Imagination, Prudence, and the Sensus Comrnunis.

Imaginatif often functions in PPl as the sensus communis, that which coordinates sense experience, informed and directed by prudence. In this sense, imagination is thought by Aquinas to complete prudence through estimation and the coordination of senses; it is thus related to both the skillful activity of crafts in society and the practice of guile, i.e., the perversion of craft. In B. 18, an action imaginatively devised by Longinus has a miraculously unexpected effect of manifesting in the dead Christ “a hidden divinity that is both the primary instance of the guile beguiled motif … and the most important example of prudence,” whereby Christ elicits from Longinus a faith that makes use of sensory consciousness, estimation, and coordination.