In a distant region of the jungle, the Lion King had fallen seriously ill. His roar, which used to echo loudly throughout the jungle, had now weakened. The animals, upon hearing of his illness, began to visit him one by one to express their concern and wish him a fast recovery. However, the foxes did not want to enter.  They were outside observing, or monitoring, the situation.

One of the foxes, named Zara, who had been watching from afar for a while how the animals entered the lion’s cave, realized that not all of them came out. This seemed very suspicious to him. Another fox, named Ziro, approached Zara and asked, “Why don’t we go visit the Lion King and show our respect?”

Zara, with a sly look, replied, “Watch closely, my friend. All go in, but not all come out. I don’t trust that situation.” Ziro began watching carefully and realized what Zara had told him was true. At the end, both foxes decided to stay away from the lion’s cave.

Soon after, it was known that the lion, although sick, had not lost his predatory instinct. He took advantage of animal visits to catch and feed on them. The foxes, thanks to their watchfulness and shrewdness, managed to avoid falling into the lion’s trap.

Shrewdness, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, is a quasi-integral part of the virtue of prudence (II-II,49,4) because it is proper to the prudent person to form a right judgment about the action he is going to perform and watchfulness is necessary to be able to discern what is convenient to do. For an action that may be good, such as visiting the lion, may not be convenient given the circumstances and observation is necessary in order to know that.

If we do not correctly understand the situation in which we are involved we cannot judge it correctly, and as a consequence we will not act prudently. In order to understand and judge correctly we also need to observe the situation.

Observation is not just seeing, hearing, etc., but rather seeing with shrewdness, discerning the situation, in order to really see what is going on and to make the right decision. St. Thomas says: “Shrewdness is concerned with the discovery of the middle term… in practical syllogisms, as, for instance, when two men are seen to be friends, they are reckoned to be enemies of a third one, as the Philosopher says (Poster. i, 34). In this way shrewdness belongs to prudence.” (S.Th., II-II, 49,3 ad 1).