DISCOVEUY 



357 



immutable. Electrons, if you please, are God's little 

 servants, or, if you like, God's little bricks. Instead 

 of drawing a legitimate analog}' between positive and 

 negative chemical elements and optimistic and pessi- 

 mistic p>eople, he goes further, and states that the 

 differences between the pairs arc due to the same cause 

 — corpuscles. For example, if you have sixty-seven 

 corpuscles you arc a pessimist, some other number 

 and you are an optimist. Psychologists may learn 

 that aphasia is very simply accounted for — in one 

 paragraph on p. 26 — by corpuscles. Shell-shock 

 k " fully explained to the Physiologist " in another 

 paragraph on p. 29 ; again by corpuscles. Life 

 and the Universe change continually as the corpuscles 

 multiply in numbers and in scries, but " the Periodic 

 Law remains true and immutable " — yes, even when 

 the author expresses himself thus : 



***** 



" Take a piece of iron and heat it to 30,000° C. ; 

 presto ! these little corpuscles fly off and unite 

 with others — the moist atmosphere — and form clouds, 

 descending again as rain to form rivers and oceans. 

 Again, ' the dead stars ' clash together, and the 

 result an ever-increasing temperature, until it has 

 reached a degree of 30,000° C, and lo ! a new star, 

 a new world is formed, and at that temperature all 

 axe in the form of our little corpuscles ; these gradu- 

 ally cool down again until the chemical elements of 

 which this world is composed are found. This evolu- 

 tion and devolution is repeated, but God's little ser- 

 vants are never destroyed, not one." 



***** 



Then we have this new method of describing the 

 death of a soldier in battle: 



" Here, for example, is a swarm of corpuscles vibrat- 

 ing, scintillant, martial — they call it a soldier ; and, 

 anon, in France or Germany that swarm dissolves — 

 dissolves, forsooth, because of another little swarm 

 they call shells. Wliat a phantasmagoric dance it is, 

 these corpuscles of atoms ! Mark you the muta- 

 bilities of things. These same corpuscles, or others 

 like them, come together again, vibrating, clustering, 

 interlocking, combining, and the result is a woman, a 

 flower, a blackbird or shark, as the case may be. But 

 to-monow the dance is ended and the corpuscles and 

 atoms are far away — some in fever germs that broke 

 up the dance ; others are the green hair of the grave, 

 and others arc blown about the antipodes on the 

 waves of the ocean, and the eternal ever-changing 

 dance goes on." 



This is eloquence, but what has it to do with the 

 origin of freemasonry ? 



***** 



It is not to be wondered at that the writer of these 



paragraphs is at times "agin" the scientists. The 

 scientists arc good enough fellows, you know, but 

 " as a whole they have much to learn, and until they 

 take the trouble to do so they will not make any real 

 advancement or gain any real knowledge regarding the 

 secrets of nature and the cosmic laws." 



***** 



After these novel incursions into physics and phy- 

 siology, we come to the Socialist, a poor creature, it 

 appears, who attempts to explain things by " meta- 

 physical arguments and Platonic terminology." He 

 does not understand his " first cause," namely the 

 Periodic Law of the Corpuscles and Elements. In 

 other words, the poor old Socialist simply will not do. 

 ***** 



So much for Chapter I, and it must be confessed 

 that a reader would find it uncommonly hard to know 

 what on earth all this has to do with freemasonry. 

 But this is quite typical of the class of books we are 

 dealing with. Their characteristics arc irrelevance, a 

 spirit of I-am-right-and-nearly-cverybody-elsc-is- 

 wrong, and the dogmatism of whatever-I-say-three- 

 times-is-truc. 



***** 



We are not going to deal piecemeal with the rest. 

 By the time we arrived at the part where freemasonry 

 is discussed, wc had become too sceptical to follow 

 the author's closely knit argument. Every now and 

 then a statement would make us sit bolt upright, but 

 the periodical references to the Socialist and to the 

 Periodic Laws calmed us down. One daring statement 

 follows another. The author talks of freemasons living 

 600,000 years ago ; of primitive cults lasting from 

 100,000 to 600,000 years. Maybe, but it is a little 

 difficult to be quite sure. Then the corpuscles swarm 

 in upon us again, and wc arc told that the Periodic 

 Laws are immutable. The author then goes on to say 

 that the mathematicians and astronomers of to-day 

 were surpassed in knowledge by the men who built the 

 Pyramids. We disagree profoundly. Sir E. Wallis 

 Budge, the great authority on Egypt, in company 

 with the Greeks, the Romans, and all classical scholars 

 since the time of the Romans, are hauled over the coals 

 for not being clever enough to read the sign language 

 of the ancient Egyptians correctly. The author 

 thinks he can do this, and makes a shot, and his at- 

 tempt is the most interesting part of the book. But 

 we look in vain for carefulness of statement, for the 

 scientific spirit, for the desire to collate the results 

 obtained with those of others, for humility of spirit. 

 Instead : "I tell you all, my Brothers, because after 

 forty years of hard study I have been permitted to 

 know and learn these Divine Truths, both as regards 

 this material world and also the Divine Laws of the 



