Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

"
24 FBANCIS BACON
has little or no experience of their use; hut since the art of cryptography
constituted in Bacon's time an important part of a
learned education, it is contrary to common sense to say that the
introduction of ciphers into printed hooks is either impossible or
improbable; or that, though the societies which used them may
still exist, working on their original lines, yet it is absurd to suppose
that they know of the ciphers or use them still. If the
society exists, its ciphers exist also.
There are some drawbacks to the delight of pursuing these
many and various questions. One is the conviction which
presses upon us, that all the information which we seek is perfectly
well known to certain living persons;
that the particulars
which, with painful slowness, we rake for and sift from the
dust of time, from books whose titles are generally forgotten,
from manuscripts whose very existence is generally unknown,
are all formally recorded, or have been verbally transmitted to
those certain few; so that, in the endeavors now made toward
reaching absolute truth in these particulars, we are doing what
Bacon would call actum agere— doing the deed done—a process
always unsatisfactory, and one from which we seek to deliver
others who may follow in our footsteps.
It is,
moreover, disheartening to know that this book must be,
of its very nature, imperfect. It must go forth unfledged,
" flying," as Bacon says, " out of its feathers." Hardly will it
have flown, when the "dogs," Bacon's cynics, and his critics,
the " birds of prey, " will be after it, and hunt it down, and peck
it to pieces. Yet if, perchance, it may be fortunate enough to
attract the attention of some dozen students in our great libraries,
workers in any department of knowledge, this little work
will have fulfilled its mission. Perhaps some fresh streams of
information may flow in to assist the subsequent portions of this
book. At all events, even common criticism, hostile though it
may be, will, we trust, lend further aid to the clearing-up of
errors or misapprehensions, and to the " finding out Truth,
though she be hid indeed within the center.