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505.

It will not forget that noble allegory of Curtius leaping, all in armor,

into the great yawning gulf that opened to swallow Rome.

506.

It will TRY.

507.

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;

508.

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:

509.

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:

510.

when nations will gravitate about the Truth, like stars about the light,

each in its own orbit, without clashing or collision;

511.

and everywhere Freedom, cinctured with stars,

crowned with the celestial splendors,

and with wisdom and justice on either hand,

will reign supreme.

512.

In your studies as a Fellow-Craft you must be guided by REASON, LOVE and FAITH.

513.

We do not now discuss the differences between Reason and Faith,

and undertake to define the domain of each.

514.

Yet 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 METAPHOR, than by REASON.

515.

The " Age of Reason" of the French Revolution taught, we know,

what a folly it is to enthrone Reason by itself as supreme.

516.

Reason is at fault when it deals with the Infinite.

517.

There we must revere and believe.

518.

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.

519.

A Faith is a necessity to man.

520.

Woe to him who believes nothing!

521.

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 apperance alone, from little more than a glimpse of it, without the means of knowing.

522.

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.

523.

We believe that occurrences have taken place, upon the assertion of others.

524.

We believe that one will acts upon another,

and in the reality of a multitude of other phenomena that Reason cannot explain.

525.

Yet 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.

526.

A man's Faith is as much his own as his Reason is.

527.

His Freedom consists as much in his faith being free

as in his will being uncontrolled by power.

528.

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.

529.

All the Imaums (priests) of Mohammedanism have not the right

to require a pagan to believe that Gabriel dictated the Koran to the Prophet.

530.

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.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Divisions 531-560

MORALS & DOGMA 2

531.

No man or body of men can be infallible,

and authorized to decide what other men shall believe, as to any tenet of faith.

532.

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 metaphors of Faith.

533.

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.

534.

Domitian claimed to be the Lord God;

and statues and images of him, in silver and gold, were found throughout the known world.

535.

He claimed to be regarded as the God of all men;

and, according to Suetonius, began his letters thus:

536.

" 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.

537.

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.

538.

Reason is far from being the only guide,

in morals or in political science.

539.

Love or lovingkindness must keep it company,

to exclude fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution,

to all of which a morality that is too ascetic, and the extreme political principles, invariably lead.

540.

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.

541.

We must not listen to Reason alone.

542.

Force comes more from Faith 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.

543.

Reason must hold the helm; yet these supply the motive power,

for they are the wings of the soul.

544.

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.

545.

If the Deity had been merely and only All-wise and All-mighty,

He would never have created the Universe.

* * * * * *

546.

It is GENIUS that gets Power;

and its prime lieutenants are FORCE and WISDOM.

547.

The unruliest of men bend before the leader that has the sense to see and the will to do.

548.

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.

549.

At its glance fall down the senseless idols,

whose altars have been on all the high places and in all the sacred groves.

550.

Dishonesty and ignorance stand abashed before it.

551.

Its single Yea or Nay revokes the wrongs of ages,

and is heard among the future generations.

552.

Its power is immense, because its wisdom is immense.

553.

Genius is the Sun of the political sphere.

554.

Force and Wisdom, its ministers,

are the orbs that carry its light into darkness,

and answer it with their solid reflecting Truth.

555.

Development is symbolized by the use of the Mallet and Chisel;

the development of the energies and intellect, of the individual and the people.

556.

Genius may place itself at the head of an unintellectual, uneducated, unenergetic nation;

yet in a free country, to cultivate the intellect of those who elect,

is the only mode of securing intellect and genius for rulers.

557.

The world is seldom ruled by the great spirits,

except after dissolution and new birth.

558.

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.

559.

The Cromwells and Napoleons follow later.

560.

After Marius and Sulla and Cicero the rhetorician, follows the authoritarian CAESAR.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Divisions 561-590

MORALS & DOGMA 2

561.

The great intellect is often too sharp for the granite of this life.

562.

Legislators may be very ordinary men;

for legislation is very ordinary work;

it is but the final issue of a million minds.

563.

The power of the purse or the sword, compared to that of the spirit,

is poor and contemptible.

564.

As to lands, you may have agrarian laws, and equal partition.

565.

Yet a man's intellect is all his own,

held direct from God, an inalienable fief. (estate)

566.

It is the most potent of weapons in the hands of a paladin.

567.

If the people comprehend Force in the physical sense,

how much more do tlley revelence the intellectual!

568.

Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola.

569.

They fall prostrate before it, as before an idol.

570.

The mastery of mind over mind is the only conquest worth having.

571.

The other injures both, and dissolves at a breath;

rude as it is, the great cable falls down and snaps at last.

572.

Yet this dimly resembles the dominion of the Creator.

573.

It does not need a subject like that ofPeter the Hermit. (the Christian monk)

574.

If the stream be but bright and strong,

it will sweep like a spring-tide to the popular heart.

575.

Not in word only, yet in intellectual act lies the fascination.

576.

It is the homage to the Invisible.

577.

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.

578.

Influence of man over man is a law of nature,

whether it be by a great estate in land or in intellect.

579.

It may mean slavery, a deference to the eminent human judgment.

580.

Society hangs spiritually together, like the revoiving spheres above.

581.

The free country, in which intellect and genius govern, will endure.

582.

Where they serve, and other influences govern, the national life is short.

583.

All the nations that have tried to govern themselves by their smallest,

by the incapables, or merely respectables, have come to nought.

584.

Constitutions and Laws, without Genius and Intellect to govern, will not prevent decay.

585.

In that case they have the dry-rot and the life dies out of them by degrees.

586.

To give a nation the franchise of the Intellect

is the only sure mode of perpetuating freedom.

587.

This will compel exertion and generous care for the people from those on the higher seats,

and honorable and intelligent allegiance from those below.

588.

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.

589.

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.

590.

All of us should labor in building up the great monument of a nation,

the Holy House of the Temple.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER NINETEEN

Divisions 591-615

MORALS & DOGMA 2

591.

The cardinal virtues must not be partitioned among men,

becoming the exclusive property of some, like the common crafts.

592.

ALL are apprenticed to the partners, Duty and Honor.

593.

Masonry is a march and a struggle toward the Light.

594.

For the individual as well as the nation,

Light is Virtue, Manliness, Intelligence, Liberty.

595.

Tyranny over the soul or body, is darkness.

596.

The freest people, like the freest man,

is always in danger of relapsing into servitude.

597.

Wars are almost always fatal to Republics.

598.

They create tyrants, and consolidate their power.

599.

They spring, for the most part, from evil counsels.

600.

When the small and the base are intrusted with power,

legislation and administration become merely two parallel series of errors and blunders,

ending in war, calamity, and the necessity for a tyrant.

601.

When the nation feels its feet sliding backward, as if it walked on the ice,

the time has come for a supreme effort.

602.

The magnificent tyrants of the past are merely the types of those of the future.

603.

Men and nations will always sell themselves into slavery,

to gratify their passions and obtain revenge.

604.

The tyrant's plea, necessity, is always available;

and the tyrant once in power, the necessity of providing for his safety makes him savage.

605.

Religion is a power, and he must control that.

606.

Independent, its sanctuaries might rebel.

607.

Then it becomes unlawful for the people to worship God in their own way,

and the old spiritual despotisms revive.

608.

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.

609.

" 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. "

610.

And dynasties so established endure,

like that of the Caesars of Rome and 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.

611.

There is no concord among men,

to end the horrible bondage.

612.

The State falls inwardly,

as well as by the outward blows of the incoherent elements.

613.

The furious human passions,

the sleeping human indolence,

the stolid (unemotinoal) human ignorance,

the rivalry of human castes,

are as good for the kings as the swords of the Paladins.

614.

The worshippers have all bowed so long to the old idol,

that they cannot go into the streets and choose another Grand Llama.

615.

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.

* * * * * *

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER TWENTY

Divisions 616-645

MORALS & DOGMA 2

616.

Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand;

and Persecution matures them both.

617.

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.

618.

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.

619.

Despotism is not dimcult in any land that has only known one master from its childhood;

yet there is no harder problem than to perfect and perpetuate free government by the people;

for it is not one king that is needed: all must be kings.

620.

It is easy to set up Masaniello,

that in a few days he may fall lower than before.

621.

Yet free govermnent grows slowly, like the individual human faculties;

and like the forest-trees, from the inner heart outward.

622.

Liberty is not only the common birth-right,

yet it is lost as well by non-user as by mis-user.

623.

It depends far more on the universal effort than any other human property.

624.

It has no single shrine or holy well of pilgrimage for the nation;

for its waters should burst out freely from the whole soil.

625.

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.

626.

It is trained to think for itself, and also to act for itself.

627.

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,

628.

in all the strength of unity, in self-reliance, in mutual reliance,

with effrontery against all except the visible hand of God.

629.

It is neither cast down by calamity nor elated by success.

630.

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.

631.

And the maxim is no less true than old,

that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

632.

It is curious to observe the universal pretext through which

the tyrants of all times take away the national liberties.

633.

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.

634.

The same reason was given long before for the suppression of popular election of the bishops;

635.

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.

* * * * * *

636.

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 somewhat deficient in meaning.

637.

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.

638.

The latter is the more appropriate name for the science represented with the word " Geometry. "

639.

Neither is of a meaning sufficiently wide:

for although the vast surveys of great spaces of the earth's surface, and of coasts,

through which shipwreck and calamity to mariners are avoided,

are effected by means of triangulation;

640.

--though it was by the same method that the French astronomers measured degrees of latitude

and so established a scale of measures on an immutable basis;

641.

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,

642.

and for its apex a planet or star, that the distance of Jupiter or Sirius from the earth is ascertained;

643.

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;

644.

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 Bible,

is not sufficiently expressed by either the word " Geometry" or the word " Trigonometry. "

645.

For that science includes these 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.

* * * * * *

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER TWENTYONE

Divisions 646-680

MORALS & DOGMA 2

646.

Virtue is merely 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.

647.

Man is accountable for the uprightness of his doctrine,

yet not for the rightness of it.

648.

Devout enthusiasm is far easier han a good action.

649.

The end of thought is action;

the sole purpose of Religion is an Ethic.

650.

Theory, in political science, is worthless,

except for the purpose of being realized in practice.

651.

In every credo, religious or political as in the soul of man,

there are two regions, the Dialectic and the Ethic;

652.

and it is only when the two are harmoniously blended,

that a perfect discipline is evolved.

653.

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:

654.

--intellectual believers, yet practical atheists:

-- men who will write you " Evidences, " in perfect faith in their logic,

yet cannot carry out the Christian or Masonic doctrine,

owing to the strength, or weakness, of the flesh.

655.

On the other hand, there are many dialectical skeptics, that are yet ethical believers,

as there are many Masons who have never undergone initiation;

656.

and as ethics are the end and purpose of religion,

so are ethical believers the most worthy.

657.

He who does right

is better than he who thinks right.

658.

Yet you must not act upon the hypothesis that all men are hypocrites,

whose conduct does not square with their sentiments.

659.

No vice is more rare, for no task is more difficult,

than systematic hypocrisy.

660.

When the Demagogue (rising to power with fiery speeches) becomes a Usurper

it does not follow that he was all the time a hypocrite.

661.

Shallow men only so judge of others.

662.

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.

663.

As a general thing, the Mahometan, in the Orient,

is far more honest and trustworthy than the Christian.

664.

A Gospel of Love in the mouth, (of lip service, not charitable works)

is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart.

665.

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.

666.

Predestination (of fate) insists on the necessity of good works.

667.

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.

668.

Masonry is a sort of abstraction, which scorns to interfere in worldly matters.

669.

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.

670.

One will take an oath to oppose any unlawful usurpation of power,

and then become the ready and even eager instrument of a usurper.

671.

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.

672.

Masonry does not change human nature,

and cannot make honest men out of born knaves.

673.

While you are still engaged in preparation, and in accumulating Masonic principles for future use,

do not forget the words of the Apostle James.

674.

" 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 manner of man he was;

675.

yet whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth,

he being not a forgetful hearer, yet a doer of the work,

this man shall be blessed in his work.

676.

If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue,

yet deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain....

677.

Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being an abstraction.

678.

A man is justified by works, and not by faith only....

679.

Even the devils believe in God, a critical comment about merely professing belief

--and tremble....

680.

As the body without the heart is dead,

so is faith without works. "

* * * * * *

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Divisions 681-710

MORALS & DOGMA 2

681.

In political science, also, free governments are erected and free constitutions framed,

upon some simple and intelligible theory.

682.

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.

683.

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,

684.

and you have denial or invasion of rights,

laws that offend against first principles, and the usurpation of illegal powers,

or the abnegation and abdication of legitimate authority.

685.

Do not forget, either, that as the showy, superficial, impudent and self-conceited one

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