Philosophical

The truth is that affairs of this kind--like all the great issues of human life, Love, Politics, Religion, and so forth, do not, at their best, admit of final dispatch in definite views and phrases. They are too vast and complex for that. It is, indeed, quite probable that such things cannot be adequately represented or put before the human mind without logical inconsistencies and contradictions. But (perhaps for that very reason) they are the subjects of the most violent and dogmatic differences of opinion. Nothing people quarrel about more bitterly than Politics--unless it be Religion: both being subjects of which all that one can really say for certain is--that nobody understands them.

THE following pages are designed to give the reader a bird's-eye view of the salient features in Jewish mysticism rather than a solid presentation of the subject as a whole. The reason for this will be apparent when one thinks of the many centuries of variegated thought that have had to be packed within the small number of pages allotted to the book. It is this very fact, too, that will possibly give the present treatment of the subject a fragmentary and tentative appearance.

THE objects which Freemasonry was founded to subserve are honorable and laudable; nor is it intended in the following pages to disparage the institution or to undervalue its usefulness. It has, at various times and in several countries, incurred the ill-will of political parties and of religious bodies, in consequence of a belief, on their part, that the organization was not so purely benevolent and philanthropic as its members proclaimed it to be.

The visible phenomena of the universe are bound by the universal law of cause and effect. The effect is visible or perceptible, while the cause is invisible or imperceptible. The falling of an apple from a tree is the effect of a certain invisible force called gravitation. Although the force cannot be perceived by the senses, its expression is visible. All perceptible phenomena are but the various expressions of different forces which act as invisible agents upon the subtle and imperceptible forms of matter.

The form of his countenance is like that of a wild beast; his right eye like the star that rises in the morning, and the other without motion; his mouth one cubit; his teeth a span long; his fingers like scythes; the track of his feet of two spans; and in his face an inscription, Antichrist.' A reprint from the 1800s, this is a scanned text book. The authors use apocryphal books in their research to prove the validity of the Antichrist and disproving the Jesus mythology. Interesting read and research.

The first part-The Jew-has a somewhat curious history. Burton collected most of the materials for writing it from 1869 to 1871, when he was Consul at Damascus. His intimate knowledge of Eastern races and languages, and his sympathy with Oriental habits and lines of thought, gave him exceptional facilities for ethnological studies of this kind. Disguised as a native, and unknown to any living soul except his wife, the British Consul mingled freely with the motley populations of Damascus, and inspected every quarter of the city-Muslim, Christian, and Jewish.