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.
With respect to the diction of Proclus in this work, its general character is that of purity, clearness, copiousness, and magnificence; so that even the fastidious critic, who considers every Greek writer as partially barbarous who lived after the fall of the Macedonian empire, must, however unwillingly, be forced to acknowledge that Proclus is a splendid exception. The sagacious Kepler, whose decision on this subject, outweighs in my opinion, that of a swarm of modern critics, after having made a long extract from the commentaries of Proclus on Euclid, gives the following animated encomium of his diction. “Oratio fluit ipsi torrentis instar, ripas inundans, et cœca dubitationum vada gurgitesque occultans, dum mens plena majestatis tantarum rerum, luctatur in angustiis linguæ, et conclusio nunquam sibi ipsi verborum copiâ satisfaciens, propositionum simplicitatem excedit.” i. e. “His language flows like a torrent, inundating its banks, and hiding the dark fords and whirlpools of doubts, while his mind full of the majesty of things of such a magnitude, struggles in the straits of language, and the conclusion never satisfying him, exceeds by the copia of words, the simplicity of the propositions.” If we omit what Kepler here says about the struggle of the mind of Proclus, and his never being satisfied with the conclusion, the rest of his eulogy is equally applicable to the style of the present work, so far as it is possible for the beauties of diction to be combined with the rigid accuracy of geometrical reasoning.
