7.4, 5, and, for the technical sense of τίμιος, Bk. 1.12. objects. For it is absurd to think that Political Science or Prudence is the loftiest kind of knowledge, inasmuch as man is not the highest thing in the world.
