established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it--men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pass into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing force might become a gigantic engine of destruction. How insidiously these efforts are being made we shall see in the next chapter.
12. Secret Societies in England
We have seen that from the Illuminati onwards subversive societies have always sought recruits amongst orthodox Freemasons. The reason for this is obvious: not only do the doctrines of Freemasonry lend themselves to perversion, but the training provided in the Lodges makes an admirable preparation for initiation into other secret systems. The man who has learnt to maintain silence even on what may appear to him as trivialities, who is willing to submit to mystification, to ask no questions, and to recognize the authority of superiors whom he is in no way legally obliged to obey, who has, moreover, become imbued with the esprit de corps which binds him to his fellow-members in a common cause, is naturally a better subject for the secret society adept than the free lance who is liable to assert his independence at any moment. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the nature of the masonic oaths. These terrible penalties, which many Freemasons themselves regret as a survival of barbarism and which have in fact been abolished in the higher degrees, have done much to