The secrecy of the institution is another and a most important Landmark. There is some difficulty in precisely defining what is meant by a "secret society". If the term refers, as perhaps, in strictly logical language it should, to those associations whose designs are concealed from the public eye, and whose members are unknown, which produce their results in darkness, and whose operations are carefully hidden from the public gaze - a definition which be appropriate to many political clubs and revolutionary combinations in despotic countries where reform, if it is at all to be affected, must be effected by stealth - then clearly Freemasonry is not a secret society.

Its design is not only publicly proclaimed, but is vaunted by its disciples as something to be venerated - its disciples are known, for its membership is considered an honor to be coveted; it works for a result of which it boasts - the civilization and refinement of man, the amelioration of his condition and the reformation of his manners.

But if by a secret society is meant - and this is the most popular understanding of the term - a society in which there is a certain amount of knowledge, whether it be of methods of recognition or of legendary and traditional learning, which [is] imparted to those only who have passed through an established form of initiation, the form of which is also concealed or esoteric, then in this sense is Freemasonry undoubtedly a secret society. Now, this form of secrecy is a form inherent in it, existing with it from its very foundation, and secure to it by its ancient Landmarks. If divested of its secret character, it would lose its identity and would cease to be Freemasonry.

Whatever objections may, therefore, be made to the institution on account of its secrecy, and however much some unskilled brethren have been willing in times of trial, for the sake of expediency, to divest it of its secret character, it will be ever impossible to do so, even were the Landmark not standing before us as an insurmountable obstacle; because such change of its character would be social suicide, and the death of the Craft would follow its legalized exposure. Freemasonry, as a secret association, has lived unchanged for centuries — as an open society it would not last for as many years.