74- 



should be one. It is also a multiform collected heap, capa- 

 ble of being venerated, praised and loved by those that be- 

 hold it. For darkness shall be preferred to light, and death 

 shall be judged to be more useful than life. No one shall 

 look up to heaven. The religious man shall be accounted insane, 

 the irreligious shall he thought wise, the furious brave, and the 

 worst of men shall be considered a good man. For the soul, and 

 all things about it, by which it is either naturally immortal, 

 or conceives that it shall attain to immortality, conformably 

 to what I have explained to you, shall not only be the sub- 

 ject of laughter, but shall be considered as vanity. Believe 

 me, likewise, that a capital punishment shall be appointed for 

 him who applies himself to the religion of intellect. New sta- 

 tutes and new laws shall be established, and nothing religious, 

 or which is worthy of heaven or celestial concerns, shall be heard, 

 or believed by the mind. There will be a lamentable departure 

 of the Gods from men* ; noxious angels -f- will alone remain, who, 

 being mingled with human nature, will violently impel the mi- 

 serable men [of that time] to war, to rapine, to fraud, and to every 

 thing contrary to the nature of the soul. Then the earth shall 

 be in a preternatural state ; the sea shall not be sailed in, 



* Proclus, finding that this was partially the case in his time, 

 says prophetically, in the Introduction to his Commentary on 

 the Parmenides of Plato, Tovrcv tyu (fiouqv av rweov <pi*.offoipias us 

 etvfyawous sA^s/v V* 1 t'Jigy&ffiu ruv rtfis ^v^uv, eivri ruv 

 enrt ruv h^uv, avn rns Ajj ayurrticts (turns, *< 

 rots yt vvv eufiv avfyuvrois, KM rots tiffctvfas ytvnffop-wots. i. e. " With- 

 respect to this form of philosophy [viz. of the philosophy of 

 Plato], I should say that it came to men for the benefit of 

 terrestrial souls; that it might be instead of statues, instead of 

 temples, instead of the whole of sacred institutions, and the leader of 

 salvation both to the men that now are, and to those that shall eorist 

 hereafter." 



f i. e. evil daemons. 



