The theory that
modern Freemasonry is m some sense a direct descendant from the ancient Mysteries
has held a peculiar attraction for Masonic writers this long time, and the
end is not yet, for the world is rife with men who argue about the matter
up and down endless pages of print. It is a most difficult subject to write
about, so that the more one learns about it the less he is inclined to ventilate
any opinions of his own. The subject covers so much ground and in such tangled
jungles that almost any grand generalization is pretty sure to be either
wrong or useless. Even Gould, who is usually one of the soundest and carefullest
of generalizers, gets pretty badly mixed up on the subject.
For present purposes
it has seemed to me wise to attention to one only of the Mysteries, letting
it stand as a type of the rest, and I have chosen for that purpose MITHRAISM,
one of the greatest and one of most interesting, as well as one possessing
as many parallelisms with Freemasonry as any of the others.
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