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

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62 Mystic Masonry.
is it for a moral precept to degenerate into mere
slang. Conscience is the struggle of the understanding
in assimilating experience; it is the effort
of the individual to adjust precept with practice, or
in other words, Conscience is that living, active
process, resulting in the growth of the soul, and in
the increase of man's power to apprehend truth.
In the Ancient Mysteries, Life presented itself to
the candidate as a problem to be solved, and not as
certain propositions to be memorized and as easily
forgotten. The solution of this problem constituted
all genuine initiation, and at every step or degree
the problem expanded. As the vision of the candidate
enlarged in relation to the problems and
meaning of life, his powers of apprehension and assimilation
also increased proportionately. This was
also an evolution. It may reasonably be supposed
that the lower degrees of such initiation concerned
the ordinary affairs of life, viz., a knowledge of the
laws and processes of external nature: the candidate's
relation to these through his physical body,
and his relations, on the physical plane, through his
animal senses, and social instincts, to his fellow-men.
These matters being learned, adjusted, Mastered, the
candidate passed to the next degree. Here he
learned theoretically, at first, the nature of the soul