THE LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES
From Salem 289 Lodge Website
Educators of the Middle Ages divided their curriculum into seven branches, in
two groups, one of three and one of four, called respectively the trivium and
the quadrivium: the former comprised usually grammar, rhetoric, and logic; the
latter arithmetic, music, astronomy and geometry. It is this old-time
arrangement of studies that remains in the degree to symbolize an effective
schooling. There is no need to analyze this arrangement or to attempt to justify
its use in this day and age; the main point is that in Freemasonry the Liberal
Arts and Sciences symbolize an education.
There is however this thing to be said about the medieval curriculum: it was
a discipline in the humanities, and that is something worth thinking about. The
tendency in schools nowadays is to give a student either a scientific course, so
as to equip him for one of the technical professions, or else a course in
business methods with a view to fitting him for office or factory. This is all
well and good but it is not a complete education, and our educators will some
day regret their surrender to the utilitarians who have demanded "a schooling
that pays." Life is more than a profession, finer than a trade, it has ends and
needs above and outside of these, important as they are. One has a religious and
also an imaginative relationship with the universe which deserves to be
developed and instructed; it is just as important to look upon the stars with
the eye of reverence or as things of beauty as to measure their diameter or
estimate their distances in space; the fields and hills are to be loved for
their own sake, as well as to be converted into tillage and farmyards. There are
such things as art, poetry, music, and worship, and these too are to have a
place in school. Also it is necessary for a man to understand his own nature,
and the nature of the men and women with whom he lives, a need satisfied by
literature, painting, and music. Every labourer is a man first, with neighbours
and a family, and a life to live; to give him nothing but a training in his
craft is to rob him of his most precious birthright. The old ideal of the
Liberal Arts, the humanities, is nearer the truth and need of things than any
ultra-modern drill in scientific technique. We need to understand nature; yes;
but we need quite as much to understand human nature.
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