Charles I, King of Spain (also known as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), was walking one day with considerable difficulty due to an attack of gout. One of his attendant counts saw him and began to laugh, whereupon the Emperor asked him: “Why are you laughing?”
The count replied: “My Lord, upon seeing how unsteady Your Majesty’s steps are, it seemed to me that the empire also limps on one foot.” To which Charles responded: “Think more accurately next time, for it is not the feet, but the head, that governs the empire.”
Likewise, each one’s personal life should be governed by the head or reason, and not by the feet, which symbolize the passions or whims. If our passions govern our life, it will be like a ship without a fixed course, dragged by the winds and currents of water that carry it from one place to another.
To be governed by the head means to be prudent in one’s actions. For our head, or our reason, to guide or govern our life, it is necessary that our reason be upright, or that it be directed by principles, and that these principles be upright.
Precisely for this reason, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says, one of the quasi-integral parts of prudence is intelligence, not as a faculty of thinking, but as knowledge of the right principles of action, which is what is called “intelligence of the first principles” (S.Th. II-II,49,2), the first and foremost of which is “good is to be done and evil avoided.”
Acting prudently means applying universal knowledge or principles of action to a particular action. Hence, acting rationally or “with the head” means knowing the particular action to be carried out and applying to it universal knowledge; comparing that particular action with the first principles of action to see whether that action is in accordance with them. If the action one wishes to carry out is not in accordance with these principles, this means that it is not a prudent action. If I still decide to carry it out it means that I am being moved by my passions, and not by the virtue of prudence, since they desire the action even though it is imprudent.
