THE BUILDER MAGAZINE
February 1915
volume 1 - number 2
THE FLAG OF
PEACE
'Tis said that the Flag of
our Republic was born in 1777, but that cannot be true. It was stitched
into form at that time, in a little back parlor, but he who would know
its origin must look far into the dim, pathetic, aspiring past. It was
woven on the Loom of Ages- -woven of the dreams and heartbeats of
humanity, of the warp of sorrow and the woof of hope--by a Great Hand
stretched out from the Unseen. All those who on red fields of war died
that their sons might be free; all who in dark prison cells suffered for
the rights of man; all who in the long night of tyranny toiled and
prayed for a better day, added threads to our Flag. It floats to-day in
the blue sky, swayed by happy winds, held aloft by innumerable hands of
the living and the dead, at once a history and a prophecy.
In old mythology Minerva and
Ceres presided over the laboring classes --robed in flaming red, and
that color became their emblem; but it was an emblem of blood-making,
not of blood-letting; symbolizing the victories of peace, not those of
war. Color in ancient Rome separated plebeian from patrician--blue the
color of the aristocracy, white the war symbol, and red the emblem of
labor and peace. All these colors are blended in our Flag, making it the
sanctifying symbol of Unity, Fraternity, and Good-will among men. So may
it ever be--Flag of Freedom and Friendship--woven of "the mystic chords
of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every
living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land," proclaiming the
time-glorified principles wrought out by the tears and prayers of our
fathers.
Let all those who stand under
it join hearts in one faith, join hands in one purpose--for the safety
and sanctity of this Republic; for the rights of man and the majesty of
law; for the moral trusteeship of private property and public office;
for the education of the ignorant; for the lifting of poverty, through
self-help, to comfort; for the dignity of the home and the laughter of
little children; for social beauty, national glory, and human welfare.
Long may it wave, rendered for all ages holy by the faith of the men who
lifted it up, and the valor of the men who defended it in an hour of
madness and peril. May it never again float over a field of war, but
ever and forever over scenes of peace, honor, and progress.
-- J. F. N.
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MASONRY AND
WORLD-PEACE
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON,
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
HAD any one written a story
of modern civilization last spring, it would have read like a romance.
What a picture it would have painted of the triumphs of art and
industry, of disease yielding to the skill of science, of the
intellectual linking of nations, of the rapid march of ideas, of the
annihilation of time and distance by the ingenuities of invention. The
bright cities of the earth, with their palaces of art and prayer, lay
bathed in sunlight. Air-craft explored the sky, and wireless messages
flew every whither, telling of the glory of man.
And then--a high-school boy
in remote Bosnia fired a pistol, and a pall of ancient barbaric night
fell over the earth, darkening the heavens. Merciful God! the tragedy of
it--beyond comparison the greatest war in all the long annals of time in
the new century! In an instant, all trace of civilization seemed to
vanish, and nation was leaping at the throat of nation, filling the
world with measureless misery and woe. Commerce languishes, art is
paralyzed, religion is mocked, and civilization seems tumbling to a
fall. Four days of the cost of this conflict would dig the Panama Canal
and pay for it. One month of it would equip every hospital on earth to
fight the great White Plague. Of the loss of life, the most precious of
all wealth, who can think without a sob, remembering the cold law of
biology by which, if the fittest fall, only the weak remain to father
the men of times to be.
What man may ever hope to
find words wherewith to tell the shame, the crime, the pity of it all.
Prating of Evolution, we were swept along on the crest of an easy
optimism, not realizing that we were carrying with us the lower forms of
life, "moods of tiger and of ape, red with tooth and claw." Well may we
refresh our memories by reading that passage in the "Republic" of Plato,
in which a Pagan philosopher laid down the rules of civilized warfare,
as follows-- non-combatants to be spared, no houses to be burned, no
farms to be devastated, the dead to be honorably buried, no trophies of
war to be placed in the temples of the gods. What a rebuke to Christian
civilization in a day when shrines of art and learning and piety are
ruthlessly destroyed, and men act like fiends incarnate! Indeed, a page
from the story of this war reads like an excerpt from the chronicles of
Hell, as witness these words from a war-lord to his men:
"Cause the greatest possible
amount of suffering, leave the non-combatants nothing but their eyes to
weep with. The law of Christian charity has no bearing on the relation
of one nation to another."
--II--
With the immediate causes of
this world-shaking war we have not here to do, except to say that no
matter what generalization we make about it, there will be found as many
facts on one side as on the other. History will debate them for ages to
come. Any investigation into the question of who fired the first gun
promptly goes back into the question of who made the gun, and why ? Who
diverted the beautiful, constructive energy of humanity into such wanton
waste and unreason ? After reading the many-colored books put forth by
the nations, each in its own defense, we may admit that all are right in
their reasonings, if we accept their basic fallacy that a nation is a
thing apart from humanity to be hedged about with walls of
iron.
They are nearer the truth who
look for the roots of this tragedy in the ideas taught by unphilosophic
philosophers within the last decade or two. Ideas rule the race. They
run like rumors, they hide in the crooked lines of a printed page, but
in the end they force us into the arena to fight for them. Materialism
in philosophy led, naturally and inevitably, to a worship of brute
Force, bringing scientific efficiency to the service of all the horrible
gods of sport and speed and splendor. Offering incense to the diabolical
trinity of Mammon, Mars, and the Minotaur, we have become so vain of our
material advance and scientific technique that we have forgotten that
human well being lies in the pursuit of justice and brotherly love. With
Neitzsche preaching atheism in the alluring style of a poet, while
Treitschke and Bernhardi expounded a rationale, if not a religion, of
war, 'tis no wonder that we have been brought to where we are, to a
cataclysm unbelievable, except that it exists.
This is not to cry down
modern inventiveness and its astonishing achievements. Far from it. Not
one of us but feels the thrill of this amazing effort, albeit often
futile and misdirected, to realize life. There can be no question that
this is a wonderful age, romantic in its advance. Equally, there can be
no question that things still more wonderful are to follow. But what is
it all worth--this "will to power," this conquest of Nature--if it lead
to a wide weltering chaos of world-war ? To be sure, we travel more
rapidly and get news more quickly, but, God of dreams, what news of
savagery and slaughter! No; our ideals are wrong, and with all the
suffering and ruin already wrought, maybe it will get into our brains,
and at last into our hearts, that our real progress does in fact depend
on the genuine love of God and our fellow man. Only in tragedy, it
seems, will man learn the highest truth.
Still, if we would find the
real causes of this dreadful war we must go far back and deep down into
the nature of man. Human history is saturated with blood and blistered
with tears. It has been estimated that in the annals of mankind, there
have been only thirteen years when there was no war on earth.
"Men are only boys grown
tall, Hearts don't change much, after all. Nations are these
lads writ large, That's what makes the battle charge."
So reads the record of the
ages, and we cannot hope to reverse that order of things in a day. Envy,
ignorance, jealousy, greed, hate, revenge, vanity, racial rancor, love
of strife, these make war against peace. Nevertheless, we must refuse to
accept war as the permanent condition of human society. Slavery was once
well nigh as universal as war, if not as old, but it has been banished
from the earth. We cannot look forward very far, but, despite the horror
of today--perhaps, indeed, because of it--there is reason to hope for a
time when war, and the menace of war, shall be removed from the terrors
of human life.
--III--
What the issue of this
gigantic conflict will be, no mortal can tell. One hundred years ago
Europe was swept bare by wars of might against right, yet out of that
long-drawn tragedy came a great advance of civilization. So it may be,
must be, will be now. Make no mistake; the right will triumph, and as
one nation after another is released from the burden of militarism, the
arts of peace will prevail, the democratic spirit will be extended, and
civilization will, in the end, be promoted. History, always the sure
cure for pessimism, holds out this hope even to those, if such there be,
who see above its tangled and turbulent scene no vaster, wiser Power
correcting the blunders of man, and "from seeming evil still educing
good in infinite progression."
Amidst all doubts, one thing
is certain: kings may pass, dynasties may vanish, but the peoples of
Europe will remain substantially as they are within their historic
boundaries. But these battered and impoverished peoples will be
preserved for no other purpose than new wars and new disasters if they
do not fit themselves with a nobler, truer way of thinking. More
important than all else is the question, not as to the map of Europe,
but as to what the map of the human mind is going to be after the war.
How well men have learned war, reducing it to a fine art of destruction,
is shown by those great guns that speak with throats of thunder, and
those "airy navies grappling in the central blue," as Tennyson
predicted. Now they must learn peace, which means that they must begin
with the young, and keep always at it, until mankind masters the
sweeter, truer, and diviner language of fraternity.
In point of fact, we have
been trying to do an impossible thing-- trying to found a humane order
upon a basis of brute force. It cannot be done. Long ago Greece built
its structure of art and life upon a basis of slavery, and it fell. Just
so, our civilization will fail and fall if it is built upon a foundation
of Force. After all, it may be that this war was an inevitable result of
a transition from the rule of Force to the rule of Numbers, and,
ultimately, the rule of Reason and Love. One is tempted to hope that,
since it had to come, it will not stop until all despotisms are swept
away, and with them all upholding of the privilege of the few against
the rights of the many; until men everywhere rise up and say they will
not go to war unless they have a vote on war. John, Hans and mystic Ivan
will strike or soon or late, and then will come the end of Kings and
Kaisers--and if this war hastens that day it worth all it
cost!
As the grand divisions of
geological history have their beginnings in stupendous revolutions, so,
too the great new epochs in the human world. Such a time is even now
with us. Manifestly, we stand at the end of an era, and the men who come
after us will wonder that, seeing, we saw not, and mistook the red dawn
of a new day for a house on fire. As Napoleon would say, we are
condemned to something great. Whatever betide, the old order has
collapsed. The times are infinitely plastic. There is no reason for
letting go of faith in God or human kind. Instead, those who have eyes
will see in this tempest a storm that shall clear the air of
pestilential vapors and hasten the advent of a nobler world-order,
through the corrected sense of the nations--the final flaring up of a
blaze from falling brands, to be covered forever with penitential ashes
and quenched with bitter tears.
IV
Meantime, what has Masonry to
say, what can it do, in this hour of world-crisis when the race is
struggling through blood and fire toward something new, shaking off
shams, and coming face to face with the eternal necessities? Forming one
great society over the whole globe, bringing men together without regard
to race or religion, it is incredible that this Ancient Order should be
inactive, much less indifferent, in a day of supreme demand. From the
first Masonry has been international, knowing no Slavic race, no
Teutonic race, but only the Human race, in proof of which hear these
words from its Book of Constitutions--words that stand out like stars in
the night of world-feud:
"In order to preserve peace
and harmony no private piques or quarrels must be brought within the
door of the Lodge, far less any quarrel about Religions or National or
State-Policy, we being only, as Masons, of the religion in which all men
agree; and we are also of all Nations, Tongues, Kindreds and Languages,
and are resolved against all Politics as what never yet conduced to the
welfare of the Lodge, nor ever will.
Such is the principle on
which Masonry rests, and the spirit in which it has toiled through the
ages, breaking down barriers of caste and creed, of race and rank,
creating reverence, not only for the Divine, but also for the Human--for
man as man, regardless of land or language, for the right of every man
to be free of body and soul and have a place in the sun--and drawing men
together in mutual respect into a profound and far-reaching fellowship.
Never was its benign spirit more needed than today, living, as we are,
in a world of fratricidal strife, when every energy of the race seems
dedicated to destruction. Alas, that the truth of the Brotherhood of Man
should be revealed only in tragedy and terror, but if the sword of Mars
stabs the world wide awake to this fact, by the very magnitude of the
horror of war, it will be worth the price in suffering. Truly, the time
has come when Masonry must take up its harp and strike its world-chord
with all its might-- strike it magnificently and with prophetic
stroke.
Human unity is no fanciful
dream of a poet, no far off promise of a prophet; it is a fact.
Geographical boundaries do not now and never have represented either
race or national potencies. Morality, intelligence, efficiency,
fraternity refuse racial or political labels. There is no German
chemistry, no British astronomy, no Russian mathematics. What is most
excellent in Russia--its Tolstoys, its Kropotkins, its musicians, its
painters, and its hard-handed millions of toilers--is not Russian, but
human. The same is true of Germany, France and England. Goethe and
Schiller, Koch and Kant are fellow-countrymen of Shakespeare and Darwin,
of Hugo and Pasteur. The Republic of Letters and of Science is
universal; it is only our patriotism that has lagged behind and become
"the virtue of narrow minds"--when, indeed, it is not actually what
Johnson called it, "the last resort of knaves."
How, then, can we justify our
love of our own land as over against those who hold that all patriotism
is provincial, if not pernicious? Only in this way: Each nation, each
race has a genius of its own, and by that fact a contribution to make
and a service to render to the total of humanity. Judea was no larger
than Iowa, and yet it gave to the race its loftiest and truest religion,
and the strongest, whitest, sweetest soul the earth has known. Greece
was a tiny land, girt about by violet seas, but it added immeasurable
wealth of art, drama and philosophy to the world. So of Rome. And thus
we might call the roll of races and nations, asking of each what it had
or has to give of beauty and of truth to mankind. Even so, our country
has a genius unique, particular, and peculiar, and by that token a
service to render to the universal life of humanity. What is that
service if it be not to show, not only that "government of the People,
by the People, for the People shall not perish from the earth," but that
it is the highest ideal of government, and that it makes for the
greatest happiness of man, alike in private nobility and public welfare?
Of that genius and service our flag is the emblem and prophecy, and
loyalty to that emblem implies devotion to that service. Our field is
the world, but our solicitude is our own country--that it may the better
make its unique and priceless contribution to the universal good. Thus,
with due reverence for other nations, by loyalty to our own flag we best
serve our race.
Above all nations, greater
than all races, more important than all royalties is Humanity, and no
one nation can live to itself, much less be truly great, without regard
for the usefulness and happiness of other nations. What we need is a
transvaluation of patriotism from a tribal loyalty into a universal
allegiance--a world-patriotism, growing out of the deepening sense of
human solidarity, large of outlook, far-reaching and benign of spirit.
As it is now, patriotism consists too much in loving our own land and
hating every other--a feeling unworthy of a Republic where Teuton,
Saxon, Slav, Gaul, Celt live amicably together, stand shoulder to
shoulder in the industrial army, eat out of the same dinner pails, and,
to a surprising degree, worship at the same altar.
V
Exactly; and that is the very
genius of Freemasonry, its mission to mankind, and the spirit which it
seeks to make prevail. By its very nature cosmopolitan, it thinks in
terms of Humanity, rather than of race or creed or party, being as the
old German Handbook defined it, the activity of closely united men who,
employing symbolical forms borrowed from architecture work for the
welfare of humanity, striving morally to ennoble themselves and others,
and thereby to bring about "a universal league of mankind, which they
aspire to exhibit, even now, on a small scale." As Goethe said, in his
poem on "The Lodge,"
"The Mason's ways are
A type of existence,
And his persistence
Is, as the days are
Of men in this
world."
Every Lodge is an emblem and
prophecy of the world, and there will be no abiding peace on earth until
what Masonry exhibits on a small scale is made worldwide, and its spirit
of goodwill among men of all ranks, races and religions becomes the
reigning genius of humanity. Other way out of war there is none. If,
instead of meeting behind closed doors for intrigue, the men who plotted
this war had met in a Masonic Lodge, not one of them would have drawn a
sword ! Alas, Lilliputian militarists have kindled a fire which not even
Gulliver can put out, spreading death and desolation every
whither--fanning old feuds, marshalling hordes of hates, until the very
existence of civilization is threatened.
What of the future ? One
thing is evident: if this tragedy drags its bloody way to the bitter
end, as now seems likely, every tie by which man is bound to man the
world over will be needed to hold the race together; and Masonry is one
of those ties. To that end, Masonry itself must recapture its old accent
and emphasis upon universal principles, and take part in recruiting and
mobilizing a great army of men of goodwill, if so we may dehorn the
nations now goring each other to death, and bring to this
passion-clouded earth the light of reason. War is waste. It is unreason.
It settles nothing. It is devolution, not evolution. It is not the
survival of the fittest, but the sacrifice of the best. The canker of
long peace, as Shakespeare called it, is the canker not of peace, but of
materialism. No;
"The crest and crowning of
all good,
Life's final star, is
Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to
Earth
Her long-lost Poesy and
Mirth;
Will send new light on every
face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it comes we men are
slaves,
And travel downward to the
dust of graves."
What this sad world needs is
a League of its "Large Eternal Fellows," tall enough of soul to look
over barriers of race, walls of creed, and mountains of
misunderstanding, and recognize their kinsmen in every land and
language. These are the men who see that we are in more danger from the
grasping greed and blind ambition of the few who rule than we ever were,
ever will or ever can be from the great, toiling masses of our fellows
in other lands. They see that the great generalship displayed in the
war, and its good comradeship--the sagacity of its leaders, and the
singing, jesting courage with which the youth of Europe is marching to
the grave-- are the very qualities which, if dedicated to the
organization of the world upon a basis of peace, will swing the earth
into a new orbit! Therefore.
"Come, clear the way, then,
clear the way:
Blind creeds and kings have
had their day.
Break the dead branches from
the path:
Our hope is in the
aftermath--
Our hope is in heroic men,
Star-led to build the world
again,
To this event the ages ran:
Make way for
Brotherhood--make way for Man !
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THE LODGE
"The Mason's ways are
A type of existence,
And his persistence
Is, as the days are
Of men in this
world.
The future hides in it
Good hap or sorrow;
We press still through it--
Naught, that abides in
it,
Daunting
is--onward.
But heard are the
voices,
Voices of the sages,
Of the worlds and the
ages,
'Choose well, your choice is
Brief, but
endless.'
And silent before us,
Veiled the dark portal,
Goal of all mortal;
Stars silent rest over
us,
Graves, under us,
silent.
'Here eyes do regard
you,
In eternity's
stillness,
Here is all fullness,
Ye brave to reward you,
Work and despair not.'"
--Goethe.
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THE
PHILOSOPHY OF MASONRY
Five Lectures Delivered under
the Auspices of the Grand Master of Massachusetts Masonic Temple,
Boston
BY BROTHER ROSCOE POUND,
PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
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.
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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.
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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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THE TWO
PATHS
By Brother S.W.
Williams
MASONRY, the Church--in fact
all religions --teach that each one of us has the choice of two Paths in
life. One is long, tedious, tortuous and beset with all manner of
dangers and temptations--but finally leads to Peace and Rest--an
eternity of Happiness. The other --a broad highway, easy to travel--with
delightful groves and a plentitude of sunshine, music and flowers
--everything to delight the eye and charm the senses-- gently, almost
imperceptibly, but none the less surely, leads downward to despair and
death.
All men that have lived have
chosen--yea, traveled--one or the other of these Roads. There is no
avoidance of it. Either we must struggle as long as life lasts, to keep
on that Path which leads to Light and Life Eternal--or give up the
fight--yield to the many temptations that beset us--branch off upon a
pleasanter Path leading to the Downward Road--exchanging our
God-promised reward for a few short hours of indulgence in whatever
debasing Passion or Desire may appeal most strongly to our brutal
instincts.
In the Dhammapada, the
authorship of what is ascribed to Buddha himself, and pronounced to be
one of the most practical ethical hand-books of Buddhism, we
read
"The virtuous man is happy in
this World, and he is happy in the next; he is happy in both. He is
happy when he thinks of the good he has done; he is still more happy
when going on the GOOD PATH."
"Earnestness is the Path of
Immortality. (Nirvana.) Thoughtlessness is the Path of Death. Those who
are in earnest do not die, those who are thoughtless are as if dead
already."
"Fools follow after Vanity.
The Wise man keeps Earnestness as his best Jewel."
"The Disciple will find out
the plainly shown Path of Virtue as a clever man finds the right
flower."
These verses are about 2600
years old, and yet the truths therein contained have never been more
completely or more concisely stated. Analyze them as you will, and the
more thought you expend upon them, the more thoroughly will you
understand and appreciate their breadth and scope.
No thinking man can gainsay
that True Earnestness leads to the Upward Path. "The Path of
Immortality." It is beset with numerous dangers. Innumerable temptations
and obstacles obstruct our passage.
Our Lodge lessons have taught
us we have need of the three Theological Virtues--Faith, Hope and
Charity--together with the four Cardinal ones--Fortitude, Prudence,
Temperance and Justice; but without the foundation of Earnestness how
could Success crown our efforts ?
Truly Earnestness is man's
"Best Jewel."
And, just as this is true of
Earnestness, so is it also true that Thoughtlessness, if not eliminated
from our character, will ultimately lead us on the Downward Course--even
unto the Shades of Death.
How shall we find this Path
of Virtue ?
Reflect upon the teachings of
the Lodge from the First degree to the last one you have taken, and you
will find the answer.
But neither Faith, Hope,
Charity, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance nor Justice will avail unless
they are backed up with Sincerity-- with Determination--call it what you
will--Earnestness is the word that best suits all phases of the
case--and this message of Buddha, which has come down to us through 26
centuries, cannot be controverted.
About six hundred years after
this message was given to the World, there was born in Bethlehem of
Judea, the CHRIST. He said to the sinful Woman: "Go thy way--thy sins
are forgiven thee"--her faith had made her whole.
But think you that
Earnestness had no part in the healing? This poor woman had thrown every
particle of Earnestness of which she was capable into her appeal--and
the Christ saw--and approved.
It was the Earnestness of her
Faith which wrought the cure.
Volumes might be written upon
this subject, but more cannot be said than that which Buddha has so
tersely expressed:
"Earnestness is the Path of
Immortality. Thoughtlessness is the Path of Death.
Dear Brother, ponder over
this seriously. Choose the RIGHT PATH. BE EARNEST and PEACE and REST
will attend thy efforts.
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WHAT IS
MASONRY?
"Freemasonry is the
subjugation of the Human that is in Man, by the Divine; the conquest of
the Appetites and Passions by the Moral Sense and the Reason; a
continual effort, struggle and warfare of the Spiritual against the
Material and Sensual. That victory--when it has been achieved and
secured, and the conqueror may rest upon his shield and wear the
well-earned laurels--is the true Holy Empire." --Albert Pike. Morals and
Dogma.
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OLD
LANDMARKS OF MASONRY
BY THE LATE THEODORE S.
PARVIN, Founder of the Library of the
Grand Lodge of Iowa
(Among many MSS left by Mr.
Parvin--some of which we shall publish as occasion may offer--was the
following paper, written in the forthright and pungent style
characteristic of a man who had positive convictions, and knew how to
express them. Recent students are not so sure, as Brother Parvin seems
to have been, that there was only one degree in Craft-masonry. But no
matter, the paper speaks for itself- and the editor ventures to add a
brief discussion as showing its importance in view of the present
situation in world-Masonry.)
"Every annual Grand Lodge has
the inherent Power and Authority to make new Regulations, or to alter
those for the real Benefit of this ancient Fraternity; provided always
that the Old Landmarks be carefully preserved."--Art. XXXIX, General
Regulations of the Grand Lodge of England, 1723.
The term "Landmarks" does not
occur in the Charges of a Freemason which are universally regarded as of
bin ling authority upon all Grand Lodges. The quotation above made is
from the "General Regulations," binding only upon those Grand Lodges
which by enactment have made them so. These By-laws of the Grand Lodge
of England--- for such they are--are no more binding upon the Grand
Lodge of Iowa than are our By-laws upon any other Grand Lodge of the
land.
Save the one subject of the
History of Freemasonry, there has been more nonsense written upon the
subject of Ancient Landmarks than upon any other Masonic subject.
Neither the Charges of a Freemason nor the General Regulations, together
usually styled Ancient Constitutions; anywhere define what a Landmark
is, nor do the historians of Freemasonry, or anyone else endowed with
authority, enumerate them. Dr. Mackey, a learned Mason--though not so
learned as Findel, Lyon, Hughan, or Gould--in his Lexicon of
Freemasonry, as also in his Encyclopedia, gives a list of Landmarks
which he made and promulgated as "the" Landmarks of the Order. His
judgment, when based upon historic or legal truth, is entitled to
weight, but he followed his prejudices or speculations, as he did, he
commands no more respect than others. one Mason in ten gives adhesion to
his Sched Landmarks.
A writer of equal ability, if
not so learned, a few years ago tried his hand at enumerating the
Landmarks, and almost doubled Mackey's last list; I say list, because
Mackey two and his second contained some not in the first. Thus every
writer has his ipse dixit. For many I have invited, urge and begged
Grand Master and Grand Reports to furnish me with a list of Landmarks.
None have ever essayed to do so--further than to refer me Dr. Mackey, as
if a man who was born, lived and died in this century could make an
"ancient" Landmark.
Quite recently a Masonic
editor has told us that "every Mason ought to understand exactly what
the Old Landmarks are." How can everybody be expected to know what
nobody knows, ever has known, or ever will know; because there is no
supreme authority to declare what they are. Scarcely any two
jurisdictions, or any two men in the same jurisdiction, agree on the
question.
Again hear a learned brother:
"The Old Landmarks are those customs of the fraternity which became
fixed rules at a time so remote that even their origin is lost, but
which have been handed down as the fundamental laws of Freemasonry."
Then he gives a list of twenty-five rules which he calls Landmarks. His
second rule is "the division of symbolic Masonry into three degrees."
Every schoolboy in Masonry knows that until the eighteenth century--this
is only the nineteenth--there was only one degree. His third is, "the
legend of the Temple Builder in the Third Degree." As a fact, neither
the Temple Builder nor the legend was ever known or heard of two
centuries ago in connection with Freemasonry. And so I might go
on.
Such Landmarks are like
ten-pins; knock one over and many others fall with it. Talk about rules
established in 1700-1799 as having been "fixed at a time so remote that
even their origin is lost !" It is too ridiculous to merit sober
refutation. Yet the good brother says that "these twenty-five
unalterable rules are now accepted as Landmarks." Accepted by whom? Not
by the Grand Lodge of Iowa. In the number of her Lodges, in the
intelligence of her membership, in enterprise and true devotion to the
genuine principles of Freemasonry, the Grand Lodge of Iowa is the peer
of the oldest, the largest and the best Grand Lodge, but she does not
accept this list, nor the half of it. She refuses to bow at the altar of
this modern Baal.
--II--
So far Parvin. As showing the
wide divergence of opinion both as regards the nature and number of the
Old Landmarks--the latter varying from six to sixty, and usually fixed
at twenty-five--the article is interesting. Its criticisms of the lists
of Landmarks proposed are as sound as they are keen. Nevertheless, the
essayist leaves us still up in the air with little hope of getting down
to the land, much less of finding our landmarks. Nor does it take due
account of the injury done to the order, and the impediments put in the
way of a wider fellowship and a mutual understanding by this uncertainty
and confusion.
Hence we have the spectacle
of Masons in one part of the world refusing to recognize their brethren
in another part, because, forsooth, they do not use exactly the same
words, when the differences in the most important Masonic principles, or
their form, is so slight that they could never stand in the way of a
greater and closer fellowship. Such bigotry--for it is nothing else
--reminds one of the exclusiveness of the ecclesiastic who holds that
the sacrament is only valid when administered in a certain way, when
certain words are accurately recited, and when a certain person set
apart and properly ordained by recognized authorities, is there to
administer it.
Moreover, we accuse our
brethren abroad--in France, for instance-- of having departed from the
ancient Landmarks of Masonry, but we have not yet defined what a
Landmark is. Instead, we take some Tradition, Custom or Usage, of
comparatively recent date, and erect it into a barrier with which to
exclude our brethren--forgetting that a Landmark is one thing and a high
board fence is another. Not only so, but we actually take some detail of
organization, of whose antiquity no one dare make claim, and use it in
the same way. What a queer outcome of the gracious and free spirit of
Masonry whose genius it is, or should be, to make men friends and
fellow-workers.
For example, in 1858 Mackey
made his list of "ancient" Landmarks, twenty-five in number--that seems
to be the sacred number in respect of Landmarks--one of which was as
follows: "The Bible, being an indispensable symbol, must be present in
every Lodge." If that be so, then a Mohammedan or a Buddhist, who
reveres other sacred books than our own, cannot be a Mason. Even a
Hebrew is in part disqualified, for he does not accept all of the Bible.
Confronted with this glaring absurdity, Mackensie modified the Mackey
article on this wise: "The Bible is indispensable in Lodge, but it need
not be the Bible in all cases. It can be replaced by the Koran, by the
Zend-Avesta, or by the Vedas, according to the religious faith of the
Lodge." That is to say, the Bible is indispensable but it may be
dispensed with!
Now ye editor is a firm
believer in Christianity and the Bible, of which he is an humble
teacher, but he does not make his Christianity a test of his Masonic
fellowship. To do so would be to make Masonry sectarian-- that is,
something utterly alien to itself, only one more atom in a world of
factional feud and ferment. Instead, he welcomes to his Masonic
fellowship his brother Masons of every faith, Catholic or Protestant,
Hebrew or Hindu, thanking God the while for one altar where men of all
faiths may meet without reproach and without regret.
Obviously, any other attitude
is un-Masonic, and a violation of the fundamental, far-shining principle
of Freemasonry set forth by the Grand Lodge of England in 1723, and
reaffirmed in 1815; the cornerstone from which we must begin our survey
if we are ever to find the Landmarks of the Order; the forever memorable
words:
"But though in ancient times,
Masons were charged in every country or nation to be of the religion of
that country, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more expedient only
to oblige them to that religion in which all men agree, leaving their
particular opinions to themselves; that is, to be good men and true, or
men of honor and honesty by whatever denominations or persuasions they
may be distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the centre of union and
the means of conciliating true friendship among persons that must have
remained at a perpetual distance."
--III--
What, then, are the Landmarks
of Masonry? Manifestly, by a Landmark we must mean, if it is to have any
meaning at all, a limit set beyond which Masonry cannot go, some
boundary within which it must labor; a line drawn as against any
innovation subversive of the spirit and purpose of the Order. So, and
naturally so, the Landmarks of Masonry are its great fundamental
principles, not any usage or custom, much less mere details of
organization, save in so far as these are identical with the spread of
its spirit and the fulfillment of its purpose and mission in the world.
Since this is so, there has never been a better attempt to state the
Landmarks of the Order than that made by Findel in his "Spirit and Form
of Freemasonry," the sum and substance of which is as
follows:
First, and chiefly, its
universality, and the obligation of every Mason to believe and practice
that universal religion in which all men agree and understand each
other, and the avoidance of such debates as mar its
fellowship.
Second, the organization of a
secret society, a centre of fraternity, an alliance of men of good
repute, without regard to the distinctions made by the outside world,
such as rank, position, religion, nationality, race, or political party;
and the right of every initiated Mason to be admitted on a footing of
friendship in all regular Lodges--Masonry being universal, and all
Masons forming a single Lodge in which all are equal in the sight of
each other.
Third, the requirement of
certain qualifications for the reception of neophytes, such as moral
independence, a sufficient degree of general education, a certain age,
and good repute; and the injunction that no external circumstances, but
only moral value and service to the Order, entitles any one to
distinction or honor. Fourth, the immutable necessity for the Lodges to
teach their members to exercise brotherly love, relief, and truth, to
work for their moral advancement and the betterment of mankind, and to
keep strict discretion toward |
