FRATERNITY AND PHILOSOPHY
In considering Freemasonry as a fraternity and a philosophy, there is
disclosed a much more complex and diversified field of investigation than exists
in its element as an institution. The four old lodges that met and formed the
Grand Lodge of England in 1717, were, to a certain extent, both operative and
speculative, and it is of first concern to determine the measure of the
operative feature then existing, and the extent to which the speculative leaven
had entered into the workings of the lodges just prior to the grand lodge era.
Several widely quoted historians have held that the era mentioned was "a period
of transition" from an operative art to a speculative science. Mackey, devoting
the greater part of three volumes to the elucidation of this theory, traces the
"builders" through the Roman colleges and the traveling Masons of the Tenth
century to the Steinmetzen of Germany, the Mestrices des Masons in Gaul, the
guilds of England and the lodges of Scotland, to whom were transmitted the
secrets of the building craft and the spirit of fraternal cooperation in labor.
R.F. Gould, noted Masonic historian, says: "If we go back to the Ancient
Mysteries, we meet with dialogue, ritual, darkness, light, death and
reproduction. Many features of the Mysteries were preserved until a
comparatively late era, and to me at least it seems a not unreasonable
conjecture that some of them may have survived without a break or continuity,
and are now a part of Masonry."
Albert Pike says: "I became convinced that in Freemasonry the Ancient Greater
Mysteries were revived."
The Philosophies of all ages are of Masonic interest, and a possible cause
for some of the obscurity, surrounding Masonic symbolism may be found in the
influence wielded by alchemy, astrology and magic in the past.
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