This essay, published in 1820, was an attempt to prove that modern Freemasonry derived from ancient Greek philosophical and religious ideas. Hippolyto da Costa (1774-1823), was a Brazilian journalist, author, Freemason and world traveller. He was imprisoned for being a Freemason by the Inquisition in Portugal in 1802; he escaped in 1805. He settled in London and wrote a two volume book about his experiences, Narrativa da Perseguição, in 1811. He went on to start the first Brazilian periodical, the Correio Braziliense or Armazém Literário, (1808-23), for which he is known today as "the founder of the Brazilian Press".
The original is extremely rare and was scanned from a reprint by the Philosophical Research Society Press dated 1936, which notes that it was "made possible through the courtesy of the Masonic Grand Lodge Library at Cedar Rapids, Iowa".
This text is the first at to have experimental embedded Unicode markup in Greek and Hebrew. This will only be visible if you have a Unicode font installed on your system.