xii PREFACE 



ments of the religions of the world. They formed the 

 essence of the secrets that were revealed only to the 

 initiated in the inner temple where the ancient mysteries 

 were taught, and whose disclosure to the vulgar was for- 

 bidden under the penalty of torture and death. They 

 were the secrets known to the ancient sages, and to the 

 Adepts and Kosicrucians of the Middle Ages, and upon a 

 partial understanding of their truths rests the system of 

 modern Freemasonry. 



But it is a great error to suppose that the secrets of 

 the Alchemists can all be communicated by words or 

 signs, or be explained to any one who may be trusted 

 with them. The rendering of an explanation requires 

 the capacity to understand on the part of the receiver, 

 and where that power is absent all explanations, be they 

 ever so clear, will be in vain. It would be of little use 

 to explain the nature of a palm-tree to an Eskimo, who 

 living among icebergs, never saw a plant, or to describe 

 the construction of a dynamo-machine to an Australian 

 savage. A man entirely ignorant of all spiritual compre- 

 hension, however well his intellectuality be developed, 

 will be in the same condition regarding the understand- 

 ing of spiritual things as the savage in regard to that 

 which belongs to modern civilisation. In the spiritual 

 as well as in the sensual kingdom the perception is first, 

 and then comes the understanding. The greatest mys- 

 teries are within our own self. He who knows himself 

 thoroughly knows God and all the mysteries of His 

 nature. The doctrines resulting from true contemplation 

 are not to be confounded with speculative philosophy, that 

 reasons from the known to that which it cannot know, 

 trying by the flickering light of logic to grope its way 

 into the darkness, and to feel the objects which it cannot 



