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CHAPTER VII.
ANTIQUITY OF THE ROSICRUCIAN FRATERNITY.
THE antiquity of the Rose in symbolism and of the Cross
in symbolism, as I have already said, is no proof whatso-
ever of the antiquity of a society which we find to be using
them at a period subsequent to the Renaissance ; but, ac-
cording to John Heydon, the Rosicrucians " have been since
Christ; "
they " inhabite the suburbs of Heaven," and are "as
the eyes and ears of the great King, seeing and hearing all
things."
The existence of a "divine Fraternity" on the
astral plane, or in the fourth dimension, however " seraphically
illuminated," and with whatever powers they may be
invested by the " Generalissimo of the world," is a point
which transcends the investigations of the merely human
historian. His researches, however, have determined that,
within his own limits that is, on the physical plane
of time and space there are no vestiges of the Rosicrucians
traceable before the beginning of the seventeenth century,
and that the belief in their antiquity originates in a priori
considerations which are concerned with the predilections
and prejudices of thinkers whose faith and imagination have
been favoured by evolution or environment at the expense
of their judgment, and who determine historical questions
by the illumination of their own understandings rather than
by the light of facts.
Such persons are beyond the reach of criticism, and, as