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Of the various modes of communicating instruction to the uninformed, the masonic student is particularly interested in two; namely, the instruction by legends and that by symbols. It is to these two, almost exclusively, that he is indebted for all that he knows, and for all that he can know, of the philosophic system which is taught in the institution. All its mysteries and its dogmas, which constitute its philosophy, are entrusted for communication to the neophyte, sometimes to one, sometimes to the other of these two methods of instruction, and sometimes to both of them combined. The Freemason has no way of reaching any of the esoteric teachings of the Order except through the medium of a legend or a symbol. A legend differs from an historical narrative only in this-that it is without documentary evidence of authenticity. It is the offspring solely of tradition. Its details may be true in part or in whole. There may be no internal evidence to the contrary, or there may be internal evidence that they are altogether false. But neither the possibility of truth in the one case, nor the certainty of falsehood in the other, can remove the traditional narrative from the class of legends. It is a legend simply because it rests on no written foundation. It is oral, and therefore legendary.

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Albert Gallatin Mackey (March 12, 1807 - June 20, 1881) was an American medical doctor, and is best known for his authorship of many books and articles about freemasonry, particularly Masonic Landmarks. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of John Mackey (1765 - December 14, 1831), a physician, journalist and educator, who published The American Teacher's Assistant and Self-Instructor's Guide, containing all the Rules of Arithmetic properly Explained, etc. (Charleston, 1826), the most comprehensive work on arithmetic that had then been published in the United States. Albert Mackey obtained the means for studying medicine by teaching, and graduated from the medical department of the College of South Carolina in 1832. He settled in Charleston, and was in 1838 appointed demonstrator of anatomy in that institution, but in 1844 he abandoned the practice of medicine, and divided his time between miscellaneous writing and the study of freemasonry. After being connected with several Charleston journals, he established in 1849 The Southern and Western Masonic Miscellany, a weekly magazine, which he maintained for the following three years almost entirely with his own contributions. He conducted a Quarterly 1858-1860 which he devoted to the same interests. He acquired the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and continental languages almost unaided, and lectured frequently on the intellectual and moral development of the middle ages. Subsequently, he turned his attention exclusively to the investigation of abstruse symbolism, and to cabalistic and Talmudic researches. He served as Grand Lecturer and Grand Secretary of The Grand Lodge of South Carolina as well as Secretary General of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. He died in Fortress Monroe, Virginia.

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