A purely moral incentive to be just and upright? Perhaps in a few isolated cases. But in by far the greater number there is in reality nothing but the anxiety a man feels to keep his good name, his civil honour — a thing that touches closely even those in humble circumstances.

He knows the imminent danger incurred of having to pay for dishonest conduct by being expelled from the great Masonic Lodge of honourable people who live correct lives. He knows that property all over the world is in their hands, and duly apportioned among themselves, and that they wield the power of making him an outcast for life from good society, in case he commit a single disgraceful action. He knows that whoever takes one false step in this direction is marked as a person that no one trusts, whose company every one shuns, and from whom