Chapter Twelve — On the State of the Intermediate Common Folk

It has become clear from what has passed that these people are simple in view and knowledge, neither denying nor obstinately opposing the true views; and that if such [opposition] is established of them, it is [only] in the base views bound up with the particular appetitive and irascible impulses — on account of the shortfall of their aspirations and understandings from attaining the sublime matters and the realities, and the turning of their souls toward the lower. So every higher-minded manager overpowers them, and everyone who has risen above their rank gains mastery over them.

For this reason too they hand over the reins of affairs to the elders, the people of experience, and the masters, and they reckon their own arrival at [those elders'] rank to be among the impossibilities. For whenever they aim at the rank of one of those who have risen, or touch upon something of their views, the soul — such being their condition — does not assist them to attain it and be firmly established in it. So they reckon that impossible for themselves, and a provision apportioned to its [rightful] people. Honour and nobility, for them, lie in imitation and following. From this it appears that their state, in respect of not being cut off from the world of the soul and the inward, is nearer the state of the felicitous. In respect of engrossment and immersion in appetite and anger, it is nearer the state of the wretched. So the psychic pains that come upon them, and the pleasures, resemble the pains and the pleasures that come upon the wretched when they are occupied with sensible things.

As for the moment of the soul's emptying, then — because the soul is not wholly cut off from its true felicity — they may perhaps witness some of what the felicitous witness, even if some of what belongs to the wretched does not become clear except through some further matter beyond what they had prepared and made ready.