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

X Foreword to the Third Edition.
The progress made in physical science in the last
half century is so remarkable that it is difficult to
find an adjective suitable with which to designate
it. Hence the economic problems already referred
to are necessarily to be revised.
While the psychic problems have come into equal
prominence, no such organized results can be
pointed out as in economic experiments. The race,
as a whole, has been gathering facts and making
experiments. The working hypothesis in psychology
has seldom been suggested. At any rate, there
is no large or general agreement as to any theorems.
There seem to be no designs on the trestleboard,
and the workmen, the legions, are in confusion.
The great majority of people, even among the
educated and intelligent, will make haste to deny
that this psychic theorem has ever been known to
man. That it could ever have been discovered and
then' lost, or concealed, is to them preposterous;
yet the whole of the traditions and symbolism of
Masonry cluster around this theorem, this working
hypothesis in the psychical life of man. It is the
one thing needed to bring order out of confusion
in the psychic problems that interest so many at
the present time.