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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: believe them (as I believe them) to be founded on eternal fact, all
must confess to have been of incalculable benefit to the cause of
humanity and civilisation.
From England, finally, about the middle of the eighteenth century,
went forth--promulgated by English noblemen--that freemasonry which
seems to have been the true parent of all the secret societies of
Europe. Of this curious question, more hereafter. But enough has
been said to show that England, instead of falling, at any period,
into the stagnation of the Ancien Regime, was, from the middle of
the seventeenth century, in a state of intellectual growth and
ferment which communicated itself finally to the continental
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