Part 27 (1/2)
Internationalism is an understanding between the decadent elements in each country--the conscientious objectors, the drawing-room Socialists, the visionaries--who s.h.i.+rk the realities of life and, as the Socialist Karl Kautsky in a description of Idealists has admirably expressed it, ”see only differences of opinion and misapprehension where there are actually irreconcilable antagonisms.” This is why at times of crisis Idealists are of all men the most dangerous and Pacifists the great promoters of wars. Understanding between nations is wholly desirable, but the destruction of the national spirit everywhere can only lead to the weakening of all countries where this process takes place and the triumph of the nations who refuse to accept the same principle.
It will perhaps be answered that Freemasons do not believe in the doctrine of brotherhood between all men, but only between Masons of all races. But this may lead no less to national disintegration if it creates a nation within each nation, an international fraternity independent of the countries to which its members belong. The logical outcome of this may be that a man will refuse to fight for his country against his brother Masons--it is what has happened in France. The Grand Orient was before the recent war the great breeding-ground of anti-patriotism, where all schemes for national defence were discouraged. Before 1870 the same thing took place, and it was in the masonic lodges that Germany found her most valuable allies.
In the same way the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature lends itself to perversion. Nothing could be more desirable than that man should strive after perfection. Did not Christ enjoin His disciples: ”Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect”? Man is therefore acting in accordance with Christian principles in seeking after divine perfection. But when he comes to believe that he has already attained it he makes of himself a G.o.d. ”If I justify myself,” said Job, ”mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.” And St. John: ”If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” More than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally and make G.o.ds of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism deriving from it arrive. Human nature, they say, is itself divine; what need then for other divinities? The Catholic Church is consequently quite right in declaring that the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature leads to the deification of humanity in that it puts humanity in the place of G.o.d. The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the Universe from its ritual and has become an a.s.sociation of Freethinkers and Atheists.
Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet revile what they call ”society”? All the evils of the world, they declare, are not to be found in nature but in ”man-made laws,” in the inst.i.tutions of ”society.” Yet what is society but the outcome of human wills, of human aspirations? Society may be, and no doubt is, in need of reformation, but are not its imperfections the creation of imperfect beings? It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos, industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos.
Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling cla.s.ses are abdicating in favour of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.
And what has brought the world to this pa.s.s? Humanity! Humanity, that all-wise, all-virtuous abstraction that needs no light from Heaven.
Humanity that was to take the place of G.o.d! If ever there was a moment in the history of the world when the futility of this pretension should be apparent it is the present moment. All the ills, all the confusion, what are they but the outcome of human error and of human pa.s.sions? It is not Capitalism that has failed, nor yet Democracy, nor yet even Socialism as a principle, it is not monarchy that has broken down, nor Republicanism, nor again religion; _it is humanity that has broken down_. The ills of Capitalism arise from the egoism of individual capitalists; Socialism has failed because, as Robert Owen discovered, the idle, the quarrelsome, the selfish have prevented its success. If men were perfect, Socialism might succeed, but so might any other system. A perfect capitalist would love his employee as himself, just as a perfect Socialist would be willing to work for the common good. It is the imperfections of human nature that prevent, and will always prevent, any system from being perfect. There will never be a Millennium of man's making. Only the application of Christian principles to human conduct can bring about a better order of things.
Grand Orient Masonry, in deifying human nature, thus not only builds upon the sand, but by its rejection of all religion takes away the sole hope of human progress. Meanwhile, by the support it lends to Socialism it encourages the cla.s.s war instead of the brotherhood between men of all ranks and conditions which it professes to advocate. British Freemasonry, on the other hand, whilst not interpreting brotherhood in a political sense, nevertheless contributes to social peace. At the annual conference of the Labour Party in 1923 a proposal was made by the extreme section that ”any person who is a Free mason should be excluded from any kind of office,” it being suggested that ”in cases where an understanding has been reached between Trade Union leaders and employers, thus preventing or limiting industrial trouble, the secret has been the bond of Freemasonry.”[693] Whether this was the case or not, British Masonry, by taking its stand on patriotism and respect for religion, necessarily tends to unite men of all cla.s.ses and therefore offers a formidable bulwark against the forces of revolution. Any attacks on British Masonry as at present const.i.tuted and directed are therefore absolutely opposed to the interests of the country. But at the same time it behoves Masons to beware of the insidious attempts that are being made by irregular secret societies to infiltrate the Craft and pervert its true principles. The present satisfactory condition of Freemasonry in England is owing not only to its established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it--men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pa.s.s into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing force might become a gigantic engine of destruction. How insidiously these efforts are being made we shall see in the next chapter.
12
SECRET SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND
We have seen that from the Illuminati onwards subversive societies have always sought recruits amongst orthodox Freemasons. The reason for this is obvious: not only do the doctrines of Freemasonry lend themselves to perversion, but the training provided in the Lodges makes an admirable preparation for initiation into other secret systems. The man who has learnt to maintain silence even on what may appear to him as trivialities, who is willing to submit to mystification, to ask no questions, and to recognize the authority of superiors whom he is in no way legally obliged to obey, who has, moreover, become imbued with the _esprit de corps_ which binds him to his fellow-members in a common cause, is naturally a better subject for the secret society adept than the free lance who is liable to a.s.sert his independence at any moment.
Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the nature of the masonic oaths. These terrible penalties, which many Freemasons themselves regret as a survival of barbarism and which have in fact been abolished in the higher degrees, have done much to create prejudice against Freemasonry, whilst at the same time they provide an additional incentive to outside intriguers. In the opinion of M. Copin Albancelli, the abolition of the oath would go far to prevent penetration of British Masonry by the secret societies.
Now, by their obligations British Freemasons are forbidden to join these irregular societies, not only because their principles are in conflict with those of orthodox Masonry, but because in most cases they admit women. According to the ruling of Grand Lodge, ”any member working under the English Jurisdiction ... violates his Obligation by being present at or a.s.sisting in a.s.semblies professing to be Masonic which are attended by women.” Warnings to this effect have been frequently given in the Lodges; on September 3, 1919, the Board of General Purposes issued the following report:
The Board's attention is being increasingly drawn to sedulous endeavours which are being made by certain bodies unrecognized as Masonic by the United Grand Lodge of England, to induce Freemasons to join in their a.s.semblies. As all such bodies which admit women to members.h.i.+p are clandestine and irregular, it is necessary to caution Brethren against being inadvertently led to violate their Obligation by becoming members of them or attending their meetings.
Grand Lodge, nine years since, approved the action of the Board in suspending from all Masonic rights and privileges two Brethren who had contumaciously failed to explain the grave Masonic irregularity to which attention is now again called; and it is earnestly hoped that no occasion will arise for having again to inst.i.tute disciplinary proceedings of a like kind.
The idea of women Masons is, of course, not a new one. As early as 1730 lodges for women are said to have existed in France, and towards the end of the century several excellent women, such as the d.u.c.h.esse de Bourbon and the Princesse de Lamballe, played a leading part in the Order. But this _Maconnerie d'Adoption_, as it was called, retained a purely convivial character; a sham ceremonial, with symbols, pa.s.s words, and a ritual, was devised as a consolation to the members for their exclusion from the real lodges. These mummeries were, as Ragon observes, ”only the pretexts for a.s.semblies; the real objects were the banquet and the ball, which were their inevitable accompaniments.”[694]
But this precedent, inaugurated as a society pastime and accompanied by all the frivolity of the age, paved the way for Weishaupt's two cla.s.ses of women members, who, although never initiated into the secrets of the Order, were to act as useful tools ”directed by men without knowing it.”
For this purpose they were to be divided into two cla.s.ses, the ”virtuous” to play the part of figureheads or decoys, and the ”freer-hearted,” who were to carry out the real designs of the Order.
The same plan was adopted nearly a hundred years later by Weishaupt's disciple Bakunin, who, however, did admit women as actual initiates into his secret society, the Alliance Sociale Democratique, but, like Weishaupt, divided them into cla.s.ses. The sixth category of people to be employed in the work of social revolution is thus described in his programme:
The sixth category is very important. They are the women, who must be divided into three cla.s.ses: the first, frivolous women, without mind or heart, which we must use in the same manner as the third and fourth categories of men [i.e. by ”getting hold of their dirty secrets and making them our slaves”]; the second, the ardent, devoted and capable women, but who are not ours because they have not reached a practical revolutionary understanding, without phrase--we must make use of these like the men of the fifth category [i.e. by ”drawing them incessantly into practical and perilous manifestations, which will result in making the majority of them disappear while making some of them genuine revolutionaries”]; finally, the women who are entirely with us, that is to say completely initiated and having accepted our programme in its entirety. We ought to consider them as the most precious of our treasures, without whose help we can do nothing.[695]
The first and only woman to be admitted into real Masonry, if such a term can be applied to so heterogeneous a system, was Maria Deraismes, an ardent French Feminist celebrated for her political speeches and electioneering campaigns in the district of Pontoise and for twenty-five years the acknowledged leader of the anti-clerical and Feminist party.[696] In 1882 Maria Deraismes was initiated into Freemasonry by the members of the Lodge _Les Libres Penseurs_, deriving from the Grande Loge Symbolique ecossaise and situated at Pecq in the Department of Seine-et-Oise. The proceeding being, however, entirely unconst.i.tutional, Maria Deraismes's initiation was declared by the Grande Loge to be null and void and the Lodge _Les Libres Penseurs_ was disgraced.[697] But some years afterwards Dr. George Martin, an enthusiastic advocate of votes for women, collaborated with Maria Deraismes in founding the _Maconnerie Mixte_ at the first lodge of the Order named ”Le Droit Humain.” The _Supreme Conseil Universel Mixte_ was founded in 1899.
The Maconnerie Mixte was political and in no way theosophical or occult, and its programme, like that of the Grand Orient, was Utopian Socialism, whilst by its insistence on the supremacy of reason it definitely proclaimed its antagonism to all revealed religion. Thus in the involved language of Dr. George Martin himself:
The Ordre Maconnique Mixte Internationale is the first mixed, philosophic, progressive, and philanthropic Masonic Power to be organized and const.i.tuted in the world, placed above all the prooccupations of the philosophical or religious ideas which may be professed by those who ask to become members.... The Order wishes to interest itself princ.i.p.ally in the vital interests of the human being on earth; it wishes above all to study in its Temples the means for realizing Peace between all nations and social Justice which will enable all human beings to enjoy during their lives the greatest possible sum of moral felicity and of material well-being.... Claiming no divine revelation and loudly affirming that it is only an emanation of human reason, this fraternal inst.i.tution is not dogmatic, it is rationalist.[698]
Into this materialist and political club, erected under the guise of Freemasonry, entered Annie Besant with all the strange conglomeration of Eastern doctrines now known as Theosophy.
Theosophy
Before entering on this question it is necessary to make my own position clear. Although I should much prefer not to introduce a personal note into the discussion, I feel that nothing I say will carry any weight if it appears to be an expression of opinion by one who has never considered religious doctrines from anything but the orthodox Christian point of view. I should explain, then, that I have known Theosophists from my early youth, that I have travelled in India, Ceylon, Burma, and j.a.pan and seen much to admire in the great religions of the East. I do not believe that G.o.d has revealed Himself to one portion of mankind alone and that during only the last 1,900 years of the world's history; I do not accept the doctrine that all the millions of human beings who have never heard of Christ are plunged in spiritual darkness; I believe that behind all religions founded on a law of righteousness there lies a divine and central truth, that Ikhnaton, Moses and Isaiah, Socrates and Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed were all teachers who interpreted to men the aspect of the divine as it had been vouchsafed to them and which in harmony with the supreme revelation given to man by Jesus Christ.
This conception of an affinity between all great religious faiths was beautifully expressed by an old Mohammedan to a friend of the present writer with whom he stood watching a Hindu procession pa.s.s through an Indian village. In answer to the Englishman's enquiry, ”What do you think of this?” the Mohammedan replied: