disciples. "For an attempt of this kind," says he,[18] "will only be
beneficial to a few, who from 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 excellent things." Thus with respect to these admirable
men, the last and the most legitimate of the followers of Plato, some
from being entirely ignorant of the abstruse dogmas of Plato, and finding
these interpreters full of conceptions which are by no means obvious to
every one in the writings of that philosopher, have immediately concluded
that such conceptions are mere jargon and revery, that they are not truly
Platonic, and that they are nothing more than streams, which, though,
originally derived from a pure fountain, have become polluted by distance
from their source. Others, who pay attention to nothing but the most
exquisite purity of language, look down with contempt upon every writer
who lived after the fall of the Macedonian empire; as if dignity and
weight of sentiment were inseparable from splendid and accurate diction;
or as if it were impossible for elegant writers to exist in a degenerate
age. So far is this from being the case, that though the style of
Plotinus[19] and Jamblichus[20] is by no means to be compared with that
of Plato, yet this inferiority is lost in the depth and sublimity of
their conceptions, and is as little regarded by the intelligent reader,
as motes in a sunbeam by the eye that gladly turns itself to the
solar light.

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[17] See my Dissertation on the Mysteries.

[18]See the 7th Epistle of Plato.