on of obscurity. If this necessity gave designing
priestcraft its opportunity, it nevertheless offered the security and
silence needed by the thinker and seeker after truth in dark times.
Hence there arose in the ancient world, wherever the human mind was
alive and spiritual, systems of exoteric and esoteric instruction;
that is, of truth taught openly and truth concealed. Disciples were
advanced from the outside to the inside of this divine philosophy, as
we have seen, by degrees of initiation. Whereas, by symbols, dark
sayings, and dramatic ritual the novice received only hints of what
was later made plain.

Second, this hidden teaching may indeed be described as the open
secret of the world, because it is open, yet understood only by those
fit to receive it. What kept it hidden was no arbitrary restriction,
but only a lack of insight and fineness of mind to appreciate and
assimilate it. Nor could it be otherwise; and this is as true today as
ever it was in the days of the Mysteries, and so it will be until
whatever is to be the end of mortal things. Fitness for the finer
truths cannot be conferred; it must be developed. Without it the
teachings of the sages are enigmas that seem unintelligible, if not
contradictory. In so far, then, as the discipline of initiation, and
its use of art in drama and symbol, help toward purity of soul and
spiritual awakening, by so much do they prepare men for the truth; by
so much and no further. So that, the Secret Doctrine, whether as
taught by the ancient Mysteries or by modern Masonry, is less a
doctrine than a discipline; a method of organized spiritual culture,
and as such has a place and a ministry among men.

II

Perhaps the greatest student in this field of esoteric teaching and
method, certainly the greatest now living, is Arthur Edward Waite, to
whom it is a pleasure to pay tribute. By nature a symbolist, if not a
sacramentalist, he found in such studies a task for which he was
almost ideally fitted by temperament, training, and genius. Engaged in
business, but not absorbed by it, years of quiet, leisurely toil have
made him master of the vast literature and lore of his subject, to the
study of which he brought a religious nature, the accuracy and skill
of a scholar, a sureness and delicacy of insight at once sympathetic
and critical, the soul of a poet, and a patience as untiring as it is
rewarding; qualities rare indeed, and still more rarely blended.
Prolific but sel