Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 199
realms of imagination and intellect, and vanished forever ;
not,
however, without leaving behind some permanent and lovely
traces of its hasty passage. . . . Poetry and romance are deeply
indebted to the Rosicrucians for many a fascinating creation.
The literature of every European country contains hundreds of
pleasing fictions whose machinery has been borrowed from their
system of philosophy, though thai itself has passed aivay." 1
As will be seen, there is strongreason to doubt whetherthe words
which we have rendered in italics are correct. The philosophy,
the work of the Rosy Cross Brethren, has never passed away; it
is, we feel sure, still green and growing, and possessing all the
earth.
It is only just to readers to whom this subject is new, to say
that there is still a wide divergence of opinion concerning the
origin and true aims of the secret society of the Rosicrucians.
Bailey gives the following account:
" Their chief was a German gentleman, educated in a monastery,
where, having learned the languages, he travelled to the
Holy Land, anno 1378; and, being at Damascus, and falling sick,
he had heard the conversation of some Arabs and other Oriental
philosophers, by whom he is supposed to have been initiated
into this mysterious art. At his return into Germany he formed
a society, and communicated to them the secrets he had brought
with him out of the East, and died in 1484.
" They were a sect or cabal of hermetical philosophers, who
bound themselves by a solemn secret, which they swore inviolably
to observe, and obliged themselves, at their admission into
the order, to a strict observance of certain established rules.
" They pretended to know all sciences, and especially medicine,
of 'which they published themselves the restorers; they
also pretended to be masters of abundance of important secrets,
and, among others, that of the philosopher's stone ;
all which,
they affirmed, they had received by tradition from the ancient
^Egyptians, Chaldeans, the Magi, and Gymnosophists.
" They pretended to protract the period of human life by
means of certain nostrums, and even to restore youth. They
pretended to know all things. They are also called the Invisible
Brothers, because they have made no appearance, but have
kept themselves incog, for several years."
As will be seen, we cannot agree with the opinions of Bailey and
X Heekethorn, Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries,