PREFACE
In preparing this work, the Grand Commander has been about equally Author and Compiler; since he has
extracted quite
half its contents from the works of the best writers and most philosophic or eloquent thinkers. Perhaps it
would have
been better and more acceptable if he had extracted more and written less.
Still, perhaps half of it is his own; and, in incorporating here the thoughts and words of others, he has
continually
changed and added to the language, often intermingling, in the same sentences, his own words with theirs…. He
has felt
at liberty… to re-mould sentences, change and add to words and phrases, combine them with his own, and use
them as if
they were his own, to be dealt with at his pleasure and so availed of as to make the whole most valuable for
the
purposes intended. He claims, therefore, little of the merit of authorship, and has not cared to distinguish
his own
from that which he has taken from other sources.
— Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite of Freemasonry (Charleston, 1871; L.H. Jenkins, Inc., 1944, pp. iii-iv)
