1Therefore, that we may not be forced to turn aside and have dealings with the vices that war against us, let us wish and pray that we may walk straightly along the middle path or mean. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice, economy between careless extravagance and illiberal parsimony, prudence between knavery and folly, and finally piety between superstition and impiety.
2These lie in the middle between the deviations to either side, all of them high roads meet for the traveller’s use, wherein we are bound in duty to walk continually, not with the mechanism of the body, but with the motions of the soul which seeks the best.
3Angered greatly at this, Edom, the earthly one, since he fears lest the principles of his creed be confounded and overthrown, will threaten to wage war to the bitter end, if we should force our way through his land, tearing and ravaging ever, as we go, the fruits of his soul which he has sown for the destruction of wisdom, though he has not reaped them. For he says, “Thou shalt not go through me, else I will come out in war to meet thee.”
4But let us take no heed of his menaces, but make answer, “We will go along the mountain country.” That is, “It is our wont to hold converse with powers that are lofty and sublime, and to examine each point by analysis and definition, and to search out in everything whatsoever its rationale, by which its essential nature is known. Thus we feel contempt for all that is external or of the body; for these are low-lying and grovelling exceedingly. You love them, but we hate them, and therefore we will handle none of them.
5For if we do but touch them with our finger-tips, as the saying is, we shall provide honour and ‘value’ to you. You will plume yourself and boast that we too, the virtue-lovers, have yielded to the snares of pleasure.”