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The function of prudence is to point out which course of action is to be taken in any concrete circumstances. It has nothing to do with directly willing the good it discerns. Prudence has a directive capacity with regard to the other virtues. It lights the way and measures the arena for their exercise. Without prudence, bravery becomes foolhardiness; mercy sinks into weakness, free self-expression and kindness into censure, humility into degradation and arrogance, selflessness into corruption, and temperance into fanaticism. Culture and disciplined actions should be about the beneficial action. Its office is to determine for each in practice those circumstances of time, place, manner, etc. which should be observed, and which the Scholastics comprise under the term "medium rationis". So it is that while it qualifies the intellect and not the will, it is nevertheless rightly styled a moral virtue.<ref name="delany">{{cite web| url = http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12517b.htm| title = Delany, Joseph. "Prudence." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 2 May 2014}}</ref>
Prudence is considered the measure of moral virtues since it provides a model of ethically good actions. "The work of art is true and real by its correspondence with the pattern of its prototype in the mind of the artist. In similar fashion, the free activity of man is good by its correspondence with the pattern of prudence." ([[Josef Pieper]])
In Greek and Scholastic philosophy, "form" is the specific characteristic of a thing that makes it what it is. With this language, prudence confers upon other virtues the form of its inner essence; that is, its specific character as a virtue. For instance, not all acts of telling the truth are considered good, considered as done with the virtue of honesty. What makes telling the truth a virtue is whether it is done with prudence.
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