The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

—Sherlock Holmes

If a long and now-forgotten tradition of philosophical esotericism really did exist in the
West, how could we ever prove that? How could we even know it?
The surest way would be if the philosophers themselves told us. And so they have. For
what is necessarily secret in esotericism is the content of the hidden doctrine, but not its
existence. For a whole variety of reasons, one philosopher may choose to report on the esoteric
practices of another. And sometimes, less often to be sure, a philosopher may speak of his own
esotericism. He might be moved to do so, for example, to explain to those who would dismiss
his text as problematic and contradictory that these defects are not accidental, or to positively
encourage his readers to pay closer attention and find the secret teaching if they can, or to give
them some small guidance regarding how to go about it. Of course, all of this would be visible
to the censors too—but not necessarily in a way that would allow them to prove anything.
Moreover, in certain sophisticated times or indulgent ones, such an acknowledgment might even
be reassuring to the ruling class, being an open display of the author’s deference to their
authority and a declaration of his commitment to hide from the impressionable multitude
anything that might be misunderstood or corrupting. There is no necessary inconsistency in
speaking openly about secrecy.
Thus, philosophic testimony to esotericism is definitely possible. The only question is:
does it actually exist—beyond some isolated instances? Once one makes up one’s mind to go
looking for it, it turns out to be surprisingly easy to find. There are hundreds of such statements,
stemming from every period and strain of Western thought, testifying to the reality of
esotericism.
Since it would be tedious to read a long list of such quotations, I will present here just
a brief representative sample running to about thirty passages that roughly cover the span of
Western philosophical thought prior to. Many more passages will be found woven into the
argument of the chapters to follow. And in an online appendix (available at
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/sites/melzer/), I present the full, chronological compilation of
the testimony that I have been able to find up to this point. Although certainly not exhaustive, it
runs to well over seventy-five pages. Almost every major thinker from Homer to Nietzsche is
included, as either the source or the subject of such testimony (or both).
To be sure, quotations of this kind presented with little context will lack the scholarly
solidity and persuasive force of more detailed and contextualized presentations. For present
purposes, I do not even distinguish among the four different variants of or motives for esoteric
writing (although, I do select one example—Aristotle—to discuss in fuller detail). These
shortcomings will be remedied (to the extent possible in a synoptic work of this kind) in chapters
5 through 8 with their greater concreteness and specificity.
But for the moment, I rely on the sheer power of numbers. One contextless quotation
will lack persuasive power; but if it is followed by another and still another, all making the same
general point, the effect becomes cumulative. The effect is also retrospective: the solidity of the
whole lends new plausibility to each component part. On a second reading, we are less reluctant
to take each passage at face value. Dots can be powerful when connected.
Let us consider the evidence then. Afterward we will press the question of what it does
and does not prove.