This chapter is dedicated to how Machiavelli observes the people, reworking this central category in the lexicon and political life of the city-state. Central to his analysis is the Thomistic distinction between ordered and disordered multitudes. The former, governed by a hierarchical principle, can be defined as the ‘people’ and acts towards a collective goal; the latter is a disorganized multitude, lacking leadership, and potentially dangerous. Machiavelli analyses the specific intelligence of the disordered multitude, particularly its capacity to foresee events (the voice of the people or universal opinion). He thus elaborates a vision of the multitude as a community of perception, collectively able to grasp signals that escape the individual. This capacity, though influenced by fallacious perceptions and emotional impulses, gains political significance as it reflects a form of spontaneous wisdom, endowed with a “hidden virtue” in predicting the outcome of collective events.