Mystic masonry, or, The symbols of freemasonry and the greater ...

The Great Lodge, 225
of a science in pre-historic times such as we moderns
have not yet been able to imitate, or even to
read.
We are like miners following a vein of gold
in a crevasse of the rocks. Precious ore crops out
here and there, and is again concealed; it grows
richer as we proceed, till the conviction becomes
irresistible that deep in the bowels of the earth, or
beneath some mountain range, there must be a
great "pocket," the real source of all this buried
treasure. The analogy is complete, and the reasoning
scientific. But if the ancient monuments on the
physical plane are unimpeachable, and those in the
heavens unapproachable, they are still more transcendent
in the Intellectual and Spiritual realms.
There is not a religion, a science, or a philosophy,
known to man, that cannot be traced back to Old
India; with this difference, however, that we have
only the fragments, the broken columns, or the
disjointed images of a complete and perfect structure
as it once existed. The oldest books or written
records known to us today, such as The Egyptian
Ritual of the Dead, and the hymns of the Vedas,
have scarcely yet been spelled out by their letters.
Such translations as have been given us are both
superficial and literal, and the inner meaning,
always expressed in symbols, seldom appears at all.