But our organisation, its powers, its
methods, its rules of membership, and its doctrines are, and have
always been, a secret, and no man's connection with it is avowed or
provable. Our chief distinctive and essential doctrines you hold as
strongly as we do--the All-perfect Existence, the immortal human soul.
From these necessarily follow conceptions of life and principles of
conduct alien to those that have as necessarily grown up among a race
which repudiates, ignores, and hates our two fundamental premises.
After what has happened, I can promise you immediate and eager
acceptance among those invested with the fullest privileges of our
order. They will all admire your action and applaud your motives,
though, frankly speaking, I doubt whether any of us would carry your
views so far as you have done. The best among us would have flinched,
unless under the influence of the very strongest personal affection,
from the double peril of which you seemed to think so lightly. They
might indeed have defied the Regent but it would have been in reliance
on the protection of, a power superior to his of which you knew
nothing.
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