There is no need to tell the veteran Masonic scholar who may chance to peruse these pages that the book was not designed for his uses, but rather for the host of beginners in the field, whose first intellectual interest in the Craft is usually aroused by their curiosity as to what the work "is all about." I have tried to tell the beginners what it is all about, as clearly as possible, within the limits of space and of the obligations to secrecy, and as far as the results of modern Masonic scholarship have allowed. "Unto the divine light of the holy altar, from the outer darkness of ignorance, through the shadow of our earth life, winds the beautiful path of initiation."