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covered . From the brief notices we have of Andrea ' s book , it seems to have followed the old Kabbala hermetic path as to organisation and symbology , and whatever its novelties were , the first organisation of the fama fratemitatas was

not one of them . The metaphysics of the Rosicrusians were based on the extant Kabbalistic ideas . * Illumimsm of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cannot be separated from them . True , it has many similarities

withneoplatonic theories , readily accounted for as the one traced back through Jewish channels to the Zoroeistian ideas imbibed during the -captivity , and manifest in many of the later prophets , as well as by some ofthe evangelists while the other , tracing

back through Greek civilisation and philosophy draws inspiration in common from both Hebrew and Chaldaic sources .

The search for the fullness of light is readily distinguishable from Opine and Gnostic ideas , while at the same time it is spiritually cognate with Behmen's mysticism . Light on the affinities of the two channels of descent will be found in the

Porta Coelorum of the learned Rabbi , Abraham Cohen Ieira . ( See edition of 1698 ) . Whilst , as I have endeavoured to show , there is nothing material to be urged against the orthoxody , the free spirit , or broad humanity of the

Rosicrucians , the same cannot be maintained with regard to their scientific pretensions . In the pursuit of alchemy they made great and numerous discoveries , which form the base of present chemical science , yet , having in view chimerical

objects of pursuit , the waste of their labour was enormous . The energy of their spiritual ideas gave a thaumaturgic air to their pretensions in exact science , which , in time , drew crowds of charlatans to ape their insignia , and this , joined

¦ to a bad method of scientific investigation , broke them down as depositories of exact science , forcing them to prefer to their own obsolete and crude views on natural philosophy , the practical reasoners who followed the exact method of Da

Vinci and Bacon . The principles of humanity and brotherhood which they asserted stood on stranger ground than their science , and supplied a force that rapidly accelerated as the alchemic , medical , and astrologic objects sloughed off , leaving

Eosicrucian illumination confined substantially to their relation to social science on this subject , the Rosicrucian societies have led the way for centuries . To their initiation , even their enemies admit , is due the social revolution that , for more

than a century , has been advocating the new born liberty for Europe and America , uplifting of the oppressed , leaving enduring monuments of the success of lofty aspirations for mankind persistently acted upon . It is on this side that they

have connected themselves with Freemasonry , and , in the higher degrees of that art , still have their own affiliated , stripped , however , of pretensions to material science . There are many reasons to suppose this affiliation between Freemasonry and

these philosophers extant in the middle of the seventeenth century . Ashmole , as already stated , notes in his diary that he was made acquainted with Lilly and Booker within a week or two after he was made a Freemason , A . D . 1646 . Lilly and

Booker were noted professors of jndicial astrology and geomancy . Ashmole was an alchemist , among other pursuits pf an antiquarian character , and in his " Way to Bliss , " published in 1658 , I

observes , he often cites the authority of Robert Flud , who was known to be a Rosicrucian . It seems to me probable that his initiation into Masonry brought him immediately into contact with Rosicrucian adepts . *

The " Way . to Bliss , " he denominates in the preface " rosy crucian physick . " The book was published in 1658 , —thirteen years after he was made a Freemason , —and contain numerous allusions to the obligations of " our men " to secresy

on the hermetic art , and to the caution they had taken " to lay it up in a strong castle , as it were in the which all the broad gates and common , easy entries should be fast shut up and barred , leaving only one little , secret back door open ,

forfenced with a winding maze , that the best sort , by wit , pains , and providence , might come into the appointed Blisse ; the rest stand back forsaken . Their maze and plot is this * . first , they hide themselves in low and untrodden places , to the end

they might be free from the power of Princes , and the eyes of the wicked world . And then they wrote their books with such a wary and wellfenced style ( I mean so overcast with dark and sullen shadows , and sly pretences of Likes and