We could also posit a psychological interrelation in the form of an “etiological assumption” according to the terminology of psychoanalysis. It would explain the temporary fusion of alchemistic rosicrucianism with freemasonry. The rosicrucian frenzy would never have occurred—so much I will say—in masonry, if there had been no trend that way. Some emotional cause must have existed for the phenomenon, and as the specter of rosicrucianism stalked especially on the masonic stage, and indeed was dangerous to it alone, this etiological assumption must be such as to furnish an effective factor in masonry itself, only in more discreet and wholesome form. In masonry psychological elements have played a part which if improperly managed might degenerate, as indeed they did when gold- and rose-crossism was grafted on masonry. It appears to me too superficial to explain the movement merely from the external connection of rosicrucianism and the masonic system. Although the observation is quite just, it does not touch the kernel of the matter, the impulse, which only psychology can lay bare. Freemasonry must have felt some affinity with rosicrucianism, something related at the psychical basis of the mode of expression (symbolism, ritual) of both. Only the modes of expression of rosicrucianism are evidently more far reaching or more dangerous in the sense that they (the leadership of loose companions always presupposed) could sooner incite weaker characters to a perverted idea and practice of it.