ABSTRACT
Today's valuation of transparency in all facets of life occludes the possibility of intentionally hidden meanings in writings. Political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899 - 1973), a German-Jewish refugee writing in the United States during the Second World War and later under McCarthyism, notes that persecution of writers can take many forms, not only in totalitarian states, but also indirectly in places where freedom of expression is presumed. Ebenezer Howard's concern with spiritualism merged with writing his treatise. Stenography was associated with spirit writing. The new technologies allowing communication at a distance including typewriters, telegraphs, telephones, phonographs and photography were all considered important advances for spiritualist science. Strauss notes that in esoteric writing "errors" which would be obvious to the informed are intentionally used to call attention to a hidden meaning of the text. Rather than being entrapped by normative professional orthodoxy, truly open scholarship paradoxically requires reading and writing between the lines.
