says Sallust,[421] "then mental acumen avails."

3. Lastly, prudence comes midway betwixt the moral and the intellectual
virtues. But just as the moral virtues pertain to the active life, so do
the intellectual virtues pertain to the contemplative. Hence it would
seem that prudence belongs neither to the active nor to the
contemplative life, but, as S. Augustine says, to a kind of life which
is betwixt and between.[422]

But prudence is said to come betwixt the intellectual and the
moral virtues in the sense that, whereas it has the same subject
as the intellectual virtues, it yet coincides as regards its
object with the moral virtues. And that third species of life
comes betwixt and between the active and the contemplative life
as regards the things with which it is concerned, for at one
time it is occupied with the contemplation of truth, at another
time with external matters.

"For what shall I do when God shall rise to judge? and when He
shall examine, what shall I answer Him? For I have always feared
God as waves swelling over me, and His weight I was not able to
bear."[423]

III

Does Teaching Belong to the Active or to the Contemplative Life?

S. Gregory says[424]: "The active life means breaking bread to the
hungry; teaching words of wisdom to them that know them not."

The act of teaching has a twofold object: for teaching is by speaking,
and speaking is the audible sign of an interior mental concept. One
object, therefore, of our teaching is the matter to be taught, the
object, that is, of our interior concepts; and in this sense teaching
sometimes belongs to the active, sometimes to the contemplative life. It
belongs to the active life if a man forms interiorly some concept of a
truth with a view to thus directing his external acts; but it belongs to
the contemplative life if a man interiorly conceives some intelligible
truth and delights in the thought of it and the love of it. Whence S.
Augustine says[425]: "Let them choose for themselves the better
part--that, namely, of the contemplative life; let them devote
themselves to the Word of God; let them yearn for the sweetness of
teaching; let them occupy themselves with the knowledge that leads to
salvation"--where he clearly says that teaching belongs to the
contemplative life.

The second object of teaching arises from the fact that teaching is
given through the medium of audible speech and th