At the beginning, a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose: but as time passes, not having been treated or recognized at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state. By recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler) they can be cured quickly. But when they are not recognized and left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure.
