Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

316 FRANCIS BACON
and the pot of manna, we may reflect that this is no mere accident,
no advertisement of the firm who manufactured the paper.
These are some of the many records handed down by good
Baconians of their " great master's " desire to draw together
the most opposite ends of human society, and human thought,
and to mingle with the coarsest earthy matter some bright and
imperishable grains of the heavenly gold of truth and knowledge.
Let us turn to the plates of illustrations, of which a complete
catalogue will be found appended to this volume.
There we see, first, a reduced mark from Jansen's Essai sur
VOrigine de la Gravure, etc.
Jansen records that this is the earliest
mark known; it occurs, says Mr. Sotheby, " in an account
book dated 1301 ; a circle or a globe surmounted with a cross
A mark that is capable of suggesting much to the mind of a
Christian."i
Probably the scarabeus forms (of which several may be seen on
the plate) are not so capable of suggestion to most minds as
the former symbol, but their deep signification is interesting,
and should lead us to search into the origin of these mystical
marks, admiring the wonderful way in which the wisdom of the
earliest antiquity endeavoured to inform and teach, whilst the
minds of men were too childish and uncultivated to receive
truths except in the form of a picture or of a story.
That the matters to be instilled were in many cases eternal
truths, thoughts and doctrines of the most sublime description,
is seen in that these very same symbols, with a deeper intensity
of meaning, and with further light shed upon them, have been,
in various forms, passed on from one nation to another, from generation
to generation; adopted and modified to suit the requirements
of religious expression in many different forms of worship.
However the external appearance may shadow or disguise the
true substance, there are found in these symbols the same
fundamental ideas, the same great universal doctrines and con-
1 Principle*,, iii. 10.