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.
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