THE
EVERLASTING NECESSITY FOR BROTHERHOOD
by Albert Pike
The Builder - November
1921
Had mankind from the day of the
flood, steadily followed some of the lessons taught them by the
industrious bees, had they associated themselves together in
lodges, and taught and faithfully practiced Toleration, Charity
and Friendship; had even those of the human race done so who
have professed the Christian faith, to what imaginable
degrees of happiness and prosperity would they not have
attained! to what extreme and now invisible heights of
knowledge and wisdom would not the human intellect have
soared! Had they but practiced Toleration alone, what a
Garden of Eden would this earth be now! Blood enough has
been spilled for opinion's sake, to fill the basin of an inland
sea! Treasure enough has been expended and destroyed to have
made the world a garden, covered it with a network of roads,
canals and bridges, and made its every corner glorious with
palaces; and the descendants of those who have been slain would
have thickly peopled every continent and island of the
globe. The earliest of all lessons taught mankind was the
necessity of association; for it was taught in unmistakable
terms by his own feebleness and weakness. He is an enigma to
himself.. Launched, blind and helpless, upon the great current
of Time and Circumstance, he drifts, like a helpless vessel,
onward to eternity a mere atom.and mote of dust, clinging to
infinity, and whirled along with the revolutions of the
Universe. He knows nothing truly of himself and his fellows. His
utmost effort never enables him to get a distinct idea of his
own nature, or to understand in the least degree the phenomena
of his mind. Even his senses are miracles to him. He remains
feeble as a child. Between him and the future is let down a
curtain, dark, palpable, impenetrable, like a thick cloud,
through which he gropes his way and staggers onward. At every
step Destiny meets him in some unexpected shape, foils his
purpose, mocks at his calculation, changes the course of his
life, and forces him into new paths, as one leads a blind man by
the hand; and he never knows at what unexpected moment the arm
of Death will be thrust suddenly forth from behind the curtain
and strike him a sharp and unerring blow. The sudden
shifting of a wind, a few cold drops of rain, an unseen stone
lying in his path, the tooth of an unregarded serpent, a little
globe of lead, the waving of a rag near to a shying horse, a
spark of fire on a great boat of a dark night, upon a wide, deep
river; all are to him Death's messengers, and overtake him with
a peremptory fate. Stumbling over some object at every step, he
needs constant sympathy and unremitting assistance. Fortune
smiles today and frowns tomorrow. Blindness or palsy makes the
strong man an infant; and misfortune, disaster and sad reverses
trick him like gaunt hounds, lying in wait to seize him at a
thousand turnings. Unfortunately, the obvious truth that
every man either actually needs, or will at some time need, the
charitable assistance, or, at least, the friendship, the
sympathy, the counsel, and the good will of others, like other
truths, produced but small effect upon the early human mind.
Pressed by the urgent necessities of the moment, by which
alone, ordinarily, men's actions are governed, they did
associate themselves with communities, and institute civil
government, as often, perhaps, for purposes of aggression as
of defense or other associations. We hear and know nothing for
very many centuries, and then, except where the light of Masonic
tradition reaches, dimly and obscurely only, as in the case of
the Eleusinian Mysteries; whose purpose we can merely guess at
from the faintest possible revelations, - hardly able to say
more than their forms and ceremonies bore a faint resemblance to
some used in our time-honored institution. It is highly probable
that they had a philosophical and religious rather than a
charitable object. back to top
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