more than light and darkness were supposed to have a common origin, two distinct and independent principles were established, totally different in their nature, of opposite characters, pursuing a conflicting line of action, and creating antagonistic effects.  Such was the origin of this famous dogma, recognized by all the heathens, and incorporated with all the sacred fables, cosmogonies, and mysteries of antiquity.”—­The Religions of Profane Antiquity, p. 186.

[103] See the “Bhagvat Geeta,” one of the religious books of Brahminism.  A writer in Blackwood, in an article on the “Castes and Creeds of India,” vol. lxxxi. p. 316, thus accounts for the adoration of light by the early nations of the world:  “Can we wonder at the worship of light by those early nations?  Carry our thoughts back to their remote times, and our only wonder would be if they did not so adore it.  The sun is life as well as light to all that is on the earth—­as we of the present day know even better than they of old.  Moving in dazzling radiance or brilliant-hued pageantry through the sky, scanning in calm royalty all that passes below, it seems the very god of this fair world, which lives and blooms but in his smile.”

[104] The Institutes of Menu, which are the acknowledged code of the Brahmins, inform us that “the world was all darkness, undiscernible, undistinguishable altogether, as in a profound sleep, till the self-existent, invisible God, making it manifest with five elements and other glorious forms, perfectly dispelled the gloom.”—­Sir WILLIAM JONES, On the Gods of Greece.  Asiatic Researches, i. 244.

Among the Rosicrucians, who have, by some, been improperly confounded with the Freemasons, the word lux was used to signify a knowledge of the philosopher’s stone, or the great desideratum of a universal elixir and a universal menstruum.  This was their truth.

[105] On Symbolic Colors, p. 23, Inman’s translation.

[106] Freemasonry having received the name of lux, or light, its disciples have, very appropriately, been called “the Sons of Light.”  Thus Burns, in his celebrated Farewell:—­

    “Oft have I met your social band,
      And spent the cheerful, festive night;
    Oft, honored with supreme command,
      Presided o’er the sons of light.”

[107] Thus defined:  “The stone which lies at the corner of two walls, and unites them; the principal stone, and especially the stone which forms the corner of the foundation of an edifice.”—­Webster.

[108] Among the ancients the corner-stone of important edifices was laid with impressive ceremonies.  These are well described by Tacitus, in his history of the rebuilding of the Capitol.  After detailing the preliminary ceremonies which consisted in a procession of vestals, who with chaplets of flowers encompassed the ground and consecrated it by libations of living water, he adds that, after solemn prayer, Helvidius,