His deep spiritual intuition, his extensive learning, his familiarity with the Christian Fathers, Pantænus, Clement, and Athenagoras, and with the most erudite philosophers of the time, all fitted him for the labour which he performed so thoroughly.(13) He was successful in drawing to his views the greatest scholars and public men of the Roman Empire, who had little taste for wasting time in dialectic pursuits or superstitious observances. The results of his ministration are perceptible at the present day in every country of the Christian world; every prominent system of doctrine now bearing the marks of his plastic hand. Every ancient philosophy has had its votaries among the moderns; and even Judaism ... has taken upon itself changes which were suggested by the “God‐taught” Alexandrian.... He was a man of rare learning and endowments, of blameless life and amiable disposition. His almost superhuman ken and many excellencies won for him the title of Theodidaktos; but he followed the modest example of Pythagoras, and only assumed the title of Philalethian, or lover of truth.(14) It would be happy for truth and fact were our modern scholars to follow as modestly in the steps of their great predecessors. But not they—Philalethians! Moreover, we know that: Like Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus himself,(15) Ammonius committed nothing to writing.(16) Instead he ... communicated his most important doctrines to persons duly instructed and disciplined, imposing on them the obligations of secresy, as was done before him by Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and in the Mysteries. Except a few treatises of his disciples we have only the declarations of his adversaries from which to ascertain what he actually taught.(17) It is from the biassed statements of such “adversaries,” probably, that the learned Oxford translator of Plato’s Dialogues came to the conclusion that: That which was truly great and truly characteristic of him [Plato], his effort to realise and connect abstractions, _was not understood_ by them [the Neoplatonists] at all [?]. He states, contemptuously enough for the ancient methods of intellectual analysis, that: In the present day ... an ancient philosopher is to be interpreted from himself and by the contemporary history of thought.(18) This is like saying that the ancient Greek canon of proportion (if ever found), and the Athena Promachus of Phidias, have to be interpreted in the present day from the contemporary history of architecture and sculpture, from the Albert Hall and Memorial Monument, and the hideous Madonnas in crinolines sprinkled over the fair face of Italy. Prof. Jowett remarks that “mysticism is not criticism.” No; but neither is criticism always fair and sound judgment. La critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile.