SYMBOL.(s,ic,ism).-.
SYMBOL.
SYMBOLS, MASONIC Supl.
SYMBOL, COMPOUND.
SYMBOL OF GLORY.
SYMBOLIC DEGREES.
SYMBOLIC FREEMASONRY.
SYMBOLIC LECTURES.
SYMBOLIC LODGE.
SYMBOLIC MACHINERY.
SYMBOLISM, SCIENCE OF.
SYMBOL.
A symbol is defined to be a visible sign with which a spiritual feeling, emotion, or idea is connected. It was in this sense that the early Christians gave the name of symbols to all rites, ceremonies, and outward forms which bore a religious meaning; such, for instance, as the cross, and other pictures and images, and even the sacraments and the sacramental elements. At a still earlier period, the Egyptians communicated the knowledge of their esoteric philosophy in mvstic symbols. In fact, man's earliest instruction was by means of symbols. "The first learning of the world," says Doctor Stukely, "consisted chiefly of Symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolic." And the learned Faber remarks that "allegory and personification were peculiarly agreeable to the genius of antiquity, and the simplicity of truth was continually sacrificed at the shrine of poetical decoration."
The word symbol is derived from a Greek verb which signifies to compare one thing with another; and hence a symbol or emblem, for the two words are often used synonymously in Freemasonry, is the expression of an idea derived from the comparison or contrast of some visible object with a moral conception or attribute. Thus the Plumb is a symbol of rectitude; the Level, of equality; the Beehive, of industry. The physical qualities of the Plumb are compared or contrasted with the moral conception of virtue or rectitude of conduct. The Plumb becomes to the Freemason, after he has once been taught its symbolic meaning, forever afterward the visible expression of the idea of rectitude, or uprightness of conduct. To study and compare these visible objects —to elicit from them the moral ideas which they are intended to express—is to make one's self acquainted with the symbolism of Freemasonry
The objective character of a Symbols which presents something material to the sight and touch, as explanatory of an internal idea, is best calculated to be grasped by the infant missal, whether the infancy of that mind be considered nationally or individually.
Hence, in the first ages of the world, in its infamy, all propositions, theological, political, or Scientific were expressed in the form of symbols. Thus the first religions were eminently symbolical, because, as that great philosophical historians Grote, has remarked, At a time when language was yet in its infancy visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers."
To the man of mature intellect, each letter of the alphabet is the symbol of a certain sound. When we instruct the child in the form and value of these letters, we make the picture of some familiar object the representation of the letter which aids the infantile memory. Thus, when the teacher says, ".A was an Archer," the Archer becomes a symbol of the letter A, just as in after-life the letter becomes the symbol of a sound.
Doctor Barlow (Essays on symbolism i, page 1) says:
Symbolical representations of things sacred, were coeval with religion itself as a system of doctrine appealing to sense, and have accompanied its transmission to ourselves from the earliest known period of monumental history. Egyptian tombs and stiles exhibit religious symbols still in use among Christians. Similar forms, with
corresponding meanings, though under diffent names, are found among the Indians, and are seen on the monuments of the Assyrians, the Etruscans, and the Creeeks. The Hebrews borrowed much of their early religious symbolism from the Egyptians, their latter from the Babylonians, and through them this symbolical imagery, both verbal and objective, has descended to ourselves. The Egyptian Priests were great proficients in symbolism and so were the Chaldeans, and so were Moses and the Prophets, and the Jewish doctors generally—and so were many of the early fathers of the Church, especially the Greek fathers.
Philo of Alexandria was very learned in symbolism and the Evangelist Saint John has made much use of it. The early Christian architects, sculptors, and painters drank deep of Symbolical lore, and reproduced it in their works.
,Squier gives in his Serpent Symbolism in America (page 19) a similar view of the antiquity and the subsequent growth of the use of symbols:
In the absence of a written language or forms of expression capable of conveying abstract ideas, we can readily comprehend the necessity, among a primitiv people, of a symbolic system. That symbolism in a great degree resulted from this necessity is very obvious; and that, associated with man's primitive religious systems it was afterwards continued, when in the advanced stage of the human mind the previous necessity no longer existed, is equally undoubted. It thus came to constitute a kind of sacred language, and became invested with an esoteric significance understood only by the few.
In Freemasonry, all the instructions in its mysteries are commullicated in the form of symbols. Founded as a Speculative science, on an operative art, it has taken the working-tools of the professions which it spiritualizes, the terms of architecture, the Temple of Solomon, and everything that is connected with its traditional history and adopting them as Symbols, it teaches its great moral and philosophical lessons by this system of symbolism. But its symbols are not confined to material objects as were the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. Its myths and legends are also, for the most part, symbolic.
Often a legend, unauthenticated by history, distorted by anachronisms, and possibly absurd in its pretensions if viewed historically or as a narrative of actual occurrences, when interpreted as a symbol, is found to impress the mind with some great spiritual and philosophical truth. The legends of Freemasonry are parables, and a parable is only a Spoken symbol. By its utterance, says Adam Clarke, "spiritual things are better understood, and make a deeper impression on the attentive mind " (For a thorough discussion of the subjeet in connection with the Craft, see Doctor Mackey's Symbolism of Freemasonry, revised edition.)
SYMBOLS, MASONIC Supl.
A symbol is some object, design, device, etc., which signifies or suggests some truth, idea, cause, ideal, etc.; what it is in itself is unimportant, because it is not used to call attention to itself but to call attention to that for which it stands; its sole function is thus to call the attention of a man to its meaning because it itself has nothing to say or to teach; and it is used where it is needed or desired that men shall keep certain truths, doctrines, etc., before them at a certain time. Although the two belong to the same general category "of things that point, or signify, or denote," a symbol differs in essence from an emblem.
The latter is itself the thing it stands for, but is only one form or instance of it. A sword is war, because it is a weapon; as an emblem it stands for each and every other weapon, and hence denotes war; a bee-hive is an emblem because it is itself an instance of the power of industriousness. An allegory is a truth, doctrine, idea, ideal, ete., which is told in the form of a story; the story may be oral or
may be written down, or it may be enacted like a play the allegories of the Building of the Temple and of the Search for That Which Was Lost are enacted. A rite is an end in itself, does not point to something outside itself, but is enacted for its own sake, and delivers its meaning in the process of enactment. Symbols, emblems, allegories, and rites are as universal as language —no people or period of history has yet been discovered without them; Freemasonry is not peculiar because it uses them, but it is one of the few societies in the modern world which has a teaching for its members and which delivers that teaching solely in the symbolic form.
Without any exception each symbol, emblem, allegory, and rite employed in the Degrees (of each of the Five Rites) is in use, or has been in use, outside of Freemasonry; a few of them (the Square, Cirele, Pillars, etc.) have been in use almost without exception by every people in the world, and in every known century. It is meaningless to argue that if some Masonic symbol or rite now employed by Freemasonry is found to have been employed by some people or society elsewhere therefore Freemasonry originated in it; if carried to its logical conclusion this argument results in saying that Freemasonry was originated by everybody, everywhere. Freemasonry did not invent its own symbols; they were here beforehand; it adopted such of them as it required, and employed them for its own purposes, just as it has taken from the English language the words it has needed for its own nomenclature. The only admissible canon or principle of interpretation of symbols is therefore plain: a symbol is a Masonic symbol in the sense that Freemasonry makes use of it; the meaning of the symbol is a Masonic meaning, and it is to be interpreted in the terms of its purpose for Freemasonry. What the same symbol means, or may have meant elsewhere, is irrelevant. The Rite of Circumambulation was practiced by the Brahmins in India 1600 B.C.; it is not used in each of the Three Degrees to teach Brahminism. The religion of Mithraism had a ceremony which was strikingly like the rite of Raising in the Master Mason Degree; that Degree does not teach Mithraism. Freemasonry itself is the interpretation of its own symbols.
(For general worlds on symbolism see The Migration of Symbols, by Count Goblet D'alviela; Arehibald Constable & Co.; Westminster; 1894. [He was a Belgian savant; member of the Senate. This is one of the masterpieces on the subject; has chapters on Swastika, Tree of Life, Winged Globes, Caduceus, etc.] Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, by William Durandus; [A classic; deals with ecclesiastical symbolism of Romanesque churches. ] The Romance of Symbolism, by Sidney Heath; F. GiEths; London; 1909. Symbols and Emblems of Early and Medieval Christian Art, by Louisa Twining; John Murray; 1885. Symbolism of the East and West, by Mrs. Murray-Aynsley; George Redway; London; 1900. [Chapters on Sun and Moon; Tau Cross; Sacred Stones; Saered Trees; Swastika, and Arehiteetural Customs; etc.] The Gnostics and Their Remains, by C. W. King; G. P. Putnam's Sons; New York; 1887. Symbolism in Christian Art, by Edward F. Hulme; Swan Sonneschein & Co.; London; and Maemillan; biew York; 1909 [5th ed]. [The author is a leading authority on Medieval subjects.] The Migration of Symbols, by Donald MacKenzie; Alfred A. Knopf; 1926. [Reviewed in The Builder. Not a Masonic book, but written with Masonry in mind.] Anczent Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison; Home University Library, published by Henry Holt & Co.; New York. Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiacfical Architecture, by E. P. Evans; Henry Holt & Co.; IN'evw York; 1906. [Extraordinarily interesting; should be read by Masonic students. Contains much on the Physiologus, an old book, widely read in the Middle Ages, on animals; see artiele on "Bestiaries" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.] Symbolism qf Animals and Birds, by Arthur H. Collins; MeBride Sast & Co.; New York; 1913. Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism, by Maruice H. Farbridge; Kegan Paula French, Trubner & Co.; London; 1925. [In Trubner Oriental Series. Chapters on Acacia; the lion; the eagle; symbolism of numbers; discalceation and desti tution; colors; gematria; etc.] Medieval Italy, by H B. Cotterill; George C. Harrap; London; 1915 [In Great Nation Series; an excellent chapter on mosaiesw two chapters on architecture.] Masonic books on Craft symbolism are numbered by the hundreds; of them the following are representative; Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. Symbolism of Freemasonry, by Albert G. Mackey. Symbolism of the Three Degrees, by Oliver Day Street. Symbolical Masonry, by H. L. Haywood Thoughts Otl Masonic Symbolism, by C. C. Hunt.)
SYMBOL, COMPOUND.
In Doctor Mackey's work on the symbolism of Freemasonry, he has given this name to a species of symbol that is not unusual in Freemasonry, where the symbol is to be taken in a double sense, meaning in its general application one thing, and then in a special application another. An example of this is seen in the symbolism of Solomon's Temple, where, in a general sense, the Temple is viexed as a symbol of that spiritual temple formed by the aggregation of the whole Order, and in which each Freemason is considered as a stone; and, in an individual or special sense, the same Temple is considered as a type of that spiritual temple which each Freemason is directed to erect in his heart.
SYMBOL OF GLORY.
In the old lectures of the eighteenth century, the Blazing Star was called "the glory in the centre"; because it was placed in the centre of the Floor-Cloth or Tracing-Board, and represented hieroglyphically the glorious name of God. Hence Doctor Oliver has given to one of his most interesting works, which treats of the symbolism of the Blazing Star, the title of the symbol of Glory.
SYMBOLIC DEGREES.
The first three Degrees of Freemasonry, namely, those of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, are known, by way of distinction, as the Symbolic Degrees. This term is never applied to the Degrees of Mark, Past, and Most Excellent Master, and the Royal Arch, which, as being conferred in a Body called a Chapter, are generally designated as Capitular Degrees; nor to those of Royal and Select Master, which, conferred in a Council, are, by an excellent modern usage, styled Cryptic Degrees, from the crypt or vault which plays so important a part in their ritual. But the term symbolic is exclusively confined to the Degrees conferred in a Lodge of the three primitive Degrees, which Lodge, therefore, whether opened on the First, the Second or the Third Degree, is always referred to as a symbolic Lodge. As this distinctive term is of constant and universal use, it may be not altogether profitless to inquire into its origin and signification..
The germ and nucleus of all Freemasonry is to be found in the three primitive Degrees—The Apprentice, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason. They were at one time, under a modification, however, which included the Royal Arch, the only Degrees known to or practised by the Craft, and hence they are often called Ancient Craft Masonry, to distinguish them from those comparatively modern additions which constitute what are designated as the high degrees, or, by the French, les hautes grades.
The striking peculiarity of these primitive Degrees is that their prominent mode of instruction is by symbols. Not that they are without legends. On the contrary, they have each an abundance of legends; such, for instance, as the details of the building of the Temple; of the payment of wages in the Middle Chamber, or of the construction of the pillars of the Porch. But these legends do not perform any very important part in the constitution of the Degree.
The lessons which are communicated to the candidate in these primitive Degrees are conveved, principally, through the medium of symbols, while there is, at least in the working of the Degrees, but little tradition or legendary teaching, with the exception of the great legend of Freemasonry, the Golden Legend of the Order, to be found in the Master's Degree, and which is, itself, a symbol of the most abstruse and solemn signification. But even in this instance, interesting as are the details of the legend, they are only subordinate to the symbol. Hiram the Builder is the profound symbol of manhood laboring for immortality, and all the different points of the legend are simply clustered around it, only to throw out the symbol in bolder relief. The legend is of itself inert—it is the symbol of the Master Workrnan that gives it life and true meaning.
Symbolism is, therefore, the prevailing characteristic of these primitive Degrees; and it is because all the science and philosophy and religion of Ancient Craft Masonry is thus concealed from the profane but unfolded to the initiates in symbols, that the first three Degrees which comprise it are said to be symbolic.
Now, nothing of this kind is to be found in the Degrees above and beyond the third, if we except the Royal Arch, which, however, as we have already intimated, was, quite likely, originally a part of Ancient Craft Masonry, and was unnaturally torn from the Master's Degree, of which it, as every Masonic student knows, constituted the complement and consummation. Take, for example, the intermediate Degrees of the American Chapter, Such, for instance, as the Mark and Most Excellent Master. Here we find the symbolic feature ceasing to predominate, and the traditional or legendary taking its place. It is true that in these capitular Degrees the use of symbols is not altogether abandoned. This could not well be, for the symbol constitutes the very essence of Freemasonry. The symbolic element is still to be discovered in these Degrees, but only in a position subordinate to legendary instruction.
As an illustration, let us consider the Keystone in the Mark Master's Degree. Now, no one will deny that this is, strictly speaking, a symbol, and a very important and beautiful one, too. It is a symbol of a fraternal covenant between those who are engaged in the common search after Divine Truth. But, in the role or part which it plays in the ritual of this Degree, the symbol, however beautiful and appropriate it may be, is in a manner lost sight of, and the keystone derives almost all its importance and interest from the traditional history of its construction, its architectural design, and its fate. It is as the subject of a legend, and not as a symbol, that it attracts attention.
Now, in the Third or Master's Degree we find the Trowel, which is a symbol of almost precisely the same import as the Keystone. They both refer to a Masonic Covenant. But no legend, no tradition, no history, is connected with the Trowel. It presents itself simply and exclusively as a symbol.
Hence we learn that symbols do not in the capitular, as in the primitive, Degrees of Freemasonry strike the eye, and inform the mind, and teach the heart, in every part of the Lodge, and in every part of the ceremonial initiation. On the contrary, the capitular Degrees are almost altogether founded on and composed of a series of events in Masonic history. Each of them has attached to it some tradition or legend which it is the design of the Degree to illustrate, and the memory of which is preserved in its ceremonies and instructions
That most of these legends are themselves of symbolic signification is not denied. But this is their interior sense. In their outward and ostensible meaning, they appear before us simply as legends. To retain these legends in the memory of Freemasons appears to have been the primary design of the establishment of the higher Degrees, and as the information intended to be communicated in these Degrees is of a historical character, there can of course be but little room for symbols or for symbolic instruction, the profuse use of which would rather tend to an injury than to a benefit, by complicating the purposes of the ritual and confusing the mind of the aspirant.
The celebrated French writer Ragon, objects to this exclusive application of the term symbolic to the first three Degrees as a sort of unfavorable criticism on the higher Degrees, and as if implying that the latter are entirely devoid of the element of symbolism.
But he has mistaken the true import and meaning of the application. It is not because the higher or capitular and cryptic Degrees are altogether without symbols—for such is not the ease—that the term symbolic is withheld from them, but because symbolic instruction does not constitute their predominating characteristic, as it does of the first three Degrees. Hence the Freemasonry taught in these three primitive Degrees is very properly called Symbolic Freemasonry, and the Lodge in which this Freemasonry is taught is known as a Symbolic Lodge.
SYMBOLIC FREEMASONRY.
The Freemasonry that is concerned with the first three Degrees in all the Rites. This is the technical meaning. But in a more general sense, Symbolic Freemasonry is that Masonry, wherever it may be found, whether in the primary or in the high Degrees, in which the lessons are communicated by symbols (see Symbolic Degrees).
SYMBOLIC LECTURES.
The lectures appropriated to the First, Second, and Third Degrees are sometimes called Symbolic Lectures; but the term is more properly applied to any lecture which treats of the meaning of Masonic symbols, in contradistinction to one which discusses only the history of the Order, and which would, therefore, be called a Historical Lecture. But the English Freemasons have a lecture called the Symbolical Lecture, in which is explained the forms, symbols, and ornaments of Royal Arch Masonry, as well as its rites and ceremonies
SYMBOLIC LODGE.
A Lodge of Master Masons, with the Fellow Craft and Apprentice Lodge worked under its Constitution, is called a Symbolic Lodge, because in it the Symbolie Degrees are conferred (see Symbolic Degrees).
SYMBOLIC MACHINERY.
Machinery is a term employed in epic and dramatic poetry to denote some agency introduced by the poet to serve some purpose or accomplish some event. Faber, in treating of the Apocalypse, speaks of "a patriarchal scheme of symbolical machinery derived most plainly from the events of the Dehlge, and borrowed, with the usual perverse misapplication, by the contrivers of paganism, but which has since been reclaimed by Christianity to its proper use." Doctor Oliver thinks that this "scheme of symbolical machinery" was "the primitive Freemasonry, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." But, without adopting this questionable hypothesis, it must be admitted that Freemasonry, in seenue representations sometimes used in its initiations, has, like the epic poets, and drama tints, and the old hierophants, availed itself of the use of symbolic machinery.
SYMBOLISM, SCIENCE OF.
The science which is engaged in the investigation of the meaning of symbols, and the application of their interpretation to moral, religious, and philosophical instruction. In this sense, Freemasonry is essentially a Science of Symbolism. The English lectures define Freemasonry to be "a peculiar system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." The definition would be more correct were it in these words: Freemasonry is a system of morality developed and inculcated by the science of symbolism. It is this peculiar character as a symbolic institution, this entire adoption of the method of instruction by symbolism, which gives its whole identity to Freemasonry and has caused it to differ from every other association that the ingenuity of man has devised. It is this that has bestowed upon it that attractive form which has always secured the attachment of its disciples and its own perpetuity
The Roman Catholic Church is, perhaps, the only contemporaneous institution which continues to cultivate, in any degree, the beautiful system of symbolism. But that which, in the Roman Catholic Church, is, in a great measure, incidental, and the fruit of development, is, in Freemasonry, the very life-blood and soul of the Institution, born with it at its birth, or, rather, the germ from which the tree has sprung, and still giving it support, nourishment, and even existence. Withdraw from Freemasonry its symbolism, and you take from the body its soul, leaving behind nothing but a lifeless mass of effete matter, fitted only for a rapid decay. Since, then, the science of symbolism forms so important a part of the system of Freemasonry, it will be well to commence any discussion of that subject by an investigation of the nature of symbols in general.
There is no science so ancient as that of symbolism, and no mode of instruction has ever been so general as was the symbolic in former ages. "The first learning in the world," says the great antiquary, Doctor Stukely, "consisted chiefly of symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolic." The learned Faber remarks, that "allegory and personification were peculiarly agreeable to the genius of antiquity, and the simplicity of truth was continually sacrificed at the shrine of poetical decoration." In fact, man's earliest instruction was by symbols. The objective character of a symbol is best calculated to be grasped by the infant mind, whether the infancy of that mind be considered nationally or individually Hence, in the first ages of the world in its infancy, all propositions, theological, political, or scientific were expressed in the form of symbols. Thus the first religions were eminently symbolical, because, as that great philosophical historian, Grote, has remarked, "At a time when language was yet in its infaney, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers."
Even in the very formation of language, the medium of communication between man and man, and which must hence have been an elementary step in the progress of human improvement, it was found necessary to have recourse to symbols, for words are only and truly certain arbitrary symbols by which and through which we give an utterance to our ideas. The construction of language was, therefore, one of the first products of the science of symbolism. We must constantly bear in mind this fact of the primary existence and predominance of symbolism in the earliest times, when we are investigating the nature of the ancient religions, with which the history of Freemasonry is so intimately connected. The older the religion, the more the symbolism abounds. Modern religions may convey their dogmas in abstract propositions; ancient religions always conveyed them in symbols.
Thus there is more symbolism in the Egyptian religion than in the Jewish, more in the Jewish than in the Christian, more in the Christian than in the Mohammedan, and, lastly, more in the Roman than in the Protestant.
But symbolism is not only the most ancient and general, but it is also the most practically useful, of sciences. We have already seen how actively it operates in the early stages of life and of society.
We have seen how the first ideas of men and of nations are impressed upon their minds by means of symbols. It was thus that the ancient peoples were almost wholly educated. "In the simpler stages of society," says one writer on this subject, "mankind can be instructed in the abstract knowledge of truths only by symbols and parables. Hence we find most heathen religions becoming mythic or explaining their mysteries by allegories, or instructive incidents. Nay, God Himself, knowing the nature of the creatures formed by him, has condescended, in the earlier revelations that He made of Himself, to teach by symbols; and the greatest of all Teaehers instructed the multitudes by parables. The great exemplar of the ancient philosophy and the grand archetype of modern philosophy were alike distinguished by their possessing this faculty in a high degree, and have told us that man was best instructed by similitudes."
Such is the system adopted in Freemasonry for the development and inculcation of the great religious and philosophical truths, of which it was, for so many years, the sole conservator. And it is for this reason that we have already remarked, that any inquiry into the symbolic character of Freemasonry, must be preceded by an investigation of the nature of symbolism in general, if we would properly appreciate its particular use in the organization of the Masonic Institution.
SYNDICATION OF LODGES.
A term used in France, in 1773, by the Schismatic Grand Orient during its contests with the Grand Lodge, to denote the fusion of several Lodges into one. The word was never introduced into English Freemasonry, and has become obsolete in France.
SYNOD OF SCOTLAND.
In 1757, the Associate Synod of Seceders of Scotland adopted an Act, concerning what they called the Mason Oath, in which it is declared, that all persons who shall refuse to make such revelations as the Kirk Sessions may require, and to promise to abstain from all future connection with the Order, "shall be reputed under scandal, and incapable of admission to sealing ordinances." In consequence of this Act, passed so long ago, the sect of Seceders, of which there are a few in the United States of America, continue to be at the present day inveterate enemies of the Masonic Institution.
SYRIA.
A country of Asia Minor lying on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. To the Freemason, it is associated with the legendary history of his Order in several interesting points, especially in reference to Mount Lebanon, from whose forests was derived the timber for the construction of the Temple. The modern Templar will view it as the scene of the contests waged during the Crusades by the Christian knights with their Saracen adversaries. In modern Syria, Freemasonry has been slow to find a home. Lodges in the country have long survived at the City of Beyrout, which has had two—Palestine Lodge, No. 415, which was instituted by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, May 6, 1861, and the Lodge Le Liban, by the Grand Orient of France, January 4, 1869. Morris says (Freemasonry in the Holy Land, page 216) that "the Order of Freemasonry is not in a condition satisfactory to the members thereof, nor creditable to the great cause in which the Fraternity are engaged."
SYRIAN RITE.
A religious seet which had its origin in Syria, and which was anciently comprehended in the Patriarchates of Antioch and of Jerusalem. It was an exceedingly flourishing system. Before the end of the fourth century it numbered one hundred and nineteen distinct Sees, with a population of several millions. The liturgy is known as the liturgy of Saint James.
SYSTEM.
Lenning defines a system of Freemasonry to be the doctrine of Freemasonry as exhibited in the Lodge government and Lodge work or ritual. The definition is not, perhaps, satisfactory. In Freemasonry, a system is a plan or scheme of doctrines intended to develop a particular view as to the origin, the design, and the character of the Institution. The word is often used as synonymous with Rite, but the two words do not always express the same meaning. A system is not always developed into a Rite, or the same system may give birth to two or more different Rites. Doctor Oliver established a system founded on the literal acceptance of almost all the legendary traditions, but he never invented a Rite.
Ramsay and Hund both held the same system as to the Ternplar origin of Freemasonry; but the Rite of Ramsay and the Rite of Strict Observance are very different. The system of Schröder and that of the Grand Lodge of England do not essentially vary, but there is no similarity between the York Rite and the Rite of Schröder. Whoever in Freemasonry sets forth a connected series of doctrines peculiar to himself invents a system. He may or he may not afterward fabricate a Rite. But the Rite would be only a consequence, and not a necessary one, of the system.
SYSTYLE.
An arrangement of columns in which the intercolumniation or separation is equal to the diameter of the column.
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