Part 14 (1/2)

At any rate, whatever were the methods employed by Frederick the Great for obtaining control over Masonry, the fruitful results of that ”very trifling circ.u.mstance,” his initiation at Brunswick, become more and more apparent as the century advances. Thus when in 1786 the Rite of Perfection was reorganized and rechristened the ”Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite”--always the same Scottish cover for Prussianism!--it is said to have been Frederick who conducted operations, drew up the new Const.i.tutions of the Order, and rearranged the degrees so as to bring the total number up to thirty-three[415], as follows:

26. Prince of Mercy.

27. Sovereign Commander of the Temple.

28. Knight of the Sun.

29. Grand Scotch Knight of St. Andrew.

30. Grand Elect Knight of Kadosch.

31. Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander.

32. Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

33. Sovereign Grand Inspector-General.

In the last four degrees Frederick the Great and Prussia play an important part; in the thirtieth degree of Knight Kadosch, largely modelled on the Vehmgerichts, the Knights wear Teutonic crosses, the throne is surmounted by the double-headed eagle of Prussia, and the President, who is called Thrice Puissant Grand Master, represents Frederick himself; in the thirty-second degree of Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, Frederick is described as the head of Continental Freemasonry; in the thirty-third degree of Sovereign Grand Inspector-General the jewel is again the double-headed eagle, and the Sovereign Grand Commander is Frederick, who at the time this degree was inst.i.tuted figured with Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, Grand Master of the Grand Orient, as his lieutenant. The most important of these innovations was the thirty-second degree, which was in reality a system rather than a degree for bringing together the Masons of all countries under one head--hence the immense power acquired by Frederick. By 1786 French Masonry was thus entirely Prussianized and Frederick had indeed become the idol of Masonry everywhere. Yet probably no one ever despised Freemasonry more profoundly. As the American Mason Albert Pike shrewdly observed:

There is no doubt that Frederick came to the conclusion that the great pretensions of Masonry in the blue degrees were merely imaginary and deceptive. He ridiculed the Order, and thought its ceremonies mere child's play; and some of his sayings to that effect have been preserved. It does not at all follow that he might not at a later day have found it politic to put himself at the head of an Order that had become a power....[416]

It is not without significance to find that in the year following the official foundation of the _Stricte Observance_, that is to say in 1752, Lord Holdernesse, in a letter to the British Amba.s.sador in Paris, Lord Albemarle, headed ”Very secret,” speaks of ”the influence which the King of Prussia has of late obtained over all the French Councils”; and a few weeks later Lord Albemarle refers to ”the great influence of the Prussian Court over the French Councils by which they are so blinded as not to be able to judge for themselves.”[417]

But it is time to turn to another sphere of activity which Masonry opened out to the ambitions of Frederick.

The making of the _Encyclopedie_, which even those writers the most sceptical with regard to secret influences behind the revolutionary movement admit to have contributed towards the final cataclysm, is a question on which official history has thrown but little light.

According to the authorized version of the story--as related, for example, in Lord Morley's work on the Encyclopaedists--the plan of translating Ephraim Chambers's _Cyclopaedia_, which had appeared in 1728, was suggested to Diderot ”some fifteen years later” by a French bookseller named Le Breton. Diderot's ”fertile and energetic intelligence transformed the scheme.... It was resolved to make Chambers's work a mere starting-point for a new enterprise of far wider scope.” We then go on to read of the financial difficulties that now beset the publisher, of the embarra.s.sment of Diderot, who ”felt himself unequal to the task of arranging and supervising every department of a new book that was to include the whole circle of the sciences,” of the fortunate enlisting of d'Alembert as a collaborator, and later of men belonging to all kinds of professions, ”all united in a work that was as useful as it was laborious, without any view of interest ... without any common understanding and agreement,” further, of the cruel persecutions encountered at the hands of the Jesuits, ”who had expected at least to have control of the articles on theology,” and finally of the tyrannical suppression of the great work on account of the anti-Christian tendencies these same articles displayed.[418]

Now for a further light on the matter.

In the famous speech of the Chevalier Ramsay already quoted, which was delivered at Grand Lodge of Paris in 1737, the following pa.s.sage occurs:

The fourth quality required in our Order is the taste for useful sciences and the liberal arts. Thus, the Order exacts of each of you to contribute, by his protection, liberality, or labour, to a vast work for which no academy can suffice, because all these societies being composed of a very small number of men, their work cannot embrace an object so extended. All the Grand Masters in Germany, England, Italy, and elsewhere exhort all the learned men and all the artisans of the Fraternity to unite to furnish the materials for a Universal Dictionary of all the liberal arts and useful sciences; excepting only theology and politics. The work has already been commenced in London, and by means of the unions of our brothers it may be carried to a conclusion in a few years.[419]

So after all it was no enterprising bookseller, no brilliantly inspired philosopher, who conceived the idea of the _Encyclopedie_, but a powerful international organization able to employ the services of more men than all the academies could supply, which devised the scheme at least six years before the date at which it is said to have occurred to Diderot. Thus the whole story as usually told to us would appear to be a complete fabrication--struggling publishers, toiling _litterateurs_ carrying out their superhuman task as ”independent men of letters”

without the patronage of the great--which Lord Morley points out as ”one of the most important facts in the history of the Encyclopaedia”--writers of all kinds bound together by no ”common understanding or agreement,”

are all seen in reality to have been closely a.s.sociated as ”artisans of the Fraternity” carrying out the orders of their superiors.

The _Encyclopedie_ was therefore essentially a Masonic publication, and Papus, whilst erroneously attributing the famous oration and consequently the plan of the _Encyclopedie_ to the inspiration of the Duc d'Antin, emphasizes the importance of this fact. Thus, he writes:

The Revolution manifests itself by two stages:

1st. _Intellectual revolution_, by the publication of the _Encyclopedie_, due to French Freemasonry under the high inspiration of the Duc d'Antin.

2nd. _Occult revolution_ in the Lodges, due in great part to the members of the Templar Rite and executed by a group of expelled Freemasons afterwards amnestied.[420]

The masonic authors.h.i.+p of the _Encyclopedie_ and the consequent dissemination of revolutionary doctrines has remained no matter of doubt to the Freemasons of France; on the contrary, they glory in the fact. At the congress of the Grand Orient in 1904 the Freemason Bonnet declared:

In the eighteenth century the glorious line of Encyclopaedists formed in our temples a fervent audience which was then alone in invoking the radiant device as yet unknown to the crowd: ”Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” The revolutionary seed quickly germinated amidst this _elite_. Our ill.u.s.trious Freemasons d'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, d'Holbach, Voltaire, Condorcet, completed the evolution of minds and prepared the new era. And, when the Bastille fell, Freemasonry had the supreme honour of giving to humanity the charter (i.e. the Declaration of the Rights of Man) which it had elaborated with devotion. (_Applause_.)

This charter, the orator went on to say, was the work of the Freemason Lafayette, and was adopted by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, of which more than 300 members were Freemasons.

But in using the lodges to sow the seeds of revolution, the Encyclopaedists betrayed not only the cause of monarchy but of Masonry as well. It will be noticed that, in conformity with true masonic principles, Ramsay in his oration expressly stated that the encyclopaedia was to concern itself with the liberal arts and sciences[421] and that theology and politics were to be excluded from the contemplated scheme.