Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 259
that " the fraternity seldom had meetings together," and that
" its corporate character was by no means marked. " The
writer, who evidently takes a much more correct view of the
aims of the society than his predecessor, yet adds this statement:
" The modern society of Rosicruciansis constituted upon
a widely different basis than that of the parent society. While
the adepts of former times were contented with the knowledge of
their mutual obligations, and observed them as a matter of course
and custom, the eighteenth century Rosicrucians forced the
world to think that, for a time, they were not only the precursors
This has led to many
of Masonry, but, in essentia, that body itself.
misconceptions. With Freemasonry the occult fraternity has only
this much to do, i. e., that some of the Rosicrucians ivere also Freemasons;
and this idea was strengthened by the fact that a portion
of the curriculum of a Rosicrucian consisted in theosophy;
these bodies had, however, no other substantial connective ties.
In fact, Freemasons have never actually laid claim to the possession
of alchymical secrets. Starting from a definite legend —
that of the building of Solomon's temple — they have merely
moralised on life, death, and the resurrection." But this, we
know, is the same definite legend from which the Rosicrucians
started, and they moralised after the same fashion, and in the
same strictly Baconian manner, metaphorically and by analogy;
or, as our author here formidably puts it, " correspondentially
with the increase and decrease and the palingenesia of nature.
He pays a proper tribute to the superiority of the Rosicrucians
over the Freemasons when he says that, as the science of mathematics
contains the rude germs of things, and the science of
words comprehends the application of these forms and intellectual
purification, so " the Rosicrucian doctrine specifically
pointed out the uses and inter-relations between the qualities
and substances in nature, although their enlarged ideas admitted
of a moral survey. The Freemasons, while they have deserved
the esteem of mankind for charity and works of love, have
never accomplished, and, by their inherent sphere of operation,
never can accomplish, what these isolated students effected."
But, although the extent and precise nature of the connec-