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.
Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, Memoirs, Volume 2a, Paris, p. 33
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