w us the simplicity and beauty of the young king's faith in
the sole God. He had gained the belief that one God created not
only all the lower creatures but also all races of men, both
Egyptians and foreigners. Moreover, the king saw in his God a
kindly Father, who maintained all his creatures by his goodness....
In all the progress of men which we have followed through thousands
of years, no one had ever before caught such a vision of the great
Father of all.[14]

May not the reason why Ikhnaton was later described as a "heretic" be
that he violated the code of the priestly hierarchy by revealing this
secret doctrine to the profane? Hence, too, perhaps the necessity in
which the King found himself of suppressing the priesthood, which by
persisting in its exclusive attitude kept what he perceived to be the
truth from the minds of the people.

The earliest European centre of the Mysteries appears to have been
Greece, where the Eleusinian Mysteries existed at a very early date.
Pythagoras, who was born in Samos about 582 B.C., spent some years in
Egypt, where he was initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. After his
return to Greece, Pythagoras is said to have been initiated into the
Eleusinian Mysteries and attempted to found a secret society in Samos;
but this proving unsuccessful, he journeyed on to Crotona in Italy,
where he collected around him a great number of disciples and finally
established his sect. This was divided into two classes of
Initiates--the first admitted only into the exoteric doctrines of the
master, with whom they were not allowed to speak until after a period of
five years' probation; the second consisting of the real Initiates, to
whom all the mysteries of the esoteric doctrines of Pythagoras were
unfolded. This course of instruction, given, after the manner of the
Egyptians, by means of images and symbols, began with geometrical
science, in which Pythagoras during his stay in Egypt had become an
adept, and led up finally to abstruse speculations concerning the
transmigration of the soul and the nature of God, who was represented
under the conception of a Universal Mind diffused through all things. It
is, however, as the precursor of secret societies formed later in the
West of Europe that the sect of Pythagoras enters into the scope of this
book. Early masonic tradition traces Freemasonry partly to Pythagoras,
who is said to have travelled in England, and there i