In his seventh epistle also he observes as follows: “Thus much, however, I shall say respecting all those who either have written or shall write, affirming that they know those things which are the objects of my study (whether they have heard them from me or from others, or whether they have discovered them themselves) that they have not heard any thing about these things conformable to my opinion: for I never have written nor ever shall write about them.[53] For a thing of this kind cannot be expressed by words like other disciplines, but by long familiarity, and living in conjunction with the thing itself, a light[54] as it were leaping from a fire will on a sudden be enkindled in the soul, and there itself nourish itself.” And shortly after he adds; “But if it appeared to me that the particulars of which I am speaking could be sufficiently communicated to the _multitude_ by writing or speech, what could we accomplish more beautiful in life than to impart a mighty benefit to mankind, and lead an intelligible nature into light, so as to be obvious to all men? I think, however, that an attempt of this kind would only be beneficial to a few, who from some small vestiges previously demonstrated are themselves able to discover these abstruse particulars. But with respect to the rest of mankind, some it will fill with a contempt by no means elegant, and others with a lofty and arrogant hope that they shall now learn certain venerable things.”[55] The prediction of Plato therefore, has been but too truly fulfilled in the fate which has attended the writings of the best of his disciples, among whom Proclus certainly maintains the most distinguished rank. This indeed, these disciples well knew would be the case; but perceiving that the hand of Barbaric and despotic power was about to destroy the schools of the philosophers, and foreseeing that dreadful night of ignorance and folly which succeeded so nefarious an undertaking, they benevolently disclosed in as luminous a manner as the subject would permit, the arcana of their master’s doctrines, thereby, as Plato expresses it, giving assistance to Philosophy, and also preserving it as a paternal and immortal inheritance, to the latest posterity. Proclus in the first book of this work has enumerated the requisites which a student of it ought to possess; and it is most certain that he who does not possess them, will never fathom the depths of this theology, or perceive his mind irradiated with that admirable light, mentioned by Plato in the foregoing extract, and which is only to be seen by that eye of the soul which is better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes.