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and revive the race of freemen.

1633.

Yet, to preserve liberty, another must be added:

" that a free State does not confer office as a reward, especially for questionable services,

unless she seeks her own ruin;

1634.

yet all officers are employed by her,

in consideration solely of their will and ability to render service in the future;

and therefore that the best and most competent are always to be preferred. "

1635.

For, if there is to be any other rule,

that of hereditary succession is perhaps as good as any.

1636.

By no other rule is it possible to preserve the liberties of the State.

1637.

By no other rule to intrust the power of making the laws

to those only who have that keen instinctive sense of opposition to injustice and wrong

that enables them to detect baseness and corruption in their most secret hiding-places,

1638.

and that moral courage and generous manliness and gallant independence

that make them fearless in dragging out the perpetrators to the light of day,

and calling down upon them the scorn and indignation of the world.

1639.

The flatterers of the people are never such men.

1640.

On the contrary, a time always comes to a Republic,

when it is not content, like Liberius, with a single Sejanus, yet must have a host;

1641.

and the time when those most prominent in the lead of affairs are

men without reputation, statesmanship, ability, or information,

the mere hacks of party, owing their places to trickery and want of qualification,

1642.

with none of the qualities of head or heart that make great and wise men,

and, at the same time,

filled with all the narrow conceptions and bitter intolerance of political bigotry.

1643.

These too die mortal death;

and the world is none the wiser for what they have said and done.

1644.

Their names sink in the bottomless pit of oblivion;

yet their acts of folly or knavery curse the body politic and at last prove its ruin.

1645.

Politicians, in a free State,

are generally hollow, heartless, and egocentric.

1646.

Their own aggrandisement is the signal of the beginning of the end of their patriotism;

and they always look with secret satisfaction on the disappointment or fall of

one whose loftier genius and superior talents overshadow their own self-importance,

or whose integrity and incorruptible honor are in the way of their ends.

1647.

The influence of the small aspirants is always against the great man.

1648.

His accession to power may be almost for a lifetime.

1649.

One of themselves will be more easily displaced,

and each hopes to succeed him;

1650.

and so it at length comes to pass that men impudently aspire to and actually win

the highest stations, who are unfit for the lowest clerkships;

and incapacity and mediocrity become the surest passports to once.

1651.

The consequence is, that those who feel themselves competent and qualified to serve the people, refuse with digust to enter into the struggle for office,

1652.

where the wicked and jesuitical doctrine that all is fair in politics

is an excuse for every species of low villainy;

1653.

and those who seek even the highest places of the State

do not rely upon the power of a magnanimous spirit,

on the sympathizing impulses of a great soul,

to stir and move the people to generous, noble, and heroic resolves,

and to wise and manly action;

1654.

yet, like spaniels erect on their hind legs, with fore-paws obsequiously suppliant,

fawn, flatter, and actually beg for votes.

1655.

Rather than descend to this, they stand contemptuously aloof,

disdainfully refusing to court the people, and acting on the maxim,

that " mankind has no title to demand that we shall serve them in spite of themselves. "

* * * * * *

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

Divisions 1656-16

MORALS & DOGMA 3

1656.

It is lamentable to see a country split into factions,

each following this or that great or brazen-fronted leader

with a blind, unreasoning, unquestioning hero-worship;

1657.

it is contemptible to see it divided into parties, whose sole end is the spoils of victory,

and their chiefs the low, the base, the venal and the small.

1658.

Such a country is in the last stages of decay,

and near its end, no matter how prosperous it may seem to be.

1659.

It wrangles over the volcano and the earthquake.

1660.

Yet it is certain that no government can be conducted by the men of the people, and for the people,

without a rigid adherence to those principles which our reason commends as fixed and sound.

1661.

These must be the tests of parties, men, and measures.

1662.

Once determined, they must be inexorable in their application,

and all must either come up to the standard or declare against it.

1663.

Men may betray: principles never can.

1664.

Oppression is one invariable consequence of misplaced confidence in treacherous man,

it is never the result of the working or application of a sound, just, well-tried principle.

1665.

Compromises which bring fundamental principles into doubt,

in order to unite in one party men of antagonistic creeds, are frauds,

and end in ruin, the just and natural consequence of fraud.

1666.

Whenever you have settled upon your theory and creed,

sanction no departure from it in practice, on any ground of expediency.

1667.

It is the Master's word.

1668.

Yield it up neither to flattery nor force!

1669.

Let no defeat or persecution rob you of it!

1670.

Believe that he who once blundered in statesmanship will blunder again;

that such blunders are as fatal as crimes;

and that political nearsightedness does not improve by age.

1671.

There are always more impostors than seers among public men,

more false prophets than true ones, more prophets of Baal than of Jehovah;

and Jerusalem is always in danger from the Assyrians.

1672.

Sallust said that after a State has been corrupted by luxury and idleness,

it may by its mere greatness bear up under the burden of its vices.

1673.

Yet even while he wrote, Rome, of which he spoke, had played out her masquerade of freedom.

1674.

Other causes than luxury and sloth destroy Republics.

1675.

If small, their larger neighbors extinguish thelll by absorption.

1676.

If of great extent, the cohesive force is too feeble to hold them together,

and they fall to pieces by their own weight.

1677.

The paltry ambition of small men disintegrates them.

1678.

The want of wisdom in their councils creates exasperating issues.

1679.

Usurpation of power plays its part, incapacity seconds corruption,

the storm rises, and the fragments of the incoherent raft strew the sandy shores,

reading to mankind another lesson for it to disregard.

1680.

The Forty-seventh Proposition is older than Pythagoras.

1681.

It is this:

" In every right-angled triangle,

the sum of the squares of the base and perpendicular is equal to the square of the hypothenuse. "

1682.

The square of a number is the product of that number, multiplied by itself.

1683.

Thus, 4 is the square of 2, and 9 of 3.

1684.

The first ten numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

their squares are 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100;

1685.

and 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19 are the differences between each square

and that which precedes it;

giving us the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 9.

1686.

Of these numbers, the square of 3 and 4,

added together, gives the square of 5;

and those of 6 and 8, the square of 10;

1687.

and if a right-angled triangle be formed,

the base measuring 3 or 6 parts, and the perpendicular 4 or 8 parts,

the hypothenuse will be 5 or 10 parts;

1688.

and if a square is erected on each side,

these squares being subdivided into squares each side of which is one part in length,

there will be as many of these in the square erected on the hypothenuse

as in the other two squares together.

1689.

Now the Egyptians arranged their deities in Triads,

the FATHER

or the Spirit or Active Principle or Generative Power;

1690.

the MOTHER,

or Matter, or the Passive Principle, or the Conceptive Power;

1691.

and the SON,

Issue or Product, the Universe,

proceeding from the two principles.

1692.

These were OSRIS, ISIS, and HORUS.

1693.

In the same way, PLATO gives us thought the Father;

Primitive Matter the Mother;

and Kosmos the World, the Son, the Universe animated by a soul.

1694.

Triads of the same kind are found in the Kabalah.

1695.

PLUTARCH says, in his book De Iside et Osiride,

" Yet the better and diviner nature consists of three,

--that which exists within the Intellect only,

and Matter,

and that which proceeds from these, which the Greeks call Kosmos;

1696.

of which three, Plato is wont to call the Intelligible,

the 'Idea, Exemplar, and Father',

1697.

Matter,

'the Mother, the Nurse, and the place and receptacle of generation';

1698.

and the issue of these two, 'the Offspring and Genesis, " '

the KOSMOS, " a word signifying equally Beauty and Order, or the Universe itself. "

1699.

You will not fail to notice that Beauty is symbolized by the Junior Warden in the South.

1700.

Plutarch continues to say that the Egyptians compared the universal nature to what they called

the most beautiful and perfect triangle,

as Plato does, in that nuptial diagram, as it is termed,

which he has introduced into his Commonwealth.

1701.

When he adds that this triangle is right-angled, and its sides respectively as 3, 4, and 5;

and he says,

1702.

" We must suppose that the perpendicular is designed by them to represent the masculine nature,

the base the feminine, and that the hypothenuse is to be looked upon as the offspring of both;

1703.

and accordingly the first of them will aptly enough represent OSIRIS, or the prime cause;

the second, ISIS, or the receptive capacity;

the last, HORUS, or the common effect of the other two.

1704.

For 3 is the first number which is composed of even and odd;

and 4 is a square whose side is equal to the even number 2;

1705.

yet 5, being generated, as it were, out of the preceding numbers, 2 and 3,

may be said to have an equal relation to both of them, as to its common parents. "

* * * * * *

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

Divisions 1706-17 45

MORALS & DOGMA 3

1706.

The clasped hands is another symbol which was used by PYTHAGORAS.

1707.

It represented the number 10,

the sacred number in which all the preceding numbers were contained;

1708.

the number expressed by the mysterious TERACTYS,

1709.

a figure borrowed by him and the Hebrew priests alike from the Egyptian sacred science,

and that ought to be replaced among the symbols of the Master's degree, where it rightly belongs.

1710.

The Hebrews formed it thus, with the letters of the Divine name:

1711.

see the diagram in Hebrew

1712.

The Tetractys thus leads you,

not only to the study of the Pythagorean philosophy as to numbers,

yet also to the Kabalah,

1713.

and will aid you in discovering the True Word,

and understanding what was meant by " The Music of the Spheres. "

1714.

Modern science strikingly confirms the ideas of Pythagoras

in regard to the properties of numbers, and that they govern in the Universe.

1715.

Long before his time, nature had extracted her cube-roots and her squares.

* * * * * *

1716.

All the FORCES at man's disposal or under man's control, or subject to man's influence,

are his working tools.

1717.

The friendship and sympathy that knit heart to heart are a force like the attraction of cohesion,

by which the sandy particles became the solid rock.

1718.

If this law of attraction or cohesion were taken away,

the material worlds and suns would dissolve in an instant into thin invisible vapor.

1719.

If the ties of friendship, affection, and love were annulled,

mankind would become a raging multitude of wild and savage beasts of prey.

1720.

The sand hardens into rock under the immense superincumbent pressure of the ocean,

aided sometimes by the irresistible energy of fire;

1721.

and when the pressure of calamity and danger is upon an order or a country,

the members or the citizens ought to be the more closely united

by the cohesion of sympathy and inter-dependence.

1722.

Morality is a force.

1723.

It is the magnetic attraction of the heart toward Truth and Virtue.

1724.

The needle, imbued with this mystic property, and pointing unerringly to the north,

carries the mariner safely over the trackless ocean, through storm and darkness,

until his glad eyes behold the beneficent beacons that welcome him to safe and hospitable harbor.

1725.

Then the hearts of those who love him are gladdened, and his home made happy;

and this gladness and happiness are due to the silent, unostentatious, unerring monitor

that was the sailor's guide over the weltering waters.

1726.

Yet if drifted too far northward, he finds the needle no longer true,

yet pointing elsewhere than to the north,

what a feeling of helplessness falls upon the dismayed mariner,

what utter loss of energy and courage!

1727.

It is as if the great axioms of morality were to fail and be no longer true,

leaving the human soul to drift helplessly, eyeless like Prometheus,

at the mercy of the uncertain, faithless currents of the deep.

1728.

Honor and Duty are the pole-stars of a Mason, the Dioscuri, (twin brothers Castor and Pollux)

by never losing sight of which he may avoid disastrous shipwreck.

1729.

These Palinurus watched, until, overcome by sleep, and the vessel no longer guided truly,

he fell into and was swallowed up by the insatiable sea.

1730.

So the Mason who loses sight of these,

and is no longer governed by their beneficent and potential force, is lost,

and sinking out of sight, will disappear unhonored and unwept.

1731.

The force of electricity, analogous to that of sympathy,

and by means of which great thoughts or base suggestions,

the utterances of noble or ignoble natures,

flash instantaneously over the nerves of nations;

1732.

the force of growth, fit type of immortality,

Iying dormant three thousand years in the wheat-grains

buried with their mummies by the old Egyptians;

1733.

the forces of expansion and contraction,

developed in the earthquake and the tornado,

and giving birth to the wonderful achievements of steam,

have their parallelisms in the moral world,

in individuals, and nations.

1734.

Growth is a necessity for nations as for men.

1735.

Its cessation is the beginning of decay.

1736.

In the nation as well as the plant it is mysterious,

and it is irresistible.

1737.

The earthquakes that rend nations asunder,

overturn thrones, and engulf monarchies and republics,

have been long prepared for, like the volcanic eruption.

1738.

Revolutions have long roots in the past.

1739.

The force exerted is in direct proportion to

the previous restraint and compression.

1740.

The true statesman ought to see in progress

the causes that are in due time to produce them;

and he who does not is merely a blind leader of the blind.

1741.

The great changes in nations, like the geological changes of the earth,

are slowly and continuously wrought.

1742.

The waters, falling from Heaven as rain and dews,

slowly disintegrate the granite mountains;

abrade the plains,

leaving hills and ridges of denudation as their monuments;

1743.

scoop out the valleys, fill up the seas,

narrow the rivers,

1744.

and after the lapse of thousands on thousands of silent centuries,

prepare the great alluvia for the growth of that plant,

1745.

the snowy envelope of whose seeds is to employ the looms of the world,

and the abundance or penury of whose crops shall determine whether

the weavers and spinners of other realms shall have work to do or starve.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

Divisions 1746-1790

MORALS & DOGMA 3

1746.

So Public Opinion is an immense force;

and its currents are as inconstant and incomprehensible as those of the atmosphere.

1747.

Nevertheless, in free governments, it is omnipotent;

and the business of the statesman is to find the means to shape, control, and direct it.

1748.

According as that is done,

it is beneficial and conservative, or destructive and ruinous.

1749.

The Public Opinion of the civilized world is International Law;

1750.

and it is so great a force, though with no certain and fixed boundaries,

that it can even constrain the victorious despot to be generous,

and aid an oppressed people in its struggle for independence.

1751.

Habit is a great force;

it is second nature, even in trees.

1752.

It is as strong in nations as in men.

1753.

So also are Prejudices, which are given to men and nations as the passions are,

--as forces, valuable, if properly and skillfully availed of;

destructive, if unskillfully handled.

1754.

Above all, the Love of Country, State Pride, the Love of Home,

are forces of immense power.

1755.

Encourage them all.

1756.

Insist upon them being qualities in your public men.

1757.

Permanency of home is necessary to patriotism.

1758.

A migratory race will have little love of country.

1759.

State pride is a mere theory and chimera,

where men remove from State to State with indifference,

like the Arabs, who camp here to-day and there to-morrow.

1760.

If you have Eloquence, it is a mighty force.

1761.

See that you use it for good purposes

--to teach, exhort, ennoble the people, and not to mislead and corrupt them.

1762.

Corrupt and venal orators are the assassins of

the public liberties and of public morals.

1763.

The Will is a force;

its limits as yet unknown.

1764.

It is in the power of the will that we chiefly see

the spiritual and divine in man.

1765.

There is a seeming identity between his will that moves other men,

and the Creative Will whose action seems so incomprehensible.

1766.

It is the men of will and action, not the men of pure intellect,

that govern the world.

1767.

Finally, the three greatest moral forces are FAITH,

which is the only true WISDOM,

and the very foundation of all government;

1768.

HOPE, which is STRENGTH, and insures success;

1769.

and CHARITY, which is BEAUTY,

and alone makes animated, united effort possible.

1770.

These forces are within the reach of all men;

and an association of men, actuated by them,

ought to exercise an immense power in the world.

1771.

If Masonry does not, it is because she has ceased to possess them.

1772.

Wisdom in the man or statesman, or in king or priest,

largely consists in the due appreciation of these forces;

and upon the general non-appreciation of some of them the fate of nations often depends.

1773.

What hecatombs of lives often hang upon

the not weighing or not sumciently weighing the force of an idea,

such as, for example, the reverence for a flag,

or the blind attachment to a form or constitution of government!

1774.

What errors in political economy and statesmanship are committed

in consequence of the over-estimation or under-estimation of particular values,

or the non-estimation of some among them!

1775.

Everything, it is asserted, is the product of human labor;

yet the gold or the diamond which one accidentally finds without labor is not so.

1776.

What is the value of the labor bestowed by the husbandman upon his crops,

compared with the value of the sunshine and rain,

without which his labor avails nothing?

1777.

Commerce carried on by the labor of man,

adds to the value of the products of the field, the mine, or the workshop,

by their transportation to different markcts;

1778.

yet how much of this increase is due to the rivers down which these products float,

to the winds that urge the keels of commerce over the ocean!

1779.

Who can estimate the value of morality and manliness in a State,

of moral worth and intellectual knowledge?

1780.

These are the sunshine and rain of the State.

1781.

The winds, with their changeable, fickle, fluctuating currents,

are apt emblems of the fickle humors of the populace,

its passions, its heroic impulses, its enthusiasms.

1782.

Woe to the statesman who does not estimate these as values!

1783.

Even music and song are sometimes found to have an incalculable value.

1784.

Every nation has some song of a proven value,

more easily counted in lives than dollars.

1785.

The Marseillaise was worth to revolutionary France,

who shall say how many thousand men?

1786.

Peace also is a great element of prosperity and wealth;

a value incalculable for its wealth of happy prosperity and growth.

1787.

Social intercourse and association of men in beneficent Orders

have a value not to be estimated in coin.

1788.

The illustrious examples of the Past of a nation,

the memories and immortal thoughts of her great and wise thinkers, statesmen, and heroes,

are the invaluable legacy of that Past to the Present and Future.

1789.

And all these have not only the values of

the loftier and more excellent and priceless kind,

yet also an actual money value,

since it is only when co-operating with or aided or enabled by these,

that human labor creates wealth.

1790.

They are of the chief elements of material wealth,

as they are of national manliness, heroism, glory, prosperity, and immortal renown.

Morals & Dogma CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

Divisions 1791-1 830

MORALS & DOGMA 3

1791.

Providence has appointed the three great disciplines of War,

the Monarchy and the Priesthood,

all that the CAMP, the PALACE, and the TEMPLE may symbolize,

to train the multitudes forward to intelligent and premeditated combinations

for all the great purposes of society.

1792.

The result will at length be free governments among men,

when virtue and intelligence become qualities of the multitudes;

yet for ignorance such governments are impossible.

1793.

Man advances only by degrees.

1794.

The removal of one pressing calamity

gives courage to attempt the removal of the remaining evils,

rendering men more sensitive to them,

or perhaps sensitive for the first time.

1795.

Serfs that writhe under the whip are not disquieted about tbeir political rights;

manumitted from personal slavery,

they be come sensitive to political oppression.

1796.

Liberated from arbitrary power, and governed by the law alone,

they begin to scrutinize the law itself,

and desire to be governed, not only by law,

yet by what they deem the best law.

1797.

And when the civil or temporal despotism has been set aside,

and the municipal law has been moulded on the principles of an enlightened jurisprudence,

they may wake to the discovery that they are living under some priestly ecclesiastical despotism,

and become desirous of working a reformation there also.

1798.

It is quite true that the advance of humanity is slow,

and that it often pauses and retrogrades.

1799.

In the kingdoms of the earth we do not see despotisms retiring

and yielding the ground to self-governing communities.

1800.

We do not see the churches and priesthoods of Christendom

relinquishing their old task of governing men by imaginary terrors.

1801.

Nowhere do we see a populace that could be safely manumitted from such a government.

1802.

We do not see the great religious teachers

aiming to discover truth for themselves and for others;

1803.

yet still ruling the world,

and contented and compelled to rule the world,

by whatever dogma is already accredited;

1804.

themselves as much bound down by this necessity to govern,

as the populace by their need of government.

1805.

Poverty in all its most hideous forms still exists in the great cities;

and the cancer of pauperism has its roots in the hearts of kingdoms.

1806.

Men there take no measure of their wants and their own power to supply them,

yet live and multiply like the beasts of the field,

1807.

--Providence having apparently ceased to care for them.

1808.

Intelligence never visits these,

or it makes its appearance as some new development of villainy.

1809.

War has not ceased;

still there are battles and sieges.

1810.

Homes are still unhappy,

and tears and anger aud spite make hells where there should be heavens.

1811.

So much the more necessity for Masonry!

1812.

So much wider the field of its labors!

1813.

So much the more need for it to begin to be true to itself,

to revive from its asphyxia,

to repent of its apostasy to its true creed!

1814.

Undoubtedly, labor and death and the sexual passion

are essential and permanent conditions of human existence,

and render perfection and a millennium on earth impossible.

1815.

Always in the past,

--it is the decree of Fate! --

the vast majority of men must toil to live,

and cannot find time to cultivate the intelligence.

1816.

Man, knowing he is to die,

will not sacrifice the present enjoyment for a greater one in the future.

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