In the Ancient Orient, all religion was more or less a mystery
and there was no divorce from it of philosophy. The popular
theology, taking the multitude of allegories and symbols for
realities, degenerated into a worship of the celestial luminaries,
of imaginary Deities with human feelings, passions, appetites, and
lusts, of idols, stones, animals, reptiles. The Onion was sacred to
the Egyptians, because its different layers were a symbol of the
concentric heavenly spheres. Of course the popular religion could
not satisfy the deeper longings and thoughts, the loftier
aspirations of the Spirit, or the logic of reason. The first,
therefore, was taught to the initiated in the Mysteries. There,
also, it was taught by symbols. The vagueness of symbolism, capable
of many interpretations, reached what the palpable and conventional
creed could not. Its indefiniteness acknowledged the abstruseness of
the subject: it treated that mysterious subject mystically: it
endeavored to illustrate what it could not explain; to excite an
appropriate feeling, if it could not develop an adequate idea; and
to rmake the image a mere subordinate conveyance for the conception,
which itself never became obvious or familiar.
Thus the knowledge now imparted by books and letters, was of old
conveyed by symbols; and the priests invented or perpetuated a
display of rites and exhibitions, which were not only more
attractive to the eye than words, but often more suggestive and more
pregnant with meaning to the mind.
Masonry, successor of the Mysteries, still follows the ancient
manner of teaching. Her ceremonies are like the ancient mystic
shows,--not the reading of an essay, but the opening of a problem,
requiring research, and constituting philosophy the arch-expounder.
Her symbols are the instruction she gives. The lectures are
endeavors, often partial and one-sided, to interpret these symbols.
He who would become an accomplished Mason must not be content merely
to hear, or even to understand, the lectures; he must, aided by
them, and they having, as it were, marked out the way for him,
study, interpret, and develop these symbols for himself
* * * * * *
Though Masonry is identical with the ancient Mysteries, it is so
only in this qualified sense: that it presents but an imperfect
image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a
system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of
social events, political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility
of its improvers. After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified
by the habits of the different nations among whom they were
introduced, and especially by the religious systems of the countries
into which they were transplanted. To maintain the established
government, laws, and religion, was the obligation of the Initiate
everywhere; and everywhere they were the heritage of the priests,
who were nowhere willing to make the common people co-proprietors
with themselves of philosophical truth.
Masonry is not the Coliseum in ruins. It is rather a Roman palace
of the middle ages, disfigured by moderll architectural
improvements, yet built on a Cyclopcean foundation laid by the
Etruscans, and with many a stone of the superstructure taken from
dwellings and temples of the age of Hadrian and Antoninus.
Christianity taught the doctrine of FRATERNITY; but repudiated
that of political EQUALITY, by continually inculcating obedience to
Caesar, and to those lawfully in authority. Masonry was the first
apostle of EQUALITY. In the Monastery there is fraternity and
equality, but no liberty. Masonry added that also, and claimed for
man the three-fold heritage, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY.
It was but a development of the original purpose of the
Mysteries, which was to teach men to know and practice their duties
to themselves and their fellows, the great practical end of all
philosophy and all knowledge.
Truths are the springs from which duties flow; and it is but a
few hundred years since a new Truth began to be distinctly seen;
that MAN IS SUPREME OVER INSTITUTIONS, AND NOT THEY OVER HIM. Man
has natural empire over all institutions. They are for him,
aecording to his development; not he for them. This seems to us a
very simple statement, one to which all men, everywhere, ought to
assent. But once it was a great new Truth,--not revealed until
governments had been in existence for at least five thousand years.
Once revealed, it imposed new duties on men. Man owed it to himself
to be free. He owed it to his country to seek to give her freedom,
or maintain her in that possession. It made Tyranny and Usurpation
the enemies of the Human Race. It created a general outlawry of
Despots and Despotisms, temporal and spiritual. The sphere of Duty
was immensely enlarged. Patriotism had, henceforth, a new and wider
meaning. Free Government, Free Thought, Free Conscience, Free
Speech! All these came to be inalienable rights, which those who had
parted with them or been robbed of them, or whose ancestors had lost
them, had the right summarily to retake. Unfortunately, as Truths
always become perverted into falsehoods, and are falsehoods when
misapplied, this Truth became the Gospel of Anarchy, soon after it
was first preached.
Masonry early comprehended this Truth, and recognized its own
enlarged duties. Its symbols then came to have a wider meaning; but
it also assumed the mask of Stone-masonry, and borrowed its
working-tools, and so was supplied with new and apt symbols. It
aided in bringing about the French Revolution, disappeared with the
Girondists, was born again with the restoration of order, and
sustained Napoleon, because, though Emperor, he acknowledged the
right of the people to select its rulers, and was at the head of a
nation refusing to receive back its old kings. He pleaded, with
sabre, musket, and cannon, the great cause of the People against
Royalty, the right of the French people even to make a Corsican
General their Emperor, if it pleased them.
Masonry felt that this Truth had the Omnipotence of God on its
side; and that neither Pope nor Potentate could overcome it. It was
a truth dropped into the world's wide treasury, and forming a part
of the heritage which each generation receives, enlarges, and holds
in trust, and of necessity bequeaths to mankind; the personal estate
of man, entailed of nature to the end of time. And Masonry early
recognized it as true, that to set forth and develop a truth, or any
human excellence of gift or growth, is to make greater the spiritual
glory of the race; that whosoever aids the march of a Truth, and
makes the thought a thing, writes in the same line with MOSES, and
with Him who died upon the cross; and has an intellectual sympathy
with the Deity Himself.
The best gift we can bestow on man is manhood. It is that which
Masonry is ordained of God to bestow on its votaries: not
sectarianism and religious dogma; not a rudimental morality, that
may be found in the writings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Seneca, and
the Rabbis, in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; not a little and cheap
common-school knowledge; but manhood and science and philosophy.
Not that Philosophy or Science is in opposition to Religion. For
Philosophy is but that knowledge of God and the Soul, which is
derived from observation of the manifested action of God and the
Soul, and from a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which
the religious sentiment needs. The true religious philosophy of an
imperfect being, is not a system of creed, but, as SOCRATES thought,
an infinite search or approximation. Philosophy is that intellectual
and moral progress, which the religious sentiment inspires and
ennobles.
As to Science, it could not walk alone, while religion was
stationary. It consists of those matured inferences from experience
which all other experience confirms. It realizes and unites all that
was truly valuable in both the old schemes of mediation,--one
heroic, or the system of action and effort; and the mystical theory
of spiritual, ccntemplative commullion. "Listen to me," says GALEN,
"as to the voice of the Eleusinian Hierophant, and believe that the
study of Nature is a mystery no less important than theirs, nor less
adapted to display the wisdom and power of the Great Creator. Their
lessons and demonstrations were obscure, but ours are clear and
unmistakable."
We deem that to be the best knowledge we can obtain of the Soul
of another man, which is furnished by his actions and his life-long
conduct. Evidence to the contrary, supplied by what another man
informs us that this Soul has said to his, would weigh little
against the former. The first Scriptures for the human race were
written by God on the Earth and Heavens. The reading of these
Scriptures is Science. Familiarity with the grass and trees, the
insects and the infusoria, teaches us deeper lessons of love and
faith than we can glean from the writings of FENELON and AUGUSTINE.
The great Bible of God is ever open before mankind.
Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of
utility and duty. But knowledge itself is not Power. Wisdom is
Power; and her Prime Minister is JUSTICE, which is the perfected law
of TRUTH. The purpose, therefore, of Education and Science is to
make a man wise. If knowledge does not make him so, it is wasted,
like water poured on the sands. To know the formulas of Masonry, is
of as little value, by itself, as to know so many words and
sentences in some barbarous African or Australasian dialect. To know
even the meaning of the symbols, is but little, unless that adds to
our wisdom, and also to our charity, which is to justice like one
hemisphere of the brain to the other.
Do not lose sight, then, of the true object of your studies in
Masonry. It is to add to your estate of wisdom, and not merely to
your knowledge. A man may spend a lifetime in studying a single
specialty of knowledge,-- botany, conchology, or entomology, for
instance,--in committing to memory names derived from the Greek, and
classifying and reclassifying; and yet be no wiser than when he
began. It is the great truths as to all that most concerns a man, as
to his rights, interests, and duties, that Masonry seeks to teach
her Initiates.
The wiser a man becomes, the less will he be inclined to submit
tamely to the imposition of fetters or a yoke, on his conscience or
his person. For, by increase of wisdom he not only better knows his
rights, but the more highly values them, and is more conscious of
his worth and dignity. His pride then urges him to assert his
independence. He becomes better able to assert it also; and better
able to assist others or his country, when they or she stake all,
even existence, upon the same assertion. But mere knowledge makes no
one independent, nor fits him to be free. It often only makes him a
more useful slave. Liberty is a curse to the ignorant and
brutal.
Political science has for its object to ascertain in what manner
and by means of what institutions political and personal freedom may
be secured and perpetuated: not license, or the mere right of every
man to vote, but entire and absolute freedom of thought and opinion,
alike free of the despotism of monarch and mob and prelate; freedom
of action within the limits of the general law enacted for all; the
Courts of Justice, with impartial Judges and juries, open to all
alike; weakness and poverty equally potent in those Court.s as power
and wealth; the avenues to office and honor open alike to all the
worthy; the military powers, in war oY peaee, in strict
subordination to the civil power; arbitrary arrests for acts not
known to the law as crimes, impossible; Romish Inquisitions,
Star-Chambers, Military Commissions, unknown; the means of
instruction within reach of the children of all; the right of Free
Speech; and accountability of all public omcers, civil and
military.
If Masonry needed to be justified for imposing political as well
as moral duties on its Initiates, it would be enough to point to the
sad history of the world. It would not even need that she should
turn back the pages of history to the chapters written by Tacitus:
that she should recite the incredible horrors of despotism under
Caligula and Domitian, Caracalla and Commodus, Vitellius and
Maximin. She need only point to the centuries of calamity through
which the gay French nation passed; to the long oppression of the
feudal ages, of the selfish Bourbon kings; to those times when the
peasants were robbed and slaughtered by their own lords and princes,
like sheep; when the lord claimed the firstfruits of the peasant's
marriage-bed; when the captured city was given up to merciless rape
and massacre; when the State-prisons groaned with innocent victims,
and the Church blessed the banners of pitiless murderers, and sang
Te Deums for the crowning mercy of the Eve of St. Bartholomew.
We might turn over the pages, to a later chapter,--that of the
reign of the Fifteenth Louis, when young girls, hardly more than
children, were kidnapped to serve his lusts; when lettres de cachet
filled the Bastile with persons accused of no crime, with husbands
who were in the way of the pleasures of lascivious wives and of
villains wearing orders of nobility; when the people were ground
between the upper and the nether millstone of taxes, customs, and
excises; and when the Pope's Nuncio and the Cardinal de la
Roche-Ayman, devoutly kneeling, one on each side of Madame du Barry,
the king's abandoned prostitute, put the slippers on her naked feet,
as she rose from the adulterous bed. Then, indeed, suffering and
toil were the two forms of man, and the people were but beasts of
burden.
The true Mason is he who labors strenuously to help his Order
effect its great purposes. Not that the Order can effect them by
itself; but that it, too, can help. It also is one of God's
instruments. It is a Force and a Power; and shame upon it, if it did
not exert itself, and, if need be, sacrihce its children in the
cause of humanity, as Abraham was ready to offer up Isaac on the
altar of sacrifice. It will not forget that noble allegory of
Curtius leaping, all in armor, into the great yawning gulf that
opened to swallow Rome. It will TRY. It shall not be its fault if
the day never comes when man will no longer have to fear a conquest,
an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand,
an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage-royal, or a
birth in the hereditary tyrannies; a partition of the peoples by a
Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty, a combat of
two religions, meeting head to head, like two goats of darkness on
the bridge of the Infinite: when they will no longer have to fear
famine, spoliation, prostitution from distress, misery from lack of
work, and all the brigandages of chance in the forest of events:
when nations will gravitate about the Truth, like stars about the
light, each in its own orbit, without clashing or collision; and
everywhere Freedom, cinctured with stars, crowned with the celestial
splendors, and with wisdom and justice on either hand, will reign
supreme.
In your studies as a Fellow-Craft you must be guided by REASON,
LOVE and FAITH.
We do not now discuss the differences between Reason and Faith,
and undertake to define the domain of each. But it is necessary to
say, that even in the ordinary affairs of life we are governed far
more by what we believe than by what we know; by FAITH and ANALOGY,
than by REASON. The "Age of Reason" of the French Revolution taught,
we know, what a folly it is to enthrone Reason by itself as supreme.
Reason is at fault when it deals with the Infinite. There we must
revere and believe. Notwithstanding the calamities of the virtuous,
the miseries of the deserving, the prosperity of tyrants and the
murder of martyrs, we must believe there is a wise, just, merciful,
and loving God, an Intelligence and a Providence, supreme over all,
and caring for the minutest things and events. A Faith is a
necessity to man. Woe to him who believes nothing!
We believe that the soul of another is of a certain nature and
possesses certain qualities, that he is generous and honest, or
penurious and knavish, that she is virtuous and amiable, or vicious
and ill-tempered, from the countenance alone, from little more than
a glimpse of it, without the means of knowing. We venture our
fortune on the signature of a man on the other side of the world,
whom we never saw, upon the belief that he is honest and
trustworthy. We believe that occurrences have taken place, upon the
assertion of others. We believe that one will acts upon another, and
in the reality of a multitude of other phenomena that Reason cannot
explain.
But we ought not to believe what Reason authoritatively denies,
that at which the sense of right revolts, that which is absurd or
self-contradictory, or at issue with experience or science, or that
which degrades the character of the Deity, and would make Him
revengeful, malignant, cruel, or unjust.
A man's Faith is as much his own as his Reason is. His Freedom
consists as much in his faith being free as in his will being
uncontrolled by power. All the Priests and Augurs of Rome or Greece
had not the right to require Cicero or Socrates to believe in the
absurd mythology of the vulgar. All the Imaums of Mohammedanism have
not the right to require a Pagan to believe that Gabriel dictated
the Koran to the Prophet. All the Brahmins that ever lived, if
assembled in one conclave like the Cardinals, could not gain a right
to compel a single human being to believe in the Hindu Cosmogony. No
man or body of men can be infallible, and authorized to decide what
other men shall believe, as to any tenet of faith. Except to those
who first receive it, every religion and the truth of all inspired
writings depend on human testimony and internal evidences, to be
judged of by Reason and the wise analogies of Faith. Each man must
necessarily have the right to judge of their truth for himself;
because no one man can have any higher or better right to judge than
another of equal information and intelligence.
Domitian claimed to be the Lord God; and statues and images of
him, in silver and gold, were found throughout the known world. He
claimed to be regarded as the God of all men; and, according to
Suetonius, began his letters thus: "Our Lord and God commands that
it should be done so and so;" and formally decreed that no one
should address him otherwise, either in writing or by word of mouth.
Palfurius Sura, the philosopher, who was his chief delator, accusing
those who refused to recognize his divinity, however much he may
have believed in that divinity, had not the right to demand that a
single Christian in Rome or the provinces should do the same.
Reason is far from being the only guide, in morals or in
political science. Love or loving-kindness must keep it company, to
exclude fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution, to all of which a
morality too ascetic, and extreme political principles, invariably
lead. We must also have faith in ourselves, and in our fellows and
the people, or we shall be easily discouraged by reverses, and our
ardor cooled by obstacles. We must not listen to Reason alone. Force
comes more from Faitll and Love: and it is by the aid of these that
man scales the loftiest heights of morality, or becomes the Saviour
and Redeemer of a People. Reason must hold the helm; but these
supply the motive power. They are the wings of the soul. Enthusiasm
is generally unreasoning; and without it, and Love and Faith, there
would have been no RIENZI, or TELL, or SYDNEY, or any other of the
great patriots whose names are immortal. If the Deity had been
merely and only All-wise and All-mighty, He would never have created
the Universe.
* * * * * *
It is GENIUS that gets Power; and its prime lieutenants are FORCE
and WISDOM. The unruliest of men bend before the leader that has the
sense to see and the will to do. It is Genius that rules with
God-like Power; that unveils, with its counsellors, the hidden human
mysteries, cuts asunder with its word the huge knots, and builds up
with its word the crumbled ruins. At its glance fall down the
senseless idols, whose altars have been on all the high places and
in all the sacred groves. Dishonesty and imbecility stand abashed
before it. Its single Yea or Nay revokes the wrongs of ages, and is
heard among the future generations. Its power is immense, because
its wisdom is immense. Genius is the Sun of the political sphere.
Force and Wisdom, its ministers, are the orbs that carry its light
into darkness, and answer it with their solid reflecting Truth.
Development is symbolized by the use of the Mallet and Chisel;
the development of the energies and intellect, of the individual and
the people. Genius may place itself at the head of an
unintellectual, uneducated, unenergetic nation; but in a free
country, to cultivate the intellect of those who elect, is the only
mode of securing intellect and genius for rulers. The world is
seldom ruled by the great spirits, except after dissolution and new
birth. In periods of transition and convulsion, the Long
Parliaments, the Robespierres and Marats, and the
semi-respectabilities of intellect, too often hold the reins of
power. The Cromwells and Napoleons come later. After Marius and
Sulla and Cicero the rhetorician, CAESAR. The great intellect is
often too sharp for the granite of this life. Legislators may be
very ordinary men; for legislation is very ordinary work; it is but
the final issue of a million minds.
The power of the purse or the sword, compared to that of the
spirit, is poor and contemptible. As to lands, you may have agrarian
laws, and equal partition. But a man's intellect is all his own,
held direct from God, an inalienable fief. It is the most potent of
weapons in the hands of a paladin. If the people comprehend Force in
the physical sense, how much more do tlley revelence the
intellectual! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola. They fall
prostrate before it, as before an idol. The mastery of mind over
mind is the only conquest worth having. The other injures both, and
dissolves at a breath; rude as it is, the great cable falls down and
snaps at last. But this dimly resembles the dominion of the Creator.
It does not need a subject like that of Peter the Hermit. If the
stream be but bright and strong, it will sweep like a spring-tide to
the popular heart. Not in word only, but in intellectual act lies
the fascination. It is the homage to the Invisible. This power,
knotted with Love, is the golden chain let down into the well of
Truth, or the invisible chain that binds the ranks of mankind
together.
Influence of man over man is a law of nature, whether it be by a
great estate in land or in intellect. It may mean slavery, a
deference to the eminent human judgment. Society hangs spiritually
together, like the revoiving spheres above. The free country, in
which intellect and genius govern, will endure. Where they serve,
and other influences govern, the national life is short. All the
nations that have tried to govern themselves by their smallest, by
the incapables, or merely respectables, have come to nought.
Constitutions and Laws, without Genius and Intellect to govern, will
not prevent decay. In that case they have the dry-rot and the life
dies out of them by degrees.
To give a nation the franchise of the Intellect is the only sure
mode of perpetuating freedom. This will compel exertion and generous
care for the people from those on the higher seats, and honorable
and intelligent allegiance from those below. Then political public
life will protect all men from self-abasement in sensual pursuits,
from vulgar acts and low greed, by giving the noble ambition of just
imperial rule. To elevate the people by teaching loving-kindness and
wisdom, with power to him who teaches best: and so to develop the
free State from the rough ashlar:-- this is the great labor in which
Masonry desires to lend a helping hand.
All of us should labor in building up the great monument of a
nation, the Holy House of the Temple. The cardinal virtues must not
be partitioned among men, becoming the exclusive property of some,
like the common crafts. ALL are apprenticed to the partners, Duty
and Honor.
Masonry is a march and a struggle toward the Light. For the
individual as well as the nation, Light is Virtue, Manliness,
Intelligence, Liberty. Tyranny over the soul or body, is darkness.
The freest people, like the freest man, is always in danger of
relapsing into servitude. Wars are almost always fatal to Republics.
They create tyrants, and consolidate their power. They spring, for
the most part, from evil counsels. When the small and the base are
intrusted with power, legislation and administration become but two
parallel series of errors and blunders, ending in war, calamity, and
the necessity for a tyrant. When the nation feels its feet sliding
backward, as if it walked on the ice, the time has come for a
supreme effort. The magnificent tyrants of the past are but the
types of those of the future. Men and nations will always sell
themselves into slavery, to gratify their passions and obtain
revenge. The tyrant's plea, necessity, is always available; and the
tyrant once in power, the necessity of providing for his safety
makes him savage. Religion is a power, and he must control that.
Independent, its sanctuaries might rebel. Then it becomes unlawful
for the people to worship God in their own way, and the old
spiritual despotisms revive. Men must believe as Power wills, or
die; and even if they may believe as they will, all they have,
lands, houses, body, and soul, are stamped with the royal brand. "I
am the State," said Louis the Fourteenth to his peasants; "the very
shirts on your backs are mine, and I can take them if I will."
And dynasties so established endure, like that of the Caesars of
Rome, of the Caesars of Constantinople, of the Caliphs, the Stuarts,
the Spaniards, the Goths, the Valois, until the race wears out, and
ends with lunatics and idiots, who still rule. There is no concord
among men, to end the horrible bondage. The State falls inwardly, as
well as by the outward blows of the incoherent elements. The furious
human passions, the sleeping human indolence, the stolid human
ignorance, the rivalry of human castes, are as good for the kirlgs
as the swords of the Paladins. The worshippers have all bowed so
long to the old idol, that they cannot go into the streets and
choose another Grand Llama. And so the effete State floats on down
the puddled stream of Time, until the tempest or the tidal sea
discovers that the worm has consumed its strength, and it crumbles
into oblivion.
* * * * * *
Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand; and Persecution
matures them both. A people content with the thoughts made for them
by the priests of a church will be content with Royalty by Divine
Right,-- the Church and the Throne mutually sustaining each other.
They will smother schism and reap infidelity and indifference; and
while the battle for freedom goes on around them, they will only
sink the more apathetically into servitude and a deep trance,
perhaps occasionally interrupted by furious fits of frenzy, followed
by helpless exhaustion.
Despotism is not dimcult in any land that has only known one
master from its childhood; but there is no harder problem than to
perfect and perpetuate free government by the people themselves; for
it is not one king that is needed: all must be kings. It is easy to
set up Masaniello, that in a few days he may fall lower than before.
But free govermnent grows slowly, like the individual human
faculties; and like the forest-trees, from the inner heart outward.
Liberty is not only the common birth-right, but it is lost as well
by non-user as by mis-user. It depends far more on the universal
effort than any other human property. It has no single shrine or
holy well of pilgrimage for the nation; for its waters should burst
out freely from the whole soil.
The free popular power is one that is only known in its strength
in the hour of adversity: for all its trials, sacrifices and
expectations are its own. It is trained to think for itself, and
also to act for itself. When the enslaved people prostrate
themselves in the dust before the hurricane, like the alarmed beasts
of the field, the free people stand erect before it, in all the
strength of unity, in self-reliance, in mutual reliance, with
effrontery against all but the visible hand of God. It is neither
cast down by calamity nor elated by success.
This vast power of endurance, of forbearance, of patience, and of
performance, is only acquired by continual exercise of all the
functions, like the healthful physical human vigor, like the
individual moral vigor.
And the maxim is no less true than old, that eternal vigilance is
the price of liberty. It is curious to observe the universal pretext
by which the tyrants of all times take away the national liberties.
It is stated in the statutes of Edward II., that the justices and
the sheriff should no longer be elected by the people, on account of
the riots and dissensions which had arisen. The same reason was
given long before for the suppression of popular election of the
bishops; and there is a witness to this untruth in the yet older
times, when Rome lost her freedom, and her indignant citizens
declared that tumultuous liberty is better than disgraceful
tranquillity.
* * * * * *
With the Compasses and Scale, we can trace all the figures used
in the mathematics of planes, or in what are called GEOMETRY and
TRIGONOMETRY, two words that are themselves deficient in meaning.
GEOMETRY, which the letter G. in most Lodges is said to signify,
means measurement of land or the earth--or Surveying; and
TRIGONOMETRY, the measurement of triangles, or figures with three
sides or angles. The latter is by far the most appropriate name for
the science intended to be expressed by the word "Geometry." Neither
is of a meaning sufficiently wide: for although the vast surveys of
great spaces of the earth's surface, and of coasts, by which
shipwreck and calamity to mariners are avoided, are effected by
means of triangulation;--though it was by the same method that the
French astronomers measured a degree of latitude and so established
a scale of measures on an immutable basis; though it is by means of
the immense triangle that has for its base a line drawn in
imagination between the place of the earth now and its place six
months hence in space, and for its apex a planet or star, that the
distance of Jupiter or Sirius from the earth is ascertained; and
though there is a triangle still more vast, its base extending
either way from us, with and past the horizon into immensity, and
its apex infinitely distant above us; to which corresponds a similar
infinite triangle below--what is above equalling what is below,
immensity equalling immensity; yet the Science of Numbers, to which
Pythagoras attached so much importance, and whose mysteries are
found everywhere in the ancient religions, and most of all in the
Kabalah and in the Bib]e, is not sufficiently expressed by either
the word "Geometry" or the word "Trigonometry." For that science
includes theseJ with Arithmetic, and also with Algebra, Logarithms,
the Integral and Differential Calculus; and by means of it are
worked out the great problems of Astronomy or the Laws of the
Stars.
* * * * * *
Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true,
in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all
temptations or menaces. Man is accountable for the uprightness of
his doctrine, but not for the rightness of it. Devout enthusiasm is
far easier than a good action. The end of thought is action; the
sole purpose of Religion is an Ethic. Theory, in political science,
is worthless, except for the purpose of being realized in
practice.
In every credo, religious or political as in the soul of man,
there are two regions, the Dialectic and the Ethic; and it is only
when the two are harmoniously blended, that a perfect discipline is
evolved. There are men who dialectically are Christians, as there
are a multitude who dialectically are Masons, and yet who are
ethically Infidels, as these are ethically of the Profane, in the
strictest sense:--intellectual believers, but practical atheists:--
men who will write you "Evidences," in perfect faith in their logic,
but cannot carry out the Christian or Masonic doctrine, owing to the
strength, or weakness, of the flesh. On the other hand, there are
many dialectical skeptics, but ethical believers, as there are many
Masons who have never undergone initiation; and as ethics are the
end and purpose of religion, so are ethical believers the most
worthy. He who does right is better than he who thinks right.
But you must not act upon the hypothesis that all men are
hypocrites, whose conduct does not square with their sentiments. No
vice is more rare, for no task is more difficult, than systematic
hypocrisy. When the Demagogue becomes a Usurper it does not follow
that he was all the time a hypocrite. Shallow men only so judge of
others.
The truth is, that creed has, in general, very little influence
on the conduct; in religion, on that of the individual; in politics,
on that of party. As a general thing, the Mahometan, in the Orient,
is far more honest and trustworthy than the Christian. A Gospel of
Love in the mouth, is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart. Men who
believe in eternal damnation and a literal sea of fire and
brimstone, incur the certainty of it, according to their creed, on
the slightest temptation of appetite or passion. Predestination
insists on the necessity of good works. In Masonry, at the least
flow of passion, one speaks ill of another behind his back; and so
far from the "Brotherhood" of Blue Masonry being real, and the
solemn pledges contained in the use of the word "Brother" being
complied with, extraordinary pains are taken to show that.Masonry is
a sort of abstraction, which scorns to interfere in worldly matters.
The rule may be regarded as universal, that, where there is a choice
to be made, a Mason will give his vote and influence, in politics
and business, to the less qualified profane in preference to the
better qualified Mason. One will take an oath to oppose any unlawful
usurpation of power, and then become the ready and even eager
instrument of a usurper. Another will call one "Brother," and then
play toward him the part of Judas Iscariot, or strike him, as Joab
did Abner, under the fifth rib, with a lie whose authorship is not
to be traced. Masonry does not change human nature, and cannot make
honest men out of born knaves.
While you are still engaged in preparation, and in accumulating
principles for future use, do not forget the words of the Apostle
James: "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is
like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, for he
beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what
ma1lner of man he was; but whoso looketh into the perfect law of
liberty, and continueth, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer
of the work, this man shall be blessed in his work. If any man among
you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth
his own heart, this man's religion is vain.... Faith, if it hath not
works, is dead, being an abstraction. A man is justified by works,
and not by faith only.... The devils believe,--and tremble.... As
the body without the heart is dead, so is faith without works."
* * * * * *
In political science, also, free governments are erected and free
constitutions framed, upon some simple and intelligible theory. Upon
whatever theory they are based, no sound conclusion is to be reached
except by carrying the theory out without flinching, both in
argumcnt on constitutional qucstions and in practice. Shrink from
the true theory through timidity, or wander from it througll want of
the logical faculty, or transgress against it througll passion or on
the plea of necessity or expediency, and you have denial or invasion
of rights, laws that offend against first principles, usurpation of
illegal powers, or abnegation and abdication of legitimate
authority.
Do not forget, either, that as the showy, superficial, impudent
and self-conceited will almost always be preferred, even in utmost
stress of danger and calamity of the State, to the man of solid
learning, large intellect, and catholic sympathies, because he is
nearer the common popular and legislative level, so the highest
truth is not acceptable to the mass of mankind.
When SOLON was asked if he had given his countrymen the best
laws, he answered, "The best they are capable of receiving." This is
one of the profoundest utterances on record; and yet like all great
truths, so simple as to be rarely comprehended. It contains the
whole philosophy of History. It utters a truth which, had it been
recognized, would have saved men an immensity of vain, idle
disputes, and have led them into the clearer paths of knowledge in
the Past. It means this,--that all truths are Truths of Period, and
not truths for eternity; that whatever great fact has had strength
and vitality enough to make itself real, whether of religion,
morals, government, or of whatever else, and to find place in this
world, has been a truth for the time, and as good as men were
capable of receiving.
So, too, with great men. The intellect and capacity of a people
has a single measure,--that of the great men whom Providence gives
it, and whom it receives. There have always been men too great for
their time or their people. Every people makes such men only its
idols, as it is capable of comprehending.
To impose ideal truth or law upon an incapable and merely real
man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of sympathy
govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put at the head.
We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep insist on in a
leader. With men who are too high intellectually, the mass have as
little sympathy as they have with the stars. When BURKE, the wisest
statesman England ever had, rose to speak, the House of Commons was
depopulated as upon an agreed signal. There is as little sympathy
between the mass and the highest TRUTHS. The highest truth, being
incomprehensible to the man of realities, as the highest man is, and
largely above his level, will be a great unreality and falsehood to
an unintellectual man. The profoundest doctrines of Christianity and
Philosophy would be mere jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian.
The popular explanations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for
the multitude that have swarmed into the Temples,--being fully up to
the level of their capacity. Catholicism was a vital truth in its
earliest ages, but it became obsolete, and Protestantism arose,
flourished, and deteriorated. The doctrines of ZOROASTER were the
best which the ancient Persians were fitted to receive; those of
CONFUCIUS were fitted for the Chinese; those of MOHAMMED for the
idolatrous Arabs of his age. Each was Truth for the time. Each was a
GOSPEL, preached by a REFORMER; and if any men are so little
fortunate as to remain content therewith, when others have attained
a higher truth, it is their misfortune and not their fault. They are
to be pitied for it, and not persecuted.
Do not expect easily to convince men of the truth, or to lead
them to think aright. The subtle human intellect can weave its mists
over even the clearest vision. Remember that it is eccentric enough
to ask unanimity from a jury; but to ask it from any large number of
men on any point of political faith is amazing. You can hardly get
two men in any Congress or Convention to agree;--nay, you can rarely
get one to agree with himself. The political church which chances to
be supreme anywhere has an indefinite number of tongues. How then
can we expect men to agree as to matters beyond the cognizance of
the senses? How can we compass the Infinitc and the Invisible with
any chain of evidence? Ask the small sea-waves what they murmur
among the pebbles ! How many of those words that come from the
invisible shore are lost, like the birds, in the long passage ? How
vainly do we strain the eyes across the long Infinite ! We must be
content, as the children are, with the pebbles that have been
stranded, since it is forbidden us to explore the hidden depths.
The Fellow-Craft is especially taught by this not to become wise
in his own conceit. Pride in unsound theories is worse than
ignorancc. Humility becomes a Mason. Take some quiet, sober moment
of life, and add together the two ideas of Pride and Man; behold
him, creature of a span, stalking through infinite space in all the
grandeur of littleness ! Perched on a speck of the Universe, every
wind of Heaven strikes into his blood the coldness of death; his
soul floats avvay from his body like the melody from the string. Day
and night, like dust on the wheel, he is rolled along the heavens,
through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the creations of God are
flanling on every side, further than even his imagination can reach.
Is this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, to deny his
own flesh, to mock at his fellow, sprung with him from that dust to
which both will soon return? Does the proud man not err? Does he not
suffer? Does he not die? When he reasons, is he never stopped short
by difficulties ? When he acts, does he never succumb to the
temptations of pleasure? When he lives, is he free from pain? Do the
diseases not claim him as their prey? When he dies, can he escape
the common grave ? Pride is not the heritage of man. Humility should
dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error and
imperfection.
Neither should the Mason be over-anxious for office and honor,
however certainly he rmay feel that he has the capacity to serve the
State. He should neither seek nor spurn honors. It is good to enjoy
the blessings of fortune; it is better to submit without a pang to
their loss. The greatest deeds are not done in the glare of light,
and before the eyes of the populace. He whom God has gifted with a
love of retirement possesses, as it were, an additional sense; and
among the vast and noble scenes of nature, w e find the balm for the
wounds we have received among the pitiful shifts of policy; for the
attachment to solitude is the surest preservative from the ills of
life.
But Resignation is the more noble in proportion as it is the less
passive. Retirement is only a morbid selfishness, if it prohibit
exertions for others; as it is only dignified and noble, when it is
the shade whence the oracles issue that are to instruct mankind; and
retirement of this nature is the sole seclusion which a good and
wise man will covet or command. The very philosophy which makes such
a man covet the quiet, will make him eschew the inutility of the
hermitage. Very little praiseworthy would LORD BOLINGBROKE have
seemed among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among haymakers and
ploughmen he had looked with an indifferent eye upon a profligate
minister and a venal Parliament. Very little interest would have
attached to his beans and vetches, if beans and vetches had caused
him to forget that if he vvas happier on a fann he could be more
useful in a Senate, and made him forego, in the sphere of a bailiff,
all care for re-entering that of a legislator.
Remember, also, that therc is an education which quickens the
Intellect, and leaves the heart hollower or harder than before.
There are ethical lessons in the laws of the heavenly bodies, in the
properties of earthly elements, in geography, chemistry, geology,
and all the material sciences. Things are symbols of Truths.
Properties are symbols of Truths. Science, not teaching moral and
spiritual truths, is dead and dry, of little more real value than to
commit to the menlory a long row of unconnected dates, or of the
names of bugs or butterflies.
Christianity, it is said, begins from the burning of the false
gods by the people themselves. Education begins with the burning of
our intellectual and moral idols: our prejudices, notions, conceits,
our worth]ess or ignoble purposes. Especially it is necessary to
shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the longing
for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever falling, rising,
running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and the abject dread
of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble brow. The gambler grows
old as he watches the chances. Lawful hazard drives Youth away
before its time; and this Youth draws heavy bills of exchange on
Age. Men live, like the engines, at high pressure, a hundred years
in a hundred months; the ledger becomes the Bible, and the day-book
the Book of the Morning Prayer.
Hence flow overreachings and sharp practice, heartless traffic in
which the capitalist buys profit with the lives of the laborers,
speculations that coin a nation's agonies into wealth, and all the
other devilish cnginery of Mammon. This, and greed for office, are
the two columns at the entrance to the Temple of Moloch. It is
doubtful whether the latter, blossoming in falsehood, trickery, and
fraud, is not even more pernicious than the former. At all events
they are twins, and fitly mated; and as either gains control of the
unfortunate subject, his soul withers away and decays, and at last
dies out. The souls of half the human race leave them long before
they die. The two greeds are twin plagues of the leprosy, and make
the man unclean; and whenever they break out they spread until "they
cover all the skin of him that hath the plague, from his head even
to his foot." Even the raw flesh of the heart becomes unclean with
it.
Alexander of Macedon has left a saying behind him which has
survived his conquests: "Nothing is nobler than work." Work only can
keep even kings respectable. And when a king is a king indeed, it is
an honorable office to give tone to the manners and morals of a
nation; to set the example of virtuous conduct, and restore in
spirit the old schools of chivalry, in which the young manhood may
be nurtured to real greatness. Work and wages will go together in
men's minds, in the most royal institutions. We must ever come to
the idea of real work. The rest that follows labor should be sweeter
than the rest which follows rest.
Let no Fellow-Craft imagine that the work of the lowly and
uninfluential is not worth the doing. There is no legal limit to the
possible influences of a good deed or a wise word or a generous
effort. Nothing is really small. Whoever is open to the deep
penetration of nature knows this. Although, indeed, no absolute
satisfaction may be vouchsafed to philosophy, any more in
circumscribing the cause than in limiting the effect, the man of
thought and contemplation falls into unfathomable ecstacies in view
of all the decompositions of forces resulting in unity. All works
for all. Destruction is not annihilation, but regeneration.
Algebra applies to the clouds; the radiance of the star benefits
the rose; no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the
hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate
the path of the molecule? How do we know that the creations of
worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand ? Who, then,
understands the reciprocal flow and ebb of the inrlnitely great and
the infinitely small; the echoing of causes in the abysses of
beginning, and the avalanches of creation? A fleshworm is of
account; the small is great; the great is small; all is in
equilibrium in necessity. There are marvellous relations between
beings and things; in this inexhaustible Whole, from sun to grub,
there is no scorn: all need each other. Light does not carry
terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what it
does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the
sleeping plants. Every bird which flies has the thread of the
Infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor,
and the tap of a swallow's bill, breaking the egg; and it leads
forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of a Socrates.
Where the telescope ends the microscope begins. Which of them the
grander view ? A bit of mould is a Pleiad of flowers --a nebula is
an ant-hill of stars.
There is the same and a still more wonderful interpenetration
between the things of the intellect and the things of matter.
Elements and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied
one by another to such a degree as to bring the material world and
the moral world into the same light. Phenomena are perpetually
folded back upon themselves. In the vast cosmical changes the
universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, enveloping all
in the invisible mystery of the emanations, losing no dream from no
single sleep, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there,
oscillating and winding in curves; making a force of Light, and an
element of Thought; disseminated and indivisible, dissolving all
save that point without length, breadth, or thickness, The MYSEF;
reducing everything to the Soul-atom ; making everything blossom
into God; entangling all activities, from the higllest to the
lowest, in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism; hanging the flight
of an insect upon the movement of the earth; subordinating, perhaps,
if only by the identity of the law, the eccentric evolutions of the
comet in the firmament, to the whirlings of the infusoria in the
drop of water. A mechanism made of mind, the first motor of which is
the gnat, and its last wheel the zodiac.
A peasant-boy, guiding Blucher by the right one of two roads, the
other being impassable for artillery, enables him to reach Waterloo
in time to save Wellington from a defeat that would have been a
rout; and so enables the kings to imprison Napoleon on a barren rock
in mid-ocean. An unfaithful smith, by the slovenly shoeing of a
horse, causes his lameness, and, he stumbling, the career of his
world-conquering rider ends, and the destinies of empires are
changed. A generous officer permits an imprisoned monarch to end his
game of chess before leading him to the block; and meanwhile the
usurper dies, and the prisoner reascends the throne. An unskillful
workman repairs the compass, or malice or stupidity disarranges it,
the ship mistakes her course, the waves swallow a Caesar, and a new
chapter is written in the history of a world. What we call accident
is but the adamantine chain of indissoluble connection between all
created things. The locust, hatched in the Arabian sands, the small
worm that destroys the cotton-boll, one making famine in the Orient,
the other closing the mills and starving the vvorkmen and their
children in the Occident, with riots and massacres, are as much the
ministers of God as the earthquake; and the fate of nations depends
more on them than on the intellect of its kings and legislators. A
civil war in America will end in shaking the world; and that war may
be caused by the vote of some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed
fanatic in a city or in a Congress, or of some stupid boor in an
obscure country parish. The electricity of universal sympathy, of
action and reaction, pervades everything, the planets and the motes
in the sunbeam. FAUST, with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons,
worked greater results than Alexander or Hannibal. A single thought
sometimes suffices to overturn a dynasty. A silly song did more to
unseat James the Second than the acquittal of the Bishops. Voltaire,
Condorcet, and Rousseau uttered words that will ring, in change and
revolutions, throughout all the ages.
Remember, that though life is short, Thought and the influences
of what we do or say are immortal; and that no calculus has yet
pretended to ascertain the law of proportion between cause and
effect. The hammer of an English blacksmith, smiting down an
insolent official, led to a rebellion which came near being a
revolution. The word well spoken, the deed fitly done, even by the
feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have their effect. More or
less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. The echoes of the
greatest deeds may die away like the echoes of a cry among the
cliffs, and what has been done seem to the human judgment to have
been without result. The unconsidered act of the poorest of men may
fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and an empire be
rent by the explosion.
The power of a free people is often at the disposal of a single
and seemingly an unimportant individual;--a terrible and truthful
power; for such a people feel with one heart, and therefore can lift
up their myriad arms for a single blow. And, again, there is no
graduated scale for the measurement of the influences of different
intellects upon the popular mind. Peter the Hermit held no office,
yet what a work he wrought !
* * * * * *
From the political point of view there is but a single
principle,-- the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty
of one's self over one's self is called LIBERTY. Where two or
several of these sovereignties associate, the State begins. But in
this association there is no abdication. Each sovereignty parts with
a certain portion of itself to form the common right. That portion
is the same for all. There is equal contribution by all to the joint
sovereignty. This identity of concession which each makes to all, is
EQUALITY. The common right is nothing more or less than the
protection of all, pouring its rays on each. This protection of each
by all, is FRATERNITY.
Liberty is the summit, Equality the base. Equality is not all
vegetation on a level, a society of big spears of grass and stunted
oaks, a neighborhood of jealousies, emasculatillg each other. It is,
civilly, all aptitudes having equal opportunity; politically, all
votes having equal weight; religiously, all consciences having equal
rights.
Equality has an organ;--gratuitous and obligatory instruction. We
must begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary school
obligatory upon all; the higher school offered to all. Such is the
law. From the same school for all springs equal society. Instruction
! Light ! all comes from Light, and all returns to it.
We must learn the thoughts of the common people, if we would be
wise and do any good work. We must look at men, not so much for what
Fortune has given to them with her blind old eyes, as for the gifts
Nature has brought in her lap, and for the use that has been made of
them. We profess to be equal in a Church and in the Lodge: we shall
be equal in the sight of God when He judges the earth. We may well
sit on the pavement together here, in communion and conference, for
the few brief moments that constitute life.
A Democratic Government undoubtedly has its defects, because it
is made and administered by men, and not by the Wise Gods. It cannot
be concise and sharp, like the despotic. When its ire is aroused it
develops its latent strength, and the sturdiest rebel trembles. But
its habitual domestic rule is tolerant, patient, and indecisive. Men
are brought together, first to differ, and then to agree.
Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution: these are the means of
attaining truth. Often the enemy will be at the gates before the
babble of the disturbers is drowned in the chorus of consent. In the
Legislative office deliberation will often defeat decision. Liberty
can play the fool like the Tyrants
Refined society requires greater minuteness of regulation; and
the steps of all advancing States are more and more to be picked
among the old rubbish and the new matcrials. The difficulty lies in
discovering the right path through the chaos of confusion. The
adjustment of mutual rights and wrongs is also more difficult in
democracies. We do not see and estimate the relative importance of
objects so easily and clearly from the level or the waving iand as
from the elevation of a lone peak, towering above the plain; for
each looks through his own mist.
Abject dependence on constituents, also, is too common. It is as
miserable a thing as abject dependence on a minister or the favorite
of a Tyrant. It is rare to find a man who can speak out the simple
truth that is in him, honestly and frankly, without fear, favor, or
affection, either to Emperor or People.
Moreover, in assemblies of men, faith in each other is almost
always wanting, unless a terrible pressure of calamity or danger
from without produces cohesion. Hence the constructive power of such
assemblies is generally deficient. The chief triumphs of modern
days, in Europe, have been in pulling down and obliterating; not in
building up. But Repeal is not Reform. Time must bring with him the
Restorer and Rebuilder.
Speech, also, is grossly abused in Republics; and if the use of
speech be glorious, its abuse is the most villainous of vices.
Rhetoric, Plato says, is the art of ruling the minds of men. But in
democracies it is too common to hide thought in words,to overlay it,
to babble nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual
soap-and-water bubbles are mistaken for the rainbow-glories of
genius. The worthless pyrites is continually mistaken for gold. Even
intellect condescends to intellectual jugglery, balancing thoughts
as a juggler balances pipes on his chin. In all Congresses we have
the inexhaustible flow of babble, and Faction's clamorous knavery in
discussion, until the divine power of speech, that privilege of man
and great gift of God, is no better than the screech of parrots or
the mimicry of monkeys. The mere talker, however fluent, is barren
of deeds in the day of trial.
There are men voluble as women, and as well skilled in fencing
with the tongue: prodigies of speech, misers in deeds. Too much
calking, like too much thinking, destroys the power of action. In
human nature, the thought is only made perfect by deed. Silence is
the mother of both. The trumpeter is not the bravest of the brave.
Steel and not brass wins the day. The great doer of great deeds is
mostly slow and slovenly of speech. There are some men born and brcd
to betray. Patriotism is their trade, and their capital is speech.
But no noble spirit can plead like Paul and be false to itself as
Judas.
Imposture too commonly rules in republics; they seem to be ever
in their minority; their guardians are self-appointed; and tlhe
unjust thrive better than the just. The Despot, like the night-lion
roaring, drowns all the clamor of tongues at once, and speech, the
birthright of the free man, becomes the bauble of the enslaved.
It is quite true that republics only occasionally, and as it were
accidentally, select their wisest, or even the less incapable among
the incapables, to govern them and legislate for them. If genius,
armed with learning and knowledge, will grasp the reins, the people
will reverence it; if it only modestly offers itself for office, it
will be smitten on the face, even when, in the straits of distress
and the agonies of calamity, it is indispensable to the salvation of
the State. Put it upon the track with the showy and superficial, the
conceited, the ignorant, and impudent, the trickster and charlatan,
and the result shall not be a moment doubtful. The verdicts of
Legislatures and the People are like the verdicts of
juries,--sometimes right by accident.
Offices, it is true, are showered, like the rains of Heaven, upon
the just and the unjust. The Roman Augurs that used to laugh in each
other's faces at the simplicity of the vulgar, were also tickled
with their own guile; but no Augur is needed to lead the people
astray. They readily deceive themselves. Let a Republic begin as it
may, it will not be out of its minority before imbecility will be
promoted to high places; and shallow pretence, getting itself puffed
into notice, will invade all the sanctuaries. The most unscrupulous
partisanship will prevail, even in respect to judicial trusts; and
the most unjust appointments constantly be made, although every
improper promotion not merely confers one undeserved favor, but may
make a hundred honest cheeks smart with injustice.
The country is stabbed in the front when those are brought into
the stalled seats who should slink into the dim gallery. Every stamp
of Honor, ill-clutched, is stolen from the Treasury of Merit.
Yet the entrance into the public service, and the promotion in
it, affect both the rights of individuals and those of the nation.
Injustice in bestowing or withholding office ought to be so
intolerable in democratic communities that the least trace of it
should be like the scent of Treason. It is not universally true that
all citizens of equal character have an equal claim to knock at the
door of every public office and demand admittance. When any man
presents himself for service he has a right to aspire to the highest
body at once, if he can show his fitness for such a beginning,--that
he is fitter than the rest who offer themselves for the same post.
The entry into it can only justly be made through the door of merit.
And whenever any one aspires to and attains such high post,
especially if by unfair and disreputable and indecent means, and is
afterward found to be a signal failure, he should at once be
beheaded. He is the worst among the public enemies.
When a man sumciently reveals himself, all others should be proud
to give him due precedence. When the power of promotion is abused in
the grand passages of life whether by People, Legislature, or
Executive, the unjust decision recoils on the judge at once. That is
not only a gross, but a willful shortness of sight, that cannot
discover the deserving. If one will look hard, long, and honestly,
he will not fail to discern merit, genius, and qualification; and
the eyes and voice of the Press and Public should condemn and
denounce injustice wherever she rears her horrid head.
"The tools to the workmen!" no other principle will save a
Republic from destruction, either by civil war or the dry-rot. They
tend to decay, do all we can to prevent it, like human bodies. If
they try the experiment of governing themselves by their smallest,
they slide downward to the unavoidable abyss with tenfold velocity;
and there never has been a Republic that has not followed that fatal
course.
But however palpable and gross the inherent defects of democratic
governments, and fatal as the results finally and inevitably are, we
need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula, of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla, of Domitian and Commodus, to recognize
that the difference between freedom and despotism is as wide as that
between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of
tyrants are incredible. Let him who complains of the fickle humors
and inconstancy of a free people, read Pliny's character of
Domitian. If the great man in a Republic cannot win omce without
descending to low arts and whining beggary and the judicious use of
sneaking lies, let him remain in retirement, and use the pen.
Tacitus and Juvenal held no office. Let History and Satire punish
the pretender as they crucify the despot. The revenges of the
intellect are terrible and just.
Let Masonry use the pen and the printing-press in the free State
against the Demagogue; in the Despotism against the Tyrant. History
offers examples and encouragement. All history, for four thousand
years, being filled with violated rights and the sufferings of the
people, each period of history brings with it such protest as is
possible to it. Under the Caesars there was no insurrection, but
there was a Juvenal. The arousing of indignation replaces the
Gracchi. Under the Caesars there is the exile of Syene; there is
also the author of the Annals. As the Neros reign darkly they should
be pictured so. Work with the graver only would be pale; into the
grooves should be poured a concentrated prose that bites.
Despots are an aid to thinkers. Speech enchained is speech
terrible. The writer doubles and triples his style, when silence is
imposed by a master upon the people. There springs from this silence
a certain mysterious fullness, which filters and freezes into brass
in the thoughts. Compression in the history produces conciseness in
the historian. The granitic solidity of some celebrated prose is
only a condensation produced by the Tyrant. Tyranny constrains the
writer to shortenings of diameter which are increases of strength.
The Ciceronian period, hardly sumcient upon Verres, would lose its
edge upon Caligula.
The Demagogue is the predecessor of the Despot. One springs from
the other's loins. He who will basely fawn on those who have office
to bestow, will betray like Iscariot, and prove a miserable and
pitiable failure. Let the new Junius lash such men as they deserve,
and History make them immortal in infamy; since their influences
culminate in ruin. The Republic that employs and honors the shallow,
the superficial, the base,
"who crouch
Unto the offal of an office promised,"
at last weeps tears of blood for its fatal error. Of such supreme
folly, the sure fruit is damnation. Let the nobility of every great
heart, condensed into justice and truth, strike such creatures like
a thunderbolt ! If you can do no more, you can at least condemn by
your vote, and ostracise by denunciation.
It is true that, as the Czars are absolute, they have it in their
power to select the best for the public service. It is true that the
beginner of a dynasty generally does so; and that when monarchies
are in their prime, pretence and shallowness do not thrive and
prosper and get power, as they do in Republics. All do not gabble in
the Parliament of a Kingdom, as in the Congress of a Democracy. The
incapables do not go undetected there, all their lives.
But dynasties speedily decay and run out. At last they dwindle
down into imbecility; and the dull or flippant Members of Congresses
are at least the intellectual peers of the vast majority of kings.
The great man, the Julius Caesar, the Charlemagne, Cromwell,
Napoleon, reigns of right. He is the wisest and the strongest. The
incapables and imbeciles succeed and are usurpers; and fear makes
them cruel. After Julius came Caracalla and Galba; after
Charlemagne, the lunatic Charles the Sixth. So the Saracenic dynasty
dwindled out; the Capets, the Stuarts, the Bourbc1ns; the last of
these producing Bomba, the ape of Domitian.
Man is by nature cruel, like the tigers. The barbarian, and the
tool of the tyrant, and the civilized fanatic, enjoy the sufferings
of others, as the children enjoy the contortions of maimed flies.
Absolute Power, once in fear for the safety of its tenure, cannot
but be cruel.
As to ability, dynasties invariably cease to possess any after a
few lives. They become mere shams, governed by ministers, favorites,
or courtesans, like those old Etruscan kings, slumbering for long
ages in their golden royal robes, dissolving forever at the first
breath of day. Let him who complains of the shortcomings of
democracy ask himself if he would prefer a Du Barry or a Pompadour,
governing in the name of a Louis the Fifteenth, a Caligula making
his horse a consul, a Domitian, "that most savage monster," who
sometimes drank the blood of relatives, sometimes employing himself
with slaughtering the most distinguished citizens before whose gates
fear and terror kept watch; a tyrant of frightful aspect, pride on
his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly seeking darkness and
secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to make solitude. After
all, in a free government, the Laws and the Constitution are above
the Incapables, the Courts correct their legislation, and posterity
is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on them. What is the
exclusion of worth and intellect and knowledge from civil office
compared with trials before Jeffries, tortures in the dark caverns
of the Inquisition, Alvabutcheries in the Netherlands, the Eve of
Saint Bartholomew, and the Sicilian Vespers?
* * * * * *
The Abbe Barruel in his Memoirs for the History of Jacobinism,
declares that Masonry in France gave, as its secret, the words
Equality and Liberty, leaving it for every honest and religious
Mason to explain them as would best suit his principles; but
retained the privilege of unveiling in the higher Degrees the
meaning of those words, as interpreted by the French Revolution. And
he also excepts English Masons from his anathemas, because in
England a Mason is a peaceable subject of the civil authorities, no
matter where he resides, engaging in no plots or conspiracies
against even the worst government. England, he says, disgusted with
an Equality and a Liberty, the consequences of which she had felt in
the struggles of her Lollards, Anabaptists, and Presbyterians, had
"purged her Masonry" from all explanations tending to overturn
empires; but there still remained adepts whom disorganizing
principles bound to the Ancient Mysteries.
Because true Masonry, unemasculated, bore the banners of Freedom
and Equal Rights, and was in rebellion against temporal and
spiritual tyranny, its Lodges were proscribed in 1735, by an edict
of the States of Holland. In 1737, Louis XV. forbade them in France.
In 1738, Pope Clement XII. issued against them his famous Bull of
Excommunication, which was renewed by Benedict XIV.; and in 1743 the
Council of Berne also proscribed them. The title of the Rull of
Clement is, "The Condemnation of the Society of Conventicles de
Liberi Muratori, or of the Freemasons, under the penalty of ipso
facto excommunication, the absolution from which is reserved to the
Pope alone, except at the point of death." And by it all bishops,
ordinaries, and inquisitors were empowered to punish Freemasons, "as
vehemently suspected of heresy," and to call in, if necessary, the
help of the secular arm; that is, to cause the civil authority to
put them to death.
* * * * * *
Also, false and slavish political theories end in brutalizing the
State. For example, adopt the theory that offices and employments in
it are to be given as rewards for services rendered to party, and
they soon become the prey and spoil of faction, the booty of the
victory of faction;--and leprosy is in the flesh of the State. The
body of the commonwealth becomes a mass of corruption, like a living
carcass rotten with syphilis. All unsound theories in the end
develop themselves in one foul and loathsome disease or other of the
body politic. The State, like the man, must use constant effort to
stay in the paths of virtue and manliness. The habit of
electioneering and begging for office culminates in bribery with
office, and corruption in office.
A chosen man has a visible trust from God, as plainly as if the
commission were engrossed by the notary. A nation cannot renounce
the executorship of the Divine decrees. As little can Masonry. It
must labor to do its duty knowingly and wisely. We must remember
that, in free States, as well as in despotisms, Injustice, the
spouse of Oppression, is the fruitful parent of Deceit, Distrust,
Hatred, Conspiracy, Treason, and Unfaithfulness. Even in assailing
Tyranny we must have Truth and Reason as our chief weapons. We must
march into that fight like the old Puritans, or into the battle with
the abuses that spring up in free government, with the flaming sword
in one hand, and the Oracles of God in the other.
The citizen who cannot accomplish well the smaller purposes of
public life, cannot compass the larger. The vast power of endurance,
forbearance, patience, and performance, of a free people, is
acquired only by continual exercise of all the functions, like the
healthful physical human vigor. If the individual citizens have it
not, the State must equally be without it. It is of the essence of a
free government, that the people should not only be concerned in
making the laws, but also in their execution. No man ought to be
more ready to obey and administer the law than he who has helped to
make it. The business of government is carried on for the benefit of
all, and every co-partner should give counsel and cooperation.
Remember also, as another shoal on which States are wrecked, that
free States always tend toward the depositing of the citizens in
strata, the creation of castes, the perpetuation of the jus divinurn
to office in families. The more democratic the State, the more sure
this result. For, as free States advance in power, there is a strong
tendency toward centralization, not from deliberate evil intention,
but from the course of events and the indolence of human nature. The
executive powers swell and enlarge to inordinate dimensions; and the
Executive is always aggressive with respect to the nation. Offices
of all kinds are multiplied to reward partisans; the brute force of
the sewerage and lower strata of the mob obtains large
representation, first in the lower offices, and at last in Senates;
and Bureaucracy raises its bald head, bristling with pens, girded
with spectacles, and bunched with ribbon. The art of Government
becomes like a Craft, and its guilds tend to become exclusive, as
those of the Middle Ages.
Political science may be much improved as a subject of
speculation; but it should never be divorced from the actual
national necessity. The science of governing men must always be
practical, rather than philosophical. There is not the same amount
of positive or universal truth here as in the abstract sciences;
what is true in one country may be very false in another; what is
untrue to-day may become true in another generation, and the truth
of to-day be reversed by the judgment of to-morrow. To distinguish
the casual from the enduring, to separate the unsuitable from the
suitable, and to make progress even possible, are the proper ends of
policy. But without actual knowledge and experience, and communion
of labor, the dreams of the political doctors may be no better than
those of the doctors of divinity. The reign of such a caste, with
its mysteries, its myrmidons, and its corrupting influence, may be
as fatal as that of the despots. Thirty tyrants are thirty times
worse than one.
Moreover, there is a strong temptation for the governing people
to become as much slothful and sluggards as the weakest of absolute
kings. Only give them the power to get rid, when caprice prompts
them, of the great and wise men, and elect the little, and as to all
the rest they will relapse into indolence and indifference. The
central power, creation of the people, organized and cunning if not
enlightened, is the perpetual tribunal set up by them for the
redress of wrong and the rule of justice. It soon supplies itself
with all the requisite machinery, and is ready and apt for all kinds
of interference. The people may be a child all its life. The central
power may not be able to suggest the best scientific solution of a
problem; but it has the easiest means of carrying an idea into
effect. If the purpose to be attained is a large one, it requires a
large comprehension; it is proper for the action of the central
power. If it be a small one, it may be thwarted by disagreement. The
central power must step in as an arbitrator and prevent this. The
people may be too averse to change, too slothful in their own
business, unjust to a minority or a majority. The central power must
take the reins when the people drop them.
France became centralized in its government more by the apathy
and ignorance of its people than by the tyranny of its kings. When
the inmost parish-life is given up to the direct guardianship of the
State, and the repair of the belfry of a country church requires a
written order from the central power, a people is in its dotage. Men
are thus nurtured in imbecility, from the dawn of social life. When
the central government feeds part of the people it prepares all to
be slaves. When it directs parish and county affairs, they are
slaves already. The next step is to regulate labor and its
wages.
Nevertheless, whatever follies the free people may commit, even
to the putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the
little competent and less honest, despair not of the final result.
The terrible teacher, EXPERIENCE, writing his lessons on hearts
desolated with calamity and wrung by agony, will make thelll wiser
in time. Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes will some
day cease to avail. Have FAITH, and struggle on, against all evil
influences and discouragements! FAITH is the Saviour and Redeemer of
nations. When Christianity had grown weak, profitless, and
powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast came, like a cleansing
hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about to be fought, the
Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at the head of
his clergy, witll trle Cross once so triumphant raised in the air,
came down to the gates of the city, and laid open before the army
the Testament of Christ. The Christian general, THOMAS, laid his
hand on the book, and said, "Oh God ! If our faith be true, aid us,
and deliver us not into the hands of its enemies!" But KHALED, "the
Sword of God," who had marched from victory to victory, exclaimed to
his wearied soldiers, "Let no man sleep! There will be rest enough
in the bowers of Paradise; sweet will be the repose never more to be
followed by labor." The faith of the Arab had become stronger than
that of the Christian, and he conquered.
The Sword is also, in the Bible, an emblem of SPEECH, or of the
utterance of thought. Thus, in that vision or apocalypse of the
sublime exile of Patmos, a protest in the name of the ideal,
overwhelming the real world, a tremendous satire uttered in the name
of Religion and Liberty, and with its fiery reverberations smiting
the throne of the Gesars, a sharp two-edged sword comes out of the
mouth of the Semblance of the Son of Man, encircled by the seven
golden candlesticks, and holding in his right hand seven stars. "The
Lord," says Isaiah, "hath made my mouth like a sharp sword." "I have
slain them," says Hosea, "by the words of my mouth." "The word of
God," says the writer of the apostolic letter to the Hebrews, "is
quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." "The sword of the
Spirit, which is the Word of God," says Paul, writing to the
Christians at Ephesus. "I will fight against them with the sword of
my mouth," it is said in the Apocalypse, to the angel of the church
at Pergamos.
* * * * * *
The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal
wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is
heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an
echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is nothing to
tlle living and coming generations of men. It was the written
hulllan speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought. It
is this that makes the whole human history but one individual
life.
To write on the rock is to write on a solid parchment; but it
requires a pilgrimage to see it. There is but one copy, and Time
wears even that. To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it
were, but one tardy edition, and the rich only could procure it. The
Chinese stereotyped not only the unchanging wisdom of oid sages, but
also the passing events. The process tended to suffocate thought,
and to hinder progress; for there is continual wandering in the
wisest minds, and Truth writes her last words, not on clean tablets,
but on the scrawl that Error has made and often mended.
Printing made the movable letters prolific. Thenceforth the
orator spoke almost visibly to listening nations; and the author
wrote, like the Pope, his cecumenic decreesJ urbi et orbi, and
ordered them to be posted up in all the market-places; remaining, if
he chose, impervious to human sight. The doom of tyrannies was
thenceforth sealed. Satire and invective became potent as armies.
The unseen hands of the Juniuses could launch the thunderbolts, and
make the ministers tremble. One whisper from this giant fills the
earth as easily as Demosthenes filled the Agora. It will soon be
heard at the antipodes as easily as in the next street. It travels
with the lightning under the oceans. It makes the mass one man,
speaks to it in the same comtnon language, and elicits a sure and
single response. Speech passes into thought, and thence promptly
into act. A nation becomes truly one, with one large heart and a
single throbbing pulse. Men are invisibly present to each other, as
if already spiritual beings; and the thinker who sits in an Alpine
solitude, unknown to or forgotten by all the world, among the silent
herds and hills, may flash his words to all tlle cities and over all
the seas.
Select the thinkers to be Legislators; and avoid the gabblers.
Wisdom is rarely loquacious. Weight and depth of thougbt are
unfavorable to volubility. The shallow and superficial are generally
voluble and often pass for eloquent. More words, less thought,--is
the general rule. The man who endeavors to say something worth
remembering in every sentence, becomes fastidious, and condenses
like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more diffuse stream. The
ornamentation that does not cover strength is the gewgaws of
babble.
Neither is dialectic subtlety valuable to public men. The
Christian faith has it, had it formerly more than now; a subtlety
that might have entangled Plato, and which has rivalled in a
fruitless fashion the mystic lore of Jewish Rabbis and Indian Sages.
It is not this which converts the heathen. It is a vain task to
balance the great thoughts of the earth, like hollow straws, on the
fingertips of disputation. It is not this kind of warfare whicll
makes the Cross triumphant in the hearts of the unbelievers; but the
actual power that lives in the Faith.
So there is a political scholasticism that is merely useless. The
dexterities of subtle logic rarely stir the hearts of the people, or
convince them. The true apostle of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality
makes it a matter of life and death. His combats are like those of
Bossuet,-- combats to the death. The true apostolic fire is like the
lightning: it flashes conviction into the soul. The true word is
verily a two-edged sword. Matters of government and political
science can be fairly dealt with only by sound reason, and the logic
of common sense: not the common sense of the ignorant, but of the
wise. The acutest thinkers rarely succeed in becoming leaders of
men. A watchword or a catchword is more potent with the people than
logic, especially if this be the least metaphysical. When a
political prophet arises, to stir the dreaming, stagnant nation, and
hold back its feet from the irretrievable descent, to heave the land
as with an earthquake, and shake the silly-shallow idols from their
seats, his words vvill come straight from God's own nlouth, and be
thundered into the conscience. He will reason, teach, warn, and
rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit" is keener than the brightest
blade of Damascus. Such men rule a land, in the strength of justice,
with wisdom and with power. Still, the men of dialectic subtlety
often rule well, because in practice they forget their finely-spun
theories, and use the trenchant logic of common sense. But when the
great heart and large intellect are left to the rust in private
life, and small attorneys, brawlers in politics, and those who in
the cities would be only the clerks of notaries, or practitioners in
the disreputable courts, are made national Legislators, the country
is in her dotage. even if the beard has not yet grown upon her
chin.
In a free country, human speech must needs be free; and the State
must listen to the maunderings of folly, and the screechings of its
geese, and the brayings of its asses, as well as to the golden
oracles of its wise and great men. Even the despotic old kings
allowed their wise fools to say what they liked. The true
alchelllist will extract the lessons of wisdom from the babblings of
folly. He will hear what a man has to say on any given subject, even
if the speaker end only in proving himself prince of fools. Even a
fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some truth in all men who
are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak other men's
thoughts. The finger even of the idiot may point to the great
highway.
A people, as well as the sages, must learn to forget. If it
neither learns the new nor forgets the old, it is fated, even if it
has been royal for thirty generations. To unlearn is to learn; and
also it is sometimes needful to learn again the forgotten. The
antics of fools make the current follies more palpable, as fashions
are shown to be absurd by caricatures, which so lead to their
extirpation. The buffoon and the zany are useful in their places.
The ingenious artificer and craftsman, like Solomon, searches the
earth for his materials, and transforms the misshapen matter into
glorious workmanship. The world is conquered by the head even more
than by the hands. Nor will any assembly talk forever. After a time,
when it has listened long enough, it quietly puts the silly, the
shallow, and the superficial to one side,--it thinks, and sets to
work.
The human thought, especially in popular assemblies, runs in the
most singularly crooked channels, harder to trace and follow than
the blind currents of the ocean. No notion is so absurd that it may
not find a place there. The master-workman must train these notions
and vagaries with his two-handed hammer. They twist out of the way
of the sword-thrusts; and are invulnerable all over, even in the
heel, against logic. The martel or mace, the battle-axe, the great
double-edged two-handed sword must deal with follies; the rapier is
no better against them than a wand, unless it be the rapier of
ridicule.
The SWORD is also the symbol of war and of the soldier. Wars,
like thunder-storms, are often necessary to purify the stagnant
atmosphere. War is not a demon, without remorse or reward. It
restores the brotherhood in letters of fire. When men are seated in
their pleasant places, sunken in ease and indolence, with Pretence
and Incapacity and Littleness usurping all the high places of State,
war is the baptism of blood and fire, by which alone they can be
renovated. It is the hurricane that brings the elemental
equilibrium, the concord of Power and Wisdom. So long as these
continue obstinately divorced, it will continue to chasten.
In the mutual appeal of nations to God, there is the
acknowledgment of His might. It lights the beacons of Faith and
Freedom, and heats the furnace through which the earnest and loyal
pass to immortal glory. There is in war the doom of defeat, the
quenchless sense of Duty, the stirring sense of Honor, the
measureless solemn sacrifice of devotedness, and the incense of
success. Even in the flame and smoke of battle, the Mason discovers
his brother, and fulfills the sacred obligations of Fraternity.
Two, or the Duad, is the symbol of Antagonism; of Good and Evil,
Light and Darkness. It is Cain and Abel, Eve and Lilith, Jachin and
Boaz, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon.
THREE, or the Triad, is most significantly expressed by the
equilateral and the right-angled triangles. There are three
principal colors or rays in the rainbow, which by intermixture make
seven. The three are the blue, the yelloW, and the red. The Trinity
of the Deity, in one mode or other, has been an article in all
creeds. He creates, preserves, and destroys. He is the generative
power, the productive capacity, and the result. The immaterial man,
according to the Kabalah, is composed of vitality, or life, the
breath of life; of soul or mind, and spirit. Salt, sulphur, and
mercury are the great symbols of the alchemists. To them man was
body, soul, and spirit.
FOUR is expressed by the square, or four-sided right-angled
figure. Out of the symbolic Garden of Eden flowed a river, dividing
into four streams,--PISON, which flows around the land of gold, or
light; GIHON, which flows around the land of Ethiopia or Darkness;
HIDDEKEL, running eastward to Assyria; and the EUPHRATES. Zechariah
saw four chariots coming out from between two mountains of bronze,
in the first of which were red horses; in the second, black; in the
third, white; and in the fourth, grizzled: "and these were the four
winds of the heavens, that go forth from standing before the Lord of
all the earth." Ezekiel saw the four living creatures, each with
four faces and four wings, the faces of a man and a lion, an ox and
an eagle; and the four wheels going upon their four sides; and Saint
John beheld the four beasts, full of eyes before and behind, the
LION, the young Ox, the MAN, and the flying EAGLE. Four was the
signature of the Earth. Therefore, in the 148th Psalm, of those who
must praise the Lord on the land, there are four times four, and
four in particular of living creatures. Visible nature is described
as the four quarters of the world, and the four corners of the
earth. "There are four," says the old Jewish saying, "which take the
first place in this world: man, among the creatures; the eagle among
birds; the ox among cattle; and the lion among wild beasts." Daniel
saw four great beasts come up from the sea.
FIVE is the Duad added to the Triad. It is expressed by the
five-pointed or blazing star, the mysterious Pentalpha of
Pythagoras. It is indissolubly connected with the number seven.
Christ fed His disciples and the multitude with five loaves and two
fishes, and of the fragments there remained twelve, that is, five
and seven, baskets full. Again He fed them with seven loaves and a
few little fishes, and there remained seven baskets full. The five
apparently small planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn,
with the two greater ones, the Sun and Moon, constituted the seven
celestial spheres.
SEVEN was the peculiarly sacred number. There were seven planets
and spheres presided over by seven archangels. There were seven
colors in the rainbow; and the Phoenician Deity was called the
HEPTAKIS or God of seven rays; seven days of the week; and seven and
five made the number of months, tribes, ancl apostles. Zechariah saw
a golden candlestick, with seven lamps and seven pipes to the lamps,
and an olive-tree on each side. Since he says, "the seven eyes of
the Lord shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of
Zerubbabel." John, in the Apocalypse, writes seven epistles to the
seven churches. In the seven epistles there are twelve promises.
What is said of the churches in praise or blame, is completed in the
number three. The refrain, "who has ears to hear," etc., has ten
words, divided by three and seven, and the seven by three and four;
and the seven epistles are also so divided. In the seals, trumpets,
and vials, also, of this symbolic vision, the seven are divided by
four and three. He who sends his message to Ephesus, "holds the
seven stars in his right hand, and walks amid the seven golden
lamps."
In six days, or periods, God created the Universe, and paused on
the seventh day. Of clean beasts, Noah was directed to take by
sevens into the ark; and of fowls by sevens; because in seven days
the rain was to commence. On the seventeenth day of the month. the
rain began; on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark
rested on Ararat. When the dove returned, Noah waited seven days
before he sent her forth again; and again seven, after she returned
with the olive-leaf. Enoch was the seventh patriarch, Adam included,
and Lamech lived 777 years.
There were seven lamps in the great candlestick of the Tabernacle
and Temple, representing the seven planets. Seven times Moses
sprinkled the anointing oil upon the altar. The days of consecration
of Aaron and his sons were seven in number. A woman was unclean
seven days after child-birth; one infected with leprosy was shut up
seven days; seven times the leper was sprinkled with the blood of a
slain bird; and seven days afterwards he must remain abroad out of
his tent. Seven times, in purifying the leper, the priest was to
sprinkle the consecrated oil; and seven times to sprinkle with the
blood of the sacrificed bird the house to be purified. Seven times
the blood of the slain bullock was sprinkled on the mercy-seat; and
seven times on the altar. The seventh year was a Sabbath of rest;
and at the end of seven times seven years came the great year of
jubilee. Seven days the people ate unleavened bread, in the month of
Abib. Seven weeks were counted from the time of first putting the
sickle to the wheat. The Feast of the Tabernacles lasted seven
days.
Israel was in the hand of Midian seven years before Gideon
delivered them. The bullock sacrificed by him was seven years old.
Samson told Delilah to bind him with seven green withes; and she
wove the seven locks of his head, and afterwards shaved them off.
Balaam told Barak to build for him seven altars. Jacob served seven
years for Leah and seven for Rachel. Job had seven sons and three
daughters, making the perfect number ten. He had also seven thousand
sheep and three thousand camels. His friends sat down with him seven
days and seven nights. His friends were ordered to sacrifice seven
bullocks and seven rams; and again, at the end, he had seven sons
and three daughters, and twice seven thousand sheep, and lived an
hundred and forty, or twice seven times ten years. Pharaoh saw in
his dream seven fat and seven lean kine, seven good ears and seven
blasted ears of wheat; and there were seven years of plenty, and
seven of famine. Jericho fell, when seven priests, with seven
trumpets, made the circuit of the city on seven successive days;
once each day for six days, and seven times on the seventh. "The
seven eyes of the Lord," says Zechariah, "run to and fro through the
whole earth." Solomon was seven years in building the Temple. Seven
angels, in the Apocalypse, pour out seven plagues, from seven vials
of wrath. The scarlet-colored beast, on which the woman sits in the
wilderness, has seven heads and ten horns. So also has the beast
that rises Up out of the sea. Seven thunders uttered their voices.
Seven angels sounded seven trumpets. Seven lamps of fire, the seven
spirits of God, burned before the throne; and the Lamb that was
slain had seven horns and seven eyes.
EIGHT is the first cube, that of two. NINE is the square of
three, and represented by the triple triangle.
TEN includes all the other numbers. It is especially seven and
three; and is called the number of perfection. Pythagoras
represented it by the TETRACTYS, which had many mystic meanings.
This symbol is sometimes composed of dots or points, sometimes of
commas or yods, and in the Kabalah, of the letters of the name of
Deity. It is thus arranged:
,
, ,
, , ,
, , , ,
The Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, inclusive, are ten in number,
and the same number is that of the Commandments.
TWELVE is the number of the lines of equal length that form a
cube. It is the number of the months, the tribes, and the apostles;
of the oxen under the Brazen Sea, of the stones on the breast-plate
of the high priest.