It is ever necessary to believe in the truth of the _Sacred Accounts_ of the _Olden Time_, which inform us that the soul is immortal and has judges of its conduct and suffers the greatest punishments when it is liberated from the body. Hence it is requisite to regard it a lesser evil to suffer than to commit the greatest sins and injuries. It is unjustifiable to assume as scholars usually do that we are in a position to judge correctly of all of Plato's thoughts because, most fortunately, it appears that all of his published works have been preserved. The last thirty-eight years of Plato's life were spent as Scholarch or Head of the Platonic School among the olive groves of the Academy where the philosopher dwelt with some of his principal students, namely, his successor and pupil Speusippos, Xenokrates, and others, teaching Divine Wisdom freely to those who were able to understand. The fact that Aristotle refers to various teachings of Plato not now extant in the Platonic works, as well as the request in the Second of our Platonic Letters that the letter be burned after its frequent reading so that it may not fall into improper hands, both afford corroborative evidence of the tradition that Plato refused to _publish_ any of his numerous lectures and oral teachings. It is therefore _a priori_ probable that Plato treated philosophy in two distinct ways, one treatment intended for public circulation and the other intended for School instruction. If this be true, presumably his published dialogs give mere indirect hints, illustrations, and applications of the central principles of his teachings, which were revealed only orally to a selected audience. Doubtless the character of his oral instructions also varied and certain teachings were given only to a few of his more advanced students, as even Grote admits. Therefore in seeking to understand Plato it is important to recollect that today "the Prince of Western Philosophers" is known only from his Dialogs, while his teachings as Scholarch are now unknown. It is, however, certain from the statement of Aristotle in regard to Plato's lectures "On the Supreme Good," that Plato in his oral instructions taught Pythagorean Doctrines, and dealt with the highest and most transcendental concepts in a mystical and enigmatical way. In regard to this there are important declarations in the extant Letters of Plato, Letters which it is orthodox to declare to be apocryphal, but whose genuineness is rightly defended by Grote in his _Plato and Other Companions of Socrates_. In the Second Letter, which is addressed to Dionysios the Younger of Syracuse, Plato uses some very suggestive language in referring to the effect upon the newly fledged student of entering the School: