Part 8 (2/2)

Q C_, iv, 11) Kipling has a rollicking story with the Masonic sign-code for a theination is positively uncanny If not a little of the old sign-language of the race lives to this day in Masonic Lodges, it is due not only to the exigencies of the craft, but also to the instinct of the order for the old, the universal, the _hu use of all the ways and ht to know and love and help one another

[91] Once more it is a pleasure to refer to the transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, whose essays and discussions of this issue, as of so many others, are the best survey of the whole question fro in behalf of only one degree in the old tirees, with the hly and in full light of all the facts (_A Q C_, vol x, 127; vol xi, 47) As for the Third Degree, that will be considered further along

[92] _Storia di Como_, vol i, 440

[93] _Natural History of Wiltshi+re_, by John Aubrey, written, but not published, in 1686

[94] _A Q C_, vol x, 82

[95] Roughly speaking, the year 1600the two periods Addison, writing in the _Spectator_, March 1, 1711, draws the following distinction between a speculative and an operative member of a trade or profession: ”I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative states with any practical part of life” By a Speculative Mason, then, is ht and obtainedFree-an to enter the order as early as 1600, if not earlier If by Operative Mason isto his tools, there were none such in the olden ti their tools as moral emblems in a way quite unknown to builders of our day 'Tis a pity that this light of poetry has faded from our toil, and with it the joy of work

[96] _History of Masonry_, p 66

[97] For a single example, the _Diary_ of Elias Ashmole, under date of 1646

[98] Time out of mind it has been the habit of writers, both within the order and without, to treat Masonry as though it were a kind of agglos, -ends of Occult lore

Far from it! If this were the fact the present writer would be the first to admit it, but it is not the fact Instead, the idea that an order so noble, so heroic in its history, so rich in symbolism, so skilfully adjusted, and with so many traces of remote antiquity, was the creation of pious fraud, or else of an ingenious conviviality, passes the bounds of credulity and enters the domain of the absurd

This fact will be further e, to which those are respectfully referred who go everywhere else, _except to Masonry itself_, to learn what Masonry is and how it caricol Perdiguier, 1841 George Sand's novel, _Le Conon du Tour de France_, was published the same year See full account of this order in Gould, _History of Masonry_, vol i, chap v

ACCEPTED MASONS

/ _The_ SYSTEM, _as taught in the regular_ LODGES, _norance or Indolence of the old h what Obscurity and Darkness the_ MYSTERY _has been deliver'd down; the es, and_ SECTS _and_ PARTIES _it has run through; we are rather to wonder that it ever arrived to the present Age, withoutin muddy Streareat Rust it may have contracted, there is : the essential Pillars of the Building h the Rubbish, tho' the Superstructure be overrun with Moss and Ivy, and the Stones, by Length of Time, be disjointed And therefore, as the Bust of an_ OLD HERO _is of great Value aht Hand; so Masonry with all its Bleht to be receiv'd with some Candor and Esteem, from a Veneration of its_ ANTIQUITY

--_Defence of Masonry_, 1730 /

CHAPTER III

_Accepted Masons_

I

Whatever may be dis much must remain hidden, its syh the centuries; and its symbolism is its soul So much is this true, that it may almost be said that had the order ceased to exist in the period when it was at its height, its symbolisht into the mind of mankind When, at last, the craft finished its labors and laid down its tools, its sye for the thoughts of the thinker

Few realize the service of the science of nu of the world, when he sought to find so a chance, he found in the laws of numbers a path by which to escape the awful sense of life as a series of accidents in the hands of a capricious Power; and, e think of it, his insight was not invalid ”All things are in nu aritheometry in its repose” Nature is a realeo, ures, and cannot free itself fro away into discord Surely it is not strange that a science whereby limpses of the unity and order of the world should be hallowed a revealed so s in a way quite alien to our prosaic habit of thinking--faith in our day having betaken itself to other sy--a living allegory in which ht by every device to discover the secret of its stability Already we have sho, from earliest times, the simple symbols of the builder beca shape to its thought, its faith, its dreae but bears their impress, as e speak of a Rude or Polished ht man who is a Pillar of society, of the Level of equality, or the Golden Rule by which ould Square our actions They are so natural, so inevitable, and so eloquent withal, that we use thees have always been called Builders, and it was no idle fancy when Plato and Pythagoras used ihest thought Everywhere in literature, philosophy, and life it is so, and naturally so Shakespeare speaks of ”square-men,” and when Spenser would build in stately lines the Castle of Tele:[101]

/P The fraular: O work divine!

Those two the first and last proportions are; The one imperfect, mortal, feminine

The other immortal, perfect, masculine, And twixt them both a quadrate was the base, Proportion'd equally by seven and nine; Nine was the circle set in heaven's place All which cooodly diapase