possible to suppose, I repeat, that those meetings, in which the
governments may have their own creatures, can offer dangers sufficiently
serious to warrant the proscriptions of kings or the excommunications of
Popes?

In reality such proceedings miss the end for which they are undertaken,
and the Pope, in spite of his infallibility, will not prevent his
persecutions from giving Freemasonry an importance which it would perhaps
have never obtained if it had been left alone. Mystery is the essence of
man's nature, and whatever presents itself to mankind under a mysterious
appearance will always excite curiosity and be sought, even when men are
satisfied that the veil covers nothing but a cypher.

Upon the whole, I would advise all well-born young men, who intend to
travel, to become Freemasons; but I would likewise advise them to be
careful in selecting a lodge, because, although bad company cannot have
any influence while inside of the lodge, the candidate must guard against
bad acquaintances.

Those who become Freemasons only for the sake of finding out the secret
of the order, run a very great risk of growing old under the trowel
without ever realizing their purpose. Yet there is a secret, but it is so
inviolable that it has never been confided or whispered to anyone. Those
who stop at the outward crust of things imagine that the secret consists
in words, in signs, or that the main point of it is to be found only in
reaching the highest degree. This is a mistaken view: the man who guesses
the secret of Freemasonry, and to know it you must guess it, reaches that
point only through long attendance in the lodges, through deep thinking,
comparison, and deduction. He would not trust that secret to his best
friend in Freemasonry, because he is aware that if his friend has not
found it out, he could not make any use of it after it had been whispered
in his ear. No, he keeps his peace, and the secret remains a secret.

Everything done in a lodge must be secret; but those who have
unscrupulously revealed what is done in the lodge, have been unable to
reveal that which is essential; they had no knowledge of it, and had they
known it, they certainly would not have unveiled the mystery of the
ceremonies.

The impression felt in our days by the non-initiated is of the same
nature as that felt in former times by those who were not initiated in
the mysteries enacted at Eleusis in honour of Ceres. But the mysteries of
Eleusis int