THE PHILOSOPHY OF MASONRY
by Brother Roscoe Pound, Professor of Jurisprudence in
Harvard University
Five Lectures Delivered under the Auspices of the Grand
Master of Massachusetts, Masonic Temple, Boston
Lecture I - Philosophers
Lecture II - Drake
Lecture III - Oliver
Lecture IV - Pike
Lecture V - 20th Century Masonic
Philosophy
LECTURE I
PHILOSOPHERS
PHILOSOPHERS are by no means agreed with respect to the scope
and
subject matter of philosophy. Nor are Masonic scholars at one with
respect to the scope and purpose of Freemasonry. Hence one may not
expect to define and delimit Masonic philosophy according to the
easy method of Dickens' editor who wrote upon Chinese metaphysics
by reading in the Encyclopedia upon China and upon metaphysics and
combining his information. It is enough to say at the outset that
in the sense in which philosophers of Masonry have used the term,
philosophy is the science of fundamentals. Possibly it would be
more correct to think of the philosophy of Masonry as organized
Masonic knowledge--as a system of Masonic knowledge. But there has
come to be a well-defined branch of Masonic learning which has to
do with certain fundamental questions; and these fundamental
questions may be called the problems of Masonic philosophy, since
that branch of Masonic learning which treats of them has been
called commonly the philosophy of Masonry. These fundamental
questions are three:
1. What is the nature and purpose of Masonry as an institution?
For
what does it exist? What does it seek to do? Of course for the
philosopher this involves also and chiefly the questions, what
ought Masonry to be? For what ought it to exist? What ought it to
seek as its end?
2. What is- and this involves what should be-the relation of
Masonry to other human institutions, especially to those directed
toward similar ends? What is its place in a rational scheme of
human activities?
3. What are the fundamental principles by which Masonry is
governed
in attaining the end it seeks? This again, to the philosopher,
involves the question what those principles ought to be.
Four eminent Masonic scholars have essayed to answer these
questions and in so doing have given us four systems of Masonic
philosophy, namely, William Preston, Karl Christian Friedrich
Krause, George Oliver and Albert Pike. Of these four systems of
Masonic philosophy, two, if I may put it so, are intellectual
systems. They appeal to and are based upon reason only. These two
are the system of Preston and that of Krause. The other two are, if
I may put it that way, spiritual systems. They do not flow from the
rationalism of the eighteenth century but spring instead from a
reaction toward the mystic ideas of the hermetic philosophers in
the seventeenth century. As I shall try to show here-after, this is
characteristic of each, though much more marked in one.
Summarily, then, we have four systems of Masonic philosophy. Two
are intellectual systems: First that of Preston, whose key word is
Knowledge; second, that of Krause, whose key word is Morals. Two
are spiritual systems: First that of Oliver, whose key word is
Tradition; and second, that of Pike, whose key word is Symbolism.
Comparing the two intellectual systems of Masonic philosophy,
the
intrinsic importance of Preston's is much less than that of
Krause's. Krause's philosophy of Masonry has a very high value in
and of itself. On the other hand the chief interest in Preston's
philosophy of Masonry, apart from his historical position among
Masonic philosophers, is to be found in the circumstance that his
philosophy is the philosophy of our American lectures and hence is
the only one with which the average American Mason acquires any
familiarity.
Preston was not, like Krause, a man in advance of his time who
taught his own time and the future. He was thoroughly a child of
his time. Hence to understand his writings we must know the man and
the time. Accordingly I shall divide this discourse into three
parts: (1) The man, (2) the time, (3) Preston's philosophy of
Masonry as a product of the two.
1. First, then, the man. William Preston was born at Edinburgh
on
August 7,1742. His father was a writer to the signet or solicitor--
the lower branch of the legal profession--and seems to have been a
man of some education and ability. At any rate he sent William to
the high school at Edinburgh, the caliber of which in those days
may be judged from the circumstance that the boy entered it at six-
-though he was thought very precocious. At school he made some
progress in Latin and even began Greek. But all this was at an
early age. His father died while William was a mere boy and he was
taken out of school, apparently before he was twelve years old. His
father had left him to the care of Thomas Ruddiman, a well-known
linguist and he became the latter's clerk. Later Ruddiman
apprenticed William to his brother who was a printer, so that
Preston learned the printer's trade as a boy of fourteen or
fifteen. On the death of his patron (apparently having nothing by
inheritance from his father) Preston went into the printing shop as
an apprentice and worked there as a journeyman until 1762. In that
year, with the consent of the master to whom he had been
apprenticed, he went to London. He was only eighteen years old, but
carried a letter to the king's printer, and so found employment at
once. He remained in the employ of the latter during substantially
the whole remaining period of his life.
Preston's abilities showed themselves in the printing shop from
the
beginning. He not merely set up the matter at which he worked but
he contrived in some way to read it and to think about it. From
setting up the great variety of matter which came to the king's
printer he acquired a notable literary style and became known to
the authors whose books and writings he helped to set up as a judge
of style and as a critic. Accordingly he was made proof reader and
corrector for the press and worked as such during the greater part
of his career. He did work of this sort on the writings of Gibbon,
Hume, Robertson and authors of that rank, and presentation copies
of the works of these authors, which were found among Preston's
effects at his death, attest the value which they put upon the
labors of the printer.
Preston had no more than come of age when he was made a Mason in
a
lodge of Scotchmen in London. This lodge had attempted to get a
warrant from the Grand Lodge of Scotland, but that body very
properly refused to invade London, and the Scotch petitioners
turned to the Grand Lodge of Ancients, by whom they were chartered.
Thus Preston was made in the system of his great rival, Dermott,
just as the latter was at first affiliated with a regular or modern
lodge. According to the English usage, which permits simultaneous
membership in several lodges, Preston presently became a member of
a lodge subordinate to the older Grand Lodge. Something here
converted him, and he persuaded the lodge in which he had been
raised to secede from the Ancients and to be reconstituted by the
so-called Moderns. Thus he cast his lot definitely with the latter
and soon became their most redoubtal champion. Be it remembered
that the Preston who did all this was a young man of twenty-three
and a journeyman printer.
At the age of twenty-five he became master of the newly
constituted
lodge, and as such conceived it his duty to make a thorough study
of the Masonic institution. His own words are worth quoting:
"When I first had the honor to be elected master of a
lodge, I
thought it proper to inform myself fully of the general rules of
the society, that I might be able to fulfill my own duty and
officially enforce obedience in others. The methods which I adopted
with this view excited in some of superficial knowledge an absolute
dislike of what they considered as innovations, and in others, who
were better informed, a jealousy of preeminence which the
principles of Masonry ought have checked. Notwithstanding these
discouragements, however, I persevered in my intention."
Indeed one cannot wonder that the pretenses of this journeyman
printer of twenty-five were scouted by older Masons. But for the
present Preston had to contend with nothing more than shakings of
the head. Unlike the scholarly, philosophical, imperturbable,
academic Krause, Preston was a fighter. Probably his confident
dogmatism, which shows itself throughout his lectures, his
aggressiveness and his ambition made more enemies than the supposed
innovations involved in his Masonic research. Moreover we must not
forget that he had to overcome three very serious obstacles namely,
dependence for his daily bread upon a trade at which he worked
twelve hours a day, youth, and recent connection with the
fraternity. That Preston was not persecuted at this stage of his
career and that he succeeded in taking the lead as he did is a
complete testimony to his abilities.
Preston had three great qualifications for the work he
undertook:
(1) Indefatigable diligence, whereby he found time and means to
read everything that bore on Masonry after twelve hours of work at
his trade daily, six days in the week; (2) a marvelous memory,
which no detail of his reading ever escaped; and (3) a great power
of making friends and of enlisting their enthusiastic co-operation.
He utilized this last resource abundantly, corresponding diligently
all with well-informed Masons abroad and taking advantage of every
opportunity to interview Masons at home. The results of this
communication with all the prominent Masons of his time are to be
seen in his lectures.
It was a bold but most timely step when this youthful master of
a
new lodge determined to rewrite or rather to write the lectures of
Craft Masonry. The old charges had been read to the initiate
originally, and from this there had grown up a practice of orally
expounding their contents and commenting upon the important points.
To turn this into a system of fixed lectures and give them a
definite place in the ritual was a much-needed step in the
development of the work. But it was so distinctly a step that the
ease with which it was achieved is quite as striking as the result
itself.
When Preston began the composition of his lectures, he organized
a
sort of club, composed of his friends, for the purpose of listening
to him and criticising him. This club was wont to meet twice a week
in order to pass on, criticise and learn the lecture as Preston
conceived it. Finally in 1772, after seven years, he interested the
grand lodge officers in his work and delivered an oration, which
appears in the first edition of his Illustrations of Masonry,
before a meeting of eminent Masons including the principal grand
officers. After delivery of the oration, he expounded his system to
the meeting. His hearers approved the lectures, and, though
official sanction was not given immediately, the result was to give
them a standing which insured their ultimate success. His disciples
began now to go about from lodge to lodge delivering his lectures
and to come back to the weekly meetings with criticisms and
suggestions. Thus by 1774 his system was complete. He then
instituted a regular school of instruction, which obtained the
sanction of the Grand Lodge and thus diffused his lectures
throughout England. This made him the most prominent Mason of the
time, so that he was elected to the famous Lodge of Antiquity, one
of the four old lodges of 1717, and the one which claimed Sir
Christopher Wren for a past master. He was soon elected master of
this lodge and continued such for many years, giving the lodge a
pre-eminent place in English Masonry which it has kept ever since.
Preston's Masonic career, however, was not one of unbroken
triumph.
In 1779 his views as to Masonic history and Masonic jurisprudence
brought him into conflict with the Grand Lodge. It is hard to get
at the exact facts in the mass of controversial writing which this
dispute brought forth. Fairly stated, they seem to have been about
as follows:
The Grand Lodge had a rule against lodges going in public
processions. The Lodge of Antiquity determined on St. John's Day,
1777, to go in a body to St. Dunstan's church, a few steps only
from the lodge room. Some of the members protested against this as
being in conflict with the rule of the Grand Lodge, and in
consequence only ten attended. These ten clothed themselves in the
vestry of the church, sat in the same pew during the service and
sermon, and then walked across the street to the lodge room in
their gloves and aprons. This action gave rise to a debate in the
lodge at its next meeting, and in the debate Preston expressed the
opinion that the Lodge of Antiquity, which was older than the Grand
Lodge and had participated in its formation, had certain inherent
privileges, and that it had never lost its right to go in
procession as it had done in 1694 before there was any Grand Lodge.
Thus far the controversy may remind us of the recent differences
between Bro. Pitts and the Grand Lodge authorities in Michigan. But
the authority of Grand Lodges was too recent at that time to make
it expedient to overlook such doctrine when announced by the first
Masonic scholar of the day. Hence, for maintaining this opinion,
Preston was expelled by the Grand Lodge, and in consequence the
Lodge of Antiquity severed its connection with the Grand Lodge of
Moderns and entered into relations with the revived Grand Lodge at
York. The breach was not healed till 1787.
Upon settlement of the controversy with the Grand Lodge of
Moderns,
Preston, restored to all his honors and dignities, at once resumed
his Masonic activities. Among other things, he organized a society
of Masonic scholars, the first of its kind. It was known as the
Order of the Harodim and included the most distinguished Masons of
the time. Preston taught his lectures in this society, and through
it they came to America, where they are the foundation of our Craft
lectures. Unhappily at the Union in England in 1813 his lectures
were displaced by those of Hemming, which critics concur in
pronouncing much inferior. But Preston was ill at the time and
seems to have taken no part whatever in the negotiations that led
to the Union nor in the Union itself. He died in 1818, at the age
of 76, after a lingering illness. A diligent and frugal life had
enabled him to lay by some money and he was able to leave 800
pounds for Masonic uses, 500 pounds to the Freemason's charity for
orphans--for which, left an orphan himself before the age of
twelve, he had a natural sympathy-- and 300 pounds to endow the
so-called Prestonian lecture--an annual lecture in Preston's words
verbatim by a lecturer appointed by the Grand Lodge. This lecture
is still kept up and serves to remind us that Preston was the first
to insist on the minute verbal accuracy which is now a feature of
our lectures. It should be noted also that in addition to his
lectures, Preston's book, Illustrations of Masonry, has had great
influence. It went through some twenty editions in England, four or
five in America, and two in Germany.
So much for the man.
Now as to the time.
Three striking characteristics of the first three quarters of
the
eighteenth century in England are of importance for an
understanding of Preston's philosophy of Masonry: (1) It was a
period of mental quiescence; (2) both in England and elsewhere it
was a period of formal over-refinement; (3) it was the so-called
age of reason, when the intellect was taken to be self-sufficient
and men were sure that knowledge was a panacea.
1. In contrast with the seventeenth century, the eighteenth
century
was a period of quiescence. Society had ceased to be in a state of
furious ebullition, nor was there a conflict of manifestly
irreconcilable ideas as in the time just gone by. On the surface
there was harmony. True, as the events of the end of the century
showed, it was a harmony of compromise rather than of
reconciliation--a truce, not a peace. But men ceased for a time to
quarrel over fundamentals and turned their attention to details and
to form. A common theological philosophy was accepted by men who
denounced each other heartily for comparatively trivial differences
of opinion. In politics, Whig and Tory had become little more than
names, and both parties agreed to accept, with little modification,
the body of doctrine afterwards known as the principles of the
English Revolution. Political ideas were fixed. Men conceived of a
social compact from which every detail of social and political
rights and duties might be deduced by abstract reasoning and
believed that it was possible in this way to work out a model code
for the legislator, a touchstone of sound law for the judge and an
infallible guide to private conduct for the individual. In
literature and in art there was a like acquiescence in accepted
canons. A certain supposed classical style was assumed to be the
final and the only permissible mode of expression. In other words
acquiescence was the dominant tendency and finality was the
dominant idea. For example, Blackstone, a true representative of
the century, thought complacently of the legal system of his time,
with its heavy load of archaisms, almost ripe for the legislative
reform movement of the next generation, as substantially perfect.
Nothing, so he thought, was left for the completion of five hundred
years of legal development but to patch up a few trivial details.
In the same spirit of finality the framers of our bills of rights
undertook to lay out legal and political charts for all time.
Indeed the absolute legal philosophy of our text books which has
made so much trouble for the social reformers of yesterday and of
today, speaks from the eighteenth century. In this spirit of
finality, with this same confidence that his time had the key to
reason and could pronounce once for all for every time, for every
place and for every people, Preston framed the dogmatic discourses
which we are content to take as the lectures of Freemasonry.
2. For the modern world, the eighteenth century was par
excellence
the period of formalism. It was the period of formal
over-refinement in every department of human activity. It was the
age of formal verse and heroic diction, of a classical school in
art which lost sight of the spirit in reproducing the forms of
antiquity, of elaborate and involved court etiquette, of formal
diplomacy, of the Red Tape and Circumlocution Office in every
portion of administration, of formal military tactics in which
efficiency in the field yielded to the exigencies of parade and
soldiers went into the field dressed for the ball room. Our
insistence upon letter perfect, phonographic reproduction of the
ritual comes from this period, and Preston fastened that idea upon
our lectures, perhaps for all time.
3. The third circumstance, that the eighteenth century was the
era
of purely intellectualist philosophy naturally determined Preston's
philosophy of Masonry. At that time reason was the central idea of
all philosophical thought. Knowledge was regarded as the universal
solvent. Hence when Preston found in his old lectures that among
other things Masonry was a body of knowledge and discovered in the
old charges a history of knowledge and of its transmission from
antiquity, it was inevitable that he make knowledge the central
point of his system. How thoroughly he did this is apparent today
in our American Fellowcraft lecture, which, with all the
abridgments to which it has been subjected, is still essentially
Prestonian. Time does not suffice to read Preston in his original
rhetorical prolixity. But a few examples from Webb's version, which
at these points is only an abridgment, will serve to make the
point. The quotations are from a Webb monitor, but have been
compared in each case with an authentic version of Preston.
"The Globes are two artificial spherical bodies, on the convex
surface of which are represented the countries, seas, and various
parts of the earth, the face of the heavens, the planetary
revolutions, and other particulars.
"The sphere, with the parts of the earth delineated on its surface,
is called the Terrestrial Globe; and that with the constellations,
and other heavenly bodies, the Celestial Globe.
"The principal use of the Globes, besides serving as maps to
distinguish the outward parts of the earth, and the situation of
the fixed stars, is to illustrate and explain the phenomena arising
from the annual revolution and the diurnal rotation of the earth
around its own axis. They are the noblest instruments for improving
the mind, and giving it the most distinct idea of any problem or
proposition, as well as enabling it to solve the same."
It has often been pointed out that these globe on the pillars are
pure anachronisms. They are due to Preston's desire to make the
Masonic lectures teach astronomy, which just then was the dominant
science.
Note particularly the purpose, as the lecture sets it forth
expressly: "for improving the mind and for giving it the most
distinct idea of any problem or proposition as well as enabling it
to solve the same."
In other words, these globes are not symbolic, they are not
designed for moral improvement. They rest upon the pillars,
grotesquely out of place, simply and solely to teach the lodge the
elements of geography and astronomy.
We must remember that Preston, who worked twelve hours a day
setting type or reading proof, would look on this very differently
from the Mason of today. What are commonplaces of science now were
by no means general property then. To him the teaching of the
globes was a perfectly serious matter.
Turn to the solemn disquisition on architecture in our Fellowcraft
lecture. As we give it, it is unadulterated Preston, but happily it
is often much abridged. You know how it runs, how it describes each
order in detail, gives the proportions, tells what was the model,
appends an artistic critique, and sets forth the legend of the
invention of the Corinthian order by Callimachus. The foundation
for all this is in the old charges. But in Preston's hands it has
become simply a treatise on architecture. The Mason who listened to
it repeatedly would become a learned man. He would know what an
educated man ought to know about the orders of architecture.
In the same way he gives us an abridgment of Euclid:
"Geometry treats of the powers and properties of magnitudes in
general, where length, breadth and thickness are considered, from
a point to a line, from a line to a superficies, and from a
superficies to a solid. A point is a dimensionless figure, or an
indivisible part of space. A line is a point continued, and a
figure of one capacity, namely, length. A superficies is a figure
of two dimensions, namely, length and breadth. A solid is a figure
of three dimensions, namely, length, breadth and thickness."
But enough of this. You see the design. By making the lectures
epitomes of all the great branches of learning, the Masonic Lodge
may be made a school in which all men, before the days of public
schools and wide-open universities, might acquire knowledge, by
which alone they could achieve all things. If all men had
knowledge, so Preston thought, all human, all social problems would
be solved. With knowledge on which to proceed deductively, human
reason would obviate the need of government and of force and an era
of perfection would be at hand. But those were the days of endowed
schools which were not for the many. The priceless solvent,
knowledge, was out of reach of the common run of men who most
needed it. Hence to Preston, first and above all else the Masonic
order existed to propagate and diffuse knowledge. To this end,
therefore, he seized upon the opportunity afforded by the lectures
and sought by means of them to develop in an intelligent whole all
the knowledge of his day.
Now that knowledge has become too vast to be comprised in any one
scheme and too protean to be formulated as to any of its details
even for the brief life of a modern text, the defects of such a
scheme are obvious enough. That this was Preston's conception, may
be shown abundantly from his lectures. For instance:
"Smelling is that sense by which we distinguish odors, the various
kinds of which convey different opinions to the mind. Animal and
vegetable bodies, and, indeed, most other bodies, while exposed to
the air, continually send forth effluvia of vast subtilty, as well
in the state of life and growth, as in the state of fermentation
and putrefaction. These effluvia, being drawn into the nostrils
along with the air, are the means by which all bodies are smelled."
This bit of eighteenth-century physics, which makes us smile today,
is still gravely recited in many of our lodges as if it had some
real or some symbolic importance. It means simply that Preston was
endeavoring to write a primer of physiology and of physics.
He states his theory expressly in these words:
"On the mind all our knowledge must depend; what, therefore, can be
a more proper subject for the investigation of Masons ? By
anatomical dissection and observation we become acquainted with the
body; but it is by the anatomy of the mind alone we discover its
powers and principles."
That is: All knowledge depends upon the mind. Hence the Mason
should study the mind as the instrument of acquiring knowledge, the
one thing needful.
Today this seems a narrow and inadequate conception. But the basis
of such a philosophy of Masonry is perfectly clear if we remember
the man and the time. We must think of these lectures as the work
of a printer, the son of an educated father, but taken from school
before he was twelve and condemned to pick up what he could from
the manuscripts he set up in the shop or by tireless labor at night
after a full day's work. We must think of them as the work of a
laborer, chiefly self-educated, associated with the great literati
of the time whom he came to know through preparing their
manuscripts for the press and reading their proofs, and so filled
with their enthusiasm for enlightenment in what men thought the age
of reason. We must think of them as the work of one imbued with the
cardinal notions of the time--intellectualism, the all-sufficiency
of reason, the absolute need of knowledge as the basis on which
reason proceeds, and finality.
How, then, does Preston answer the three problems of Masonic
philosophy ?
1. For what does Masonry exist? What is the end and purpose of the
order ? Preston would answer: To diffuse light, that is, to spread
knowledge among men. This, he might say, is the proximate end. He
might agree with Krause that the ultimate purpose is to perfect
men--to make them better, wiser and consequently happier. But the
means of achieving this perfection, he would say, is general
diffusion of knowledge. Hence, he would say, above all things
Masonry exists to promote knowledge; the Mason ought first of all
to cultivate his mind, he ought to study the liberal arts and
sciences; he ought to become a learned man.
2. What is the relation of Masonry to other human activities ?
Preston does not answer this question directly anywhere in his
writings. But we may gather that he would have said something like
this: The state seeks to make men better and happier by preserving
order. The church seeks this end by cultivating the moral person
and by holding in the background supernatural sanctions. Masonry
endeavors to make men better and happier by teaching them and by
diffusing knowledge among them. This, bear in mind, was before
education of the masses had become a function of the state.
3. How does Masonry seek to achieve its purposes? What are the
principles by which it is governed in attaining its end ?
Preston answers that both by symbols and by lectures the Mason is
(first) admonished to study and to acquire learning and (second)
actually taught a complete system of organized knowledge. We have
his own words for both of these ideas. As to the first, in his
system both lectures and charges reiterate it. For example: "The
study of the liberal arts, that valuable branch of education which
tends so effectually to polish and adorn the mind is earnestly
recommended to your consideration." Again, notice how he dwells
upon the advantages of each art as he expounds it:
"Grammar teaches the proper arrangement of words according to the
idiom or dialect of any particular people, and that excellency of
pronunciation which enables us to speak or write a language with
accuracy, agreeably to reason and correct usage. Rhetoric teaches
us to speak copiously and fluently on any subject, not merely with
propriety alone, but with all the advantages of force and elegance,
wisely contriving to captivate the hearer by strength of argument
and beauty of expression, whether it be to entreat and exhort, to
admonish or applaud."
As to the second proposition, one example will suffice:
"Tools and implements of architecture are selected by the
fraternity to imprint on the memory wise and serious truths."
In other words the purpose even of the symbols is to teach wise and
serious truths. The word serious here is significant. It is
palpably a hit at those of his brethren who were inclined to be
mystics and to dabble in what Preston regarded as the empty jargon
of the hermetic philosophers.
Finally, to show his estimate of what he was doing and hence what,
in his view, Masonic lectures should be, he says himself of his
Fellowcraft lecture: "This lecture contains a regular system of
science [note that science then meant knowledge] demonstrated on
the clearest principles and established on the firmest foundation."
One need not say that we cannot accept the Prestonian philosophy of
Masonry as sufficient for the Masons of today. Much less can we
accept the details or even the general framework of his ambitious
scheme to expound all knowledge and set forth a complete outline of
a liberal education in three lectures. We need not wonder that
Masonic philosophy has made so little headway in Anglo-American
Masonry when we reflect that this is what we have been brought up
on and that it is all that most Masons ever hear of. It comes with
an official sanction that seems to preclude inquiry, and we forget
the purpose of it in its obsolete details. But I suspect we do
Preston a great injustice in thus preserving the literal terms of
the lectures at the expense of their fundamental idea. In his day
they did teach-- today they do not. Suppose today a man of
Preston's tireless diligence attempted a new set of lectures which
should unify knowledge and present its essentials so that the
ordinary man could comprehend them. To use Preston's words, suppose
lectures were written, as a result of seven years of labor, and the
co-operation of a society of critics, which set forth a regular
system of modern knowledge demonstrated on the clearest principles
and established on the firmest foundation. Suppose, if you will,
that this were confined simply to knowledge of Masonry. Would not
Preston's real idea (in an age of public schools) be more truly
carried than by our present lip service, and would not his central
notion of the lodge as a center of light vindicate itself by its
results?
Let me give two examples. In Preston's day, there was a general
need, from which Preston had suffered, of popular education--of
providing the means whereby the common man could acquire knowledge
in general. Today there is no less general need of a special kind
of knowledge. Society is divided sharply into classes that
understand each other none too well and hence are getting wholly
out of sympathy. What nobler Masonic lecture could there be than
one which took up the fundamenta of social science and undertook to
spread a sound knowledge of it among all Masons ? Suppose such a
lecture was composed, as Preston's lectures were, was tried on by
delivery in lodge after lodge, as his were, and after criticism and
recasting as a result of years of labor, was taught to all our
masters. Would not our lodges diffuse a real light in the community
and take a great step forward in their work of making for human
perfection?
Again, in spite of what is happening for the moment upon the
Continent, this is an era of universality and internationality. The
thinking world is tending strongly to insist upon breaking over
narrow local boundaries and upon looking at things from a
world-wide point of view. Art, science, economics, labor and
fraternal organizations, and even sport are tending to become
international. The growing frequency of international congresses
and conferences upon all manner of subjects emphasizes this
breaking of local political bonds. The sociological movement, the
world over, is causing men to take a broader and more humane view,
is causing them to think more of society and hence more of the
world-society, is causing them to focus their vision less upon the
individual, and hence less upon the individual locality.
In this world-wide movement toward universality Masons ought to
take the lead. But how much does the busy Mason know, much less
think, of the movement for internationality or even the pacificist
movement which has been going forward all about him ? Yet every
Mason ought to know these things and ought to take them to heart.
Every lodge ought to be a center of light from which men go forth
filled with new ideas of social justice, cosmopolitan justice and
internationality.
Preston of course was wrong--knowledge is not the sole end of
Masonry. But in another way Preston was right. Knowledge is one
end--at least one proximate end--and it is not the least of those
by which human perfection shall be attained. Preston's mistakes
were the mistakes of his century--the mistake of faith in the
finality of what was known to that era, and the mistake of
regarding correct formal presentation as the one sound method of
instruction. But what shall be said of the greater mistake we make
today, when we go on reciting his lectures--shorn and abridged till
they mean nothing to the hearer--and gravely presenting them as a
system of Masonic knowledge ? Bear in mind, he thought of them as
presenting a general scheme of knowledge, not as a system of purely
Masonic information. If we were governed by his spirit, understood
the root idea of his philosophy and had but half his zeal and
diligence, surely we could make our lectures and through them our
lodges a real force in society. Here indeed, we should encounter
the precisians and formalists of whom lodges have always been full,
and should be charged with innovation. But Preston was called an
innovator. And he was one in the sense that he put new lectures in
the place of the old reading of the Gothic constitutions. Preston
encountered the same precisians and the same formalists and wrote
our lectures in their despite. I hate to think that all initiative
is gone from our order and that no new Preston will arise to take
up his conception of Knowledge as an end of the fraternity and
present to the Masons of today the knowledge which they ought to
possess.
By the author of "Poems of The Temple."
When I was a king and a mason--
A mason proved and skilled,
I cleared me ground for a palace
Such as a king should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels-
Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a palace
Such as a king had built.
-Kipling.
A part of a builder's profession
Is digging in ruins of old,
And his findings, in rapid succession,
Equip him with merits untold,
For the builder who never uncovers
The work of the centuries past
Is the builder who never discovers
Construction most certain to last.
Far back before history's pages
Did ever their stories relate
Or the sayings of eminent sages
Their quota of learning donate,
We find over lands without number
Where human achievements were felt,
Their ruins profusely encumber
The sites where the race had long dwelt.
And the study of long hidden symbols
Induces the mind to concede
That their mystical system resembles
Our own very closely indeed.
And the builders of old, laid foundations
Of ethical value so rare
That their teaching of mystic creations
With Masonry closely compare.
And we find them in cities long buried
When civilization's decay
O'er the work of the builder fast hurried
With ruthless demolishing sway.
In the temples of Indian ages
And far on the banks of the Nile
Where the work and the study of sages
Their wonderful stories compile.
And remote from all eastern persuasions
Of all known connection devoid,
In old Mexico's ancient creations
They find the same symbols employed.
'Tis the soul of the Master revolving
All lands in the universe through,
With His children of nature evolving
From light of the old to the new.
--Lewis A. McConnell.
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LECTURE II
KRAUSE
EXCEPT as he builds upon the old charges and so uses older
materials, Preston speaks so completely from the eighteenth century
that one needs but understand the thinking of eighteenth-century
England to appreciate him fully. In the case of our next Masonic
philosopher, there is another story. He was in the main current of
the philosophical thought of his day. But that current, along with
the current of Masonic thought, had been flowing without break from
the seventeenth century. Hence to appraise his philosophy of
Masonry it is not enough to consider the man and the time. We must
begin farther back.
The beginning of the seventeenth century was a period of great
mental activity. The awakening of the Reformation had brought in an
era of fresh and vigorous religious thought. Political ideas
foreshadowing those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were
taking form. The downfall of scholasticism had set philosophy free
from Aristotle. Grotius was about to emancipate Jurisprudence from
Theology. Conring was about to deliver Law from Justinian. In
consequence a new theory of law and government arose. Men went back
to the classical Roman jurists and their law of nature founded on
reason--applicable to men, not as citizens, nor as members of
civilized society, but simply and solely as men--and the
philosophical school which resulted and maintained itself during
the two succeeding centuries, produced the great succession of
publicists, who built up the system of international law, launched
the ever-growing movement for humanity in war and ultimate peace,
and stimulated that interest in legal and political philosophy, of
which the democratic ideas of our own time, and the humanizing and
rationalizing of law in the nineteenth century, were to be the
fruit. The renascence of Masonry, complete in the next century, had
its roots in this period. "There was always," says Sir Henry Maine,
"a close association between Natural Law and humanity." In such a
time, with the very air full of ideas of human brotherhood and of
the rational claims of humanity, the notion of an organization of
all men, for the general welfare of mankind, was to be looked for.
It may be seen, indeed, in the opening years of the century; and we
need not doubt that the writings of Andreae and the well-known
Rosicrucian controversy were a symptom rather than a cause. But the
idea was slow in attaining its maturity. In the seventeenth
century, it struggled beneath a load of alchemy and mysticism,
bequeathed to it by an obsolete era of ignorance and superstition.
In the eighteenth century, it was retarded by the absorbing
interest in political philosophy. Hence it was not till the first
decade of the nineteenth century that the possibilities of this
phase of the new thought were perceived entirely. Then, for the
first time, the idea of general organization of mankind was treated
in scientific method, referred to a definite end, and made part of
a philosophical system of human activities. Perhaps no better theme
could be chosen as an introduction to Masonic philosophy, than the
life and work of that learned and eminent man and Mason, in his
time at once the first of Masonic philosophers and the foremost of
philosophers of law, who rendered this service to humanity and to
the Craft.
Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, one of the founders of a new
Masonic literature, and the founder of a school of legal thought,
was born at Eisenberg, not far from Leipzig, in 1781. He was
educated at Jena, where he taught for some time, till, in 1805, he
removed to Dresden. In this same year, he became a Mason; and at
once, with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, he entered upon a
critical and philosophical study of the institution, reading every
Masonic work accessible. As a result of his studies, he delivered
twelve lectures before his lodge in Diesden, which were published
in 1809, under the title: "Hoehere Vergeistung der
echtuberlieferten Grundsymbole der Freirmaurerei," or "Higher
Spiritualization of the True Symbols of Masonry." A year later, he
published the first volume of his great work, "Die drei aeltesten
Kunsturkunden del Freimaurerbruderschaft," or "The Three Oldest
Professional Records of the Masonic Fraternity." This book, in the
words of Dr. Mackey, "one of the most learned that ever issued from
the Masonic press," unhappily fell upon evil days. The limits of
permissible public discussion of Masonic symbols were then
uncertain, and the liberty of the individual Mason to interpret
them for himself, since expounded so eloquently by Albert Pike, was
not wholly conceded by the German Masons of that day. In
consequence he met the fate which has befallen so many of the great
scholars of the Craft. His name, even more than those of Preston
and Dalcho and Crucefix and Oliver, warns us that honest ignorance,
zealous bigotry, and well-meaning intolerance are to be found even
among sincere and fraternal seekers for the light. The very rumor
of Krause's book produced great agitation. Extraordinary efforts
were made to prevent its publication, and, when these failed, the
mistaken zeal of his contemporaries was exerted toward expelling
him from the order. Not only was he excommunicated by his lodge,
but the persecution to which his Masonic publications gave rise
clung to him all his life, and prevented him from receiving public
recognition of the position he occupied among the thinkers of his
day. It has been said, indeed, that he was too far in advance of
the time to be understood fully beyond a small circle of friends
and disciples. Yet there seems no doubt that the bitterness
engendered by the Masonic controversies over his book was chiefly
instrumental in preventing him from attaining a professorship.
Happily, he was not a man to yield to persecution or misfortune.
Like the poet, he might have said," *** I seek not good-fortune, I
myself am good fortune."
Undaunted by miscomprehension of his teachings, unembittered by the
seeming success of his energies, he labored steadily, as a lecturer
at the University of Goettingen, in the development and
dissemination of the system of legal and political philosophy from
which his fame is derived. Roeder has recorded the deep impression
which his lectures left upon the hearers, and the common opinion
which placed him far above the respectable mediocrities who held
professorships in the institution, where he was a simple docent. As
we read the accounts of his work as a lecturer, and turn over the
earnest, devout, and tolerant pages of his books, full of faith in
the perfectibility of man, and of zeal discovering and furthering
the conditions of human progress, we must needs feel that here was
one prepared in his heart and made by nature, from whom no judgment
of a lodge could permanently divide us. He died in 1832 at the
relatively early age of 51.
Krause did not leave us a complete or systematic exposition of
his
general philosophical system. Nor can it be said that he achieved
much of moment in the field of philosophy at large, though some
historians of philosophy accord him a notable place. It is rather
in the special fields of the philosophy of Masonry, to which he
devoted the enthusiasm of youth, and of the philosophy of law, to
which he turned his maturer energies, that he will be remembered.
In the latter field, indeed, he is still a force. Two able and
zealous disciples, Ahrens and Roeder, labored for more than a
generation in expounding and spreading his doctrines. The great
work of Ahrens, published five years after his master's death, has
gone through twenty-four editions, in seven languages. Thus Krause
became recognized as the founder of a school of legal and political
philosophers, and his followers, not merely by writings, but by
meetings and congresses, developed and disseminated his ideas.
Until the rise of the military spirit in Germany and the shifting
of the growing point of German law to legislation, produced a new
order of ideas, the influence of his doctrines was almost dominant.
Outside of Germany, especially in lands where the philosophy of law
is yet a virgin field, they still have a useful and fruitful future
before them, and he has been pronounced the "leader of the latest
and largest thought" in the sphere of legal philosophy. In view of
the social-philosophical and sociological movements in the last
generation, this characterization is no longer accurate. But it is
true that until the rise of the great names of the social-
philosophical school of legal thought in the past decade, Krause's
was the greatest name in modern legal philosophy. His great Masonic
work is disfigured by the uncritical voracity, characteristic of
Masonic writers until a very recent period, which led him to give
an unhesitating credence to tradition, and to accept, as genuine,
documents of doubtful authenticity, or even down-right
fabrications. Hence his historical and philological investigations,
in which he minutely examines the so-called Leland MS., the Entered
Apprentice Lecture, and the so-called York Constitutions, as well
as his dissertation on the form of government and administration in
the Masonic order, must be read with caution, and with many
allowances for over-credulity. But in spite of these blemishes--and
they unhappily disfigure too large a portion of the historical and
critical literature of the Craft--his Masonic writings are
invaluable.
In a time and among a people in which the nineteenth-century
indifference to philosophy is exceptionally strong, and threatens
to deprive Law and Government, Jurisprudence and Politics of all
basis, other than popular caprice, a teaching which sets them on a
surer and more enduring ground, which seeks to direct them to a
definite place and to give them definite work in a general scheme
of human progress, cannot fail to be tonic. For the Mason, however,
Krause's system of legal philosophy has a further and higher value.
It is not merely that his works on the philosophy of law, written,
for the most part, after his period of Masonic research and Masonic
authorship was at an end, afford us, at many points, memorable
examples of the practical possibilities of Masonic studies. Nor is
it merely that he enforces so strenuously the social, political,
and legal applications of the principles of our lectures. His great
achievement, his chiefest title to our enduring gratitude, is the
organic theory of law and the state, in which he develops the
seventeenth-century notion of a general organization of mankind
into a practical doctrine, seeks to unite the state with all other
groups and organizations--high or low, whatever their immediate
scope or purpose--in a harmonious system of men's activities, and
points out the station and the objective of our world-wide
brotherhood in the line of battle of human progress. Let me
indicate to you some of the leading points of his Masonic and of
his legal philosophy, and the relation of the one to the other.
Law is but "the skeleton of social order, clothed upon by the flesh
and blood of morality." Among primitive peoples, it is no more than
a device to keep the peace, and to regulate, so far as may be, the
archaic remedy of private war. In time it is taken over by the
state, and is able to put down violence, where originally it could
go no farther than to limit it. This done, it may aspire to a
better end, and seek not only to preserve order but to do justice.
Thus far it has come at present. But beyond all this, says Krause,
there is a higher and nobler goal, which is, he says, "The
perfection of man and of society." The law, singly, is by no means
adequate to this task. Rightly understood, it is one of many
agencies, which are to operate harmoniously, each in its own
sphere, toward that great end. The state organizes and wields but
one of these agencies. Morals, religion, science, the arts,
industry and commerce--all these, in his view, are co-workers, and
must be organized also. But the state, or the political
organization, being charged with the duty of maintaining the
development of justice, has the special function of assuring to the
other forms of organized human activity the means of perfecting
themselves. It must "mediate between the individual and the social
destiny." Thus it is but an organ in the whole social organism. He
looks upon human society as an organic whole, made up of many
diverse institutions, each related to an important phase of human
life, and all destined, at an epoch of maturity, to compose a
superior unity. Relatively, they are independent. In a wider view
and looked at with an eye to the ultimate result, they are parts of
a single mechanism. All operate in one direction and to one end--
the achievement of the destiny of humanity, which is perfection.
Nor is this idle speculation. Krause seeks to animate these several
phases of human activity, these varied institutions evolved as
organs of the social body, with a new spirit. He impresses upon us
that we are not on the decline, but are rather in a period of
youth. Humanity, he insists, is but beginning to acquire the
consciousness of its social aim. Knowing its aim, conscious of the
high perfection that awaits it, he calls upon mankind, by
harmonious development of its institutions, to reach the ideal
through conscious development of the real.
This insistence upon perfection as a social aim and upon conscious
striving to that end is of capital importance in contrast with the
ideas which prevailed so generally in the latter half of the
nineteenth century. Under the influence of the positivists and of
the mechanical sociologists for a time there was a condition of
social, political and juristic pessimism. Men thought of society as
governed by the inflexible operation of fixed social laws, whose
workings we might observe, as we may observe the workings of the
law of gravitation in the motions of the heavenly bodies, but might
no more influence in the one case than in the other. Krause's
social philosophy, on the other hand, to use a recent phrase, gives
us faith in the efficacy of effort and thus accords with the best
tendencies of social and political thought in the present.
Krause's philosophy of Masonry and his philosophy of law require
us
to distinguish the natural order, the social order and the moral
order. The distinction may be developed as follows.
Scientists tell us that nature exhibits a ceaseless and relentless
strife--a struggle for existence, though this way of putting it had
not been invented in Krause's day--in which all individuals, races,
and species are inevitably involved. The very weeds by the roadside
are not only at war with one another for room to grow, but must
contend for their existence against the ravages of insects, the
voracity of grazing animals, and the implements of men. Thus, the
staple of life, under purely natural conditions, is conflict. If we
turn to the artificial conditions of a garden, the contrast is
extreme. Exotics, which-could not maintain themselves a moment, in
an alien soil and an unwonted climate, against the competition of
hardy native weeds, thrive luxuriantly. Planted carefully, so as
not to interfere with each other, carefully tended, so as to
eliminate the competition of native vegetation, supplied with the
best of soil, watered whenever the natural supply is deficient, the
individual plants, freed from the natural necessity of caring for
themselves in the struggle for existence, turn their whole energies
to more perfect development, and produce forms and varieties of
which their rude, uncultivated originals scarcely convey a hint.
All struggle for existence is not eliminated, indeed, in the
garden. But the burden of it is shifted. Instead of each plant
struggling with every other for a precarious existence the gardener
contends with nature for the existence of his garden. He covers his
plants to protect from frosts, he waters them to mitigate drought,
he sprays them to prevent injury by insects, and he hoes to keep
down the competition of weeds. Instead of leaving each plant to
propagate itself as it may, he gathers and selects the seed,
prepares the ground, and sows so as to insure the best results. The
whole proceeding is at variance with nature; and it is maintained
only by continual strife with nature, and at the price of vigilance
and diligence. If these are relaxed, insects, drought, and weeds
soon gain the day, and the artificial order of the garden is at an
end.
Society and civilization are, in like manner, an artificial order,
maintained at the price of vigilance and diligence in opposition to
natural forces. As in the garden, so in society, the characteristic
feature is elimination of the struggle for existence, by removal or
amelioration of the conditions which give rise to it. On the other
hand, in savage or primitive society, as in the natural plant
society of the wayside, the characteristic feature is the intense
and unending competition of the struggle for existence. In the
wayside weed patch, nature exerts herself to adjust the forms of
life to the conditions of existence. In the garden, the gardener
strives to adjust the conditions of existence to the forms of life
he intends to cultivate. Similarly, among savage and uncivilized
races, men adjust themselves as they may to a harsh environment.
With the advent and development of society and civilization,
men-create an artificial environment, adjusted to their needs and
furthering their continued progress. Thus, the social and moral
ordeal are, in a sense, artificial; they have been set up in
opposition to the natural order, and they are maintained and
maintainable only by strife with nature, and the repression of
natural instincts and primitive desires. It has been said that
nature is morally indifferent. Morality is a conception which
belongs to the social, not to the natural existence. The course of
conduct which the member of civilized society pursues would be
fatal to the savage; and the course followed by the savage would be
fatal to society. The savage, like any wild animal, fights out the
struggle fol existence relentlessly. The civilized man joins his
best energies to those of his fellows, in the endeavor to limit and
eliminate that struggle.
The social ordeal, then, is, as it were, an artificial order, set
up and maintained by the co-operation of numbers of individuals
through successive generations. Just as the garden demands
vigilance and diligence on the part of the gardener, to prevent the
encroachment and re-establishment of the natural order, so the
social order requires continual struggle with natural surroundings,
as well as with other societies and with individuals, wherewith its
interests or necessities come in conflict. Consequently, in
addition to the instincts of self and species preservation, there
is required an instinct or intuition of preserving and maintaining
the social order. Whether we regard this as acquired in an orderly
process of evolution, or as implanted in man at creation, it stands
as the basis of right and justice, bringing about as a moral habit,
"that tendency of the will and mode of conduct which refrains from
disturbing the lives and interests of others, and, as far as
possible, hinders such interference on the part of others." The
mere knowledge by individuals, however, that the welfare, and even
the continuance, of society require each to limit his activities
somewhat with reference to the activities of others, does not
suffice to keep within the bounds required by-right and justice.
The more primitive and powerful selfish instincts tend to prevail
in action. Hence private war was an ordinary process of archaic
society. The competing activities of individuals could not be
brought into harmony and were left to adjust themselves. But peace,
order, and security are essential to civilization. Every individual
must be relieved from the necessity of guarding his interests
against encroachment, and set free to pursue some special end with
his whole energies. As civilization advances, this is done by
substituting the force of society for that of the individual, and
thus putting an end to private war. Historically, law grew up to
this demand.
The maintenance of society and the promotion of its welfare,
however, as has been seen, depend upon much besides the law. Even
in its original and more humble role of preserving the peace, the
law was by no means the first in importance. The germs of legal
institutions are to be seen in ancient religions, and religion and
morals held men in check while law was yet in embryo. Beginning as
one, religion, morals and law have slowly differentiated into the
three regulating and controlling agencies by which right and
justice are upheld and society is made possible. In many respects
their aim is common, in many respects they cover the same field,
among some peoples they are still confused, in whole or in part.
But today, among enlightened peoples, they stand as three great
systems; with their own aims, their own fields, their own
organization, and their own methods; each keeping down the
atavistic tendencies toward wrong-doing and private war, and each
bearing its share in the support of the artificial social order, by
maintaining right and justice. Religion governs men, so far as it
is a regulating agency, supernatural sanctions; morality by the
sanction of private conscience, fortified by public opinion; law by
the sanction of the force of organized society. Each, therefore, to
be able to employ its sanctions systematically and effectively in
maintaining society, must be directed or wielded by an
organization. Accordingly we find the church giving regulative and
coercive force to religion and the state taking over and putting
itself behind the law. But what is behind the third of these great
agencies? What and where is the organization that gives system and
effectiveness to the regulative force of morality?
Here, Krause tells us, is the post of the Masonic order.
World-wide; respecting every honest creed, requiring adherence to
none; teaching obedience to states, but confining itself to no one
of them; it looks to religion on the one side and to law upon the
other, and, standing upon the solid middle-ground of the universal
moral sentiments of mankind, puts behind them the force of
tradition and precept, and organizes the mighty sanction of human
disapproval. Thus, he conceives that Masonry is working hand in
hand with church and state, in organizing the conditions of social
progress; and that all societies and organizations, local or
cosmopolitan, which seek to unify men's energies in any sphere--
whether science, or art, or labor, or commerce --have their part
also; since each and all, held up by the three pillars of the
social order--Religion, Law, and Morals; Wisdom, Strength, and
Beauty--are making for human perfection.
But, in the attainment of human perfection, we must go beyond
the
strict limits of the social order. Morality, as we have seen, is an
institution of social man. Nevertheless it has possibilities of its
own, surpassing the essential requirements of a society. There is
a moral order, above and developed out of the social t order, as
the social order is above the natural. The natural order is
maintained by the instincts of self and species preservation. These
instincts, unrestrained, take no account of other existences, and
make struggle for existence the rule. In the social order, men have
learned to adjust act to end in maintaining their own lives without
hindering others from doing the like. In the moral order, men have
learned not merely to live without hindering the lives of others,
but to live so as to aid others in attaining a more complete and
perfect life. When the life of every individual is full and
complete, not merely without hindering other lives from like
completeness, but while helping them to attain it, perfection will
have been reached. Then will the individual, "In hand and foot and
soul four-square, fashioned without fault," fit closely into the
moral order, as the perfect ashler. Instinct maintains the natural
order. Law must stand chiefly behind the social order. Masonry will
find its sphere, for the most part, in maintaining and developing
the moral order. So that, while it reminds us of our natural duties
to ourselves, and of the duties we owe our country, as the
embodiment of the social order, it insists, above and beyond them
all, upon our duties to our neighbor and to God, through which
alone the perfection of the moral order may be attained.
Krause does not believe, however, that law and the state should
limit their scope and purpose to keeping up the social order. They
maintain right and justice in order to uphold society. But they
uphold society in order to liberate men's energies so that they may
make for the moral order. Hence the ultimate aim is human
perfection. If by any act intended to maintain the social order,
they retard the moral order, they are going counter to their ends.
Law and morals are distinct; but their aim is one, and the
distinction is in the fields in which they may act effectively and
in the means of action, rather than in the ideas themselves. The
lawgiver must never forget the ultimate purpose, and must seek to
advance rather than to hinder the organization and harmonious
development of all human activities. "Law," he tells us, "is the
sum of the external conditions of life measured by reason." So far
as perfection may be reached by limitation of the external acts of
men, whereby each may live a complete life, unhindered by his
fellows, the law is effective. More than this, the external
conditions of the life measured by reason are, indirectly,
conditions of the fuller and completer life of the moral order; for
men must be free to exercise their best energies without hindrance,
before they can employ them to much purpose in aiding others to a
larger life. Here, however, law exhausts its possibilities. It
upholds the social order, whereon the moral order rests. The
development and maintenance of the moral order depend on internal
conditions. And these are without the domain of law. Nevertheless,
as law prepares the way for the moral order, morals make more easy
the task of law. The more thoroughly each individual, of his own
motion, measures his life by reason, the more completely does law
cease to be merely regulative and restraining, and attains its
higher role of an organized human freedom. Here is one of the prime
functions of the symbols of the Craft. As one reflects upon these
symbols, the idea of life measured by reason is everywhere borne in
upon him. The twenty-four inch gauge, the plumb, the level, the
square and compass, and the trestle board are eloquent of
measurement and restraint.
There is nothing measured in the life of the savage. He may kill
sufficient for his needs, or, from mere caprice or wanton love of
slaughter, may kill beyond his needs at the risk of future want.
His acts have little or no relation to one another. He does not sow
at one season that he may reap at another, much less does he plant
or build in one generation that another generation may be nourished
or sheltered. The exigencies or the desires of the moment control
his actions. On the other hand, the acts of civilized man are
connected, related to one another, and, to a great extent, parts of
a harmonious and intelligent scheme of activity. Even more is this
true of conduct which is called moral. Its prime characteristic is
certainty. We know today what it will be tomorrow. The unprincipled
may or may not keep promises, may or may not pay debts, may or may
not be constant in political or family relations. The man whose
conduct is moral, we call trustworthy. We repose entire confidence
in his steadfast adherence to a regular and orderly course of life.
Hence we speak of rectitude of conduct, under the figure of
adjustment to a straight line; and our whole nomenclature of ethics
is based upon such figures of speech. Excess, which is indefinite
and unmeasured, is immoral; moderation, which implies adherence to
a definite and ascertainable medium, we feel to be moral. The
social man, as distinguished from the savage, and even more the
moral man, as distinguished from him who merely takes care not to
infringe the law, measures and lays out his life, and the symbols
of the Craft serve as continual monitors to the weak or thoughtless
of what must distinguish them from the savage and the unprincipled.
The allegory of the house not built with hands, into which we are
to be fitted as living stones, suggests reflections still more
inspiring. Here we see symbolized the organic conception of society
and of human activities, upon which Krause insists so strongly.
Social and individual progress, he says, are inseparable. Nothing
is to be kept back or hindered in the march toward human
perfection. The social order conserves the end of self and race
maintenance more perfectly than the natural order, which aims at
nothing higher; and the moral order accomplishes the end of
maintaining society more fully than a system that attempts no more.
The complete life is a complete life of the units, as well as of
the whole, and the progress of humanity is a harmonizing of the
interests of each with each other and with all. Nature is wasteful.
Myriads of seeds are produced that a few plants may struggle to
maturity. Multitudes of lives are lost in the struggle for
existence, that a few may survive. As men advance in social and
moral development, this sacrifice of individuals becomes
continually less. The most perfect state, in consequence, is that
in which the welfare of each citizen and that of all citizens have
become identical, where the interests of state and subject are one,
where the feelings of each accord with those of all. In this era of
universal organization, when Krause's chapters seem almost
prophetic, there is much to console us in his belief that the
organic must prove harmonious, and that organizations which now
conflict will in the end work consciously and unerringly, as they
now work unconsciously and imperfectly, toward a common end. If, as
his illustrious pupil tells us, "human society is but a solid
bundle of organic institutions, a federation of particular
organizations, through which the fundamental aims of humanity are
realized," we may confidently hope for unity where now is discord.
And we may hope for most of all, in this work of unification, from
that world-wide Brotherhood, which has for its mission to organize
morals and to bring them home as realities to every man.
To sum up, how does Krause answer the three problems of Masonic
philosophy ?
(1) What is the purpose for which Masonry exists? What does it seek
to do? Krause answers that in common with all other human
institutions its ultimate purpose is the perfection of humanity.
But its immediate purpose is to organize the universal moral
sentiments of mankind; to organize the sanction of human
disapproval.
(2) What is the relation of Masonry to other human institutions,
especially to government and religion, state and church? Krause
answers that these aim also at human perfection. Immediately each
seeks to organize some particular branch of human activity. But
they do this as means to a common end. Hence, he says, each of
these organizations should work in harmony and even in co-operation
with the others toward the great end of all of them. In this spirit
expounds the well-known exhortations in our charges with respect to
the attitude of the Mason toward the government and the religion of
his country.
(3) What are the fundamental principles by which Masonry is
governed in attaining the end it seeks? Krause answers: Masonry has
to deal with the internal conditions of life governed by reason.
Hence its fundamental principles are measurement and restraint--
measurement by reason and restraint by reason--and it teaches these
as a means of achieving perfection.
Such, in brief and meager outline, is the relation of Masonry to
the philosophy of law and government, as conceived by one who has
left his mark on the history of each. Think what we may of some of
his doctrines, differ with him as we may at many points, hold, as
we may, that our Order has other ends, we must needs be stirred by
the noble aim he has set before us; we must needs be animated by a
higher spirit and more strenuous purpose, as one of the chiefest of
the organic societies composing the "solid bundle" that makes for
human perfection.
A KNIGHT'S PRAYER.
"Keep, in Thy pierced hands,
Still the bruised helmet;
Let not their hostile bands
Wholly o'erwhelm it !
Bless my poor shield for me,
Christ, King of Chivalry.
Keep Thou the sullied mail,
Lord, that I tender
Here, at Thine altar-rail !
Then--let Thy splendor
Touch it once--and I go
Stainless to meet the foe !"
--Alfred Noyes. Sheerwood.
SO MOTE IT BE.
The depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
One stone the more swings to her place
In that dread Temple of Thy Worth--
It is enough that through Thy Grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth.
Take not that vision from my ken;
Oh whatsoe'r may spoil or speed,
Help me to need no aid from men
That I may help such men as need.
--Rudyard Kipling.
"My New Cut Ashlar."
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LECTURE III
OLIVER
KRAUSE'S philosophy is concerned chiefly with the relation of
Masonry to the philosophy of law and government. Oliver's
philosophy of Masonry deals rather with Masonry in its relation to
the philosophy of religion. In order to understand this we need
only note that Krause was by profession a philosopher and that the
main work of his life was done in the philosophy of law and of
government while, on the other hand, Oliver was a clergyman. As in
Preston's case, Oliver's general philosophical ideas came to him
ready-made. He flowed with the philosophical current of his time.
He did not turn it into new channels or affect its course as did
Krause. Hence here, as with Preston, we may conveniently consider
Oliver's philosophy of Masonry under three heads: 1. The man; 2.
The time; 3. His Masonic philosophy as a product of the two.
1. The man. George Oliver was born at Pepplewick in the county of
Nottingham, November 5, 1782. His father was a clergyman of the
established church and his mother was the daughter of a country
gentleman. Hence he had the advantage of a bringing up under
conditions of culture and refinement. He was educated at Nottingham
and made such progress that at twenty-one he was made second master
of the grammar school at Caistor in Lincolnshire. Six years later
he was made head master of King Edward's grammar school at Great
Grimsby. In 1813 he took orders but continued to teach. In 1815 he
was given a living by his bishop as the result of an examination
and at the same time, as the phrase was, was put on the boards of
Trinity College, Cambridge, as a so-called ten-year man. That is he
was given ten years in which to earn his degree. Thus in 1836 he
was able to take his degree of doctor of divinity. In the meantime
he was successively promoted to parishes of more and more
importance till he became rector of Wolverhampton and prebendary of
the collegiate church. In 1846 the lord chancellor gave him an
easier and more lucrative living. He died in 1866 at the age of
eighty four.
Beginning in 1811 Oliver was a diligent student of and a prolific
writer upon antiquities, particularly ecclesiastical antiquities
and his writings soon brought him a high reputation as an
antiquary. It is worth while to give a list of the more important
of these books since taken in connection with the long list of his
Masonic writings it will afford some idea of his diligence and
activity. I give only those which have been considered the more
important.
1. History and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of
Beverley.
2. History and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of
Wolverhampton.
3. History of the Conventual Church of Grimsby.
4. Monumental Antiquities of Grimsby.
5. History of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, Sleaford.
6. Druidical Remains near Lincoln.
7. Guide to the Druidical Temple at Nottingham
8. Remains of the Ancient Britons between Lincoln and Sleaford.
To these must be added a great mass of papers and notes on
antiquarian matters published between 1811 and 1866. And be it
remembered the author was, while most of these were writing, a
teacher studying during his leisure hours in preparation for orders
and later for his degree and when the remainder were written was
rector of an important parish, a magistrate, a surrogate for the
bishopric of Lincoln and a steward of the clerical fund for his
diocese. This sounds like one man's work and a good measure at
that. To it, however, we have to add a Masonic literary career even
more fruitful and more enduring in its results.
Oliver was made a Mason at the age of nineteen. This statement,
startling to the modern Masonic ear, requires explanation. As
Masonic usage then stood a "lewis," that is the son of a Mason,
might be initiated by dispensation before he came of age. The
privileges of a lewis have never been defined clearly. He was
supposed to have a right of initiation in precedence over all other
candidates. Also in England and France he was supposed to have the
right to be initiated at an earlier age, namely eighteen. The
constitutions are silent on this point but the traditional custom
was to grant a dispensation in the case of a lewis after that age.
It is hard to say how far this usage has ever obtained in America.
At present it is not recognized. But there is evidence that it
obtained in the eighteenth century as, for example, in the case of
George Washington who was initiated at the age of twenty. At any
rate Oliver became a Mason in this way at the age of nineteen being
initiated by his father in St. Peters Lodge at Peterborough in
1801.
Oliver's father was a zealous and well-informed Mason and a
ritualist of the literal school, that is of the type who regard
literal expertness in ritual as the unum necessarium in Masonry.
Accordingly Oliver was thoroughly trained on this side--which
indeed is indispensable not only to Masonic advancement but, I
suspect, to Masonic scholarship--and as a result of his thorough
knowledge of the work and his tireless activity his rise in the
Craft was rapid.
In 1809 Oliver established a lodge at Grimsby where he was the
master of the grammar school and chiefly by his exertions the lodge
became strong and prosperous. He was master of that lodge fourteen
years. Thence successively he became Provincial Grand Steward
(1813); Grand Chaplain (1816); and Deputy Grand Master of
Lincolnshire (1832). The latter office he held for eight years. It
should be remembered that the post of Provincial Grand Master was
reserved in England for the nobility. It is interesting to know in
passing that the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts gave him the honorary
title of Past Deputy Grand Master.
The list of Oliver's Masonic writings is very long. He is the most
prolific of Masonic authors and on the whole has had the widest
influence. He began by publishing a number of Masonic sermons but
presently as one may suspect by way of revolt from the mechanical
ritualistic Masonry to which, as it were, he had been bred he
turned his attention to the history and subsequently to the
philosophy of the Craft.
His first historical work is the well-known "Antiquities of Free
Masonry: comprising illustrations of the five grand periods of
Masonry from the creation of the world to the dedication of King
Solomon's temple." This was published in 1823.
Then followed in order:
2. The Star in the East, his first philosophical work, designed to
show the relation of Masonry to religion.
3. Signs and Symbols, an exposition of the history and significance
of all the Masonic symbols then recognized.
4. History of Initiation, twelve lectures on the ancient mysteries
in which Oliver sought to trace Masonic initiation and ancient
systems of initiation to a common origin; a matter with respect to
which recent anthropological and sociological studies of primitive
secret societies indicate that he may have hit the truth much more
nearly than we had been supposing of late.
5. The Theocratic Philosophy of Masonry, a further development of
his ideas as to the relation of Masonry to religion.
6. A History of Free Masonry from 1829 to 1840, intended as an
appendix to Preston's Illustrations of Masonry which he had edited
in 1829.
7. Historical Landmarks and Other Evidences of Masonry Explained,
by far his greatest work, a monument of wide reading and laborous
research.
8. Revelations of a Square, a bit of Masonic fiction.
9. The Golden Remains of the Early Masonic Writers, an elaborate
compilation in five volumes.
10. The Symbol of Glory, his best discussion of the object and
purpose of Masonry.
11. A Mirror for the Johannite Masons, in which he discusses the
dedication of lodges and the two Sts. John.
12. The Origin and Insignia of the Royal Arch Degree.
13. A Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry, the first of a long line of
such dictionaries.
14. Institutes of Masonic Jurisprudence.
He also published a "Book of the Lodge," a sort of ritualistic
manual similar to the monitors or manuals so well known today.
Likewise he was a constant contributor to English and even to
American Masonic periodicals.
Probably no one not by profession a writer can show such a list,
bearing in mind how many of the foregoing are books of the first
order in their class.
Unhappily Oliver's views of Masonic law were not in accord with
those which prevailed in England in 1840. In consequence when in
that year Dr. Crucefix, one of the most distinguished of
nineteenth-century English Masons, was suspended by the Grand Lodge
and retired from Masonic activity Oliver also incurred the
displeasure of the authorities by claiming the right, though a
Provincial Deputy Grand Master, to take part in a public
demonstration in honor of Crucefix in which a large number of
prominent Masons joined. This led to his losing his office by the
action of the Provincial Grand Master and to his withdrawing from
active connection with the Craft. But English Masons soon came to
see the soundness of Oliver's views as to the independence which
Masonry must allow to the individual in his belief and opinion as
to what is Masonic law. Accordingly four years later nearly all the
Masons in the kingdom joined in subscribing for a presentation of
plate to Oliver in recognition of his great services to the Craft.
But justice was not done to Oliver as it was to Preston possibly
because Oliver was not the type of man to urge it for himself as
Preston would have done. In consequence Oliver was out of touch
with active Masonic work for the last twenty two years of his life.
That this was in no way due to improper obstinacy on his part is,
I think, manifest from merely looking at his portrait--which
radiates benevolence and amiability. Moreover all accounts of his
personality agree with the impression one gets from the portrait.
All accounts bear witness to his lovableness, his geniality, his
charitableness and his readiness to oblige. All who have written of
him testify that he was in the highest degree unassuming,
unaffected and easy of approach. That such men as Krause and Oliver
should suffer from the jealousies which greater knowledge seems to
engender in those who regard ability to recite the ritual with
microscopic fidelity as the sum of Masonry is not wholly to be
wondered at. The breadth which such knowledge inevitably brings
about threatens the very foundations of the literalism which the
strongest men in our lodges have been taught or have taught
themselves is the essence of the institution. But it is strange and
is an unhappy commentary upon human nature that the arrogant,
ambitious Preston could at length obtain justice which was denied
to Krause and to Oliver.
Summing up Oliver's personality, everything confirms the
impression
which one derives from the portrait. He was a warm-hearted man, of
zealous antiquarian enthusiasm, of deep faith and of thoroughgoing
religious convictions. We must remember each of these traits when
we come to consider his philosophy of Masonry. So much for the man.
Now for the time.
The dominant philosophy everywhere when Oliver wrote was what is
known as romanticism. In England, which at this period was still
primarily taken up with religious rather than with philosophical or
scientific questions, romanticism was especially strong. Thinkers
of the generation after Kant objected to his critical philosophy on
the ground that it lacked vitality. They asserted that the living
unity of the spirit was violated by his analyzings and
distinguishings. They pointed to religious faith on the one hand
and to artistic conception and creation on the other hand as
methods which unlike the critical philosophy did full justice to
life. In other words the age of reason in which Preston wrought and
wrote was over and for a season at least men ceased to expect all
things of reason, intellect and knowledge and began to expect all
things of what they called spirit. The younger thinkers especially
were filled with enthusiasm at this idea of deducing all things
from spirit and did not see that they were simply seeking for a new
philosopher's stone. They expected through the idea of the spirit
to establish a complete unity of all things, to break down the
existing separation between science, religion and art and to
reconcile all discords. Such an idea of knowledge rightly may be
called romantic. It stands before us sublime and distant. It rouses
our enthusiasm or our zeal to achieve it, and influences us by its
exaltation rather than by any prospect which it affords us of clear
and sober realization. That a whole generation should have been
content to put its ideal of knowledge in this form seems difficult
to explain even by reaction from the over-rationalism of the
preceding century. Probably the general upheaval brought about by
the French Revolution must be taken into account and the golden age
of poetry which accompanied this philosophical movement must not be
overlooked. Indeed the connection between the romantic
philosophers, the romantic poets and the romantic musicians is very
close. It is not an accident that what I may fairly call romantic
Masonry appears at the same time. This will be manifest especially
when I come to speak of Oliver's views as to the relation of
Masonry to religion.
One of the most representative of the German romantic
philosophers
argued that all separation between poetry, philosophy and religion
was superficial and arbitrary. He argued that while the poet
regards philosophy as an expounding of the poetry of life which is
to be found in all things, the philosopher regards poetry as a
pictorial form, perceived intuitively, of the thought which moves
in all things. But, he said, religion is a phase of the same quest
for unity. Let me quote his words since they bear strongly upon
Oliver's views: "If it is allowed that the task of thought is to
show us the unity of all things, can philosophical endeavor differ
in its essence from the religious yearning which likewise seeks to
transcend the oppositions and unrest of life ?"
This romantic philosophy came into England chiefly through the poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) who wrote while Oliver's chief
literary activities were in progress and died about six years
before the most important and significant of Oliver's writings. The
relation of the one to the other is so clear that a moment's
digression as to Coleridge is necessary.
In his youth Coleridge tells us he had been a disciple of the
eighteenth-century rationalists. But he was repelled by the
attempt, so characteristic of the eighteenth century, to reduce
mental phenomena to elementary functions by means of analysis and
to discover mechanical laws for all consciousness. If this could be
done, he said, it would destroy the unity and activity of the mind.
At this time he came in contact with the German romantic philosophy
and turned in the new direction. Indeed he was a romanticist by
nature. He revelled, it has been said, in ideas of the absolute in
which the differences and oppositions of the finite world blended
and disappeared. He was a poet and a preacher rather than a thinker
and rarely got beyond intuition and prophecy. Hence there is more
than a little truth in the saying of one of his critics that he led
his generation through moonshine to orthodoxy and to a more
pronounced orthodoxy than had formerly obtained. It is said that
the Anglo-Catholic or Puseyite movement of the nineteenth century,
which carried Newman and so many other English scholars into the
church of Rome, was a result of Coleridge's ideas.
What, then, were the characteristics of the philosophy of the time
and place in which Oliver wrote ?
1. Speculation and imagination were the chief organs of thought.
The poetic passed for the only real. Enthusiasm passed for
scholarship.
2. Reason abdicated for a season. Conviction, intuition and faith
were regarded as justifying themselves.
3. In the same way tradition became something which justified
itself. This is seen particularly in the so-called Oxford movement
and the Catholic reaction in England. It is seen also in the
position of the time as to the English constitution which Dickens
has satirized in the person of Mr. Podsnap.
4. Reconciliation of Christianity with philosophy became a
recognized problem. For example, Coleridge took this for his chief
work.
All of these features may be seen in Oliver's Masonic writings. The
defects of his historical writing, for example, which have utterly
debased popular Masonic history are the defects of a romanticist.
A warm imagination and speculative enthusiasm carried him away. In
common with his philosophical teachers he had thrown off the
critical method and had lost the faculty of discriminating
accurately between what had been and what he would like to believe
had been. On the other hand, in Masonic philosophy, where pure
speculation was allowable, these qualities had a certain value.
Mill says of Coleridge that his was one of the great seminal minds
of his time. In the same way Oliver more than anyone else set men
to thinking upon the problems of Masonic philosophy. His style is
agreeable. He is always easy to read and often entertaining. A
multitude of readers, who would be repelled by Krause's learned but
difficult pages, have rejoiced in Oliver. Hence he has given a form
and direction to Masonic speculation which still persist.
Turning to Oliver's philosophy of Masonry three important points
may be noted:
1. His theory of the relation of Masonry to religion;
2. His theory of Masonry as a tradition coming down to us from a
pure state prior to the flood; 3. His theory of the essentially
Christian nature of our institution.
Let me take these up in order.
1. It has been said that reconciliation of knowledge with religion
and unifying of religion with all other human activities was a
favorite undertaking of the romantic philosophy. It was natural,
therefore that a clergyman should be attracted to this type of
thought and that a zealous churchman and enthusiastic Mason who had
learned from Preston, whose book he edited, that Masonry was
knowledge, should convert the problem into one of relating Masonry
to religion and of reconciling them. Oliver's mode of doing this
was highly ingenious. Religion and Masonry, he would say, are
identical in their end and they are identical in their end with
knowledge. Each is a manifestation of the spirit, the absolute,
that is of God. God, he would say, is manifest to us, first, by
revelation and thus manifest we know Him and know ourselves and
know the universe through religion. Second, He is manifest to us by
tradition, and in this way we know Him and know ourselves and know
the universe through Masonry. Third, He is manifest to us through
reason, and in this way we know Him and know ourselves and know the
universe through knowledge or, as we have come to call it, science.
In common with the romanticists he sought to throw the entire
content of life into one interconnected whole; and this he found in
God or in the absolute. Accordingly to him Masonry was one mode of
approach to God, the other two being religion and science. If
Krause's triad was law, religion, morals, given effect by state,
church, Masonry, Oliver's is revelation, tradition, reason,
expounded, handed down, developed and interpreted by religion,
Masonry and science.
2. Oliver's theory of Masonry as a system of tradition seems to
have been derived from Hutchinson. The latter deserves a moment's
digression.
William Hutchinson (1732-1814), an English lawyer, is perhaps the
earliest Masonic philosopher. In 1774 by permission of the Grand
Lodge, which then insisted upon a right to censor all Masonic
writing, Hutchinson published his chief Masonic work entitled "The
Spirit of Masonry." Oliver himself has said that this book was "the
first efficient attempt to explain in a rational and scientific
manner the true philosophy of the order." Hutchinson's doctrine was
that the lost word was symbolical of lost religious purity due to
corruptions of the Jewish faith. He held that the master's degree
symbolized the new law of Christ taking the place of the old law of
Judaism which had become dead and corrupt. By a bit of fanciful
etymologsr he derived Hiram (Huram) from the Greek heuramen (we
have found it) and Acacia from the Greek alpha privative and Kakia
(evil)--Akakia, freedom from evil, or freedom from sin. Thus, he
says, the Master Mason "represents a man under the Christian
doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith
of salvation." Hutchinson influenced Hemming, who wrote the
lectures of the Ancients and a trace of this influence may be seen
in America in the interpretation of the blazing star in our
lectures.
Clearly enough Oliver got his cue from Hutchinson. But Hutchinson
had identified religion and Masonry. This Oliver, as a clergyman of
the established church, could not allow. Instead Oliver sought to
unify them, that is while keeping them distinct to make them phases
of a higher unity, to make them expressions of what is ultimately,
though not immediately, one. This he did as has been seen by
regarding each as a mode of approach to God. That conception led to
his theory of Masonry as a body of tradition.
Briefly stated Oliver's theory is this. He held that Masonry was to
be found as a body of tradition in the earliest periods of history
as recorded in Scripture. This tradition according to his
enthusiastic speculations was taught by Seth to his descendants and
was practiced by them as a pure or primitive Masonry before the
flood. Thus it passed over to Noah and his descendants and at the
dispersion of mankind was divided into pure Masonry and spurious
Masonry. The pure Masonry passed through the patriarchs to Solomon
and thence to the present institution. On the other hand, the pure
tradition was corrupted among the pagans and took the form of the
mysteries and initiatory rites of antiquity. Accordingly, he held,
we have in Masonry a traditional science of morality veiled in
allegory and illustrated by symbols.
3. Again taking his cue from Hutchinson, though the old charges
to
be true to holy church gave him some warrant--Oliver insisted that
Masonry was strictly a Christian institution. He believed of course
that Christianity was foretold and in a way revealed in the Old
Testament and that the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, was
clearly expounded therein. In the same way he held that the
earliest of Masonic symbols also taught the doctrine of the Trinity
and that the Masonic references to the Grand Architect of the
Universe were references to Christ. Indeed in his system this was
necessary. For if religion, which to him could mean only the
Christian religion, and Masonry were to be unified it must be as
setting before us different manifestations of the same God. There
could be but one God and that triune God, the God of his religion,
he held was made known to us by revelation, by tradition and by
reason. Thus Oliver's interpretation of revelation determined his
interpretation of the other two. If we bear this in mind we may
accept his general philosophy without accepting this particular
doctrine. For it needs only to postulate a more universal and more
general religion than he professed, a religion above sects, creeds
and dogmas to hold that such a religion along with Masonry and
along with reason leads to God. Moreover Hindu and Mahommedan may
each put his own interpretation on revelation and join in believing
in these three modes of knowing the absolute. Mackey reproaches
Oliver for narrowness and sectarianism. But the possibilities of
his Masonic philosophy are as broad as could be desired. It was too
soon in 1840 to ask a clergyman to go further in its application
than he went.
What then are Oliver's answers to the three fundamental questions
of Masonic philosophy?
1. What is the end of Masonry, for what does the institution exist?
Oliver would answer, it is one in its end with religion and with
science. Each of these are means through which we are brought into
relation with the absolute. They are the means through which we
know God and his works.
2. How does Masonry seek to achieve its end? Oliver would answer by
preserving, handing down and interpreting a tradition of immemorial
antiquity, a pure tradition from the childhood of the race.
3. What are the fundamental principles by which Masonry is governed
in achieving its task? Oliver would say, the fundamental principles
of Masonry are essentially the principles of religion as the basic
principles of the moral world. But in Masonry they appear in a
traditional form. Thus, for example, toleration in Masonry is a
form of what in religion we call charity; universality in Masonry
is a traditional form of what in religion we call love of one's
neighbor.
As has been said, Krause's was a philosophy of Masonry in its
relation to law and government. Preston's was a philosophy of
Masonry in its relation to knowledge. Oliver's is a philosophy of
Masonry in its relation to religion. Neither of the others has had
a tithe of the influence which Oliver's philosophy has exerted upon
Masonic thought. And on the whole his influence has been valuable
and stimulating. A critic has said that "all he had to give was
transcendental moonshine which shed a new light on old things for
many a young doubter and seeker, but which contained no new life."
In a sense this is so. Oliver's Masonic philosophy is an obvious
product of a clergyman in the age of the romantic philosophy who
had read and reflected upon Hutchinson. And yet it is not true that
there is no new life in Oliver. Except for Krause nothing so well
worth while has been pointed out for Masonry as the end which
Oliver found for us. I cannot but feel that it is a great
misfortune that his philosophy is being peddled out to a new
generation in grandiloquent fragments through Grand Lodge orations
and articles in the Masonic press instead of being apprehended as
a whole.
THE SACRAMENT.
"The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need;
Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three--
Himself, his hungering brother, and Me."
--J. R. Lowell. The Vision of Sir LaunfalI
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LECTURE IV
PIKE
WE come now to a radically different type of Masonic philosophy.
To
Preston Masonry is a traditional system of knowledge and its end is
to impart knowledge. Hence he thinks of the relation of Masonry to
education. To Krause it is organized morals and its end is to put
organized mankind behind the universal moral ideas of humanity.
Hence he thinks of the relation of Masonry to law and government.
To Oliver it is a mode of approach to God and its end is to bring
us to the Absolute by means of a pure tradition. Hence he thinks of
the relation of Masonry to religion. Pike gives us instead a
metaphysic of Masonry. To him Masonry is a mode of studying first
principles and its end is to reveal and to give us possession of
the universal principle by which we may master the universe. Hence
he thinks of the relation of Masonry to the fundamental problems of
existence. In part this view was inevitable in one who thought and
wrote in a country under the influence of the transcendental
philosophy. In part also it was to be expected in a member of a
profession whose philosophical ideas, so far as its leaders held
any at all, were thoroughly Hegelian. In part it grew out of Pike's
wide reading in the philosophical writings of antiquity and his
bent for mysticism. Thus his philosophy of Masonry is a product of
the man and of the time and we must look first at each of these in
order to treat it intelligently.
1. The man. Albert Pike was born in Boston, December 29, 1809. His
parents were poor. He was educated in the public schools in Boston
and it is interesting to know as a means of comparing those days
with these that, although he passed the examinations for admission
to Harvard College, he was unable to enter because in those days
the requirement was that two years' tuition be paid in advance or
secured by bond. He became a school teacher and taught in country
schools in Massachusetts from 1825 to 1831. In 1831 he went west
and joined a trading party from St. Louis to Santa Fe. Santa Fe was
then in Mexico and the journey at that time was a perilous one
through a wilderness inhabited only by Indians. On his, return he
traversed the Staked Plains and the Indian Territory and settled
finally at Van Buren in Arkansas where he opened a school.
At that time political feeling in Arkansas was very bitter. The
territory was divided between the Conway party who were politically
democrats and in truth were a sort of clan as well, and the
Crittenden party who were Whigs politically but were in truth more
a personal faction than a political party. Bloodshed was frequent
and in many respects there was a feud between the factions quite as
much as a political rivalry. The early experience of this era of
feud and private war on the frontier is worth remembering in
connection with many things in Pike's lectures upon Masonry. Pike
was a Whig and as such published in the Whig organ at Little Rock
some articles of such force as to attract general attention.
Accordingly Crittend, the Whig leader, sought out Pike in his
country school-room and induced him to go to Little Rock as one of
the editors of the party organ. This was his opportunity and he
improved it to the full by studying law while, also at work upon
the paper. In 1834 he was admitted to the bar and he rose rapidly
to the first rank in the profession in Arkansas. Among his earlier
achievements was the preparation of the first revision of the
statutes of that state. The book does not bear his name but
contemporary accounts tell us that he had the chief part in framing
it. By general consent it is a model of what such a work should be.
At the outbreak of the Mexican war Pike entered the service and was
in action at Buena Vista. His courage, proved already in the
political conflicts of territorial days, was again shown in events
that grew out of the campaign in Mexico. Pike felt it his duty to
criticise the military conduct of Governor Roane and as a result
was compelled to fight a duel. The duel took place over the line in
the Indian Territory. Happily it was bloodless and ended in
reconciliation. There is good reason to suspect that some traces of
this experience are to be seen in his lectures.
From 1853 to 1857 Pike practiced law in New Orleans. Thus he was
led to make a diligent and characteristically thorough study of
Roman law, the basis of the French law which obtained then, as it
does now, in Louisiana. In 1857 he returned to Arkansas and
afterward sat upon the supreme bench of that state. At the outbreak
of the Civil War he cast his lot with the South. As he had great
influence with the Indians he was sent to raise a force in the
Indian Territory. In this work he was vigorous and untiring. But
his utmost efforts could not make obedient or efficient soldiers
out of the large force which he was able to raise. Some of the
doings of this force have left a stain upon his memory, which,
according to the best authorities obtainable, seems to be
undeserved. In truth his experience was not very different from
that of the British officers during the Revolution and during the
War of 1812 who sought to make military use of Indian allies. In
any event the project failed. This experience also has left more
than one trace in his Masonic lectures. After the Civil War he
practiced law for a time in Memphis. In 1868 he went to Alexandria,
Virginia, and in 1870 moved across the river to Washington where he
practiced law for twenty-one years. He died in 1891.
Albert Pike was a man of the widest and most varied learning. He
was a strong and successful common-law lawyer. He had studied the
Roman law to good purpose and left a manuscript of a three-volume
book upon the principles of the Roman law which is now in the
library of the Supreme Court of the United states. But he had many
scholarly interests outside of his profession. He left among his
papers a manuscript translation of the Zend Avesta and of the Rig
Veda in twenty-two large volumes copiously annotated. Moreover he
made some mark as a poet. Some of his poems, particularly a
striking one upon the battle of Buena Vista, are still to be found
in school readers and his verses were formerly much in vogue.
Reviewing his extra-Masonic record for a moment, we see a man born
and educated in New England, a pioneer in the southwest in its
frontier period, a soldier in two wars, a successful lawyer under
each of the two great systems of modern law, for a season judge of
a supreme court and withal, though largely self-educated, a man of
learning and culture who, along with a treatise upon the principles
of Roman law which bore immediately upon his profession, could
write verse of some merit and could busy himself in the translation
of the great books of Oriental philosophy and religion.
But the field of Pike's most fruitful labors was Masonry. His
career as a Mason is too recent and his standing as a Masonic
scholar is too well-known to all of you to call for any statement
in this place. But I may remind you that he became Sovereign Grand
Commander of the southern jurisdiction in the Scottish Rite in 1859
and devoted the remaining thirty-two years of his life in
continually increasing measure to the work of that rite. Excepting
Krause no mind of equal caliber has been employed upon the problems
of Masonry. And Krause, great scholar and philosopher as he was,
had lived only in the cultured serenity of German university towns
whereas Pike had lived in staid Boston and turbulent territorial
Arkansas, had been compelled by local public opinion to fight in a
duel, had fought in two wars and had commanded Indians. Moreover,
Krause's Masonic experience was negligible in comparison with that
of this veteran of American Masonry. Accordingly we need not
hesitate to pronounce Albert Pike by far the best qualified by
nature, experience of life, Masonic experience and Masonic learning
of those who have thought upon the problems of Masonic philosophy.
2. Now as to the time.
In the earlier part of his career, Pike was brought into contact
with the eighteenth-century political philosophy which became
classical in American political thought because it was the
philosophy of the framers of our constitutions and bills of rights
and entered into the framework of our institutions in their
formative period. Also in this part of his career, in his study of
law, he came in contact with the eighteenth-century legal
philosophy of the American common-law lawyer. In the latter part of
his career, in his wide philosophical studies, he was brought into
contact with the prevailing metaphysical method of the nineteenth
century, with the conception of the Absolute, which governed in
English philosophical writing, and with the method of unifying all
things by reference to some basic absolute principle which
prevailed down to the new century. This same period saw the general
rise of materialism in the wake of decay of dogma and the
triumphant advance of the natural sciences, and this movement so
far affected his thought as to turn him, by way of reaction, to
mysticism. Indeed a mystic element is to be found not uncommonly in
thorough-going idealists. For example the leader of the new school
that builds on Hegel's philosophy has been reproved for dragging
mysticism into so prosaic a subject as the philosophy of law. But
mystics are made by nature, and nature made Pike one of the
greatest of them. Hence we may be confident that reaction from
materialism merely accentuated an element which in any event would
have been prominent in his thinking and writing. Each of the four
points of contact with American thought in the nineteenth century
requires a moment's consideration.
American political philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth
century was a compound of English law and French speculation. Prior
to the Revolution in the Declaration of Rights of the Continental
Congress the colonists had relied upon the common-law rights of
Englishmen as asserted by English lawyers and English judges
against the Stuart kings in the seventeenth century. But the
Declaration of Independence relied instead upon the natural rights
of man, a supposed body of universal, eternal, inalienable rights
deduced by reason from the nature of man in the abstract. Under the
influence of English thinkers of the seventeenth century and of the
Continental philosophy of law in the period after Grotius, the
French writers of the eighteenth century had developed this theory
of natural rights to a high degree, and the founders of our
government were deeply read in their writings. But they were also
deeply read in Blackstone and in Coke, the oracle of English law.
Naturally they combined the general theory of the French
speculators and the concrete details of the English lawyers and
came to hold that the common-law rights of Englishmen found in
their law books were the natural rights of man found in their
French political philosophy. Hence in our bills of rights they laid
down the former section by section and enacted them in fixed and
precise rules on the authority of the latter. This had important
consequences for the American legal philosophy which Pike absorbed
in the formative period of his study for the bar.
In the contests between the English judges and the Stuart kings the
judges had claimed to stand between the rights and liberties of the
individual Englishman and arbitrary oppressive action on the part
of the crown. When we took over the theory of eternal, inalienable
natural rights and combined it with the theory of the English
lawyers, the result was a doctrine that law stands and must stand
between the individual on the one hand and state and society on the
other hand and that its function is to secure the individual in his
natural rights against the aggressions and oppressions of organized
society. This idea of the mediating function of law, as a
reconciling of the individual and the whole, which the lawyer of
the last century took for the first article of his creed, is to be
seen throughout Pike's lectures and lent itself readily to his
generalization of equilibrium or balance as the Ultimate Reality.
For if law was a mediation, a harmonizing, a reconciling, and the
universe was governed by law, the fundamental principle of the
universe was the mediating or harmonizing which he called
equilibrium.
When, in his later studies, Pike came upon the metaphysical
method
of nineteenth-century philosophers, it was easy to confirm the
views to which his acquaintance with the classical American
political and legal philosophy and his reading of French Masonic
writers of the eighteenth century had led him. For the generation
that followed Hegel sought to explain the universe as the
realization of an idea. History was the unfolding of that idea in
human experience. Philosophy was a logical unfolding of the same
idea. Hence the quest was for the one fundamental idea of which the
seemingly complex order of the phenomenal world was but a
manifestation. Hence the task of the philosopher was to unite and
reconcile all differences in the Absolute which he reached through
this idea. Traces of the transition from the legal and political
analogy to this metaphysical foundation may be seen here and there
in those parts of Morals and Dogma which, we may suspect, remained
in their earlier forms despite his repeated and thorough-going
revisions.
In his later studies Pike was also compelled to take account of the
materialism which held its head so high and with "a mouth speaking
great things" grew so confidently dogmatic during the last third of
his life. If Pike, who was naturally a mystic, seems sometimes to
rely on intuition more than on reason, to put faith, which is
self-justifying, at the bottom of knowledge, to find a reality in
the occult, and to show a conviction of the relation of the symbol
to the thing symbolized, in contrast with the rigorous metaphysic
of the lectures where he argues and demonstrates instead of
prophesying, we must consider the impatience of an idealist and a
mystic with the mechanical universe of the positivists and the
economic ethics and belly-philosophy of the materialists which a
new generation was asserting all about him.
3. Let us turn now to Pike's Masonic philosophy. Pike did not
leave
us any compendium of his philosophical views. Hence we cannot, as
in the case of Oliver, apprehend them at a glance from a concise
exposition. The student of Pike's Masonic philosophy must read and
study the teeming pages of Morals and Dogma. After reading and
reflection the system of philosophy expounded will make itself
felt. But it is quite impossible for the reader to put his finger
upon this sentence or that and say here is Pike's philosophy in a
nut-shell. For the first thing to bear in mind in reading Morals
and Dogma is that we must discriminate closely between what is
really Pike and what is not.
Indeed he has told us this himself.
"In preparing this work, the Grand Commander has been about equally
Author and Compiler; since he has extracted quite half its contents
from the works of the best writers and most philosophic or eloquent
thinkers. Perhaps it would have been better and more acceptable, if
he had extracted more and written less.
"Still, perhaps half of it is his own; and, in incorporating here
the thoughts and words of others, he has continually changed and
added to the language, often intermingling, in the same sentences,
his own words with theirs."
In some measure the author is unjust to himself in this statement.
In a sense the book is all his own. He read and digested
everything. He assimilated it. He made it part of himself and
worked it into his system. But for this very reason texts from Pike
and excepts from Morals and Dogma are more than usually deceptive.
We may fasten almost any philosophical idea upon him if we proceed
in this way. We may refute almost any page by any other page if we
look simply at the surface and do not distinguish matter which he
is adapting or is making use of to illustrate the development of
thought upon the subject from dogmatic statements of his
philosophy. Morals and Dogma must be read and interpreted as a
unit. As Immanuel Kant said of his own writings, it is a book to
think through not merely to read through.
Three contributions of the first moment to Masonic science deserve
to be noted before taking up Pike's philosophy of Masonry in
detail. In the first place Pike was the apostle of liberty of
interpretation. He insisted in season and out of season that no
infallible authority speaking ex cathedra could bind the individual
Mason to this or that interpretation of the traditional symbols of
the Craft. He taught that the individual Mason instead of receiving
a pre-digested Masonry ladled out to him by another should make his
own Masonry for himself by study and reflection upon the work and
the symbols. Thus he stood for thorough going individual Masonic
development. He stood for a Masonry built up within each Mason by
himself and for himself on the solid foundation of internal
conviction. This Masonic Protestantism, as it might well be called,
is especially interesting in one who was so thoroughly filled with
French writings upon Masonry. Secondly he gave us a genuine
interpretation of the symbols which came into Masonry through the
hermetic philosophers. Hutchinson and Preston and even Oliver in
many cases did not understand these symbols at all. Indeed Preston
was much less interested in what they really were than in how they
might be made instruments of education in his time and place.
Accordingly Preston and Oliver gave currency to inadequate and
often ignorant explanations of ancient symbols. Pike studied their
history and development. He mastered their spirit and perceived
their place in the evolution of human thinking. Hence he was able
to replace the crude symbolism of the end of the eighteenth century
by a real science of Masonic symbols. In the third place not only
did he interpret our symbols but he enriched the symbolism of the
Craft from a profound acquaintance with the ancient and modern
literature of symbolism and mysticism. Thus he made us aware that
the science of Masonic symbols is but part of a much wider subject,
that it is not self-sufficient and that the serious Masonic Student
has much more to study than he can find within the covers of an
exclusively Masonic library.
I can do no more than give you a key to what I conceive to be
Pike's philosophy of Masonry. Perhaps the first point to make is
that in nineteenth-century America philosophy was regarded, under
the influence of Herbert Spencer, as the unification of knowledge.
Moreover the metaphysical method of the first half of the
nineteenth century, when Pike's ideas were formative, was to
endeavor to explain everything in a "speculative, metaphysical way
by a spiritual, logical principle." But it so happened that all
antiquity had been making a like search for the One but for a
different sort of One. The earlier Greek philosophers sought a
single element to which the whole universe might be reduced. The
Ionian philosophers sought to find such elements in air or fire or
water or, as one of them put it, "a primordial slime." Oriental
thinkers had usually sought an absolute word which was to be the
key of all things. Others among the ancients had sought an absolute
principle. With vast labor Pike brings together all that ancient
and Oriental peoples thought and wrote and all that mystics have
since thought and written with the ideas of the Orient and of
antiquity as a basis and upon this foundation he sets forth to work
out a system of his own.
Pike starts with a triad. This is suggested by the ancient
conception of the number three as the symbol of completion or
perfection. The singular, the dual and the plural, the odd and even
added, was thought of as a complete system of numbers. Hence the
number three was perfection in its simplest form; it was the type
or the symbol of perfection. He finds a triad everywhere in ancient
thought and in every system of the occult and in every mystic
philosophy. He finds it also in all Masonic symbolism and from end
to end in our lectures. Accordingly he seeks to show that in its
essentials this triad is at all times and in all its forms the same
triad. Wisdom, strength, beauty; intelligence, force, harmony;
reason, will, action; morals, law, social order; faith, hope,
charity; equality, liberty, fraternity--all these he shows are the
same triad in various forms. There is a fruitful passive principle
which is energized and made productive by an active, creative
principle and there is a product. As he shows, Osiris, Isis and
Horus symbolize this with the Egyptians and he traces the same
reduction of the universe to these fundamental through every type
of ancient mystery and all mystic speculation. In Morals and Dogma
he makes all manner of application of this idea to politics, to
morals and to religion. He carries it into every type of human
spiritual activity and gives the most copious and learned
illustrations.
But this of itself would be barren and would end in pluralism.
Accordingly he conceives that these three things are emanations, or
better, are manifestations of the Absolute. This idea again he
subjects to the test of application to all that has been thought
and written by mystics down to his time. We find a unity in the
Absolute. But how do we unify the manifold, the infinite
manifestations of the Absolute in our experience ? Is there here
some one principle? Pike says there is and that this unifying
principle is equilibrium or balance. The result of the action of
creative, active energy and productive, passive receptivity is in
the end a harmony, a balance, an equilibrium. He then applies this
idea of equilibrium to every field of thought. One example will
suffice.
"It is the Secret of the Universal Equilibrium:--
"Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Divine
Wisdom and the Infinite Divine Power, from which result the
Stability of the Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine Law,
and the Principles of Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of
it; . . .
"Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine Justice and
the Infinite Divine Mercy, the result of which is the Infinite
Divine Equity, and the M oral Harmony or Beauty of the Universe. By
it the endurance of created and imperfect natures in the presence
of a Perfect Deity is made possible;
"Of that Equilibrium between Necessity and Liberty, between the
action of the Divine Omnipotence and the Free-will of man, by which
vices and base actions, and ungenerous thoughts and words are
crimes and wrongs, justly punished by the law of cause and
consequence, though nothing in the Universe can happen or be done
contrary to the will of God; and without which co-existence of
Liberty and Necessity, of Freewill in the creature and Omnipotence
in the Creator, there could be no religion, nor any law of right
and wrong, or merit and demerit, nor any justice in human
punishments or penal laws.
"Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, and Light and Darkness
in the world, which assures us that all is the work of the Infinite
Wisdom and of an Infinite Love; and that there is no rebellious
demon of Evil, or Principle of Darkness co-existent and in eternal
controversy with God, or the Principle of Light and of Good: by
attaining to the knowledge of which equilibrium we can, through
Faith, see that the existence of Evil, sin, Suffering, and Sorrow
in the world, is consistent with the Infinite Goodness as well as
with the Infinite Wisdom of the Almighty.
"Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repulsion, each a Force of
nature, are contraries, in the souls of men and in the universe of
spheres and worlds; and from the action and opposition of each
against the other, result Harmony, and that movement which is the
Life of the Universe and the Soul alike...
"Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action which
constitutes Free Government, by settling on immutable foundations
Liberty with Obedience to Law, Equality with Subjection to
Authority, and Fraternity with Subordination to the wisest and the
Best: and of that Equilibrium between the Active Energy of the Will
of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the People, and the
Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of the Past, expressed
in constitutions of government, written or unwritten, and in the
laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, as
precedents and authority;
"And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in ourselves, and
which Masonry incessantly labors to accomplish in its Initiates,
and demands of its Adepts and Princes (else unworthy of their
titles), between the Spiritual and Divine and the Material and
Human in man; between the Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense on one
side, and the Appetites and Passions on the other, from which
result the Harmony and Beauty of a well-regulated life."
Well, we have got our idea of equilibrium and the profane will say:
What of it ? Pike would answer that this universal unifying
principle is the light of which all men in all ages have been in
search, the light which we seek as Masons. Hence we get our answers
to the fundamental problems of Masonic philosophy.
1. What is the end of Masonry? What is the purpose for which it
exists? Pike would answer: the immediate end is the pursuit of
light. But light means here attainment of the fundamental principle
of the universe and bringing of ourselves into the harmony, the
ultimate unity which alone is real. Hence the ultimate end is to
lead us to the Absolute--interpreted by our individual creed if we
like but recognized as the final unity into which all things merge
and with which in the end all things must accord. You will see here
at once a purely philosophical version of what, with Oliver, was
purely religious.
2. What is the relation of Masonry to other human institutions and
particularly to the state and to religion? He would answer it seeks
to interpret them to us, to make them more vital for us, to make
them more efficacious for their purposes by showing the ultimate
reality of which they are manifestations. It teaches us that there
is but one Absolute and that everything short of that Absolute is
relative; is but a manifestation, so that creeds and dogmas,
political or religious, are but interpretations. It teaches us to
make our own interpretation for ourselves. It teaches us to save
ourselves by finding for ourselves the ultimate principle by which
we shall come to the real. In other words, it is the universal
institution of which other spiritual, moral and social institutions
are local and temporary phases.
3. How does Masonry seek to reach these ends? He would say by a
system of allegories and of symbols handed down from antiquity
which we are to study and upon which we are to reflect until they
reveal the light to each of us individually. Masonry preserves
these symbols and acts out these allegories for us. But the
responsibility of reaching the real through them is upon each of
us. Each of us has the duty of using this wonderful heritage from
antiquity for himself. Masonry in Pike's view does not offer us
predigested food. It offers us a wholesome fare which we must
digest for ourselves. But what a feast ! It is nothing less than
the whole history of human search for reality. And through it he
conceives, through mastery of it, we shall master the universe.
CHARGE GIVEN TO THE CANDIDATE BY HIS
FATHER.
After the Candidate Had Received the "Third Degree."
MY SON--Tonight you become a member of an order--not only of
friends but of brothers. In your after-life as you master its
teachings, and experience its good influences, you will have a
great mental growth.
Masonry fosters only the right doers; its principles, its
teachings, its mysteries--all tend to the elevation of man.
Masonry gives maturity to the good character, and character may be
likened to a universal bank; The deposits that are made in the bank
of character bear an eternal interest; no thief can steal them, no
panic can dissipate them.
The life of him who is pule, just, honorable and noble, finds
within the tenets of Masonry loyal protection "from the evil
intentions of our enemies."
We believe that you will be true and faithful to the teachings of
Masonry, and we trust that you will so live that your words and
your actions will be such as to brighten the memory of all the good
men who have stood where you and I now stand--amid friends and amid
brothers.
You are the son of a Mason who reveres Masonry's teachings and
stands uncovered in the presence of its sublime mysteries.
If you will have your conduct in harmony with the principles of
Masonry, you will aid my remaining years, to pass in peaceful
satisfaction.
You are not only my SON but you are also my BROTHER; and believing
that you will always prove yourself as being worthy of having been
this evening, "raised to the sublime degree of a Master Mason," I
hope to be steadied by your arm as my SON and as my BROTHER when I
depart on the journey whose goal is the realm of silence.
FRANK BRAYTON.
ARTHUR BRAYTON.
Lyons Lodge, Number Ninety-Three, Lyons, Iowa
back to top
LECTURE V
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY MASONIC PHILOSOPHY
WE have long outgrown the notion that Masonry is to be held to
one
purpose or one object or is to be hemmed in by the confines of one
philosophy. If we are taught truly that the roof of the Mason's
workshop is nothing less than the "clouded canopy or starry-decked
heavens," nothing that goes on beneath that capacious covering can
be wholly alien to us. Our Fraternity is to be of all men and for
all men; it is to be of all time and for all time. The needs of no
one time and of no one people can circumscribe its objects. The
philosophy of no one time, of no one people, and much more of no
one man, can be admitted as its final authority. Hence it is no
reproach to Masonry to have, along with lessons and tenets for all
times, a special lesson and a special tenet for each time, which is
not to be insisted on at other times. Truth, after all, is
relative. Vital truths to one time cannot be put into pellets or
boluses to be administered to all times to come. If the Craft is to
be perpetual, it must appeal to each time as well as to all times;
it must have in its traditions something that today can use,
although yesterday could not use it and tomorrow need not. We are
a Craft of workmen. It is our glory to be engaged in useful
service. Our rites and usages are not merely a proud possession to
be treasured for their beauty and antiquity. They are instruments
imparted to us to be used. Hence we may properly inquire, what can
we make of this wonderful tradition of which we are the custodians
that will serve the world of today?
One is indeed rash who essays a philosophy of Masonry after such
masters as Krause and Oliver and Pike. But I have tried to show
heretofore how largely their philosophies of Masonry grew out of
the time and the philosophical situation at the time when they
severally thought and wrote. Thus Preston wrote in the so-called
"age of reason," when Knowledge was supposed to be the one thing
needful. Krause wrote moral philosophy, so-called, was a chief
concern in Germany, and he was primarily a leader in the philosophy
of law. Oliver wrote under the influence of Romanticism in England,
at a time when German idealism was coming into English thought.
Pike wrote under the influence of the reaction from the materialism
of last half of the nineteenth century and under the influence of
the nineteenth century metaphysical method of unifying all things
by reference to some basic absolute principle.
In the same way a present-day philosophy of Masonry will
necessarily relate itself to present-day modes of thought and to
the present situation in philosophy. Consequently we may predict
that it will have four characteristics.
1. Its metaphysical creed will be either idealistic-monistic--or
else pragmatist-pluralistic. Although my personal sympathies are
with the latter view, so that in a sense I should range myself with
Preston and Krause rather than with Oliver and Pike, I suspect that
our twentieth-century Masonic philosopher will adhere to the
former. He will probably hold, to quote Paulsen, that "reality,
which is represented to our senses by the corporeal world as a
uniform system of movements, is the manifestation of a universal
spiritual life that is to be conceived as an idea, as the
development of a unitary reason, a reason which infinitely
transcends our notions." Hence he will probably range himself with
Oliver and Pike. But he will despair of comprehending this reason
through knowledge or through tradition or of completely expressing
it in a single word. And so, if by chance he should be a
pragmatist, the result will not be very different, since the
philosophy of Masonry is a part of applied philosophy and the
results count for more than the exact method of attaining them.
Moreover in the three following characteristics, idealist and
pragmatist will agree, merely coming to the same results by
different routes.
2. Its psychology will be voluntaristic rather than
intellectualistic; that is, under the influence of modern biology
it will insist upon giving a chief place to the will. It will have
faith in the efficacy of conscious human effort.
3. What is more important for our purpose, its standpoint will be
teleological. To quote Paulsen once more: "Ethics and sociology,
jurisprudence and politics are about to give up the old formalistic
treatment and to employ instead the teleological method: purpose
governs life, hence the science of life, of individual as well as
of collective life, must employ this principle." In other words, as
it would have been put formerly, the philosophy of Masonry will be
treated as a part of practical rather than of pure philosophy.
4. It will have its roots in history. This is the distinguishing
mark of modern philosophical thought. The older philosophies
conceived of reality along the lines of mathematics and of the
physical sciences. Today we endeavor to interpret nature
historically. As Paulsen says, we essay to interpret it "according
to a logical genetical scheme."
Such are the lines which modern philosophy is following, and such,
we may be confident, are the lines which the philosophy of Masonry
will follow, unless, indeed, some philosopher of the stamp of
Krause, capable of striking out new paths in philosophy at large,
should busy himself with this special field. Can we construct a
philosophy of Masonry that will conform to these lines ? In
attempting to answer this question, I should lay down three
fundamental principles at the outset: (1) We must not be dogmatic.
We must remember that our ideal is the ideal of an epoch, to serve
the needs of time and place. (2) Nevertheless we must seek an end.
We must have before us the idea of purpose, since we are in the
realm of practical philosophy. (3) We must base our conception of
the ideal of our Masonic epoch and our idea of purpose upon the
history of institutions. Thus we get three modes of approach to our
immediate subject.
1. Let us first turn to the current philosophies and inquire what
they may do for us. How far may we build on some one or on all of
them? What does Masonry call for which they can or cannot give?
The oldest and perhaps the most authoritative system of philosophy
current today is absolute idealism, in many forms, indeed, but with
a recognizable essential unity. This philosophy puts life in a
world of thought. It thinks of the world of experience which we
perceive through our senses as appearance. Reality is in the world
of thought. But these are not two distinct worlds. Rather they are
related as cause and effect, as that which animates and that which
is animated. It regards God, not as a power outside of the world
and transcending it, but as that which permeates it and connects it
and gives it unity. It regards reality as a connected, a unified
whole and conceives that life is real in so far as it is a part of
this whole. Hence it conceives we must turn steadfastly and
courageously from the superficial realm of appearance in which our
senses put us, and set ourselves "in the depth of reality"; we are
to bring ourselves into relation with the whole and to develop
ourselves from within so as to reach the whole. To use Eucken's
phrases, each life is to "evolve a morality in the sense of taking
up the whole into one's own volition" and subjecting "caprice to
the necessity of things," that is, to their necessary inner
interconnection. In this theory of life, the central point is
spiritual creative activity. Everything else is but the
environment, the means or the logical presupposition. Man is to be
raised above himself and is to be saved by spiritual creation.
This philosophy of scholars and for scholars is not a philosophy
for Masons. Indeed Pike said of his idealistic system of Masonic
philosophy that it was not the Masonry of the multitude. And for
this very reason that it is essentially aristocratic, the old
idealistic philosophy is fighting a sure though obstinate retreat
in our democratic age. There are periods of creative energy in the
world and there are periods in which what has been created is
organized and assimilated. In the periods of creation, those to
whom spiritual creative power is given are relatively few. In a
period of assimilation they are few indeed. In such a time, to
quote Eucken, the life pictured by the idealist "tends to become
mere imagination." "The man imbued with [its] spirit . . . easily
seems to himself more than he is; with a false self-consciousness
talks and feels as if he were at a supreme height; lives less his
own life than an alien one. Sooner or later opposition must
necessarily arise against such a half life, such a life of
pretence, and this opposition will become especially strong if it
is animated by the desire that all who bear human features should
participate in the chief goods of our existence and freely
co-operate in the highest tasks. . . And so the aristocratic
character of Immanent Idealism produces a type of life rigidly
exclusive, harsh and intolerable."
Another type of philosophy, which has become more and more current
with the advance of science, has been called Naturalism. This
philosophy rejects the spiritual life entirely, denying its
independence and holding it nothing but a phase or an incident of
the existence revealed by the senses. There is no spiritual sphere.
Of itself, the spiritual can create nothing. Nor is life anything
in itself. All things are valued in terms of biology and of
economics. Nothing is intrinsically valuable. Truth means only
correct adjustment to the environment; the good is that which best
preserves life; the moral is that which makes for social life; the
beautiful is a form of the useful. Self preservation is the real
inspiration of conduct. I need not argue that this is not a
philosophy for Masons, who have faith in God for one of their
landmarks. Whatever else we may be consistently with a naturalistic
philosophy, we cannot be Masons. For if there is any one test of a
Mason it is a test wholly incompatible with this rejection of the
spiritual.
Closely connected with naturalism are a variety of social
philosophies which have come to have much vogue and in one form,
socialism, have given rise to an active propaganda involving almost
religious fervor. These philosophies reject the individual life,
and hence the individual spiritual life. So far as the individual
will is regarded it is because of a social interest in the
individual social life. As political or social philosophies some of
these systems have very great value. But when they are expanded
into universal systems and make material welfare in society--a very
proper end in political philosophy--the sole end of the individual
life, when they reject the spiritual independence of the individual
by making "the judgment of society the test of truth" and expect
him to submit his views of good and evil to the arbitrament of a
show of hands, when they ignore individual creation and think only
of distributing, they run counter to Masonic landmarks, so that we
cannot accept them and continue to be Masons. For we hold as Masons
that there is a spiritual part of man. We hold that the individual
is to construct a moral and spiritual edifice within himself by
earnest labor, not to receive one ready-made by a referendum to the
judgment of society. Understand me. I do not assert that modern
social philosophies are to be cast out utterly. In law, in
politics, in social science some of them are achieving great
things. But we must think of them as applications, not as universal
systems. The problem of the individual life, the demands of the
individual spiritual life, which they ignore, are matters of vital
concern to the Mason, and he calls for a philosophy which takes
account of them. To quote Eucken once more, we cannot assent that
the "world of sense is the sole world of man" nor can we "find
life
entirely in the relation to the environment, be it nature or
society."
By way of revolt from naturalistic and social philosophies a modern
movement has arisen which has been called aesthetic individualism.
It is distinctly a literary and artistic movement and for that very
reason ignores the mass of humanity and falls short of our basic
Masonic requirement of universality. But it demands a moment's
consideration as one of the significant modes of modern thought. In
aesthetic individualism, we are told, "the center of life is
transferred into the inner tissue of self-consciousness. With the
development of this self-consciousness, life appears to be placed
entirely on its own resources and directed towards itself. Through
all change of circumstances and conditions it remains undisturbed;
in all the infinity of that which happens to it, it feels that it
is supreme. All external manifestation is valuable to it as an
unfolding of its own being; it never experiences things, but only
itself." Hence to the aesthetic individualist the end is to "make
all the relations and all the externals of life as individual as
possible." He is not to sacrifice the present to the future; he is
to reject everything that subjects the development of life to
universal standards; he is to ignore all those conventions that fit
men into the social order and instead is to cultivate a free
relation of individual to individual. To those who accept this
doctrine "what is usually called morality is considered to be only
a statute of the community, a means by which it seeks to rob the
individualist the end is to "make all the relations and all the
itself." This philosophy of artists and for artists is too palpably
impossible for the Masonic philosopher to require further
discussion.
If we turn from these disappointing modern theories of the end of
life to systems of applied philosophy, we may do better. Here the
idealists have a more fruitful program. Where Hegel regarded all
things as the unfolding of an idea either logically or in
experience, the recent followers of Hegel, who are the most active
force in recent social philosophy, say rather that all social and
political and legal institutions are manifestations of
civilization. To them the idea which is unfolding in all things
human is not some single metaphysical principle; it is the complex
idea of human civilization. Our institutions are resultants of the
civilization of the past and of attempts to adapt them as we
received them, to the civilization of the present. Our task as
members of society is to advance civilization by exerting ourselves
consciously and intelligently to that end. Every man may do this in
some measure in his time and place. So every man may, if he will,
retard or obstruct civilization in some degree in his time and
place. But from the fact that he is a man and as such a factor in
society actually or potentially, he is charged with a duty of
exerting himself to maintain and advance civilization, of which as
the ultimate idea, society is a mere agent. So far as we may, we
must each of us discover the principles which are presupposed by
the civilization of today and we must exert ourselves consciously
to mold institutions thereto and to regulate conduct thereby. The
universal thing, the reality is civilization among men. To
paraphrase a well-known formula, God is the eternal, not ourselves,
that makes for civilization. Here, then, we have a modern system
that comports with the fundamenta of Masonry and with our
philosophical demands. It recognizes the spiritual side of man as
something which civilization both presupposes and develops. It has
a God. It is not for a scholarly or artistic aristocracy. It is of
and for all men as partakers in and, if they will be, agents of a
universal human culture. Moreover it meets our first requirement.
It is not dogmatic. It recognizes that civilization is something
that is constantly advancing and hence is changing. It realizes
that civilization, for that very reason, is a matter of time and
place and hence that the principles it presupposes at any time and
place, which we take for our ideals, are ideals of an epoch and
principles to serve the needs of time and place. And yet all these
stages transient forms of human culture merge in a general and a
constantly growing human civilization which is the reality both in
ourselves and outside of ourselves.
2. Again the new idealism of practical philosophy meets our
second
requirement. Even though its adherents recognize that they have no
absolute formula for all times, for all places, for all peoples,
they have an end, they put before us a purpose. Each of us and all
of us are to make for human civilization. Each of us by developing
himself as a civilized, in the real sense, as a cultured man
according to his lights and his circumstances can find reality in
himself and can bring others and the whole nearer to the reality
for which we are consciously or unconsciously striving--the
civilization of mankind. The knowledge which Preston sought to
advance, the perfection of man at which Krause aimed, the relation
to God which Oliver sought to attain and the harmony and through it
control of the universe which Pike took for the goal, may well be
regarded as phases of and as summed up in the one idea of human
civilization.
3. How far does this new idealism, or as its adherents call it,
this neo-Hegelianism, meet our third requirement? Has it a sound
basis in the history of human institutions generally and the
history of our institution in particular? Here at least the Masonic
neo-idealist is upon sure ground.
Anthropologists and sociologists have shown us that next to the
family, which indeed antedates society, the most primitive and most
universal of social institutions is the association of grown men in
a secret society. The simplest and earliest of the institutions of
social man is the "men's house"--a separate house for the men of
the tribe which has some analogies among civilized peoples of
antiquity, e.g. the common meal of the citizens at Sparta, the
assembly of the men in the agora in an ancient Greek community and
the meeting of the Roman citizens in assembly in the ancient polity
of the Roman city. In this men's house of a primitive tribe is the
center of social life. Here the most precious belongings of the
community, its religious emblems and its trophies taken in war, are
preserved. Here the young men of the tribe gather as a visible
token of their separation from their families and their entrance
upon the duties and responsibilities of tribal life. Here the
elders and leaders have seats according to their dignity and
importance. Women and children may not enter; it is the house of
the grown men. This wide-spread primitive institution develops in
different ways. Sometimes it results in what are practically
barracks for the fighting men of the community, as at Sparta and
among some primitive peoples today. Sometimes it becomes a
religious center and ultimately in substance a temple. Usually it
becomes the center of another stage of social development, that is,
of what anthropologists call "the puberty initiation ceremonies"
and thence of still another stage, the primitive secret society.
And as these societies develop, replacing the earlier tribal
puberty initiations, the men's house, as the seat of these
organizations, becomes the secret lodge. Hence in this oldest of
social institutions, rather than on the highest hills and in the
lowest dales of our lectures, we may find the first Masonry.
It is a natural instinct, so sociologists tell us, that leads men
of the same age, who have the same interests and the same duties,
to group themselves accordingly and to separate to some extent from
other groups. In obedience to this instinct, we are told that four
classes of the male members of a tribe set themselves off:
(1) The
boys who have not yet arrived at puberty;
(2) unmarried youths;
(3)
mature men on whom the duties and responsibilities of tribesmen
rest, and
(4) old men, the repositories of tribal wisdom and the
directors of the community.
On the attainment of puberty, the boy
is taken into the men's house and as it were initiated into
manhood. In due time he becomes tribesman and warrior. In process
of time his eldest son has himself reached manhood and the father
becomes an elder, retired from active service. Thus the men of the
tribe become in substance a secret association divided into two or
three grades or classes out of which, we are told, as a later
development, grow the degrees of primitive secret societies. For
the passage from one of these classes to another almost universally
among primitive peoples is accompanied by secret initiatory
ceremonies, and among almost all primitive peoples, the initiatory
ceremonies at puberty are the most solemn and important event in a
man's life. Usually they are more or less dramatic. They begin with
some sort of ordeal. Often there is a symbolic raising from death
to life to show that the child is dead and that a man has risen in
his place. Often a great deal of symbolism is employed and there
follows something very like a lecture, explaining the ceremony.
Always they involve an impressive instruction in the science and
the morality of the tribe and an impressive inculcation of
obedience.
In time these initiatory ceremonies degenerate or develop, as the
case may be, into tribal secret societies pure and simple, and with
the progress of civilization and the rise of political and
religious systems these societies also decay or lose their
character. Thus eventually, out of this primitive institution of
the men's house, which on one side has grown into political
organization, on another side, through the initiatory ceremonies,
no less than six institutions are developed among different
peoples. First there are political, magical and more or less
fraudulent secret societies, which are extremely common in Africa
today. Second, there are clan ceremonies, becoming in time state
ceremonies and state religions. Antiquity abounds in examples of
the importance which men attached to these ceremonies. For example,
the dictator Fabius, at a critical moment in the campaign against
Hannibal, left the army in order to repair to the proper place and
perform the clan sacrifices as head of the Fabian gens. Third,
there are religious societies, with elaborate ceremonies for the
reception of the novice. Such societies exist in Thibet and among
the Hindus in striking forms. Fourth, there are the mysteries of
antiquity, for example, the Egyptian and the Eleusinian, or
sometimes a mixture of the third and fourth, as in the case of the
Essenes. Fifth, there are trade societies on the fraternal model,
such as the Roman collegia and the trade and operative guilds.
Finally there are purely charitable associations, such as the Roman
burial societies. Each of these, it will be noted, develops or
preserves some side of the primitive tribal secret society. The
political and magical societies develop or preserve their political
and medical traditions; the clan ceremonies, their function of
promoting solidarity by ancestor worship; the religious societies,
their moral and religious functions; the mysteries, their
symbolical instruction; the trade societies, their function of
instruction in useful knowledge; the charitable societies, their
function of binding men to duties of relief and of mutual
assistance. All preserve the memory of their origin in a tribe of
kinsmen by the fiction of brotherhood which they strive to make
real by teaching and practice.
The relation of Masonry to this development of societies out of the
primitive men's house, as described by non-Masonic scholars with no
thought of Masonry, is so obvious, that we may no longer laugh at
Oliver's ambitious attempts to find Masonry in the very beginning
of things. But apart from its bearing upon Masonic history, this
discovery of the anthropologists is significant for Masonic
philosophy. For in this same men's house are the germs of
civilization; the development of the men's house is a development
of civilization, and its end and purpose and the end and purpose of
all the legitimate institutions that have grown out of it have been
from the beginning to preserve, further and hand down the
civilization of the tribe or people. In our universal society,
therefore, the end is, and as we study our old charges and our
lectures we see it has always been, to preserve, further and hand
down a universal, human civilization.
Thus we are enabled to answer the three problems of Masonic
philosophy.
1. What is the end of Masonry; for what do we exist as an
organization? The answer of the Masonic neo-idealist would be that
our end in common with all social institutions is to preserve, to
develop and to transmit to posterity the civilization wrought by
our fathers and passed on to us.
2. What is the place of Masonry in a rational scheme of human
activity ? What is its relation to other kindred activities? The
answer would be, that it is an organization of human effort along
the universal lines on which all may agree in order to realize our
faith in the efficacy of conscious effort in preserving and
promoting civilization. What other human organizations do along
lines of caste or creed or within political or territorial limits
hampered by the limits of political feeling or local prejudice, we
seek to achieve by universality--by organizing the universal
elements in man that make for culture and civilization.
3. How does Masonry achieve its end? Our answer would be that it
makes for civilization by its insistence on the solidarity of
humanity, by its insistence on universality and by the preservation
and transmission of an immemorial tradition of human solidarity and
of universality. So conceived, this tradition becomes a force of
the first moment in maintaining and advancing civilization. And in
this way we connect on the one hand with the practical systems of
Preston and of Krause. The ideal of the eighteenth century was
knowledge. The ideal of the nineteenth century was the individual
moral life. The ideal of the twentieth century, I take it, is the
universal human life. But what are these but means toward the
advance of human culture? And on the other hand we connect also
with Oliver and with Pike. For they were idealists and so are we.
Only they sought a simple, static idea of which the universe was a
manifestation or an unfolding. We turn rather to a complex and
growing idea and claim to do no more than interpret it in terms of
the ideals of the time and place.
My brethren, we of all men, owe it to ourselves and to the world,
to be universal in spirit. Universality is a lesson the whole world
is learning and must learn. But we ought to know it well already.
We ought to be upon the front bench of the world's school, setting
an example to our more backward school-fellows. Wherever in the
world there is a lodge of Masons, there should be a focus of
civilization, a center of the idea of universality, radiating
reason to put down prejudice and advance justice in the disputes of
peoples, and in the disputes of classes, and making for the peace
and harmony and civilization that should prevail in this great
lodge of the world.
Moreover, the idea of universality has a special message to the
Mason for the good of Masonry. Every world-organization hitherto
has been wrecked ultimately upon its own dogmatism. It has taken
the dogmas, the interpretations, the philosophy of its youth for a
fixed order of nature. It has assumed that universality consisted
in forcing these dogmas, these interpretations, this philosophy
upon all times to come. While it has rested serene in the ruts made
by its own prosperity, the world has marched by it unseen. We have
a glorious body of tradition handed down to us from the past, which
we owe it to transmit unimpaired to the future. But let us
understand what in it is fundamental and eternal, and what is mere
interpretation to make it of service to the past. Let us while we
have it use it well to make it of service to the present. Yet let
us fasten upon it nothing hard and fast that serves well enough to
make it useful today, but may make it useless tomorrow. As the
apprentice stands in the corner of the lodge, the working tools are
put in his hands and he is taught their uses. But they are not his.
They are the tools of the lodge. He is to use them that the
Worshipful Master may have pleasure and the Craft profit. The Grand
Master of the Universe has entrusted to us the principles of
Masonry as working tools. They, too, are not ours, they belong to
the lodge of the world. We are to use them that He may have
pleasure and the Craft of humanity that labors in this wide lodge
of the world may profit thereby.
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