# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S55
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Secret Societies etc. 55

one is not let in on the truth right at the start, but is perhaps led there only through all manner of circuitous ways and blinds, to a point from which one could no longer turn back even if one wished, so that one might have to serve as a blind tool of the designs of entirely unknown hands. The only thing one might still say in excuse of joining would be the favorable prejudice in favor of such a society and the good reputation of its members. But prejudices are always deceptive; and where is the society all of whose members are so blameless, so thoroughly blameless men, that one might trust and follow them blindly? This very blind trusting and following is already something unworthy, to which no thoroughly conscientious man can expose himself.*) And whence, indeed, come the many splits, reforms, and systems even within the most highly praised secret society, if there did not already lie, in the secret itself, a seed of corruption — if the secret element could not appropriate to itself evil quite as readily as good? Why, then, do you not step out into the clear light of day, if a good spirit rules you, if your ends and means are nothing but pure goodness? Light has, after all, ever been the symbol of the good, darkness and gloom the symbol of evil. That is why the open and honest man is by nature the enemy of all secret-mongering, and that is why the greatest moralist of the world also said: "'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works'" and "'Men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.'" — **) So little, then, can admission to secret societies be approved by the stricter morality, without thereby falling into a harsh rigorism; just as little, and indeed even less, can it approve the constant frequenting of our public tea-, dance-, gaming-, and feasting-societies, in so-called clubs, ressources, assemblies, and whatever else the means of whiling away time that is, after all, so fleeting and yet so precious may further be called. These inventions of idleness and boredom are the true sources of our social corruption." (Part II, pp. 217–220.)

*) That such trust in men is something even more than unworthy, that it is an idolatry laid under God's curse (Jeremiah 17:5), reason, once forsaken by revelation, certainly does not rise to see. L. u. W.

**) "It is and remains true what the notorious Sarsena (p. 58) says: '"One becomes a Freemason before one even knows what Freemasonry is. Each one brings his own particular passions and desires with him into the lodge. Each is therefore inclined to see, in that which is hidden, what he would most like to see in it. Each one takes pains secretly to search out resemblances to his favorite idea, connections to his wishes, grounds for his hopes."' — Equally certain is it that most people in former years entered those orders for no other reason than to make their fortune in the world through them; and when they then, as usual, find themselves deceived, they become, in later years, lukewarm brothers, who either no longer visit the lodges at all, or do so only from habit and for the sake of social entertainment. Compare also the recently published Mac-Benac." K.