order the  other two divisions.  This we may call Synthemology, or Semaeology, and in the future, for the sake of greater accuracy, I shall designate it.  For in the arts it is important that we have at our service accurately defined terms.  Thus, although Steganography and Polygraphy are, as I have said, rather broad in their application, I shall consider them valuable terms for our study and make use of them.  Be there, then, the word Steganography, and be there denoted by it that branch of our subject that deals with words, themselves non-significant, constrained to the limits of letters with are Significant, wherein is contained a secret sense.  It was thus, we find, that Trithemius used the word in the two books of his Steganographia.  The term Polygraphy let us apply to that part of our subject that deals with a ready-prepared apparatus, consisting of a number of written synonyms and words, which, being collected and arranged and taken together with their alphabets which are prefixed, supply us with the most secret means of writing our hidden message.  With regard to the other terms which are applied to our art, our understanding of them should be equally accurate.  Schwenter, speaking of the art in a general way, calls it Eine geheime Magishce Natürliche Redund Schreibkunst.  But notwithstanding all that has been said above, I wish it carefully noted that I use the word Cryptography in a broader sense than that just given, - in a sense that includes even that part of Synthemology which has to do with the imitation of writing, and at the same time fits, as defined, the definition prefixed to the present chapter.  I do this not without a reason in the nature of my undertaking.  For, my principal aim here being to set forth the subject of hidden writing and to touch only in a general way on the devices of speech, I have selected the word Cryptography, and have preferred to define this term, which embraces the principal object of my investigation; see what I shall say near the end of the following chapter.

As respects the Class, I have called Cryptography an art.  This distinguished philosopher, Julius Caesar Scaliger (Exerc., 327, De Subtilitate) however, though he grants that there is a sort of ingenious trifling here, holds that by no manner of means can this be called an art.  In reply thereto I will simply say that, had it by any chance fallen to the lot of Scaliger to see this present System of Cryptography, such as it is, or to become acquainted with the many very ingenious devices invented in modern times for the concealment of one’s thoughts, he would never have passed such judgment as the above.  As regards the fact, that he therein calls this same art an imposture and a madness and holds it to be a thing unworthy a serious man, either, as I have suggested in the previous chapter, he meant the remark to refer to the still comparatively rude devices of the ancients, not yet developed and polished as they have been in modern times, or this man, as a rule soundest of the sound in his judgment, had on the present occasion his human failing.  For that this art is something quite different from an imposture and a madness is shown by its End, its Material, and its Mediums; so that there is no need to dwell longer on the subject.

The Objects requiring to be hidden by Cryptography have been in former times and may be again:  1^st.  Matters of religion.  2^nd.  Occult learning.  3^rd.  Difficult undertakings and important matters of business, especially in war and at other times of stress; secrecy in these things being desirable.

The ultimate End is the disclosure of the secret.  For if there is to be no disclosure at any time to any person, our work is vain.  Now the first and most essential condition in connection with this End is that the secret should be well guarded, that the hidden meaning of the document or epistle should be, either quite unintelligible, or intelligible only after great labor, to persons other than the person for whom the secret is designed, and that thus the writer should be preserved safe and uninjured.  For the discovery of such secrets is attended with the greatest danger, -- often, indeed, with peril of life.  Whence we may judge of the value and in fact absolute indispensableness of this art.