II.: 
 
QlorneU Iniocrattj} Slihrara 
 
 3tt(ara, N«m f ark 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
LIBRABKeAWlEX 
 
 ^ig^ 
 
 B Tl %1 ' 
 
 
 
 'S^Mj 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 '' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 HS425 .P87 
 
 Lectures on the philosophy o' 'feemasonr 
 
 3 1924 030 286 466 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030286466 
 
Copyright, 1915 
 
 BY 
 
 The National Masonic Research Society 
 Anamosa, Iowa 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Philosophy of Freemasonry 
 
 BY 
 
 ROSCOE POUND, LL. D. 
 
 Carter Professor of Jurisprudence in Harvard University 
 Deputy Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts 
 
 The National Masonic Research Society 
 
 ANAMOSA, IOWA 
 
 1915 
 
 J? 
 
 /- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These lectures were first delivered before the Har- 
 vard Chapter of the Acacia Fraternity in the school- 
 year 1911-12, except the lecture on Krause, which was 
 first delivered before the Grand Lodge of Nebraska in 
 1903, and was originally printed in the proceedings of 
 that body for that year. Afterwards all five lectures, 
 revised and corrected, were delivered before the Grand 
 Lodge of Massachusetts in 1914, and appear in its pro- 
 ceedings for that year. In the latter form they were 
 published in successive numbers of The Builder, from 
 January to May, 1915, from which they are now re- 
 printed. 
 
 From the foregoing statement it will appear that 
 in their original form all but one of the lectures were 
 prepared for students who had come fresh from a cer- 
 tain general philosophical training in college. Un- 
 doubtedly the reader who has not had such a training 
 will find them somewhat difficult. But it is believed 
 the difficulty is involved necessarily in the subject it- 
 self. There is no more a popular road to learning than 
 there was once a royal road. Learning which costs no 
 effort is worth no more than it costs. The perennial 
 problems of the nature of reality, the conduct of life, 
 and the relation of the human individual to the uni- 
 verse cannot be stated in words of one syllable, nor can 
 solutions of them which are of enough value to justify 
 the time spent in achieving them, be ladled out as pre- 
 digested food for mental digestions too weak to assim- 
 ilate the ideas of Krause and Pike undiluted and un- 
 tempered. On the other hand the serious student of 
 
Masonry needs no elaborate philosophical apparatus to 
 apprehend these ideas, if he is willing to think critically 
 and deeply. What he needs chiefly is to connect the 
 Masonic thinking of these masters of the philosophy 
 of the Craft with the general thought of the time and 
 place in which they wrought and to perceive the prob- 
 lems raised by the civilization of those times and places 
 in their relation to the ethical and social problems of 
 today. Thus he may make the Masonic writings of 
 these masters and through them Freemasonry a force 
 in his life and ultimately, in consequence, a force in 
 society. Such must be the justification of the some- 
 what elaborate consideration of the philosophical en- 
 vironment of the great thinkers of the Craft which I 
 have ventured in each case. 
 
 To assist the zealous student who desires to do 
 more than scratch the surface, bibliographies have been 
 appended to each lecture. Except in the case of 
 Krause, whose works have not been translated, the 
 writings cited are readily accessible to the ordinary 
 Mason. And if they seem to invite him to a hard task, 
 he may reflect how hard a task Preston coped with and 
 under what heavy burdens, and may take heart on per- 
 ceiving how much Preston achieved. Of the five de- 
 partments of Masonic study — Ritual, History, Philos- 
 ophy, Symbolism, and Law — Philosophy, the science of 
 Masonic fundamentals, is by no means the least. In- 
 deed its problems are as perennial and as changing as 
 life itself. None of these studies will better repay the 
 diligent student ; none aft'ords a more promising field to 
 the ambitious student. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
 30 August, 1915. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Preston: Masonry in its Relation to Education 3 
 
 II. Krause: Masonry in its Relation to Morals and Law. . . .23 
 
 III. Oliver: Masonry in its Relation to Religion 40 
 
 IV. Pike: Masonry in its Relation to Metaphysics and the 
 
 Problem of Reality 56 
 
 V. A Twentieth-Century Masonic Philosophy: The Relation 
 
 of Masonry to Civilization 73 
 
 Bibliography Appendix 
 
33° 
 
 Past Grand Master of Masons in Nebraska 
 
 LET NOT THE STUDENT WHO KNOWS HIS DUTY 
 ARIGHT GIVE ANYTHING TO HIS TEACHER BEFORE 
 HIS RETURN HOME; BUT WHEN HE IS ABOUT TO 
 PERFORM THE SACRIFICE ON HIS RETURN, LET HIM 
 GIVE TO THE VENERABLE MAN ACCORDING TO HIS 
 ABILITY. MANU, 11, 245. 
 
WILLIAM PRESTON 
 
WILLIAM PRESTON. 
 
 PHILOSOPHERS are by no means agreed 
 with respect to the scope and subject mat- 
 ter of philosophy. Nor are Masonic schol- 
 ars at one with respect to the scope and 
 purpose of Freemasonry. Hence one may 
 not expect to define and delimit Masonic philosophy ac- 
 cording to the easy method of Dickens' editor who 
 wrote upon Chinese metaphysics by reading in the En- 
 cyclopedia upon China and upon metaphysics and com- 
 bining his information. It is enough to say at the out- 
 set that in the sense in which philosophers of Masonry 
 have used the term, philosophy is the science of funda- 
 mentals. Possibly it would be more correct to think 
 of the philosophy of Masonry as organized Masonic 
 knowledge — as a system of Masonic knowledge. But 
 there has come to be a well-defined branch of Masonic 
 learning which has to do with certain fundamental 
 questions; and these fundamental questions may be 
 called the problems of Masonic philosophy, since that 
 branch of Masonic learning which treats of them has 
 been called commonly the philosophy of Masonry. 
 These fundamental questions are three: 
 
 1. What is the nature and purpose of Masonry as 
 an institution? For what does it exist? What does 
 it seek to do? Of course for the philosopher this in- 
 volves also and chiefly the questions, what ought Ma- 
 sonry to be ? For what ought it to exist ? What ought 
 it to seek as its end? 
 
 2. What is — and this involves what should be — 
 the relation of Masonry to other human institutions, 
 especially to those directed toward similar ends ? What 
 is its place in a rational scheme of human activities? 
 
4 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF AIASONR V 
 
 3. What are the fundamental principles by which 
 Masonry is governed in attaining the end it seeks? 
 This again, to the philosopher, involves the question 
 what those principles ought to be. 
 
 Four eminent Masonic scholars have essayed to an- 
 swer these questions and in so doing have given us four 
 systems of Masonic philosophy, namely, William Pres- 
 ton, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, George Oliver 
 and Albert Pike. Of these four systems of Masonic 
 philosophy, two, if I may put it so, are intellectual sys- 
 tems. They appeal to and are based upon reason only. 
 These two are the system of Preston and that of 
 Krause. The other two are, if I may put it that waj% 
 spiritual systems. They do not flow from the rational- 
 ism of the eighteenth century but spring instead from 
 a reaction toward the mystic ideas of the hermetic 
 philosophers in the seventeenth century. As I shall 
 try to show hereafter, this is characteristic of each, 
 though much more marked in one. 
 
 Summarily, then, we have four systems of Ma- 
 sonic philosophy. Two are intellectual systems : First 
 that of Preston, whose keyword is Knowledge; sec- 
 ond, that of Krause, whose keyword is Morals. Two 
 are spiritual systems: First that of Oliver, whose 
 keyword is Tradition; and second, that of Pike, whose 
 keyword is Symbolism. Comparing the two intellec- 
 tual systems of Masonic philosophy, the intrinsic im- 
 portance of Preston's is much less than that of 
 Krause's. Krause's philosophy of Masonry has a very 
 high value in and of itself. On the other hand the chief 
 interest in Preston's philosophy of Masonry, apart from 
 his historical position among Masonic philosophers, is 
 to be found in the circumstance that his philosophy is 
 the philosophy of our American lectures and hence is 
 the only one with which the average American Mason 
 acquires any familiarity. 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 5 
 
 Preston was not, like Krause, a man in advance of 
 his time who taught his own time and the future. He 
 was thoroughly a child of his time. Hence to under- 
 stand his writings we must know the man and the time. 
 Accordingly I shall divide this discourse into three 
 parts: (1) The man, (2) the time, (3) Preston's phil- 
 osophy of Masonry as a product of the two. 
 
 1. First, then, the man. William Preston was 
 born at Edinburgh on August 7, 1742. His father was 
 a writer to the signet or solicitor — the lower branch of 
 the legal profession — and seems to have been a man of 
 some education and ability. At any rate he sent Wil- 
 liam to the high school at Edinburgh, the caliber of 
 which in those days may be judged from the circum- 
 stance that the boy entered it at six — though he was 
 thought very precocious. At school he made some 
 progress in Latin and even began Greek. But all this 
 was at an early age. His father died while William 
 was a mere boy and he was taken out of school, appar- 
 ently before he was twelve years old. His father had 
 left him to the care of Thomas Ruddiman, a well-known 
 linguist and he became the latter's clerk. Later Rud- 
 diman apprenticed William to his brother who was a 
 printer, so that Preston learned the printer's trade as a 
 boy of fourteen or fifteen. On the death of his patron 
 (apparently having nothing by inheritance from his 
 father) Preston went into the printing shop as an ap- 
 prentice and worked there as a journeyman until 1762. 
 In that year, with the consent of the master to whom 
 he had been apprenticed, he went to London. He was 
 only eighteen years old, but carried a letter to the king's 
 printer, and so found employment at once. He re- 
 mained in the employ of the latter during substantially 
 the whole remaining period of his life. 
 
 Preston's abilities showed themselves in the print- 
 ing shop from the beginning. He not merely set up 
 
6 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 the matter at which he worked but he contrived in some 
 way to read it and to think about it. From setting up 
 the great variety of matter which came to the king's 
 printer he acquired a notable hterary style and became 
 known to the authors whose books and writings he 
 helped to set up as a judge of style and as a critic. Ac- 
 cordingly he was made proof reader and corrector for 
 the press and worked as such during the greater part of 
 his career. He did work of this sort on the writings of 
 Gibbon, Hume, Robertson and authors of that rank, 
 and presentation copies of the works of these authors, 
 which were found among Preston's effects at his death, 
 attest the value which they put upon the labors of the 
 printer. 
 
 Preston had no more than come of age when he 
 was made a Mason in a lodge of Scotchmen in London. 
 This lodge had attempted to get a warrant from the 
 Grand Lodge of Scotland, but that body very properly 
 refused to invade London, and the Scotch petitioners 
 turned to the Grand Lodge of Ancients, by whom they 
 were chartered. Thus Preston was made in the system 
 of his great rival, Dermott, just as the latter was at 
 first affiliated with a regular or modem lodge. Accord- 
 ing to the English usage, which permits simultaneous 
 membership in several lodges, Preston presently be- 
 came a member of a lodge subordinate to the older 
 Grand Lodge. Something here converted him, and he 
 persuaded the lodge in which he had been raised to 
 secede from the Ancients and to be reconstituted by the 
 so-called Modems. Thus he cast his lot definitely with 
 the latter and soon became their most redoubtable 
 champion. Be it remembered that the Preston who 
 did all this was a young man of twenty-three and a 
 journeyman printer. 
 
 At the age of twenty-five he became master of the 
 newly constituted lodge, and as such conceived it his 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 7 
 
 duty to make a thorough study of the Masonic institu- 
 tion. His own words are worth quoting : 
 
 "When I first had the honor to be elected master 
 of a lodge, I thought it proper to inform myself fully of 
 the general rules of the society, that I might be able to 
 fulfill my own duty and officially enforce obedience in 
 others. The methods which I adopted with this view 
 excited in some of superficial knowledge an absolute dis- 
 like of what they considered as innovations, and in 
 others, who were better informed, a jealousy of pre- 
 eminence which the principles of Masonry ought to 
 have checked. Notwithstanding these discourage- 
 ments, however, I persevered in my intention." 
 
 Indeed one cannot wonder that the pretensions of 
 this journeyman printer of twenty-five were scouted by 
 older Masons. But for the present Preston had to 
 contend with nothing more than shakings of the head. 
 Unlike the scholarly, philosophical, imperturbable, aca- 
 demic Krause, Preston was a fighter. Probably his 
 confident dogmatism, which shows itself throughout 
 his lectures, his aggressiveness and his ambition made 
 more enemies than the supposed innovations involved 
 in his Masonic research. Moreover we must not forget 
 that he had to overcome three very serious obstacles, 
 namely, dependence for his daily bread upon a trade at 
 which he worked twelve hours a day, youth, and recent 
 connection with the fraternity. That Preston was not 
 persecuted at this stage of his career and that he suc- 
 ceeded in taking the lead as he did is a complete testi- 
 mony to his abilities. 
 
 Preston had three great qualifications for the work 
 he undertook: (1) Indefatigable diligence, whereby 
 he found time and means to read everything that bore 
 on Masonry after twelve hours of work at his trade 
 daily, six days in the week; (2) a marvelous memory, 
 which no detail of his reading ever escaped ; and (3) a 
 great power of making friends and of enlisting their 
 
8 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 enthusiastic co-operation. He utilized this last re- 
 source abundantly, corresponding diligently with all 
 well-informed Masons abroad and taking advantage of 
 every opportunity to interview Masons at home. The 
 results of this communication with all the prominent 
 Masons of his time are to be seen in his lectures. 
 
 It was a bold but most timely step when this youth- 
 ful master of a new lodge determined to rewrite or rath- 
 er to write the lectures of Craft Masonry. The old 
 charges had been read to the initiate originally, and 
 from this there had grown up a practice of orally ex- 
 pounding their contents and commenting upon the im- 
 portant points. To turn this into a system of fixed 
 lectures and give them a definite place in the ritual was 
 a much-needed step in the development of the work. 
 But it was so distinctly a step that the ease with which 
 it was achieved is quite as striking as the result itself. 
 
 When Preston began the composition of his lec- 
 tures, he organized a sort of club, composed of his 
 friends, for the purpose of listening to him and criticis- 
 ing him. This club was wont to meet twice a week in 
 order to pass on, criticise and learn the lecture as Pres- 
 ton conceived it. Finally in 1772, after seven years, he 
 interested the grand lodge officers in his work and de- 
 livered an oration, which appears in the first edition of 
 his Illustrations of Masonry, before a meeting of emi- 
 nent Masons including the principal grand officers. 
 After delivery of the oration, he expounded his system 
 to the meeting. His hearers approved the lectures, 
 and, though official sanction was not given immediately, 
 the result was to give them a standing which insured 
 their ultimate success. His disciples began now to go 
 about from lodge to lodge delivering his lectures and to 
 come back to the weekly meetings with criticisms and 
 suggestions. Thus by 1774 his system was complete. 
 He then instituted a regular school of instruction, 
 which obtained the sanction of the Grand Lodge and 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 9 
 
 thus diffused his lectures throughout England. This 
 made him the most prominent Mason of the time, so 
 that he was elected to the famous Lodge of Antiquity, 
 one of the four old lodges of 1717, and the one which 
 claimed Sir Christopher Wren for a past master. He 
 was soon elected master of this lodge and continued 
 such for many years, giving the lodge a pre-eminent 
 place in English Masonry which it has kept ever since. 
 
 Preston's Masonic career, however, was not one of 
 unbroken triumph. In 1779 his views as to Masonic 
 history and Masonic jurisprudence brought him into 
 conflict with the Grand Lodge. It is hard to get at the 
 exact facts in the mass of controversial writing which 
 this dispute brought forth. Fairly stated, they seem 
 to have been about as follows : 
 
 The Grand Lodge had a rule against lodges going 
 in public processions. The Lodge of Antiquity deter- 
 mined on St. John's Day, 1777, to go in a body to St. 
 Dunstan's church, a few steps only from the lodge 
 room. Some of the members protested against this as 
 being in conflict with the rule of the Grand Lodge, and 
 in consequence only ten attended. These ten clothed 
 themselves in the vestry of the church, sat in the same 
 pew during the service and sermon, and then walked 
 across the street to the lodge room in their gloves and 
 aprons. This action gave rise to a debate in the lodge 
 at its next meeting, and in the debate Preston expressed 
 the opinion that the Lodge of Antiquity, which was 
 older than the Grand Lodge and had participated in its 
 formation, had certain inherent privileges, and that it 
 had never lost its right to go in procession as it had 
 done in 1694 before there was any Grand Lodge. Thus 
 far the controversy may remind us of the recent differ- 
 ences between Bro. Pitts and the Grand Lodge authori- 
 ties in Michigan. But the authority of Grand Lodges 
 was too recent at that time to make it expedient to 
 overlook such doctrine when announced by the first 
 
10 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 Masonic scholar of the day. Hence, for maintaining 
 this opinion, Preston was expelled by the Grand Lodge, 
 and in consequence the Lodge of Antiquity severed its 
 connection with the Grand Lodge of Modems and en- 
 tered into relations with the revived Grand Lodge at 
 York. The breach was not healed till 1787. 
 
 Upon settlement of the controversy with the Grand 
 Lodge of Modems, Preston, restored to all his honors 
 and dignities, at once resumed his Masonic activities. 
 Among other things, he organized a society of Masonic 
 scholars, the first of its kind. It was known as the 
 Order of the Harodim and included the most distin- 
 guished Masons of the time. Preston taught his lec- 
 tures in this society, and through it they came to Amer- 
 ica, where they are the foundation of our Craft lectures. 
 Unhappily at the Union in England in 1813 his lectures 
 were displaced by those of Hemming, which critics con- 
 cur in pronouncing much inferior. But Preston was ill 
 at the time and seems to have taken no part whatever 
 in the negotiations that led to the Union nor in the 
 Union itself. He died in 1818, at the age of 76, after a 
 lingering illness. A diligent and frugal life had en- 
 abled him to lay by some money and he was able to 
 leave £800 for Masonic uses, £500 to the Freemason's 
 charity for orphans — for which, left an orphan himself 
 before the age of twelve, he had a natural sympathy — 
 and £300 to endow the so-called Prestonian lecture — an 
 annual lecture in Preston's words verbatim by a lec- 
 turer appointed by the Grand Lodge. This lecture is 
 still kept up and serves to remind us that Preston was 
 the first to insist on the minute verbal accuracy which 
 is now a feature of our lectures. It should be noted 
 also that in addition to his lectures, Preston's book, 
 Illustrations of Masonry, has had great influence. It 
 went through some twenty editions in England, four 
 or five in America, and two in Germany. 
 
 So much for the man. 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASON R V ii 
 
 Now as to the time. 
 
 Three striking characteristics of the first three 
 quarters of the eighteenth century in England are of 
 importance for an understanding of Preston's philoso- 
 phy of Masonry: (1) It was a period of mental qui- 
 escence; (2) both in England and elsewhere it was a 
 period of formal over-refinement; (3) it was the so- 
 called age of reason, when the intellect was taken to be 
 self-sufficient and men were sure that knowledge was a 
 panacea. 
 
 1. In contrast with the seventeenth century, the 
 eighteenth century was a period of quiescence. Society 
 had ceased to be in a state of furious ebullition, nor was 
 there a conflict of manifestly irreconcilable ideas as in 
 the time just gone by. On the surface there was har- 
 mony. True, as the events of the end of the century 
 showed, it was a harmony of compromise rather than 
 of reconciliation — a truce, not a peace. But men ceased 
 for a time to quarrel over fundamentals and turned 
 their attention to details and to form. A common the- 
 ological philosophy was accepted by men who denounced 
 each other heartily for comparatively trivial differences 
 of opinion. In politics. Whig and Tory had become little 
 more than names, and both parties agreed to accept, 
 with little modification, the body of doctrine afterwards 
 known as the principles of the English Revolution. 
 Political ideas were fixed. Men conceived of a social 
 compact from which every detail of social and political 
 rights and duties might be deduced by abstract reason- 
 ing and believed that it was possible in this way to work 
 out a model code for the legislator, a touchstone of 
 sound law for the judge and an infallible guide to pri- 
 vate conduct for the individual. In literature and in 
 art there was a like acquiescence in accepted canons. 
 A certain supposed classical style was assumed to be 
 the final and the only permissible mode of expression. 
 In other words acquiescence was the dominant tendency 
 
12 THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 and finality was the dominant idea. For example, 
 Blackstone, a true representative of the century, 
 thought complacently of the legal system of his time, 
 with its heavy load of archaisms, almost ripe for the 
 legislative reform movement of the next generation, as 
 substantially perfect. Nothing, so he thought, was 
 left for the completion of five hundred years of legal 
 development but to patch up a few trivial details. In 
 the same spirit of finality the framers of our bills of 
 rights undertook to lay out legal and political charts 
 for all time. Indeed the absolute legal philosophy of 
 our text books which has made so much trouble for the 
 social reformers of yesterday and of today, speaks from 
 the eighteenth century. In this spirit of finality, with 
 this same confidence that his time had the key to rea- 
 son and could pronounce once for all for every time, for 
 every place and for every people, Preston framed the 
 dogmatic discourses which we are content to take as 
 the lectures of Freemasonry. 
 
 2. For the modem world, the eighteenth century 
 was par excellence the period of formalism. It was the 
 period of formal over-refinement in every department 
 of human activity. It was the age of formal verse and 
 heroic diction, of a classical school in art which lost 
 sight of the spirit in reproducing the forms of antiqui- 
 ty, of elaborate and involved court etiquette, of formal 
 diplomacy, of the Red Tape and Circumlocution Office 
 in every portion of administration, of formal military 
 tactics in which efficiency in the field yielded to the ex- 
 igencies of parade and soldiers went into the field 
 dressed for the ballroom. Our insistence upon letter- 
 perfect, phonographic reproduction of the ritual comes 
 from this period, and Preston fastened that idea upon, 
 our lectures, perhaps for all time. 
 
 3. The third circumstance, that the eighteenth 
 century was the era of purely intellectualist philosophy, 
 naturally determined Preston's philosophy of Masonry. 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 13 
 
 At that time reason was the central idea of all phil- 
 osophical thought. Knowledge was regarded as the 
 universal solvent. Hence when Preston found in his 
 old lectures that among other things Masonry was a 
 body of knowledge and discovered in the old charges a 
 history of knowledge and of its transmission from an- 
 tiquity, it was inevitable that he make knowledge the 
 central point of his system. How thoroughly he did 
 this is apparent today in our American Fellowcraft lec- 
 ture, which, with all the abridgments to which it has 
 been subjected, is still essentially Prestonian. Time 
 does not suffice to read Preston in his original rhetorical 
 prolixity. But a few examples from Webb's version, 
 which at these points is only an abridgment, will serve 
 to make the point. The quotations are from a Webb 
 monitor, but have been compared in each case with an 
 authentic version of Preston. 
 
 "The Globes are two artificial spherical bodies, on 
 the convex surface of which are represented the coun- 
 tries, seas, and various parts of the earth, the face of 
 the heavens, the planetary revolutions, and other par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 "The sphere, with the parts of the earth delineated 
 on its surface, is called the Terrestrial Globe ; and that 
 with the constellations, and other heavenly bodies, the 
 Celestial Globe. 
 
 "The principal use of the Globes, besides serving as 
 maps to distinguish the outward parts of the earth, and 
 the situation of the fixed stars, is to illustrate and ex- 
 plain the phenomena arising from the annual revolution 
 and the diurnal rotation of the earth around its own 
 axis. They are the noblest instruments for improving 
 the mind, and giving it the most distinct idea of any 
 problem or proposition, as well as enabling it to solve 
 the same." 
 
 It has often been pointed out that these globes on 
 t;he pillars are pure anachronisms. They are due to 
 
14 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 Preston's desire to make the Masonic lectures teach as- 
 tronomy, which just then was the dominant science. 
 
 Note particularly the purpose, as the lecture sets it 
 forth expressly : "for improving the mind and for giv- 
 ing it the most distinct idea of any problem or proposi- 
 tion as well as enabling it to solve the same." 
 
 In other words, these globes are not symbolic, they 
 are not designed for moral improvement. They rest 
 upon the pillars, grotesquely out of place, simply and 
 solely to teach the lodge the elements of geography and 
 astronomy. 
 
 We must remember that Preston, who worked 
 twelve hours a day setting type or reading proof, would 
 look on this very differently from the Mason of today. 
 What are commonplaces of science now were by no 
 means general property then. To him the teaching of 
 the globes was a perfectly serious matter. 
 
 Turn to the solemn disquisition on architecture in 
 our Fellowcraft lecture. As we give it, it is unadulter- 
 ated Preston, but happily it is often much abridged. 
 You know how it runs, how it describes each order in 
 detail, gives the proportions, tells what was the model, 
 appends an artistic critique, and sets forth the legend 
 of the invention of the Corinthian order by Callima- 
 chus. The foundation for all this is in the old charges. 
 But in Preston's hands it has become simply a treatise . 
 on architecture. The Mason who listened to it repeat- 
 edly would become a learned man. He would know 
 what an educated man ought to know about the orders 
 of architecture. 
 
 In the same way he gives us an abridgment of Eu- 
 clid: 
 
 "Geometry treats of the powers and properties of 
 magnitudes in general, where length, breadth and thick- 
 ness are considered, from a point to a line, from a line to 
 a superficies, and from a superficies to a solid. A point 
 is a dimensionless figure, or an indivisible part of space. 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MA SONR V is 
 
 A line is a point continued, and a figure of one capacity, 
 namely, length. A superficies is a figure of two dimen- 
 sions, namely, length and breadth. A solid is a figure 
 of three dimensions, namely, length, breadth and thick- 
 ness." 
 
 But enough of this. You see the design. By 
 making the lectures epitomes of all the great branches 
 of learning, the Masonic Lodge may be made a school in 
 which all men, before the days of public schools and 
 wide-open universities, might acquire knowledge, by 
 which alone they could achieve all things. If all men had 
 knowledge, so Preston thought, all human, all social 
 problems would be solved. With knowledge on which 
 to proceed deductively, human reason would obviate 
 the need of government and of force and an era of per- 
 fection would be at hand. But those were the days of 
 endowed schools which were not for the many. The 
 priceless solvent, knowledge, was out of reach of the 
 common run of men who most needed it. Hence to 
 Preston, first and above all else the Masonic order ex- 
 isted to propagate and diffuse knowledge. To this end, 
 therefore, he seized upon the opportunity afforded by 
 the lectures and sought by means of them to develop in 
 an intelligent whole all the knowledge of his day. 
 
 Now that knowledge has become too vast to be 
 comprised in any one scheme and too protean to be 
 formulated as to any of its details even for the brief life 
 of a modem text, the defects of such a scheme are ob- 
 vious enough. That this was Preston's conception, may 
 be shown abundantly from his lectures. For instance : 
 
 "Smelling is that sense by which we distinguish 
 odors, the various kinds of which convey different opin- 
 ions to the mind. Animal and vegetable bodies, and, 
 indeed, most other bodies, while exposed to the air, con- 
 tinually send forth effluvia of vast subtilty, as well in 
 the state of life and growth, as in the state of fermenta- 
 tion and putrefaction. These effluvia, being drawn into 
 
i6 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR V 
 
 the nostrils along with the air, are the means by which 
 all bodies are smelled." 
 
 This bit of eighteenth-century physics, which 
 makes us smile today, is still gravely recited in many of 
 our lodges as if it had some real or some symbolic im- 
 portance. It means simply that Preston was endeavor- 
 ing to write a primer of physiology and of physics. 
 
 He states his theory expressly in these words : 
 
 "On the mind all our knowledge must depend; 
 what, therefore, can be a more proper subject for the 
 investigation of Masons? By anatomical dissection 
 and observation we become acquainted with the body ; 
 but it is by the anatomy of the mind alone we discover 
 its powers and principles." 
 
 That is: All knowledge depends upon the mind. 
 Hence the Mason should study the mind as the instru- 
 ment of acquiring knowledge, the one thing needful. 
 
 Today this seems a narrow and inadequate concep- 
 tion. But the basis of such a philosophy of Masonry is 
 perfectly clear if we remember the man and the time. 
 We must think of these lectures as the work of a 
 printer, the son of an educated father, but taken from 
 school before he was twelve and condemned to pick up 
 what he could from the manuscripts he set up in the 
 shop or by tireless labor at night after a full day's work. 
 We must think of them as the work of a laborer, chiefly 
 self-educated, associated with the great literati of the 
 time whom he came to know through preparing their 
 manuscripts for the press and reading their proofs, and 
 so filled with their enthusiasm for enlightenment in 
 what men thought the age of reason. We must think 
 of them as the work of one imbued with the cardinal 
 notions of the time — intellectualism, the all-sufficiency 
 of reslson, the absolute need of knowledge as the basis 
 on which reason proceeds, and finality. 
 
 How, then, does Preston answer the three problems 
 of Masonic philosophy ? 
 
THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 17 
 
 1. For what does Masonry exist? What is the 
 end and purpose of the order ? Preston would answer : 
 To diffuse Ught, that is, to spread knowledge among 
 men. This, he might say, is the proximate end. He 
 might agree with Krause that the ultimate purpose is 
 to perfect men — to make them better, wiser and conse- 
 quently happier. But the means of achieving this per- 
 fection, he would say, is general diffusion of knowledge. 
 Hence, he would say, above all things Masonry exists to 
 promote knowledge ; the Mason ought first of all to cul- 
 tivate his mind, he ought to study the liberal arts and 
 sciences ; he ought to become a learned man. 
 
 2. What is the relation of Masonry to other hu- 
 man activities ? Preston does not answer this question 
 directly anywhere in his writings. But we may gather 
 that he would have said something like this : The state 
 seeks to make men better and happier by preserving 
 order. The church seeks this end by cultivating the 
 moral person and by holding in the background super- 
 natural sanctions. Masonry endeavors to make men 
 better and happier by teaching them and by diffusing 
 knowledge among them. This, bear in mind, was before 
 education of the masses had become a function of the 
 state. 
 
 3. How does Masonry seek to achieve its pur- 
 poses? What are the principles by which it is gov- 
 erned in attaining its end ? 
 
 Preston answers that both by symbols and by lec- 
 tures the Mason is (first) admonished to study and to 
 acquire learning and (second) actually taught a com- 
 plete system of organized knowledge. We have his own 
 words for both of these ideas. As to the first, in his 
 system both lectures and charges reiterate it. For ex- 
 ample: "The study of the liberal arts, that valuable 
 branch of education which tends so effectually to polish 
 and adorn the mind is earnestly recommended to your 
 
i8 THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASON R Y 
 
 consideration." Again, notice how he dwells upon the 
 advantages of each art as he expounds it : 
 
 "Grammar teaches the proper arrangement of 
 words according to the idiom or dialect of any particu- 
 lar people, and that excellency of pronunciation which 
 enables us to speak or write a language with accuracy, 
 agreeably to reason and correct usage. Rhetoric 
 teaches us to speak copiously and fluently on any sub- 
 ject, not merely with propriety alone, but with all the 
 advantages of force and elegance, wisely contriving to 
 captivate the hearer by strength of argument and 
 beauty of expression, whether it be to entreat and ex- 
 hort, to admonish or applaud." 
 
 As to the second proposition, one example will suf- 
 fice: 
 
 "Tools and implements of architecture are selected 
 by the fraternity to imprint on the memory wise and 
 serious truths." 
 
 In other words the purpose even of the symbols is 
 to teach wise and serious truths. The word serious 
 here is significant. It is palpably a hit at those of his 
 brethren who were inclined to be mystics and to dabble 
 in what Preston regarded as the empty jargon of the 
 hermetic philosophers. 
 
 Finally, to show his estimate of what he was doing 
 and hence what, in his view, Masonic lectures should be, 
 he says himself of his Fellowcraft lecture : "This lec- 
 ture contains a regular system of science [note that 
 science then meant knowledge] demonstrated on the 
 clearest principles and established on the firmest foun- 
 dation." 
 
 One need not say that we cannot accept the Pres- 
 tonian philosophy of Masonry as sufficient for the Ma- 
 sons of today. Much less can we accept the details or 
 even the general framework of his ambitious scheme 
 to expound all knowledge and set forth a complete out- 
 line of a liberal education in three lectures. We need 
 
THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y ig 
 
 not wonder that Masonic philosophy has made so little 
 headway in Anglo-American Masonry when we reflect 
 that this is what we have been brought up on and that 
 it is all that most Masons ever hear of. It comes with 
 an official sanction that seems to preclude inquiry, and 
 we forget the purpose of it in its obsolete details. But 
 I suspect we do Preston a great injustice in thus pre- 
 serving the literal terms of the lectures at the expense 
 of their fundamental idea. In his day they did teach — 
 today they do not. Suppose today a man of Preston's 
 tireless diligence attempted a new set of lectures which 
 should unify knowledge and present its essentials so 
 that the ordinary man could comprehend them. To use 
 Preston's words, suppose lectures were written, as a re- 
 sult of seven years of labor, and the co-operation of a 
 society of critics, which set forth a regular system of 
 modem knowledge demonstrated on the clearest prin- 
 ciples and established on the firmest foundation. Sup- 
 pose, if you will, that this were confined simply to 
 knowledge of Masonry. Would not Preston's real idea 
 (in an age of public schools) be more truly carried out 
 than by our present lip service, and would not his cen- 
 tral notion of the lodge as a center of light vindicate 
 itself by its results ? 
 
 Let me give two examples. In Preston's day, there 
 was a general need, from which Preston had suffered, 
 of popular education — of providing the means whereby 
 the common man could acquire knowledge in general. 
 Today there is no less general need of a special kind of 
 knowledge. Society is divided sharply into classes that 
 understand each other none too well and hence are get- 
 ting wholly out of sympathy. What nobler Masonic 
 lecture could there be than one which took up the fun- 
 damenta of social science and undertook to spread a 
 sound knowledge of it among all Masons? Suppose 
 such a lecture was composed as Preston's lectures were, 
 was tried on by delivery in lodge after lodge, as his 
 
20 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 were, and after criticism and recasting as a result of 
 years of labor, was taught to all our masters. Would 
 not our lodges diffuse a real light in the community and 
 take a great step forward in their work of making for 
 human perfection? 
 
 Again, in spite of what is happening for the mo- 
 ment upon the Continent, this is an era of universality 
 and intemationality. The thinking world is tending 
 strongly to insist upon breaking over narrow local 
 boundaries and upon looking at things from a world-wide 
 point of view. Art, science, economics, labor and frater- 
 nal organizations, and even sport are tending to become 
 international. The growing frequency of international 
 congresses and conferences upon all manner of subjects 
 emphasizes this breaking of local political bonds. The 
 sociological movement, the world over, is causing men 
 to take a broader and more humane view, is causing 
 them to think more of society and hence more of the 
 world-society, is causing them to focus their vision less 
 upon the individual, and hence less upon the individual 
 locality. 
 
 In this world-wide movement toward universality 
 Masons ought to take the lead. But how much does the 
 busy Mason know, much less think, of the movement 
 for intemationality or even the pacificist movement 
 which has been going forward all about him? Yet 
 every Mason ought to know these things and ought to 
 take them to heart. Every lodge ought to be a center 
 of light from which men go forth filled with new ideas 
 of social justice, cosmopolitan justice and intemation- 
 ality. 
 
 Preston of course was wrong — knowledge is not 
 the sole end of Masonry. But in another way Preston 
 was right. Knowledge is one end — at least one prox- 
 imate end — and it is not the least of those by which 
 human perfection shall be attained. Preston's mis- 
 takes were the mistakes of his century — the mistake of 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASON R Y 2Z 
 
 faith in the finaUty of what was known to that era, and 
 the mistake of regarding correct formal presentation 
 as the one sound method of instruction. But what 
 shall be said of the greater mistake we make today, 
 when we go on reciting his lectures — shorn and 
 abridged till they mean nothing to the hearer — and 
 gravely presenting them as a system of Masonic knowl- 
 edge ? Bear in mind, he thought of them as presenting 
 a general scheme of knowledge, not as a system of pure- 
 ly Masonic information. If we were governed by his 
 spirit, understood the root idea of his philosophy and 
 had but half his zeal and diligence, surely we could 
 make our lectures and through them our lodges a real 
 force in society. Here indeed, we should encounter the 
 precisians and formalists of whom lodges have always 
 been full, and should be charged with innovation. But 
 Preston was called an innovator. And he was one in 
 the sense that he put new lectures in the place of the 
 old reading of the Gothic constitutions. Preston en- 
 countered the same precisians and the same formalists 
 and wrote our lectures in their despite. I hate to think 
 that all initiative is gone from our order and that no 
 new Preston will arise to take up his conception of 
 Knowledge as an end of the fraternity and present to 
 the Masons of today the knowledge which they ought 
 to possess. 
 
KARL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH KRAUSE 
 
KRAUSE. 
 
 EXCEPT as he builds upon the old charges 
 and so uses older materials, Preston speaks 
 so completely from the eighteenth century 
 that one needs but understand the thinking 
 of eighteenth-century England to appre- 
 ciate him fully. In the case of our next Masonic philos- 
 opher, there is another story. He was in the main 
 current of the philosophical thought of his day. But 
 that current, along with the current of Masonic 
 thought, had been flowing without break from the sev- 
 enteenth century. Hence to appraise his philosophy of 
 Masonry it is not enough to consider the man and the 
 time. We must begin farther back. 
 
 The beginning of the seventeenth century was a 
 period of great mental activity. The awakening of the 
 Reformation had brought in an era of fresh and vigor- 
 ous religious thought. Political ideas foreshadowing 
 those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were 
 taking form. The downfall of scholasticism had set 
 philosophy free from Aristotle. Grotius was about to 
 emancipate Jurisprudence from Theology. Conring was 
 about to deliver Law from Justinian. In consequence a 
 new theory of law and government arose. Men went 
 back to the classical Roman jurists and their law of na- 
 ture founded on reason — applicable to men, not as citi- 
 zens, nor as members of civilized society, but simply 
 and solely as men — and the philosophical school which 
 resulted and maintained itself during the two succeed- 
 
24 THE PH IL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 ing centuries, produced the great succession of pub- 
 licists, who built up the system of international law, 
 launched the ever-growing movement for humanity in 
 war and ultimate peace, and stimulated that interest in 
 legal and political philosophy, of which the democratic 
 ideas of our own time, and the humanizing and rational- 
 izing of law in the nineteenth century, were to be the 
 fruit. The renascence of Masonry, complete in the 
 next century, had its roots in this period. "There was 
 always," says Sir Henry Maine, "a close association be- 
 tween Natural Law and humanity." In such a time, 
 with the very air full of ideas of human brotherhood 
 and of the rational claims of humanity, the notion of an 
 organization of all men, for the general welfare of man- 
 kind, was to be looked for. It may be seen, indeed, 
 in the opening years of the century; and we need not 
 doubt that the writings of Andrea and the well-known 
 Rosicrucian controversy were a symptom rather than 
 a cause. But the idea was slow in attaining its 
 maturity. In the seventeenth century, it struggled 
 beneath a load of alchemy and mysticism, bequeathed 
 to it by an obsolete era of ignorance and superstition. 
 In the eighteenth century, it was retarded by the ab- 
 sorbing interest in political philosophy. Hence it was 
 not till the first decade of the nineteenth century that 
 the possibilities of this phase of the new thought were 
 perceived entirely. Then, for the first time, the idea 
 of general organization of mankind was treated in 
 scientific method, referred to a definite end, and made 
 part of a philosophical system of human activities. 
 Perhaps no better theme could be chosen as an intro- 
 duction to Masonic philosophy, than the life and work 
 of that learned and eminent man and Mason, in his time 
 at once the first of Masonic philosophers and the fore- 
 most of philosophers of law, who rendered this service 
 to humanity and to the Craft. 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 25 
 
 Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, one of the found- 
 ers of a new Masonic literature, and the founder of a 
 school of legal thought, was born at Eisenberg, not far 
 from Leipzig, in 1781. He was educated at Jena, where 
 he taught for some time, till, in 1805, he removed to 
 Dresden. In this same year, he became a Mason ; and 
 at once, with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, he 
 entered upon a critical and philosophical study of the 
 institution, reading every Masonic work accessible. As 
 a result of his studies, he delivered twelve lectures 
 before his lodge in Dresden, which were published in 
 1809, under the title : "Hohere Vergeistung der echt- 
 iiberlieferten Grundsymbole der Freimaurerei," or 
 "Higher Spiritualization of the True Symbols of Mason- 
 ry." A year later, he published the first volume of his 
 great work, "Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden der 
 Freimaurerbruderschaft," or "The Three Oldest Pro- 
 fessional Records of the Masonic Fraternity." This 
 book, in the words of Dr. Mackey, "one of the most 
 learned that ever issued from the Masonic press," un- 
 happily fell upon evil days. The limits of permissible 
 public discussion of Masonic symbols were then uncer- 
 tain, and the liberty of the individual Mason to inter- 
 pret them for himself, since expounded so eloquently 
 by Albert Pike, was not wholly conceded by the German 
 Masons of that day. In consequence he met the fate 
 which has befallen so many of the great scholars of the 
 Craft. His name, even more than those of Preston and 
 Dalcho and Crucefix and Oliver, warns us that honest 
 ignorance, zealous bigotry, and well-meaning intoler- 
 ance are to be found even among sincere and fraternal 
 seekers for the light. The very rumor of Krause's 
 book produced great agitation. Extraordinary efforts 
 were made to prevent its publication, and, when these 
 failed, the mistaken zeal of his contemporaries was ex- 
 erted toward expelling him from the order. Not only 
 was he excommunicated by his lodge, but the persecu- 
 
26 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 tion to which his Masonic publications gave rise cking 
 to him all his life, and prevented him from receiving 
 public recognition of the position he occupied among 
 the thinkers of his day. It has been said, indeed, that 
 he was too far in advance of the time to be understood 
 fully beyond a small circle of friends and disciples. Yet 
 there seems no doubt that the bitterness engendered by 
 the Masonic controversies over his book was chiefly 
 instrumental in preventing him from attaining a pro- 
 fessorship. Happily, he was not a man to yield to per- 
 secution or misfoi'tune. Like the poet, he might have 
 said, "* * * J gggij j^Q^ good-fortune, I myself am good- 
 fortune." 
 
 Undaunted by miscomprehension of his teachings, 
 unembittered by the seeming success of his enemies, 
 he labored steadily, as a lecturer at the University of 
 Gottingen, in the development and dissemination of the 
 system of legal and political philosophy from which his 
 fame is derived. Roder has recorded the deep im- 
 pression which his lectures left upon the hearers, and 
 the common opinion which placed him far above the 
 respectable mediocrities who held professorships in the 
 institution, where he was a simple decent. As we read 
 the accounts of his work as a lecturer, and turn over 
 the earnest, devout, and tolerant pages of his books, 
 full of faith in the perfectibility of man, and of zeal for 
 discovering and furthering the conditions of human 
 progress, we must needs feel that here was one pre- 
 pared in his heart and made by nature, from whom no 
 judgment of a lodge could permanently divide us. He 
 died in 1832 at the relatively early age of 51. 
 
 Krause did not leave us a complete or systematic 
 exposition of his general philosophical system. Nor 
 can it be said that he achieved much of moment in the 
 field of philosophy at large, though some historians of 
 philosophy accord him a notable place. It is rather in 
 the special fields of the philosophy of Masonry, to which 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MASONR Y 27 
 
 he devoted the enthusiasm of youth, and of the philoso- 
 phy of law, to which he turned his maturer energies, 
 that he will be remembered. In the latter field, indeed, 
 he is still a force. Two able and zealous disciples, 
 Ahrens and Roder, labored for more than a generation 
 in expounding and spreading his doctrines. The great 
 work of Ahrens, published five years after his master's 
 death, has gone through twenty-four editions, in seven 
 languages. Thus Krause became recognized as the 
 founder of a school of legal and political philosophers, 
 and his followers, not merely by writings, but by meet- 
 ings and congresses, developed and disseminated his 
 ideas. Until the rise of the military spirit in Germany, 
 and the shifting of the growing point of German law to 
 legislation, produced a new order of ideas, the influence 
 of his doctrines was almost dominant. Outside of Ger- 
 many, especially in lands where the philosophy of law 
 is yet a virgin field, they still have a useful and fruitful 
 future before them, and he has been pronounced the 
 "leader of the latest and largest thought" in the sphere 
 of legal philosophy. In view of the social-philosophical 
 and sociological movements in the last generation, this 
 characterization is no longer accurate. But it is true 
 that until the rise of the great names of the social- 
 philosophical school of legal thought in the past decade, 
 Krause's was the greatest name in modem legal philos- 
 ophy. His great Masonic work is disfigured by the un- 
 critical voracity, characteristic of Masonic writers until 
 a very recent period, which led him to give an unhes- 
 itating credence to tradition, and to accept, as gen- 
 uine, documents of doubtful authenticity, or even down- 
 right fabrications. Hence his historical and philological 
 investigations, in which he minutely examines the 
 so-called Leland MS, the Entered Apprentice Lecture, 
 and the so-called York Constitutions, as well as his dis- 
 sertation on the form of government and administra- 
 tion in the Masonic order, must be read with caution. 
 
28 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 and with many allowances for over-credulity. But, in 
 spite of these blemishes — and they unhappily disfigure 
 too large a portion of the historical and critical litera- 
 ture of the Craft — his Masonic writings are invaluable. 
 
 In a time and among a people in which the nine- 
 teenth-century indifference to philosophy is exception- 
 ally strong, and threatens to deprive Law and Govern- 
 ment, Jurisprudence and Politics of all basis, other than 
 popular caprice, a teaching which sets them on a surer 
 and more enduring ground, which seeks to direct them 
 to a definite place and to give them definite work in a 
 general scheme of human progress, cannot fail to be 
 tonic. For the Mason, however, Krause's system of 
 legal philosophy has a further and higher value. It is 
 not merely that his works on the philosophy of law, 
 written, for the most part, after his period of Masonic 
 research and Masonic authorship was at an end, afford 
 us, at many points, memorable examples of the practi- 
 cal possibilities of Masonic studies. Nor is it merely 
 that he enforces so strenuously the social, political, and 
 legal applications of the principles of our lectures. His 
 great achievement, his chiefest title to our enduring 
 gratitude, is the organic theory of law and the state, 
 in which he develops the seventeenth-century notion of 
 a general organization of mankind into a practical doc- 
 trine, seeks to unite the state with all other groups and 
 organizations — high or low, whatever their immediate 
 scope or purpose — in a harmonious system of men's 
 activities, and points out the station and the objective 
 of our world-wide brotherhood in the line of battle of 
 human progress. Let me indicate to you some of the 
 leading points of his Masonic and of his legal philos- 
 ophy, and the relation of the one to the other. 
 
 Law is but "the skeleton of social order, clothed 
 upon by the flesh and blood of morality." Among 
 primitive peoples, it is no more than a device to keep 
 the peace, and to regulate, so far as may be, the archaic 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 2g 
 
 remedy of private war. In time it is taken over by the 
 state, and is able to put down violence, where originally 
 it could go no farther than to limit it. This done, it 
 may aspire to a better end, and seek not only to pre- 
 serve order but to do justice. Thus far it has come at 
 present. But beyond all this, says Krause, there is a 
 higher and nobler goal, which is, he says, "The perfec- 
 tion of man and of society." The law, singly, is by no 
 means adequate to this task. Rightly understood, it is 
 one of many agencies, which are to operate harmonious- 
 ly, each in its own sphere, toward that great end. The 
 state organizes and wields but one of these agencies. 
 Morals, religion, science, the arts, industry and com- 
 merce — all these, in his view, are co-workers, and must 
 be organized also. But the state, or the political organ- 
 ization, being charged with the duty of maintaining the 
 development of justice, has the special function of as- 
 suring to the other forms of organized human activity 
 the means of perfecting themselves. It must "mediate 
 between the individual and the social destiny." Thus 
 it is but an organ in the whole social organism. He 
 looks upon human society as an organic whole, made up 
 of many diverse institutions, each related to an import- 
 ant phase of human life, and all destined, at an epoch 
 of maturity, to compose a superior unity. Relatively, 
 they are independent. In a wider view and looked at 
 with an eye to the ultimate result, they are parts of a 
 single mechanism. All operate in one direction and to 
 one end — the achievement of the destiny of humanity, 
 which is perfection. Nor is this idle speculation. 
 Krause seeks to animate these several phases of human 
 activity, these varied institutions evolved as organs of 
 the social body, with a new spirit. He impresses upon 
 us that we are not on the decline, but are rather in a 
 period of youth. Humanity, he insists, is but begin- 
 ning to acquire the consciousness of its social aim. 
 Knowing its aim, conscious of the high perfection that 
 
30 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF iMASONR Y 
 
 awaits it, he calls upon mankind, by harmonious de- 
 velopment of its institutions, to reach the ideal through 
 conscious development of the real. 
 
 This insistence upon perfection as a social aim and 
 upon conscious striving to that end is of capital im- 
 portance in contrast with the ideas which prevailed so 
 generally in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 
 Under the influence of the positivists and of the me- 
 chanical sociologists for a time there was a condition of 
 social, political and juristic pessimism. Men thought 
 of society as governed by the inflexible operation of 
 fixed social laws, whose workings we might observe, as 
 we may observe the workings of the law of gravitation 
 in the motions of the heavenly bodies, but might no 
 more influence in the one case than in the other. 
 Krause's social philosophy, on the other hand, to use a 
 recent phrase, gives us faith in the efficacy of effort 
 and thus accords with the best tendencies of social and 
 political thought in the present. 
 
 Krause's philosophy of Masonry and his philosophy 
 of law require us to distinguish the natural order, the 
 social order and the moral order. The distinction may 
 be developed as follows. 
 
 Scientists tell us that nature exhibits a ceaseless 
 and relentless strife — a struggle for existence, though 
 this way of putting it had not been invented in Krause's 
 day — in which all individuals, races, and species are in- 
 evitably involved. The very weeds by the roadside are 
 not only at war with one another for room to grow, but 
 must contend for their existence against the ravages 
 pf insects, the voracity of grazing animals, and the im- 
 plements of men. Thus, the staple of life, under purely 
 natural conditions, is conflict. If we turn to the arti- 
 ficial conditions of a garden, the contrast is extreme. 
 Exotics, which could not maintain themselves a mo- 
 ment, in an alien soil and an unwonted climate, against 
 the competition of hardy native weeds, thrive luxuri- 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 31 
 
 antly. Planted carefully, so as not to interfere with each 
 other, carefully tended, so as to eliminate the competi- 
 tion of native vegetation, supplied with the best of soil, 
 watered whenever the natural supply is deficient, the 
 individual plants, freed from the natural necessity of 
 caring for themselves in the struggle for existence, 
 turn their whole energies to more perfect development, 
 and produce forms and varieties of which their rude, 
 uncultivated originals scarcely convey a hint. All 
 struggle for existence is not eliminated, indeed, in the 
 garden. But the burden of it is shifted. Instead of 
 each plant struggling with every other for a precarious 
 existence the gardener contends with nature for the 
 existence of his garden. He covers his plants to pro- 
 tect from frosts, he waters them to mitigate drought, 
 he sprays them to prevent injury by insects, and he 
 hoes to keep down the competition of weeds. Instead 
 of leaving each plant to propagate itself as it may, he 
 gathers and selects the seed, prepares the ground, and 
 sows so as to insure the best results. The whole pro- 
 ceeding is at variance with nature ; and it is maintained 
 only by continual strife with nature, and at the price of 
 vigilance and diligence. If these are relaxed, insects, 
 drought, and weeds soon gain the day, and the artificial 
 order of the garden is at an end. 
 
 Society and civilization are, in like manner, an arti- 
 ficial order, maintained at the price of vigilance and 
 diligence in opposition to natural forces. As in the 
 garden, so in society, the characteristic feature is elim- 
 ination of the struggle for existence, by removal or 
 amelioration of the conditions which give rise to it. On 
 the other hand, in savage or primitive society, as in the 
 natural plant society of the wayside, the characteristic 
 feature is the intense and unending competition of the 
 struggle for existence. In the wayside weed patch, 
 nature exerts herself to adjust the forms of life to the 
 conditions of existence. In the garden, the gardener 
 
32 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 strives to adjust the conditions of existence to the 
 forms of hfe he intends to cultivate. Similarly, among 
 savage and uncivilized races, men adjust themselves as 
 they may to a harsh environment. With the advent 
 and development of society and civilization, men create 
 an artificial environment, adjusted to their needs and 
 furthering their continued progress. Thus, the social 
 and moral order are, in a sense, artificial; they have 
 been set up in opposition to the natural order, and they 
 are maintained and maintainable only by strife with 
 nature, and the repression of natural instincts and 
 primitive desires. It has been said that nature is 
 morally indifferent. Morality is a conception which 
 belongs to the social, not to the natural existence. The 
 course of conduct which the member of civilized society 
 pursues would be fatal to the savage; and the course 
 followed by the savage would be fatal to society. The 
 savage, like any wild animal, fights out the struggle for 
 existence relentlessly. The civilized man joins his best 
 energies to those of his fellows, in the endeavor to limit 
 and eliminate that struggle. 
 
 The social order, then, is, as it were, an artificial 
 order, set up and maintained by the co-operation of 
 numbers of individuals through successive generations. 
 Just as the garden demands vigilance and diligence on 
 the part of the gardener, to prevent the encroachment 
 and re-establishment of the natural order, so the social 
 order requires continual struggle with natural sur- 
 roundings, as well as with other societies and with in- 
 dividuals, wherewith its interests or necessities come in 
 conflict. Consequently, in addition to the instincts of 
 self and species preservation, there is required an in- 
 stinct or intuition of preserving and maintaining the 
 social order. Whether we regard this as acquired in an 
 orderly process of evolution, or as implanted in man at 
 creation, it stands as the basis of right and justice, 
 bringing about as a moral habit, "that tendency of the 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 33 
 
 will and mode of conduct which refrains from disturb- 
 ing the lives and interests of others, and, as far as pos- 
 sible, hinders such interference on the part of others." 
 The mere knowledge by individuals, however, that the 
 welfare, and even the continuance, of society require 
 each to limit his activities somewhat with reference to 
 the activities of others, does not suffice to keep them 
 within the bounds required by right and justice. The 
 more primitive and powerful selfish instincts tend to 
 prevail in action. Hence private war was an ordinary 
 process of archaic society. The competing activities of 
 individuals could not be brought into harmony and were 
 left to adjust themselves. But peace, order, and se- 
 curity are essential to civilization. Every individual 
 must be relieved from the necessity of guarding his in- 
 terests against encroachment, and set free to pursue 
 some special end with his whole energies. As civiliza- 
 tion advances, this is done by substituting the force of 
 society for that of the individual, and thus putting an 
 end to private war. Historically, law grew up to meet 
 this demand. 
 
 The maintenance of society and the promotion of 
 its welfare, however, as has been seen, depend upon 
 much besides the law. Even in its original and more 
 humble role of preserving the peace, the law was by no 
 means the first in importance. The germs of legal in- 
 stitutions are to be seen in ancient religions, and re- 
 ligion and morals held men in check while law was yet 
 in embryo. Beginning as one, religion, morals and law 
 have slowly differentiated into the three regulating and 
 controlling agencies by which right and justice are up- 
 held and society is made possible. In many respects 
 their aim is common, in many respects they cover the 
 same field, among some peoples they are still confused, 
 in whole or in part. But today, among enlightened 
 peoples, they stand as three great systems ; with their 
 own aims, their own fields, their own organizations, and 
 
34 THE PHIL OSOFH\ ' OF MASONR Y 
 
 their own methods; each keeping down the atavistic 
 tendencies toward wrongdoing and private war, and 
 each bearing its share in the support of the artificial 
 social order, by maintaining right and justice. Eeligion 
 governs men, so far as it is a regulating agency, by 
 supernatural sanctions ; morality by the sanction of pri- 
 vate conscience, fortified by public opinion; law by the 
 sanction of the force of organized society. Each, there- 
 fore, to be able to employ its sanctions systematically 
 and effectively in maintaining society, must be directed 
 or wielded by an organization. Accordingly we find 
 the church giving regulative and coercive force to re- 
 ligion and the state taking over and putting itself 
 behind the law. But what is behind the third of these 
 great agencies? What and where is the organization 
 that gives system and effectiveness to the regulative 
 force of morality ? 
 
 Here, Krause tells us, is the post of the Masonic 
 order. World-wide ; respecting every honest creed, but 
 requiring adherence to none; teaching obedience to 
 states, but confining itself to no one of them ; it looks to 
 religion on the one side and to law upon the other, and, 
 standing upon the solid middle-ground of the universal 
 moral sentiments of mankind, puts behind them the 
 force of tradition and precept, and organizes the mighty 
 sanction of human disapproval. Thus, he conceives 
 that Masonry is working hand in hand with church and 
 state, in organizing the conditions of social progress; 
 and that all societies and organizations, local or cosmo- 
 politan, which seek to unify men's energies in any 
 sphere — whether science, or art, or labor, or commerce 
 — have their part also; since each and all, held up by 
 the three pillars of the social order — Religion, Law, and 
 Morals; Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty — are making 
 for human perfection. 
 
 But, in the attainment of human perfection, we 
 must go beyond the strict limits of the social order. 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V js 
 
 Morality, as we have seen, is an institution of social 
 man. Nevertheless it has possibilities of its own, sur- 
 passing the essential requirements of a society. There 
 is a moral order, above and developed out of the social 
 order, as the social order is above the natural. The 
 natural order is maintained by the instincts of self and 
 species preservation. These instincts, unrestrained, 
 take no account of other existences, and make struggle 
 for existence the rule. In the social order, men have 
 learned to adjust act to end in maintaining their own 
 lives without hindering others from doing the like. In 
 the moral order, men have learned not merely to live 
 without hindering the lives of others, but to live so as 
 to aid others in attaining a more complete and perfect 
 life. When the life of every individual is full and com- 
 plete, not merely without hindering other lives from 
 like completeness, but while helping them to attain it, 
 perfection will have been reached. Then will the indi- 
 vidual, "In hand and foot and soul four-square, fash- 
 ioned without fault," fit closely into the moral order, as 
 the perfect ashler. Instinct maintains the natural 
 order. Law must stand chiefly behind the social order. 
 Masonry will find its sphere, for the most part, in main- 
 taining and developing the moral order. So that, while 
 it reminds us of our natural duties to ourselves, and of 
 the duties we owe our country, as the embodiment of 
 the social order, it insists, above and beyond them all, 
 upon our duties to our neighbor and to God, through 
 which alone the perfection of the moral order may be 
 attained. 
 
 Krause does not believe, however, that law and the 
 state should limit their scope and purpose to keeping up 
 the social order. They maintain right and justice in 
 order to uphold society. But they uphold society in 
 order to liberate men's energies so that they may make 
 for the moral order. Hence the ultimate aim is human 
 perfection. If by any act intended to maintain the 
 
jd THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 social order, they retard the moral order, they are going 
 counter to their ends. Law and morals are distinct; 
 but their aim is one, and the distinction is in the fields 
 in which they may act effectively and in the means of 
 action, rather than in the ideas themselves. The law- 
 giver must never forget the ultimate purpose, and must 
 seek to advance rather than to hinder the organization 
 and harmonious development of all human activities. 
 "Law," he tells us, "is the sum of the external condi- 
 tions of life measured by reason." So far as perfection 
 may be reached by limitation of the external acts of 
 men, whereby each may live a complete life, unhindered 
 by his fellows, the law is effective. More than this, the 
 external conditions of the life measured by reason are, 
 indirectly, conditions of the fuller and completer life of 
 the moral order ; for men must be free to exercise their 
 best energies without hindrance, before they can em- 
 ploy them to much purpose in aiding others to a larger 
 life. Here, however, law exhausts its possibilities. It 
 upholds the social order, whereon the moral order rests. 
 The development and maintenance of the moral order 
 depend on internal conditions. And these are without 
 the domain of law. Nevertheless, as law prepares the 
 way for the moral order, morals make more easy the 
 task of law. The more thoroughly each individual, of 
 his own motion, measures his life by reason, the more 
 completely does law cease to be merely regulative and 
 restraining, and attain its higher role of an organized 
 human freedom. Here is one of the prime functions of 
 the symbols of the Craft. As one reflects upon these 
 symbols, the idea of life measured by reason is every- 
 where borne in upon him. The twenty-four inch gauge, 
 the plumb, the level, the square and compass, and the 
 trestle board are eloquent of measurement and re- 
 straint. 
 
 There is nothing measured in the life of the savage. 
 He may kill sufficient for his needs, or, from mere ca- 
 
THE PHIL OSOPffY OF MASONR Y 37 
 
 price or wanton love of slaughter, may kill beyond his 
 needs at the risk of future want. His acts have little 
 or no relation to one another. He does not sow at one 
 season that he may reap at another, much less does he 
 plant or build in one generation that another generation 
 may be nourished or sheltered. The exigencies or the 
 desires of the moment control his actions. On the 
 other hand, the acts of civilized man are connected, re- 
 lated to one another, and, to a great extent, parts of a 
 harmonious and intelligent scheme of activity. Even 
 more is this true of conduct which is called moral. Its 
 prime characteristic is certainty. We know today what 
 it will be tomorrow. The unprincipled may or may not 
 keep promises, may or may not pay debts, may or 
 may not be constant in political or family relations. 
 The man whose conduct is moral, we call trustworthy. 
 We repose entire confidence in his steadfast adher- 
 ence to a regular and orderly course of life. Hence we 
 speak of rectitude of conduct, under the figure of ad- 
 justment to a straight line ; and our whole nomenclature 
 of ethics is based upon such figures of speech. Excess, 
 which is indefinite and unmeasured, is immoral; mod- 
 eration, which implies adherence to a definite and ascer- 
 tainable medium, we feel to be moral. The social man, 
 as distinguished from the savage, and even more the 
 moral man, as distinguished from him who merely 
 takes care not to infringe the law, measures and lays 
 out his life, and the symbols of the Craft serve as con- 
 tinual monitors to the weak or thoughtless of what 
 must distinguish them from the savage and the unprin- 
 cipled. 
 
 The allegory of the house not built with hands, 
 into which we are to be fitted as living stones, suggests 
 reflections still more inspiring. Here we see symbol- 
 ized the organic conception of society and of human 
 activities, upon which Krause insists so strongly. So- 
 cial and individual progress, he says, are inseparable. 
 
jS THE PHILOSOPHY OF MASONRY 
 
 Nothing is to be kept back or hindered in the march 
 toward human perfection. The social order conserves 
 the end of self and race maintenance more perfectly 
 than the natural order, which aims at nothing higher; 
 and the moral order accomplishes the end of maintain- 
 ing society more fully than a system that attempts no 
 more. The complete life is a complete life of the units, 
 as well as of the whole, and the progress of humanity 
 is a harmonizing of the interests of each with each 
 other and with all. Nature is wasteful. Myriads of 
 seeds are produced that a few plants may struggle to 
 maturity. Multitudes of lives are lost in the struggle 
 for existence, that a few may survive. As men ad- 
 vance in social and moral development, this sacrifice of 
 individuals becomes continually less. The most perfect 
 state, in consequence, is that in which the welfare of 
 each citizen and that of all citizens have become iden- 
 tical, where the interests of state and subject are one, 
 where the feelings of each accord with those of all. In 
 this era of universal organization, when Krause's chap- 
 ters seem almost prophetic, there is much to console us 
 in his belief that the organic must prove harmonious, 
 and that organizations which now conflict will in the 
 end work consciously and unerringly, as they now work 
 unconsciously and imperfectly, toward a common end. 
 If, as his illustrious pupil tells us, "human society is but 
 a solid bundle of organic institutions, a federation of 
 particular organizations, through which the funda- 
 mental aims of humanity are realized," we may con- 
 fidently hope "for unity where now is discord. And we 
 may hope for most of all, in this work of unification, 
 from that world-wide Brotherhood, which has for its 
 mission to organize morals and to bring them home as 
 realities to every man. 
 
 To sum up, how does Krause answer the three 
 problems of Masonic philosophy ? 
 
 (1) What is the purpose for which Masonry 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y jg 
 
 exists? What does it seek to do? Krause answers 
 that in common with all other human institutions its 
 ultimate purpose is the perfection of humanity. But 
 its immediate purpose is to organize the uniyerpal 
 moral sentiments of mankind ; to organize the sanction 
 of human disapproval. I 
 
 (2) What is the relation of Masonry to otlier 
 human institutions, especially to government and re- 
 ligion, state and church ? Krause answers that 'all 
 these aim also at human perfection. Immediately each 
 seeks to organize some particular branch of human Ac- 
 tivity. But they do this as means to a common end. 
 Hence, he says, each of these organizations should work 
 in harmony and even in co-operation with the others 
 toward the great end of all of them. In this spirit he 
 expounds the well-known exhortations in our charges 
 with respect to the attitude of the Mason toward the 
 government and the religion of his country. 
 
 (3) What are the fundamental principles by 
 which Masonry is governed in attaining the end it 
 seeks? Krause answers: Masonry has to deal with 
 the internal conditions of life governed by reason. 
 Hence its fundamental principles are measurement and 
 restraint — measurement by reason and restraint by 
 reason — and it teaches these as a means of achieving 
 perfection. 
 
 Such, in brief and meager outline, is the rela- 
 tion of Masonry to the philosophy of law and govern- 
 ment, as conceived by one who has left his mark on the 
 history of each. Think what we may of some of his 
 doctrines, differ with him as we may at many points, 
 hold, as we may, that our Order has other ends, we 
 rnust needs be stirred by the noble aim he has set before 
 us ; we must needs be animated by a higher spirit and 
 more strenuous purpose, as one of the chiefest of the 
 organic societies composing the "solid bundle" that 
 makes for human perfection. 
 
GEORGE OLIVER 
 
OLIVER 
 
 RAUSE'S philosophy is concerned chiefly 
 with the relation of Masonry to the philos- 
 ophy of law and government. Oliver's 
 philosophy of Masonry deals rather with 
 Masonry in its relation to the philosophy 
 of religion. In order to understand this we need only 
 note that Krause was by profession a philosopher and 
 that the main work of his life was done in the philos- 
 ophy of law and of government while, on the other 
 hand, Oliver was a clergyman. As in Preston's case, 
 Oliver's general philosophical ideas came to him ready- 
 made. He flowed with the philosophical current of his 
 time. He did not turn it into new channels or affect 
 its course as did Krause. Hence here, as with Pres- 
 ton, we may conveniently consider Oliver's philosophy 
 of Masonry under three heads: I. The man; 2. The 
 time; 3. His Masonic philosophy as a product of the 
 two. 
 
 1. The man. George Oliver was born at Pepple- 
 wick in the county of Nottingham, November 5, 1782. 
 His father was a clergyman of the established church 
 and his mother was the daughter of a country gentle- 
 man. Hence he had the advantage of a bringing up 
 under conditions of culture and refinement. He was 
 educated at Nottingham and made such progress that 
 at twenty-one he was made second master of the gram- 
 mar school at Caistor in Lincolnshire. Six years later 
 he was made head master of King Edward's grammar 
 school at Great Grimsby. In 1813 he took orders but 
 
42 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 continued to teach. In 1815 he was given a living by 
 his bishop as the result of an examination and at the 
 same time, as the phrase was, was put on the boards of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, as a so-called ten-year man. 
 That is he was given ten years in which to earn his de- 
 gree. Thus in 1836 he was able to take his degree of 
 doctor of divinity. In the meantime he was successive- 
 ly promoted to parishes of more and more importance 
 till he became rector of Wolverhampton and prebendary 
 of the collegiate church. In 1846 the lord chancellor 
 gave him an easier and more lucrative living. He died 
 in 1866 at the age of eighty-four. 
 
 Beginning in 1811 Oliver was a diligent student of 
 and a prolific writer upon antiquities, particularly ec- 
 clesiastical antiquities and his writings soon brought 
 him a high reputation as an antiquary. It is worth 
 while to give a list of the more important of these 
 books since taken in connection with the long list of his 
 Masonic writings it will afford some idea of his dili- 
 gence and activity. I give only those which have been 
 considered the more important. 
 
 1. History and Antiquities of the Collegiate 
 Church of Beverley. 
 
 2. History and Antiquities of the Collegiate 
 Church of Wolverhampton. 
 
 3. History of the Conventual Church of Grimsby. 
 
 4. Monumental Antiquities of Grimsby. 
 
 5. History of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, Slea- 
 ford. 
 
 6. Druidical Remains near Lincoln. 
 
 7. Guide to the Druidical Temple at Nottingham. 
 
 8. Remains of the Ancient Britons between Lin- 
 coln and Sleaford. 
 
 To these must be added a great mass of papers and 
 notes on antiquarian matters published between 1811 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 43 
 
 and 1866. And be it remembered the author was, 
 while most of these were writing, a teacher studying 
 during his leisure hours in preparation for orders and 
 later for his degree and when the remainder were 
 written was rector of an important parish, a magis- 
 trate, a surrogate for the bishopric of Lincoln and a 
 steward of the clerical fund for his diocese. This 
 sounds like one man's work and a good measure at that. 
 To it, however, we have to add a Masonic literary ca- 
 reer even more fruitful and more enduring in its re- 
 sults. 
 
 Oliver was made a Mason at the age of nineteen. 
 This statement, startling to the modem Masonic ear, 
 requires explanation. As Masonic usage then stood a 
 "lewis," that is the son of a Mason, might be initiated 
 by dispensation before he came of age. The privileges 
 of a lewis have never been defined clearly. He was 
 supposed to have a right of initiation in precedence over 
 all other candidates. Also in England and France he 
 was supposed to have the right to be initiated at an 
 earlier age, namely eighteen. The constitutions are 
 silent on this point but the traditional custom was to 
 grant a dispensation in the case of a lewis after that 
 age. It is hard to say how far this usage has ever ob- 
 tained in America. At present it is not recognized. 
 But there is evidence that it obtained in the eighteenth 
 century as, for example, in the case of George Washing- 
 ton who was initiated at the age of twenty. At any 
 rate Oliver became a Mason in this way at the age of 
 nineteen, being initiated by his father in St. Peters 
 Lodge at Peterborough in 1801. 
 
 Oliver's father was a zealous and well-informed 
 Mason and a ritualist of the literal school, that is of 
 the type who regard literal expertness in ritual as the 
 unum necessarium in Masonry. Accordingly Oliver 
 was thoroughly trained on this side — which indeed is 
 indispensable not only to Masonic advancement but, I 
 
44 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 suspect, to Masonic scholarship — and as a result of his 
 thorough knowledge of the work and his tireless activ- 
 ity his rise in the Craft was rapid. 
 
 In 1809 Oliver established a lodge at Grimsby 
 where he was the master of the grammar school and 
 chiefly by his exertions the lodge became strong and 
 prosperous. He was master of that lodge fourteen 
 years. Thence successively he became Provincial Grand 
 Steward (1813), Grand Chaplain (1816) and Deputy 
 Grand Master of Lincolnshire (1832) . The latter office 
 he held for eight years. It should be remembered that 
 the post of Provincial Grand Master was reserved in 
 England for the nobility. It is interesting to know in 
 passing that the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts gave 
 him the honorary title of Past Deputy Grand Master. 
 
 The list of Oliver's Masonic writings is very long. 
 He is the most prolific of Masonic authors and on the 
 whole has had the widest influence. He began by pub- 
 lishing a number of Masonic sermons but presently as 
 one may suspect by way of revolt from the mechanical 
 ritualistic Masonry to which, as it were, he had been 
 bred he turned his attention to the history and subse- 
 quently to the philosophy of the Craft. 
 
 His flrst historical work is the well-known "An- 
 tiquities of Free Masonry: comprising illustrations of 
 the flve grand periods of Masonry from the creation of 
 the world to the dedication of King Solomon's temple." 
 This was published in 1823. 
 
 Then followed in order : 
 
 2. The Star in the East, his first philosophical 
 work, designed to show the relation of Masonry to re- 
 ligion. 
 
 3. Signs and Symbols, an exposition of the his- 
 tory and significance of all the Masonic symbols then 
 recognized. 
 
 4. History of Initiation, twelve lectures on the 
 ancient mysteries in which Oliver sought to trace Ma- 
 
THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 45 
 
 sonic initiation and ancient systems of initiation to a 
 common origin ; a matter with respect to which recent 
 anthropological and sociological studies of primitive 
 secret societies indicate that he may have hit the truth 
 much more nearly than we had been supposing of late. 
 
 5. The Theocratic Philosophy of Masonry, a fur- 
 ther development of his ideas as to the relation of 
 Masonry to religion. 
 
 6. A History of Free Masonry from 1829 to 1840, 
 intended as an appendix to Preston's Illustrations of 
 Masonry which he had edited in 1829. 
 
 7. Historical Landmarks and Other Evidences of 
 Masonry Explained, by far his greatest work, a monu- 
 ment of wide reading and laborious research. 
 
 8. Revelations of a Square, a bit of Masonic fiction. 
 
 9. The Golden Remains of the Early Masonic 
 Writers, an elaborate compilation in five volumes. 
 
 10. The Symbol of Glory, his best discussion of 
 the object and purpose of Masonry. 
 
 11. A Mirror for the Johannite Masons, in which 
 he discusses the dedication of lodges to the two Sts. 
 John. 
 
 12. The Origin and Insignia of the Royal Arch 
 Degree. 
 
 13. A Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry, the first 
 of a long line of such dictionaries. 
 
 14. Institutes of Masonic Jurisprudence. 
 
 He also published a "Book of the Lodge," a sort of 
 ritualistic manual similar to the monitors or manuals 
 so well known today. Likewise he was a constant con- 
 tributor to English and even to American Masonic peri- 
 odicals. 
 
 Probably no one not by profession a writer can 
 show such a list, bearing in mind how many of the fore- 
 going are books of the first order in their class. 
 
 Unhappily Oliver's views of Masonic law were not 
 in accord with those which prevailed in England in 
 
46 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 1840. In consequence when in that year Dr. Crucefix, 
 one of the most distinguished of nineteenth-century 
 English Masons, was suspended by the Grand Lodge 
 and retired from Masonic activity Oliver also in- 
 curred the displeasure of the authorities by claiming 
 the right, though a Provincial Deputy Grand Master, 
 to take part in a public demonstration in honor of 
 Crucefix in which a large number of prominent Masons 
 joined. This led to his losing his office by the action 
 of the Provincial Grand Master and to his withdrawing 
 from active connection with the Craft. But English 
 Masons soon came to see the soundness of Oliver's 
 views as to the independence which Masonry must allow 
 to the individual in his belief and opinion as to what is 
 Masonic law. Accordingly four years later nearly all 
 the Masons in the kingdom joined in subscribing for a 
 presentation of plate to Oliver in recognition of his 
 great services to the Craft. But justice was not done 
 to Oliver as it was to Preston possibly because Oliver 
 was not the type of man to urge it for himself as Pres- 
 ton would have done. In consequence Oliver was out 
 of touch with active Masonic work for the last twenty- 
 two years of his life. That this was in no way due to 
 improper obstinacy on his part is, I think, manifest 
 from merely looking at his portrait — which radiates 
 benevolence and amiability. Moreover all accounts of 
 his personality agree with the impression one gets from 
 the portrait. All accounts bear witness to his lovable- 
 ness, his geniality, his charitableness and his readiness 
 to oblige. All who have written of him testify that he 
 was in the highest degree unassuming, unaffected and 
 easy of approach. That such men as Krause and Oliver 
 should suffer from the jealousies which greater knowl- 
 edge seems to engender in those who regard ability to 
 recite the ritual with microscopic fidelity as the sum of 
 Masonry is not wholly to be wondered at. The breadth 
 which such knowledge inevitably brings about threat- 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 47 
 
 ens the very foundations of the Hteralism which the 
 strongest men in our lodges have been taught or have 
 taught themselves is the essence of the institution. 
 But it is strange and is an unhappy commentary upon 
 human nature that the arrogant, ambitious Preston 
 could at length obtain justice which was denied to 
 Krause and to Oliver. 
 
 Summing up Oliver's personality, everything con- 
 firms the impression which one derives from the por- 
 trait. He was a warm-hearted man, of zealous anti- 
 quarian enthusiasm, of deep faith and of thorough- 
 going religious convictions. We must remember each 
 of these traits when we come to consider his philosophy 
 of Masonry. So much for the man. 
 
 Now for the time. 
 
 The dominant philosophy everywhere when Oliver 
 wrote was what is known as romanticism. In England, 
 which at this periol was still primarily taken up with 
 religious rather than with philosophical or scientific 
 questions, romanticism was especially strong. Thinkers 
 of the generation after Kant objected to his critical 
 philosophy on the ground that it lacked vitality. They 
 asserted that the living unity of the spirit was violated 
 by his analyzings and distinguishings. They pointed 
 to religious faith on the one hand and to artistic con- 
 ception and creation on the other hand as methods 
 which unlike the critical philosophy did full justice to 
 life. In other words the age of reason in which Pres- 
 ton wrought and wrote was over and for a season at 
 least men ceased to expect all things of reason, intellect 
 and knowledge and began to expect all things of what 
 they called spirit. The younger thinkers especially 
 were filled with enthusiasm at this idea of deducing all 
 things from spirit and did not see that they were sim- 
 ply seeking for a new philosopher's stone. They ex- 
 pected through the idea of the spirit to establish a 
 complete unity of all things, to break down the exist- 
 
48 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 ing separation between science, religion and art and to 
 reconcile all discords. Such an idea of knowledge may 
 rightly be called romantic. It stands before us sublime 
 and distant. It rouses our enthusiasm or our zeal to 
 achieve it, and influences us by its exaltation rather 
 than by any prospect which it affords us of clear and 
 sober realization. That a whole generation should have 
 been content to put its ideal of knowledge in this form 
 seems difficult to explain even by reaction from the 
 over-rationalism of the preceding century. Probably 
 the general upheaval brought about by the French Rev- 
 olution must be taken into account and the golden age 
 of poetry which accompanied this philosophical move- 
 ment must not be overlooked. Indeed the connection 
 between the romantic philosophers, the romantic poets 
 and the romantic musicians is very close. It is not an 
 accident that what I may fairly call romantic Masonry 
 appears at the same time. This will be manifest es- 
 pecially when I come to speak of Oliver's views as to 
 the relation of Masonry to religion. 
 
 One of the most representative of the German ro- 
 mantic philosophers argued that all separation between 
 poetry, philosophy and religion was superficial and ar- 
 bitrary. He argued that while the poet regards philos- 
 ophy as an expounding of the poetry of life which is to 
 be found in all things, the philosopher regards poetry 
 as a pictorial form, perceived intuitively, of the thought 
 which moves in all things. But, he said, religion is a 
 phase of the same quest for unity. Let me quote his 
 words since they bear strongly upon Oliver's views: 
 "If it is allowed that the task of thought is to show us 
 the unity of all things, can philosophical endeavor differ 
 in its essence from the religious yearning which like- 
 wise seeks to transcend the oppositions and unrest of 
 life?" 
 
 This romantic philosophy came into England 
 chiefly through the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 
THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 4g 
 
 (1772-1834) who wrote while Ohver's chief literary 
 activities were in progress and died about six years 
 before the most important and significant of Oliver's 
 writings. The relation of the one to the other is so 
 clear that a moment's digression as to Coleridge is 
 necessary. 
 
 In his youth Coleridge tells us he had been a dis- 
 ciple of the eighteenth-century rationalists. But he 
 was repelled by the attempt, so characteristic of the 
 eighteenth century, to reduce mental phenomena to 
 elementary functions by means of analysis and to dis- 
 cover mechanical laws for all consciousness. If this 
 could be done, he said, it would destroy the unity and 
 activity of the mind. At this time he came in contact 
 with the German romantic philosophy and turned in 
 the new direction. Indeed he was a romanticist by 
 nature. He revelled, it has been said, in ideas of the 
 absolute in which the differences and oppositions of the 
 finite world blended and disappeared. He was a poet 
 and a preacher rather than a thinker and rarely got 
 beyond intuition and prophecy. Hence there is more 
 than a little truth in the saying of one of his critics that 
 he led his generation through moonshine to orthodoxy 
 and to a more pronounced orthodoxy than had formerly 
 obtained. It is said that the Anglo-Catholic or Pusey- 
 ite movement of the nineteenth century, which carried 
 Newman and so many other English scholars into the 
 church of Rome, was a result of Coleridge's ideas. 
 
 What, then, were the characteristics of the philos- 
 ophy of the time and place in which Oliver wrote ? 
 
 1. Speculation and imagination were the chief 
 organs of thought. The poetic passed for the only real. 
 Enthusiasm passed for scholarship. 
 
 2. Reason abdicated for a season. Conviction, 
 intuition and faith were regarded as justifying them- 
 selves. 
 
50 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 3. In the same way tradition became something 
 which justified itself. This is seen particularly in the 
 so-called Oxford movement and the Catholic reaction in 
 England. It is seen also in the position of the time as 
 to the English constitution which Dickens has satirized 
 in the person of Mr. Podsnap. 
 
 4. Reconciliation of Christianity with philosophy 
 became a recognized problem. For example, Coleridge 
 took this for his chief work. 
 
 All of these features may be seen in Oliver's Ma- 
 sonic writings. The defects of his historical writing, 
 for example, which have utterly debased popular Ma- 
 sonic history are the defects of a romanticist. A warm 
 imagination and speculative enthusiasm carried him 
 away. In common with his philosophical teachers he 
 had thrown off the critical method and had lost the 
 faculty of discriminating accurately between what had 
 been and what he would like to believe had been. On 
 the other hand, in Masonic philosophy, where pure spec- 
 ulation was allowable, these qualities had a certain 
 value. Mill says of Coleridge that his was one of the 
 great seminal minds of his time. In the same way 
 Oliver more than anyone else set men to thinking upon 
 the problems of Masonic philosophy. His style is 
 agreeable. He is always easy to read and often enter- 
 taining. A multitude of readers, who would be re- 
 pelled by Krause's learned but difficult pages, have re- 
 joiced in Oliver. Hence he has given a form and direc- 
 tion to Masonic speculation which still persist. 
 
 Turning to Oliver's philosophy of Masonry three 
 important points may be noted : 1. His theory of the 
 relation of Masonry to religion; 2. his theory of Ma- 
 sonry as a tradition coming down to us from a pure 
 state prior to the flood; 3. his theory of the essen- 
 tially Christian nature of our institution. 
 
 Let me take these up in order. 
 
 1. It has been said that reconciliation of knowl- 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 51 
 
 edge with religion and unifying of religion with all 
 other human activities was a favorite undertaking of 
 the romantic philosophy. It was natural, therefore, 
 that a clergyman should be attracted to this type of 
 thought and that a zealous churchman and enthusiastic 
 Mason who had learned from Preston, whose book he 
 edited, that Masonry was knowledge, should convert the 
 problem into one of relating Masonry to religion and of 
 reconciling them. Oliver's mode of doing this was 
 highly ingenious. Religion and Masonry, he would say, 
 are identical in their end and they are identical in their 
 end with knowledge. Each is a manifestation of the 
 spirit, the absolute, that is of God. God, he would say, 
 is manifest to us, first, by revelation and thus manifest 
 we know Him and know ourselves and know the uni- 
 verse through religion. Second, He is manifest to us 
 by tradition, and in this way we know Him and know 
 ourselves and know the universe through Masonry. 
 Third, He is manifest to us through reason, and in this 
 way we know Him and know ourselves and know the 
 universe through knowledge or, as we have come to call 
 it, science. In common with the romanticists he sought 
 to throw the entire content of life into one interconnect- 
 ed whole ; and this he found in God or in the absolute. 
 Accordingly to him Masonry was one mode of approach 
 to God, the other two being religion and science. If 
 Krause's triad was law, religion, morals, given effect by 
 state, church. Masonry, Oliver's is revelation, tradi- 
 tion, reason, expounded, handed down, developed and 
 interpreted by religion, Masonry and science. 
 
 2. Oliver's theory of Masonry as a system of tra- 
 dition seems to have been derived from Hutchinson. 
 The latter deserves a moment's digression. 
 
 William Hutchinson (1732-1814), an English law- 
 yer, is perhaps the earliest Masonic philosopher. In 
 1774 by permission of the Grand Lodge, which then in- 
 sisted upon a right to censor all Masonic writing. 
 
52 THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 Hutchinson published his chief Masonic work entitled 
 "The Spirit of Masonry." Oliver himself has said that 
 this book was "the first efficient attempt to explain in 
 a rational and scientific manner the true philosophy of 
 the order." Hutchinson's doctrine was that the lost 
 word was symbolical of lost religious purity due to cor- 
 ruptions of the Jewish faith. He held that the mas- 
 ter's degree symbolized the new law of Christ taking 
 the place of the old law of Judaism which had become 
 dead and corrupt. By a bit of fanciful etymology he 
 derived Hiram (Huram) from the Greek heuramen (we 
 have found it) and Acacia from the Greek alpha priva- 
 tive and Kakia (evil) — Akakia, freedom from evil, or 
 freedom from sin. Thus, he says, the Master Mason "rep- 
 resents a man under the Christian doctrine saved from 
 the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salva- 
 tion." Hutchinson influenced Hemming, who wrote the 
 lectures of the Ancients and a trace of this influence 
 may be seen in America in the interpretation of the 
 blazing star in our lectures. 
 
 Clearly enough Oliver got his cue from Hutchinson. 
 But Hutchinson had identified religion and Masonry. 
 This Oliver, as a clergyman of the established church, 
 could not allow. Instead Oliver sought to unify them, 
 that is while keeping them distinct to make them 
 phases of a higher unity, to make them expressions of 
 what is ultimately, though not immediately, one. This 
 he did as has been seen by regarding each as a mode of 
 approach to God. That conception led to his theory of 
 Masonry as a body of tradition. 
 
 Briefly stated Oliver's theory is this. He held 
 that Masonry was to be found as a body of tradition in 
 the earliest periods of history as recorded in Scripture. 
 This tradition according to his enthusiastic specula- 
 tions was taught by Seth to his descendants and was 
 practised by them as a pure or primitive Masonry 
 before the flood. Thus it passed over to Noah and his 
 
THE PHIL O SOPHY OF MASONR Y 53 
 
 descendants and at the dispersion of mankind was di- 
 vided into pure Masonry and spurious Masonry. The 
 pure Masonry passed through the patriarchs to Solo- 
 mon and thence to the present institution. On the 
 other hand, the pure tradition was corrupted among the 
 pagans and took the form of the mysteries and initia- 
 tory rites of antiquity. Accordingly, he held, we have 
 in Masonry a traditional science of morality veiled in 
 allegory and illustrated by symbols. 
 
 3. Again taking his cue from Hutchinson, though 
 the old charges to be true to holy church gave him some 
 warrant — Oliver insisted that Masonry was strictly a 
 Christian institution. He believed of course that 
 Christianity was foretold and in a way revealed in the 
 Old Testament and that the doctrine of the Trinity, for 
 example, was clearly expounded therein. In the same 
 way he held that the earliest of Masonic symbols also 
 taught the doctrine of the Trinity and that the Masonic 
 references to the Grand Architect of the Universe were 
 references to Christ. Indeed in his system this was 
 recessary. For if religion, which to him could mean 
 only the Christian religion, and Masonry were to be 
 unified it must be as setting before us different mani- 
 festations of the same God. There could be but one 
 God and that triune God, the God of his religion, he held 
 was made known to us by revelation, by tradition and 
 by reason. Thus Oliver's interpretation of revelation 
 determined his interpretation of the other two. If we 
 bear this in mind we may accept his general philosophy 
 without accepting this particular doctrine. For it 
 needs only to postulate a more universal and more gen- 
 eral religion than he professed, a religion above sects, 
 creeds and dogmas to hold that such a religion along 
 with Masonry and along with reason leads to God. 
 Moreover Hindu and Mahommedan may each put his 
 own interpretation on revelation and join in believing 
 in these three modes of knowing the absolute. Mackey 
 
54 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONRY 
 
 reproaches Oliver for narrowness and sectarianism. 
 But the possibilities of his Masonic philosophy are as 
 broad as could be desired. It was too soon in 1840 to 
 ask a clergjrman to go further in its application than he 
 went. 
 
 What then are Oliver's answers to the three fun- 
 damental questions of Masonic philosophy V 
 
 1. What is the end of Masonry, for what does the 
 institution exist? Oliver would answer, it is one in its 
 end with religion and with science. Each of these are 
 means through which we are brought into relation with 
 the absolute. They are the means through which we 
 know God and his works. 
 
 2. How does Masonry seek to achieve its end? 
 Oliver would answer by preserving, handing down and 
 interpreting a tradition of immemorial antiquity, a pure 
 tradition from the childhood of the race. 
 
 3. What are the fundamental principles by which 
 Masonry is governed in achieving its task? Oliver 
 would say, the fundamental principles of Masonry are 
 essentially the principles of religion as the basic prin- 
 ciples of the moral world. But in Masonry they appear 
 in a traditional form. Thus, for example, toleration 
 in Masonry is a form of what in religion we call charity ; 
 universality in Masonry is a traditional form of what 
 in religion we call love of one's neighbor. 
 
 As has been said, Krause's was a philosophy of 
 Masonry in its relation to law and government. Pres- 
 ton's was a philosophy of Masonry in its relation to 
 knowledge. Oliver's is a philosophy of Masonry in its 
 relation to religion. Neither of the others has had a 
 tithe of the influence which Oliver's philosophy has ex- 
 erted upon Masonic thought. And on the whole his in- 
 fluence has been valuable and stimulating. A critic has 
 said that "all he had to give was transcendental moon- 
 shine which shed a new light on old things for many a 
 young doubter and seeker, but which contained no new 
 
THE PHIL SO PHY OF MASONR Y 55 
 
 life." In a sense this is so. Oliver's Masonic philos- 
 ophy is an obvious product of a clergyman in the age 
 of the romantic philosophy who had read and reflected 
 upon Hutchinson. And yet it is not true that there is 
 no new life in Oliver. Except for Krause nothing so 
 well worth while has been pointed out for Masonry as 
 the end which Oliver found for us. I cannot but feel 
 that it is a great misfortune that his philosophy is 
 being peddled out to a new generation in grandiloquent 
 fragments through Grand Lodge orations and articles 
 in the Masonic press instead of being apprehended as 
 a whole. 
 
STATUE OF PIKE IN WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
PIKE 
 
 WE come now to a radically different type of 
 Masonic philosophy. To Preston Masonry 
 is a traditional system of knowledge and 
 its end is to impart knowledge. Hence he 
 thinks of the relation of Masonry to edu- 
 cation. To Krause it is organized morals and its end 
 is to put organized mankind behind the universal moral 
 ideas of humanity. Hence he thinks of the relation of 
 Masonry to law and government. To Oliver it is a 
 mode of approach to God and its end is to bring us to 
 the Absolute by means of a pure tradition. Hence he 
 thinks of the relation of Masonry to religion. Pike 
 gives us instead a metaphysic of Masonry. To him 
 Masonry is a mode of studying first principles and its 
 end is to reveal and to give us possession of the univer- 
 sal principle by which we may master the universe. 
 Hence he thinks of the relation of Masonry to the fun- 
 damental problems of existence. In part this view was 
 inevitable in one who thought and wrote in a country 
 under the influence of the transcendental philosophy. 
 In part also it was to be expected in a member of a 
 profession whose philosophical ideas, so far as its lead- 
 ers held any at all, were thoroughly Hegelian. In part 
 it grew out of Pike's wide reading in the philosophical 
 writings of antiquity and his bent for mysticism. Thus 
 his philosophy of Masonry is a product of the man and 
 of the time and we must look first at each of these in 
 order to treat it intelligently. 
 
58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MASONRY 
 
 1. The man. Albert Pike was born in Boston, 
 December 29, 1809. His parents were poor. He was 
 educated in the pubHc schools in Boston and it is inter- 
 esting to know as a means of comparing those days 
 with these that, although he passed the examinations 
 for admission to Harvard College, he felt unable to 
 enter because in those days the requirement was that 
 two years' tuition be paid in advance or secured by 
 bond. He became a school teacher and taught in coun- 
 try schools in Massachusetts from 1825 to 1831. In 
 1831 he went west and joined a trading party from St. 
 Louis to Santa Fe. Santa Fe was then in Mexico and 
 the journey at that time was a perilous one through a 
 wilderness inhabited only by Indians. On his return 
 he traversed the Staked Plains and the Indian Territory 
 and settled finally at Van Buren in Arkansas where he 
 opened a school. 
 
 At that time political feeling in Arkansas was very 
 bitter. The territory was divided between the Conway 
 party who were politically democrats and in truth were 
 a sort of clan as well, and the Crittenden party who 
 were Whigs politically but were in truth more a per- 
 sonal faction than a political party. Bloodshed was 
 frequent and in many respects there was a feud be- 
 tween the factions quite as much as a political rivalry. 
 The early experience of this era of feud and private 
 war on the frontier is worth remembering in connec- 
 tion with many things in Pike's lectures upon Masonry. 
 Pike was a Whig and as such published in the Whig 
 organ at Little Rock some articles of such force as to 
 attract general attention. Accordingly Crittenden, the 
 Whig leader, sought out Pike in his country schoolroom 
 and induced him to go to Little Rock as one of the 
 editors of the party organ. This was his opportunity 
 and he improved it to the full by studying law while 
 also at work upon the paper. In 1834 he was admitted 
 to the bar and he rose rapidly to the first rank in the 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y sg 
 
 profession in Arkansas. Among his earlier achieve- 
 ments was the preparation of the first revision of the 
 statutes of that state. The book does not bear his 
 name but contemporary accounts tell us that he had 
 the chief part in framing it. By general consent it is a 
 model of what such a work should be. 
 
 At the outbreak of the Mexican war Pike entered 
 the service and was in action at Buena Vista. His 
 courage, proved already in the political conflicts of ter- 
 ritorial days, was again shown in events that grew out 
 of the campaign in Mexico. Pike felt it his duty to 
 criticise the military conduct of Governor Roane and as 
 a result was compelled to fight a duel. The duel took 
 place over the line in the Indian Territory. Happily it 
 was bloodless and ended in reconciliation. There is 
 good reason to suspect that some traces of this experi- 
 ence are to be seen in his lectures. 
 
 From 1853 to 1857 Pike practiced law in New Or- 
 leans. Thus he was led to make a diligent and char- 
 acteristically thorough study of Roman law, the basis 
 of the French law which obtained then, as it does now, 
 in Louisiana. In 1857 he returned to Arkansas and 
 afterward sat upon the supreme bench of that state. 
 At the outbreak of the Civil War he cast his lot with 
 the South. As he had great influence with the Indians 
 he was sent to raise a force in the Indian Territory. 
 In this work he was vigorous and untiring. But his 
 utmost efforts could not make obedient or efficient sol- 
 diers out of the large force which he was able to raise. 
 Some of the doings of this force have left a stain upon 
 his memory, which, according to the best authorities 
 obtainable, seems to be undeserved. In truth his ex- 
 perience was not very different from that of the British 
 officers during the Revolution and during the War of 
 1812 who sought to make military use of Indian allies. 
 In any event the project failed. This experience also 
 has left more than one trace in his Masonic lectures. 
 
6o THE PHJL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 After the Civil War he practiced law for a time in 
 Memphis. In 1868 he went to Alexandria, Virginia, 
 and in 1870 moved across the river to Washington 
 where he practiced law for twenty-one years. He died 
 in 1891. 
 
 Albert Pike was a man of the widest and most 
 varied learning. He was a strong and successful com- 
 mon-law lawyer. He had studied the Roman law to 
 good purpose and left a manuscript of a three-volume 
 book upon the principles of the Roman law which is now 
 in the library of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States. But he had many scholarly interests outsido 
 of his profession. He left among his papers a manu- 
 script translation of the Zend Avesta and of the Rig 
 Veda in twenty-two large volumes copiously annotated. 
 Moreover he made some mark as a poet. Some of 
 his poems, particularly a striking one upon the battle 
 of Buena Vista, are still to be found in school readers 
 and his verses were formerly much in vogue. Review- 
 ing his extra-Masonic record for a moment, we see a 
 man bom and educated in New England, a pioneer in 
 the southwest in its frontier period, a soldier in two 
 wars, a successful lawyer under each of the two great 
 systems of modem law, for a season judge of a supreme 
 court and withal, though largely self-educated, a man 
 of learning and culture who, along with a treatise upon 
 the principles of Roman law which bore immediately 
 upon his profession, could write verse of some merit 
 and could busy himself in the translation of the great 
 books of Oriental philosophy and religion. 
 
 But the field of Pike's most fruitful labors was 
 Masonry. His career as a Mason is too recent and his 
 standing as a Masonic scholar is too well-known to all 
 of you to call for any statement in this place. But I 
 may remind you that he became Sovereign Grand Com- 
 mander of the southern jurisdiction in the Scottish Rite 
 in 1859 and devoted the remaining thirty-two years of 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 6i 
 
 his life in continually increasing measure to the work 
 of that rite. Excepting Krause no mind of equal cali- 
 ber has been employed upon the problems of Masonry. 
 And Krause, great scholar and philosopher as he was, 
 had lived only in the cultured serenity of German uni- 
 versity towns whereas Pike had lived in staid Boston 
 and turbulent territorial Arkansas, had been compelled 
 by local public opinion to fight in a duel, had fought in 
 two wars and had commanded Indians. Moreover, 
 Krause's Masonic experience was negligible in com- 
 parison with that of this veteran of American Masonry. 
 Accordingly we need not hesitate to pronounce Albert 
 Pike by far the best qualified by nature, experience of 
 life. Masonic experience and Masonic learning of those 
 who have thought upon the problems of Masonic phil- 
 osophy. 
 
 2. Now as to the time. 
 
 In the earlier part of his career, Pike was brought 
 into contact with the eighteenth-century political phil- 
 osophy which became classical in American political 
 thought because it was the philosophy of the framers 
 of our constitutions and bills of rights and entered into 
 the framework of our institutions in their formative 
 period. Also in this part of his career, in his study of 
 law, he came in contact with the eighteenth-century 
 legal philosophy of the American common-law lawyer. 
 In the latter part of his career, in his wide philosophical 
 studies, he was brought into contact with the prevail- 
 ing metaphysical method of the nineteenth century, 
 with the conception of the Absolute, which governed in 
 English philosophical writing, and with the method of 
 unifying all things by reference to some basic absolute 
 principle which prevailed down to the new century. 
 This same period saw the general rise of materialism 
 in the wake of decay of dogma and the triumphant ad- 
 vance of the natural sciences, and this movement so far 
 affected his thought as to turn him, by way of reaction, 
 
62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MASONRY 
 
 to mysticism. Indeed a mystic element is to be found 
 not uncommonly in thorough-going idealists. For ex- 
 ample the leader of the new school that builds on 
 Hegel's philosophy has been reproved for dragging 
 mysticism into so prosaic a subject as the philosophy of 
 law. But mystics are made by nature, and nature 
 made Pike one of the greatest of them. Hence we may 
 be confident that reaction from materialism merely ac- 
 centuated an element which in any event would have 
 been prominent in his thinking and writing. Each of 
 the four points of contact with American thought in 
 the nineteenth century requires a moment's considera- 
 tion. 
 
 American poHtical philosophy in the first half of 
 the nineteenth century was a compound of English law 
 and French speculation. Prior to the Revolution in 
 the Declaration of Rights of the Continental Congress 
 the colonists had relied upon the common-law rights of 
 Englishmen as asserted by English lawyers and English 
 judges against the Stuart kings in the seventeenth 
 century. But the Declaration of Independence relied 
 instead upon the natural rights of man, a supposed body 
 of universal, eternal, inalienable rights deduced by rea- 
 son from the nature of man in the abstract. Under 
 the influence of English thinkers of the seventeenth 
 century and of the Continental philosophy of law in the 
 period after Grotius, the French writers of the eight- 
 eenth century had developed this theory of natural 
 rights to a high degree, and the founders of our gov- 
 ernment were deeply read in their writings. But they 
 were also deeply read in Blackstone and in Coke, the 
 oracle of English law. Naturally they combined the 
 general theory of the French speculators and the con- 
 crete details of the English lawyers and came to hold 
 that the common-law rights of Englishmen found in 
 their law booKs were the natural rights of man found 
 in their French political philosophy. Hence in our bills 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 63 
 
 of rights they laid down the former section by section 
 and enacted them in fixed and precise rules on the au- 
 thority of the latter. This had important consequences 
 for the American legal philosophy which Pike absorbed 
 in the formative period of his study for the bar. 
 
 In the contests between the English judges and 
 the Stuart kings the judges had claimed to stand be- 
 tween the rights and liberties of the individual English- 
 man and arbitrary oppressive action on the part of the 
 crown. When we took over the theory of eternal, in- 
 alienable natural rights and combined it with the the- 
 ory of the English lawyers, the result was a doctrine 
 that law stands and must stand between the individual 
 on the one hand and state and society on the other hand 
 and that its function is to secure the individual in his 
 natural rights against the aggressions and oppressions 
 of organized society. This idea of the mediating func- 
 tion of law, as a reconciling of the individual and the 
 whole, which the lawyer of the last century took for the 
 first article of his creed, is to be seen throughout Pike's 
 lectures and lent itself readily to his generalization of 
 equilibrium or balance as the Ultimate Reality. For 
 if law was a mediation, a harmonizing, a reconciling, 
 ani the universe was governed by law, the fundamental 
 principle of the universe was the mediating or har- 
 monizing which he called equilibrium. 
 
 When, in his later studies. Pike came upon the 
 metaphysical method of nineteenth-century philos- 
 ophers, it was easy to confirm the views to which his 
 acquaintance with the classical American political and 
 legal philosophy and his reading of French Masonic 
 writers of the eighteenth century had led him. For the 
 generation that followed Hegel sought to explain the 
 universe as the realization of an idea. History was the 
 unfolding of that idea in human experience. Philos- 
 ophy was a logical unfolding of the same idea. Hence 
 the quest was for the one fundamental idea of which 
 
64 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 the seemingly complex order of the phenomenal world 
 was but a manifestation. Hence the task of the philos- 
 opher was to unite and reconcile all differences in the 
 Absolute which he reached through this idea. Traces 
 of the transition from the legal and political analogy to 
 this metaphysical foundation may be seen here and 
 there in those parts of Morals and Dogma which, we 
 may suspect, remained in their earlier forms despite his 
 repeated and thorough-going revisions. 
 
 In his later studies Pike was also compelled to take 
 account of the materialism which held its head so high 
 and with "a mouth speaking great things" grew so con- 
 fidently dogmatic during the last third of his life. If 
 Pike, who was naturally a mystic, seems sometimes to 
 rely on intuition more than on reason, to put faith, 
 which is self -justifying, at the bottom of knowledge, 
 to find a reality in the occult, and to show a conviction 
 of the relation of the symbol to the thing symbolized, 
 in contrast with the rigorous metaphysic of the lec- 
 tures where he argues and demonstrates instead of 
 prophesying, we must consider the impatience of an 
 idealist and a mystic with the mechanical universe of 
 the positivists and the economic ethics and belly-philos- 
 ophy of the materialists which a new generation was 
 asserting all about him. 
 
 3. Let us turn now to Pike's Masonic philosophy. 
 Pike did not leave us any compendium of his philosophi- 
 cal views. Hence we cannot, as in the case of Oliver, 
 apprehend them at a glance from a concise exposition. 
 The student of Pike's Masonic philosophy must read 
 and study the teeming pages of Morals and Dogma. 
 After reading and reflection the system of philosophy 
 expounded will make itself felt. But it is quite im- 
 possible for the reader to put his finger upon this sen- 
 tence or that and say here is Pike's philosophy in a 
 nut-shell. For the first thing to bear in mind in read- 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 65 
 
 ing Morals and Dogma is that we must discriminate 
 closely between what is really Pike and what is not. 
 
 Indeed he has told us this himself. 
 
 "In preparing this work, the Grand Commander 
 has been about equally Author and Compiler ; since he 
 has extracted quite half its contents from the works of 
 the best writers and most philosophic or eloquent think- 
 ers. Perhaps it would have been better and more ac- 
 ceptable, if he had extracted more and written less. 
 
 "Still, perhaps half of it is his own ; and, in incor- 
 porating here the thoughts and words of others, he has 
 continually changed and added to the language, often 
 intermingling, in the same sentences, his own words 
 with theirs." 
 
 In some measure the author is unjust to himself in 
 this statement. In a sense the book is all his own. He 
 read and digested everything. He assimilated it. He 
 made it part of himself and worked it into his system. 
 But for this very reason texts from Pike and excerpts 
 from Morals and Dogma are more than usually de- 
 ceptive. We may fasten almost any philosophical idea 
 upon him if we proceed in this way. We may re- 
 fute almost any page by any other page if we look 
 simply at the surface and do not distinguish matter 
 which he is adapting or is making use of to illustrate 
 the development of thought upon the subject from dog- 
 matic statements of his philosophy. Morals and Dogma 
 must be read and interpreted as a unit. As Immanuel 
 Kant said of his own writings, it is a book to think 
 through not merely to read through. 
 
 Three contributions of the first moment to Masonic 
 science deserve to be noted before taking up Pike's 
 philosophy of Masonry in detail. In the first place 
 Pike was the apostle of liberty of interpretation. He 
 insisted in season and out of season that no infallible 
 authority speaking ex cathedra could bind the individ- 
 ual Mason to this or that interpretation of the tradi- 
 
66 THE PHI L OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 tional symbols of the Craft. He taught that the indi- 
 vidual Mason instead of receiving a pre-digested Mason- 
 ry ladled out to him by another should make his own 
 Masonry for himself by study and reflection upon the 
 work and the symbols. Thus he stood for thorough- 
 going individual Masonic development. He stood for a 
 Masonry built up within each Mason by himself and for 
 himself on the solid foundation of internal conviction. 
 This Masonic Protestantism, as it might well be called, 
 is especially interesting in one who was so thoroughly 
 filled with French writings upon Masonry. Secondly 
 he gave us a genuine interpretation of the symbols 
 which came into Masonry through the hermetic philos- 
 ophers. Hutchinson and Preston and even Oliver in 
 many cases did not understand these symbols at all. 
 Indeed Preston was much less interested in what they 
 really were than in how they might be made instru- 
 ments of education in his time and place. Accordingly 
 Preston and Oliver gave currency to inadequate and 
 often ignorant explanations of ancient symbols. Pike 
 studied their history and development. He mastered 
 their spirit and perceived their place in the evolution 
 of human thinking. Hence he was able to replace the 
 crude symbolism of the end of the eighteenth century 
 by a real science of Masonic symbols. In the third 
 place not only did he interpret our symbols but he en- 
 riched the symbolism of the Craft from a profound ac- 
 quaintance with the ancient and modem literature of 
 symbolism and mysticism. Thus he made us aware 
 that the science of Masonic symbols is but part of a 
 much wider subject, that it is not self-sufficient and 
 that the serious Masonic Student has much more to 
 study than he can find within the covers of an exclu- 
 sively Masonic library. 
 
 I can do no more than give you a key to what I 
 conceive to be Pike's philosophy of Masonry. Perhaps 
 the first point to make is that in nineteenth-century 
 
THE PHIL OSOFHY OF MASONR Y 67 
 
 America philosophy was regarded, under the influence 
 of Herbert Spencer, as the unification of knowledge. 
 Moreover the metaphysical method of the first half of 
 the nineteenth century, when Pike's ideas were forma- 
 tive, was to endeavor to explain everything in a "spec- 
 ulative, metaphysical way by a spiritual, logical prin- 
 ciple." But it so happened that all antiquity had been 
 making a like search for the One but for a different 
 sort of One. The earlier Greek philosophers sought a 
 single element to which the whole universe might be 
 reduced. The Ionian philosophers sought to find such 
 elements in air or fire or water or, as one of them put 
 it, "a primordial slime." Oriental thinkers had usually 
 sought an absolute word which was to be the key of all 
 things. Others among the ancients had sought an 
 absolute principle. With vast labor Pike brings to- 
 gether all that ancient and Oriental peoples thought 
 and wrote and all that mystics have since thought and 
 written with the ideas of the Orient and of antiquity 
 as a basis and upon this foundation he sets forth to 
 work out a system of his own. 
 
 Pike starts with a triad. This is suggested by 
 the ancient conception of the number three as the sym- 
 bol of completion or perfection. The singular, the dual 
 and the plural, the odd and even added, was thought of 
 as a complete system of numbers. Hence the number 
 three was perfection in its simplest form; it was 
 the type or the symbol of perfection. He finds a triad 
 everywhere in ancient thought and in every system of 
 the occult and in every mystic philosophy. He finds 
 it also in all Masonic symbolism and from end to end in 
 our lectures. Accordingly he seeks to show that in its 
 essentials this triad is at all times and in all its forms 
 the same triad. Wisdom, strength, beauty; intelli- 
 gence, force, harmony; reason, will, action; morals, 
 law, social order; faith, hope, charity; equality, liberty, 
 fraternity — all these he shows are the same triad in 
 
68 THE P HIL OSOPHY OF MASONR V 
 
 various forms. There is a fruitful passive principle 
 which is energized and made productive by an active, 
 creative principle and there is a product. As he shows, 
 Osiris, Isis and Horus symbolize this with the Egyp- 
 tians and he traces the same reduction of the universe 
 to these fundamenta through every type of ancient 
 mystery and all mystic speculation. In Morals and 
 Dogma he makes all manner of application of this idea 
 to politics, to morals and to religion. He carries it into 
 every type of human spiritual activity and gives the 
 most copious and learned illustrations. 
 
 But this of itself would be barren and would end in 
 pluralism. Accordingly he conceives that these three 
 things are emanations, or better, are manifestations of 
 the Absolute. This idea again he subjects to the test 
 of application to all that has been thought and written 
 by mystics down to his time. We find a unity in the 
 Absolute. But how do we unify the manifold, the in- 
 finite manifestations of the Absolute in our experience ? 
 Is there here some one principle? Pike says there is 
 and that this unifying principle is equilibrium or bal- 
 ance. The result of the action of creative, active ener- 
 gy and productive, passive receptivity is in the end a 
 harmony, a balance, an equilibrium. He then applies 
 this idea of equilibrium to every field of thought. One 
 example will suffice. 
 
 "It is the Secret of the Universal Equilibrium : — 
 
 "Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the 
 Infinite Divine Wisdom and the Infinite Divine Power, 
 from which result the Stability of the Universe, the 
 unchangeableness of the Divine Law, and the Principles 
 of Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of it ; . . . 
 
 "Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite 
 Divine Justice and the Infinite Divine Mercy, the result 
 of which is the Infinite Divine Equity, and the Moral 
 Harmony or Beauty of the Universe. By it the en- 
 
THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 6g 
 
 durance of created and imperfect natures in the pres- 
 ence of a Perfect Deity is made possible ; . . . 
 
 "Of that Equilibrium between Necessity and Lib- 
 erty, between the action of the Divine Omnipotence and 
 the Free-will of man, by which vices and base actions, 
 and ungenerous thoughts and words are crimes and 
 wrongs, justly punished by the law of cause and con- 
 sequence, though nothing in the Universe can happen 
 or be done contrary to the will of God; and without 
 which co-existence of Liberty and Necessity, of Free- 
 will in the creature and Omnipotence in the Creator, 
 there could be no religion, nor any law of right and 
 wrong, or merit and demerit, nor any justice in human 
 punishments or penal laws. 
 
 "Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, and 
 Light and Darkness in the world, which assures us 
 that all is the work of the Infinite Wisdom and of an 
 Infinite Love ; and that there is no rebellious demon of 
 Evil, or Principle of Darkness co-existent and in eter- 
 nal controversy with God, or the Principle of Light and 
 of Good : by attaining to the knowledge of which equi- 
 librium we can, through Faith, see that the existence 
 of Evil, Sin, Suffering, and Sorrow in the world, is con- 
 sistent with the Infinite Goodness as well as with the 
 Infinite Wisdom of the Almighty. 
 
 "Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repul- 
 sion, each a Force of nature, are contraries in the souls 
 of men and in the universe of spheres and worlds ; and 
 from the action and opposition of each against the 
 other, result Harmony, and that movement which is the 
 Life of the Universe and the Soul alike. . . . 
 
 "Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Indi- 
 vidual Action which constitutes Free Government, by 
 settling on immutable foundations Liberty with Obedi- 
 ence to Law, Equality with Subjection to Authority, 
 and Fraternity with Subordination to the Wisest and 
 the Best: and of that Equilibrium between the Active 
 
70 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the 
 Vote of the People, and the Passive Stability and Per- 
 manence of the Will of the Past, expressed in constitu- 
 tions of government, written or unwritten, and in the 
 laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, 
 as precedents and authority ; . . . 
 
 "And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in our- 
 selves, and which Masonry incessantly labors to ac- 
 complish in its Initiates, and demands of its Adepts and 
 Princes (else unworthy of their titles), between the 
 Spiritual and Divine and the Material and Human in 
 man; between the Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense 
 on one side, and the Appetites and Passions on the 
 other, from which result the Harmony and Beauty of a 
 well-regulated life." 
 
 Well, we have got our idea of equilibrium and the 
 profane will say : What of it ? Pike would answer that 
 this universal unifying principle is the light of which 
 all men in all ages have been in search, the light which 
 we seek as Masons. Hence we get our answers to the 
 fundamental problems of Masonic philosophy. 
 
 1. What is the end of Masonry? What is the 
 purpose for which it exists? Pike would answer: The 
 immediate end is the pursuit of light. But light means 
 here attainment of the fundamental principle of the 
 universe and bringing of ourselves into the harmony, 
 the ultimate unity which alone is real. Hence the ulti- 
 mate end is to lead us to the Absolute — interpreted by 
 our individual creed if we like but recognized as the 
 final unity into which all things merge and with which 
 in the end all things must accord. You will see here 
 at once a purely philosophical version of what, with 
 Oliver, was purely religious. 
 
 2. What is the relation of Masonry to other hu- 
 man institutions and particularly to the state and to 
 religion ? He would answer it seeks to interpret them 
 to us, to make them more vital for us, to make them 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 71 
 
 more efficacious for their purposes by showing the ulti- 
 mate reality of which they are manifestations. It 
 teaches us that there is but one Absolute and that 
 everything short of that Absolute is relative ; is but a 
 manifestation, so that creeds and dogmas, political or 
 religious, are but interpretations. It teaches us to 
 make our own interpretation for ourselves. It teaches 
 us to save ourselves by finding for ourselves the ulti- 
 mate principle by which we shall come to the real. In 
 other words, it is the universal institution of which 
 other spiritual, moral and social institutions are local 
 and temporary phases. 
 
 3. How does Masonry seek to reach these ends? 
 He would say by a system of allegories and of symbols 
 handed down from antiquity which we are to study and 
 upon which we are to reflect until they reveal the light 
 to each of us individually. Masonry preserves these 
 symbols and acts out these allegories for us. But the 
 responsibility of reaching the real through them is 
 upon each of us. Each of us has the duty of using 
 this wonderful heritage from antiquity for himself. 
 Masonry in Pike's view does not offer us predigested 
 food. It offers us a wholesome fare which we must 
 digest for ourselves. But what a feast ! It is nothing 
 less than the whole history of human search for reality. 
 And through it he conceives, through mastery of it, 
 we shall master the universe. 
 
ALBERT G. MACKEY 
 
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 
 
 WE have long outgrown the notion that Ma- 
 sonry is to be held to one purpose or one 
 object or is to be hemmed in by the con- 
 fines of one philosophy. If we are taught 
 truly that the roof of the Mason's work- 
 shop is nothing less than the "clouded canopy or starry- 
 decked heavens," nothing that goes on beneath that 
 capacious covering can be wholly alien to us. Our 
 Fraternity is to be of all men and for all men ; it is to 
 be of all time and for all time. The needs of no one 
 time and of no one people can circumscribe its objects. 
 The philosophy of no one time, of no one people, and 
 much more of no one man, can be admitted as its final 
 authority. Hence it is no reproach to Masonry to 
 have, along with lessons and tenets for all times, a 
 special lesson and a special tenet for each time, which 
 is not to be insisted on at other times. Truth, after 
 all, is relative. Vital truths to one time cannot be put 
 into pellets or boluses to be administered to all times to 
 come. If the Craft is to be perpetual, it must appeal to 
 each time as well as to all times; it must have in its 
 traditions something that today can use, although yes- 
 terday could not use it and tomorrow need not. We 
 are a Craft of workmen. It is our glory to be engaged 
 in useful service. Our rites and usages are not merely 
 a proud possession to be treasured for their beauty 
 and antiquity. They are instruments imparted to us 
 to be used. Hence we may properly inquire, what can 
 
74 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MAS ONE I ' 
 
 we make of this wonderful tradition of which we are 
 the custodians that will serve the world of today ? 
 
 One is indeed rash who essays a philosophy of 
 Masonry after such masters as Krause and OUver and 
 Pike. But I have tried to show heretofore how largely 
 their philosophies of Masonry grew out of the time and 
 the philosophical situation at the time when they sever- 
 ally thought and wrote. Thus Preston wrote in the 
 so-called "age of reason," when Knowledge was sup- 
 posed to be the one thing needful. Krause wrote when 
 moral philosophy, so-called, was a chief concern in Ger- 
 many, and he was primarily a leader in the philosophy 
 of law. Oliver wrote under the influence of Romanti- 
 cism in England, at a time when German idealism was 
 coming into Enghsh thought. Pike wrote under the 
 influence of the reaction from the materialism of the 
 last half of the nineteenth century and under the influ- 
 ence of the nineteenth-century metaphysical method of 
 unifying all things by reference to some basic absolute 
 principle. 
 
 In the same way a present-day philosophy of Ma- 
 sonry will necessarily relate itself to present-day modes 
 of thought and to the present situation in philosophy. 
 Consequently we may predict that it will have four 
 characteristics. 
 
 1. Its metaphysical creed will be either idealistic- 
 monistic — or else pragmatist-pluralistic. Although my 
 personal sympathies are with the latter view, so that 
 in a sense I should range myself with Preston and 
 Krause rather than with Oliver and Pike, I suspect 
 that our twentieth-century Masonic philosopher will 
 adhere to the former. He will probably hold, to quote 
 Paulsen, that "reality, which is represented to our 
 senses by the corporeal world as a uniform syston 
 of movements, is the manifestation of a universal 
 spiritual life that is to be conceived as an idea, as the 
 development of a unitary reason, a reason which in- 
 
THE PHIL O SOPHY OF MASONR V 75 
 
 finitely transcends our notions." Hence he will prob- 
 ably range himself with Oliver and Pike. But he will 
 despair of comprehending this reason through knowl- 
 edge or through tradition or of completely expressing 
 it in a single word. And so, if by chance he should be 
 a pragmatist, the result will not be very different, since 
 the philosophy of Masonry is a part of applied philos- 
 ophy and the results count for more than the exact 
 method of attaining them. Moreover in the three fol- 
 lowing characteristics, idealist and pragmatist will 
 agree, merely coming to the same results by different 
 routes. 
 
 2. Its psychology will be voluntaristic rather than 
 intellectualistic ; that is, under the influence of modem 
 biology it will insist upon giving a chief place to the 
 will. It will have faith in the efficacy of conscious 
 human effort. 
 
 3. What is more important for our purpose, its 
 standpoint will be teleological. To quote Paulsen once 
 more: "Ethics and sociology, jurisprudence and poli- 
 tics are about to give up the old formalistic treatment 
 and to employ instead the teleological method : purpose 
 governs life, hence the science of life, of individual as 
 well as of collective life, must employ this principle." 
 In other words, as it would have been put formerly, the 
 philosophy of Masonry will be treated as a part of 
 practical rather than of pure philosophy. 
 
 4. It will have its roots in history. This is the 
 distinguishing mark of modem philosophical thought. 
 The older philosophies conceived of reality along the 
 lines of mathematics and of the physical sciences. To- 
 day we endeavor to interpret nature historically. As 
 Paulsen says, we essay to interpret it "according to a 
 logical genetical scheme." 
 
 Such are the lines which modem philosophy is fol- 
 lowing, and such, we may be confident, are the lines 
 which the philosophy of Masonry will follow, unless, 
 
76 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 indeed, some philosopher of the stamp of Krause, capa- 
 ble of striking out new paths in philosophy at large, 
 should busy himself with this special field. Can we 
 construct a philosophy of Masonry that will conform 
 to these lines ? In attempting to answer this question, 
 I should lay down three fundamental principles at the 
 outset: (1) We must not be dogmatic. We must re- 
 member that our ideal is the ideal of an epoch, to serve 
 the needs of time and place. (2) Nevertheless we must 
 seek an end. We must have before us the idea of 
 purpose, since we are in the realm of practical philos- 
 ophy. (3) We must base our conception of the ideal 
 of our Masonic epoch and our idea of purpose upon the 
 history of institutions. Thus we get three modes of 
 approach to our immediate subject. 
 
 1. Let us first turn to the current philosophies 
 and inquire what they may do for us. How far may 
 we build on some one or on all of them? What does 
 Masonry call for which they can or cannot give ? 
 
 The oldest and perhaps the most authoritative sys- 
 tem of philosophy current today is absolute idealism, 
 in many forms, indeed, but with a recognizable essential 
 unity. This philosophy puts life in a world of thought. 
 It thinks of the world of experience which we perceive 
 through our senses as appearance. Reality is in the 
 world of thought. But these are not two distinct 
 worlds. Rather they are related as cause and effect, 
 as that which animates and that which is animated. 
 It regards God, not as a power outside of the world and 
 transcending it, but as that which permeates it and 
 connects it and gives it unity. It regards reality as a 
 connected, a unified whole and conceives that life is real 
 in so far as it is a part of this whole. Hence it con- 
 ceives we must turn steadfastly and courageously from 
 the superficial realm of appearance in which our senses 
 put us, and set ourselves "in the depth of reality" ; we 
 are to bring ourselves into relation with the whole and 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 77 
 
 to develop ourselves from within so as to reach the 
 whole. To use Eucken's phrases, each life is to "evolve 
 a morality in the sense of taking up the whole into 
 one's own volition" and subjecting "caprice to the ne- 
 cessity of things," that is, to their necessary inner 
 interconnection. In this theory of life, the central 
 point is spiritual creative activity. Everything else 
 is but the environment, the means or the logical pre- 
 supposition. Man is to be raised above himself and is 
 to be saved by spiritual creation. 
 
 This philosophy of scholars and for scholars is not 
 a philosophy for Masons. Indeed Pike said of his ideal- 
 istic system of Masonic philosophy that it was not the 
 Masonry of the multitude. And for this very reason 
 that it is essentially aristocratic, the old idealistic 
 philosophy is fighting a sure though obstinate retreat 
 in our democratic age. There are periods of creative 
 energy in the world and there are periods in which 
 what has been created is organized and assimilated. 
 In the periods of creation, those to whom spiritual 
 creative power is given are relatively few. In a period 
 of assimilation they are few indeed. In such a time, 
 to quote Eucken, the life pictured by the idealist "tends 
 to become mere imagination." "The man imbued with 
 [its] spirit . . . easily seems to himself more than 
 he is ; with a false self-consciousness talks and feels as 
 if he were at a supreme height ; lives less his own life 
 than an alien one. Sooner or later opposition must 
 necessarily arise against such a half life, such a life of 
 pretence, and this opposition will become especially 
 strong if it is animated by the desire that all who bear 
 human features should participate in the chief goods 
 of our existence and freely co-operate in the highest 
 tasks. . . And so the aristocratic character of Im- 
 manent Idealism produces a type of life rigidly exclu- 
 sive, harsh and intolerable." 
 
jS THE PHIL O SOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 Another type of philosophy, which has become 
 more and more current with the advance of science, has 
 been called Naturalism. This philosophy rejects the 
 spiritual life entirely, denying its independence and 
 holding it nothing but a phase or an incident of the 
 existence revealed by the senses. There is no spiritual 
 sphere. Of itself, the spiritual can create nothing. 
 Nor is life anything in itself. All things are valued 
 in terms of biology and of economics. Nothing is 
 intrinsically valuable. Truth means only correct ad- 
 justment to the environment; the good is that which 
 best preserves life ; the moral is that which makes for 
 social life ; the beautiful is a form of the useful. Self- 
 preservation is the real inspiration of conduct. I need 
 not argue that this is not a philosophy for Masons, who 
 have faith in God for one of their landmarks. What- 
 ever else we may be consistently with a naturalistic 
 philosophy, we cannot be Masons. For if there is any 
 one test of a Mason it is a test wholly incompatible with 
 this rejection of the spiritual. 
 
 Closely connected with naturalism are a variety 
 of social philosophies which have come to have much 
 vogue and in one form, socialism, have given rise to 
 an active propaganda involving almost religious fervor. 
 These philosophies reject the individual life, and hence 
 the individual spiritual life. So far as the individual 
 will is regarded it is because of a social interest in the 
 individual social life. As political or social philosophies 
 some of these systems have very great value. But 
 when they are expanded into universal systems and 
 make material welfare in society — a very proper end 
 in political philosophy — the sole end of the individual 
 life, when they reject the spiritual independence of the 
 individual by making "the judgment of society the 
 test of truth" and expect him to submit his views of 
 good and evil to the arbitrament of a show of hands, 
 when they ignore individual creation and think only of 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y jg 
 
 distributing, they run counter to Masonic landmarks, 
 so that we cannot accept them and continue to be Ma- 
 sons. For we hold as Masons that there is a spiritual 
 part of man. We hold that the individual is to con- 
 struct a moral and spiritual edifice within himself by 
 earnest labor, not to receive one ready-made by a refer- 
 endum to the judgment of society. Understand me. 
 I do not assert that modern social philosophies are to 
 be cast out utterly. In law, in politics, in social science 
 some of them are achieving great things. But we must 
 think of them as applications, not as universal sys- 
 tems. The problem of the individual life, the demands 
 of the individual spiritual life, which they ignore, are 
 matters of vital concern to the Mason, and he calls for 
 a philosophy which takes account of them. To quote 
 Eucken once more, we cannot assent that the "world of 
 sense is the sole world of man" nor can we "find life 
 entirely in the relation to the environment, be it nature 
 or society." 
 
 By way of revolt from naturalistic and social 
 philosophies a modem movement has arisen which has 
 been called aesthetic individualism. It is distinctly a 
 literary and artistic movement and for that very reason 
 ignores the mass of humanity and falls short of our 
 basic Masonic requirement of universality. But it de- 
 mands a moment's consideration as one of the signifi- 
 cant modes of modern thought. In aesthetic individ- 
 ualism, we are told, "the center of life is transferred 
 into the inner tissue of self-consciousness. With the 
 development of this self-consciousness, life appears to 
 be placed entirely on its own resources and directed 
 towards itself. Through all change of circumstances 
 and conditions it remains undisturbed; in all the in- 
 finity of that which happens to it, it feels that it is 
 supreme. All external manifestation is valuable to it 
 as an unfolding of its own being ; it never experiences 
 things, but only itself." Hence to the aesthetic indi- 
 
8o THE PHIL O SO PHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 vidualist the end is to "make all the relations and all the 
 externals of life as individual as possible." He is not 
 to sacrifice the present to the future; he is to reject 
 everything that subjects the development of life to 
 universal standards; he is to ignore all those conven- 
 tions that fit men into the social order and instead is to 
 cultivate a free relation of individual to individual. 
 To those who accept this doctrine "what is usually 
 called morality is considered to be only a statute of the 
 community, a means by which it seeks to rob the indi- 
 vidual of his independence and to subordinate him to 
 itself." This philosophy of artists and for artists is 
 too palpably impossible for the Masonic philosopher to 
 require further discussion. 
 
 If we turn from these disappointing modem the- 
 ories of the end of life to systems of applied philosophy, 
 we may do better. Here the idealists have a more 
 fruitful program. Where Hegel regarded all things as 
 the unfolding of an idea either logically or in experience, 
 the recent followers of Hegel, who are the most active 
 force in recent social philosophy, say rather that all 
 social and political and legal institutions are manifesta- 
 tions of civilization. To them the idea which is un- 
 folding in all things human is not some single meta- 
 physical principle ; it is the complex idea of human 
 civilization. Our institutions are resultants of the 
 civilization of the past and of attempts to adapt them 
 as we received them to the civilization of the present. 
 Our task as members of society is to advance civiliza- 
 tion by exerting ourselves consciously and intelligently 
 to that end. Every man may do this in some measure 
 in his time and place. So every man may, if he will, 
 retard or obstruct civilization in some degree in his 
 time and place. But from the fact that he is a man 
 and as such a factor in society actually or potentially, 
 he is charged with a duty of exerting himself to main- 
 tain and advance civilization, of which as the ultimate 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 8i 
 
 idea, society is a mere agent. So far as we may, we 
 must each of us discover the principles which are pre- 
 supposed by the civilization of today and we must exert 
 ourselves consciously to mold institutions thereto and 
 to regulate conduct thereby. The universal thing, the 
 reality is civilization among men. To paraphrase a 
 well-known formula, God is the eternal, not ourselves, 
 that makes for civilization. Here, then, we have a 
 modern system that comports with the fundamenta of 
 Masonry and with our philosophical demands. It 
 recognizes the spiritual side of man as something which 
 civilization both presupposes and develops. It has a 
 God. It is not for a scholarly or artistic aristocracy. 
 It is of and for all men as partakers in and, if they will 
 be, agents of a universal human culture. Moreover it 
 meets our first requirement. It is not dogmatic. It 
 recognizes that civilization is something that is con- 
 stantly advancing and hence is changing. It realizes 
 that civilization, for that very reason, is a matter of 
 time and place and hence that the principles it pre- 
 supposes at any time and place, which we take for our 
 ideals, are ideals of an epoch and principles to serve the 
 needs of time and place. And yet all these stages and 
 transient forms of human culture merge in a general 
 and a constantly growing human civilization which is 
 the reality both in ourselves and outside of ourselves. 
 
 2. Again the new idealism of practical philosophy 
 meets our second requirement. Even though its ad- 
 herents recognize that they have no absolute formula 
 for all times, for all places, for all peoples, they have 
 an end, they put before us a purpose. Each of us and 
 all of us are to make for human civilization. Each of 
 us by developing himself as a civilized, in the real sense, 
 as a cultured man according to his lights and his cir- 
 cumstances can find reality in himself and can bring 
 others and the whole nearer to the reality for which 
 we are consciously or unconsciously striving — the civ- 
 
82 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 ilization of mankind. The knowledge which Preston 
 sought to advance, the perfection of man at which 
 Krause aimed, the relation to God which Oliver sought 
 to attain and the harmony and through it control of 
 the universe which Pike took for the goal, may well be 
 regarded as phases of and as summed up in the one 
 idea of human civilization. 
 
 3. How far does this new idealism, or as its ad- 
 herents call it, this neo-Hegelianism, meet our third 
 requirement? Has it a sound basis in the history of 
 human institutions generally and the history of our 
 institution in particular? Here at least the Masonic 
 neo-idealist is upon sure ground. 
 
 Anthropologists and sociologists have shown us 
 that next to the family, which indeed antedates society, 
 the most primitive and most universal of social insti- 
 tutions is the association of grown men in a secret 
 society. The simplest and earliest of the institutions 
 of social man is the "men's house" — a separate house 
 for the men of the tribe which has some analogies 
 among civilized peoples of antiquity, e. g. the common 
 meal of the citizens at Sparta, the assembly of the men 
 in the agora in an ancient Greek community and the 
 meeting of the Roman citizens in assembly in the an- 
 cient polity of the Roman city. In this men's house 
 of a primitive tribe is the center of social life. Here 
 the most precious belongings of the community, its 
 religious emblems and its trophies taken in war, are 
 preserved. Here the young men of the tribe gather 
 as a visible token of their separation from their fam- 
 ilies and their entrance upon the duties and responsi- 
 bilities of tribal Hfe. Here the elders and leaders have 
 seats according to their dignity and importance. Wom- 
 en and children may not enter ; it is the house of the 
 grown men. This wide-spread primitive institution de- 
 velops in different ways. Sometimes it results in what 
 are practically barracks for the fighting men of the 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 83 
 
 community, as at Sparta and among some primitive 
 peoples today. Sometimes it becomes a religious center 
 and ultimately in substance a temple. Usually it be- 
 comes the center of another stage of social develop- 
 ment, that is, of what anthropologists call "the puberty 
 initiation ceremonies" and thence of still another stage, 
 the primitive secret society. And as these societies 
 develop, replacing the earlier tribal puberty initiations, 
 the men's house, as the seat of these organizations, 
 becomes the secret lodge. Hence in this oldest of social 
 institutions, rather than on the highest hills and in the 
 lowest dales of our lectures, we may find the first Ma- 
 sonry. 
 
 It is a natural instinct, so sociologists tell us, that 
 leads men of the same age, who have the same inter- 
 ests and the same duties, to group themselves accord- 
 ingly and to separate to some extent from other groups. 
 In obedience to this instinct, we are told that four 
 classes of the male members of a tribe set themselves 
 off : (1) The boys who have not yet arrived at puberty ; 
 (2) unmarried youths; (3) mature men on whom the 
 duties and responsibilities of tribesmen rest, and (4) 
 old men, the repositaries of tribal wisdom and the di- 
 rectors of the community. On the attainment of pu- 
 berty, the boy is taken into the men's house and as it 
 were initiated into manhood. In due time he becomes 
 tribesman and warrior. In process of time his eldest 
 son has himself reached manhood and the father be- 
 comes an elder, retired from active service. Thus the 
 men of the tribe become in substance a secret associa- 
 tion divided into two or three grades or classes out of 
 which, we are told, as a later development, grow the 
 degrees of primitive secret societies. For the passage 
 from one of these classes to another almost universally 
 among primitive peoples is accompanied by secret ini- 
 tiatory ceremonies, and among almost all primitive peo- 
 ples, the initiatory ceremonies at puberty are the most 
 
84 THE P HIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 solemn and important event in a man's life. Usually 
 they are more or less dramatic. They begin with some 
 sort of ordeal. Often there is a symbolic raising from 
 death to life to show that the child is dead and that a 
 man has risen in his place. Often a great deal of sym- 
 bolism is employed and there follows something very 
 like a lecture, explaining the ceremony. Always they 
 involve an impressive instruction in the science and the 
 morality of the tribe and an impressive inculcation of 
 obedience. 
 
 In time these initiatory ceremonies degenerate or 
 develop, as the case may be, into tribal secret societies 
 pure and simple, and with the progress of civilization 
 and the rise of political and religious systems these 
 societies also decay or lose their character. Thus 
 eventually, out of this primitive institution of the men's 
 house, which on one side has grown into political organ- 
 ization, on another side, through the initiatory cere- 
 monies, no less than six institutions are developed 
 among different peoples. First there are political, 
 magical and more or less fraudulent secret societies, 
 which are extremely common in Africa today. Second, 
 there are clan ceremonies, becoming in time state cer- 
 emonies and state religions. Antiquity abounds in ex- 
 amples of the importance which men attached to these 
 ceremonies. For example, the dictator Fabius, at a 
 critical moment in the campaign against Hannibal, left 
 the army in order to repair to the proper place and per- 
 form the clan sacrifices as head of the Fabian gens. 
 Third, there are religious societies, with elaborate cer- 
 emonies for the reception of the novice. Such societies 
 exist in Thibet and among the Hindus in striking forms. 
 Fourth, there are the mysteries of antiquity, for ex- 
 ample, the Egyptian and the Eleusinian, or sometimes 
 a mixture of the third and fourth, as in the case of the 
 Essenes. Fifth, there are trade societies on the fra- 
 ternal model, such as the Roman collegia and the trade 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 85 
 
 and operative guilds. Finally there are purely charita- 
 ble associations, such as the Roman burial societies. 
 Each of these, it will be noted, develops or preserves 
 some side of the primitive tribal secret society. The 
 political and magical societies develop or preserve their 
 political and medical traditions; the clan ceremonies, 
 their function of promoting solidarity by ancestor wor- 
 ship; the religious societies, their moral and religious 
 functions; the mysteries, their symbolical instruction; 
 the trade societies, their function of instruction in use- 
 ful knowledge; the charitable societies, their function 
 of binding men to duties of relief and of mutual assist- 
 ance. All preserve the memory of their origin in a 
 tribe of kinsmen by the fiction of brotherhood which 
 they strive to make real by teaching and practice. 
 
 The relation of Masonry to this development of 
 societies out of the primitive men's house, as described 
 by non-Masonic scholars with no thought of Masonry, 
 is so obvious, that we may no longer laugh at Oliver's 
 ambitious attempts to find Masonry in the very begin- 
 ning of things. But apart from its bearing upon Ma- 
 sonic history, this discovery of the anthropologists is 
 significant for Masonic philosophy. For in this same 
 men's house are the germs of civilization ; the develop- 
 ment of the men's house is a development of civiliza- 
 tion, and its end and purpose and the end and purpose 
 of all the legitimate institutions that have grown out 
 of it have been from the beginning to preserve, further 
 and hand down the civilization of the tribe or people. 
 In our universal society, therefore, the end is, and as 
 we study our old charges and our lectures we see it has 
 always been, to preserve, further and hand down a uni- 
 versal, human civilization. 
 
 Thus we are enabled to answer the three problems 
 of Masonic philosophy. 
 
 1. What is the end of Masonry ? For what do we 
 exist as an organization? The answer of the Masonic 
 
86 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 neo-idealist would be that our end in common with all 
 social institutions is to preserve, to develop and to 
 transmit to posterity the civilization wrought by our 
 fathers and passed on to us. 
 
 2. What is the place of Masonry in a rational 
 scheme of human activity? What is its relation to 
 other kindred activities? The answer would be, that 
 it is an organization of human effort along the universal 
 lines on which all may agree in order to realize our 
 faith in the efficacy of conscious effort in preserving 
 and promoting civilization. What other human organ- 
 izations do along lines of caste or creed or within polit- 
 ical or territorial limits hampered by the limits of 
 political feeling or local prejudice, we seek to achieve 
 by universality — by organizing the universal elements 
 in man that make for culture and civilization. 
 
 3. How does Masonry achieve its end? Our an- 
 swer would be that it makes for civilization by its in- 
 sistence on the solidarity of humanity, by its insistence 
 on universality and by the preservation and trans- 
 mission of an immemorial tradition of human solidarity 
 and of universality. So conceived, this tradition be- 
 comes a force of the first moment in maintaining and 
 advancing civilization. And in this way we connect 
 on the one hand with the practical systems of Preston 
 and of Krause. The ideal of the eighteenth century 
 was knowledge. The ideal of the nineteenth century 
 was the individual moral life. The ideal of the twen- 
 tieth century, I take it, is the universal human life. 
 But what are these but means toward the advance of 
 human culture? And on the other hand we connect 
 also with Oliver and with Pike. For they were ideal- 
 ists and so are we. Only they sought a simple, static 
 idea of which the universe was a manifestation or an 
 unfolding. We turn rather to a complex and growing 
 idea and claim to do no more than interpret it in terms 
 of the ideals of the time and place. 
 
THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 87 
 
 My brethren, we of all men, owe it to ourselves 
 and to the world, to be universal in spirit. Univer- 
 sality is a lesson the whole world is learning and must 
 learn. But we ought to know it well already. We 
 ought to be upon the front bench of the world's school, 
 setting an example to our more backward school-fel- 
 lows. Wherever in the world there is a lodge of Ma- 
 sons, there should be a focus of civilization, a center of 
 the idea of universality, radiating reason to put down 
 prejudice and advance justice in the disputes of peo- 
 ples, and in the disputes of classes, and making for the 
 peace and harmony and civilization that should prevail 
 in this great lodge of the world. 
 
 Moreover, the idea of universality has a special 
 message to the Mason for the good of Masonry. Every 
 world-organization hitherto has been wrecked ultimate- 
 ly upon its own dogmatism. It has taken the dogmas, 
 the interpretations, the philosophy of its youth for a 
 fixed order of nature. It has assumed that universality 
 consisted in forcing these dogmas, these interpreta- 
 tions, this philosophy upon all times to come. While it 
 has rested serene in the ruts made by its own pros- 
 perity, the world has marched by it unseen. We have 
 a glorious body of tradition handed down to us from 
 the past, which we owe it to transmit unimpaired to the 
 future. But let us understand what in it is funda- 
 mental and eternal, and what is mere interpretation to 
 make it of service to the past. Let us while we have 
 it use it well to make it of service to the present. Yet 
 let us fasten upon it nothing hard and fast that serves 
 well enough to make it useful today, but may make it 
 useless tomorrow. As the apprentice stands in the 
 comer of the lodge, the working tools are put in his 
 hands and he is taught their uses. But they are not 
 his. They are the tools of the lodge. He is to use them 
 that the Worshipful Master may have pleasure and the 
 Craft profit. The Grand Master of the Universe has 
 
88 THE PHIL OSOPHY OF MASONR Y 
 
 entrusted to us the principles of Masonry as working 
 tools. They, too, are not ours, they belong to the lodge 
 of the world. We are to use them that He may have 
 pleasure and the Craft of humanity that labors in this 
 wide lodge of the world may profit thereby. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I 
 
 For those who have previously given no attention to the 
 subject some general introduction to philosophy and to ethics is 
 advisable. The following works of Bro. Frank Thilly, Professor 
 of Philosophy in Cornell University, may be recommended: 
 
 History of Philosophy, New York, 1914. 
 
 Introduction to Ethics, New York, 1901. 
 
 Translation of Paulsen's System of Ethics, New York, 1899. 
 
 Another good introduction is: 
 
 Windelband, History of Philosophy (transl. by Tufts) New 
 York, 1901. 
 
 Preston's Works 
 
 Illustrations of Masonry, London, 1772, 2 ed. (enlarged and 
 revised) 1775. There were successive editions at short 
 intervals during the author's lifetime, ending with the 
 twelfth in 1812. Two noteworthy editions after his 
 death are those of Jones (1821) and of Oliver (1829). 
 But there have been many since. There have been 
 several American editions, one of which by Richards, 
 Portsmouth, N. H., 1804-, has some importance. 
 
 On Preston's Life and Work 
 
 The standard biography is by Jones in the thirteenth edition 
 
 of Illustrations of Masonry (1821). There is also an 
 
 important sketch in Chapter 18 of Gould, History of 
 
 Freemasonry (vol. II, pp. 422-428). 
 For critiques of Preston's writings, see Gould, History of 
 
 Freemasonry, II, 37-39, 411-412. 
 
 On the Philosophical Ideas of Preston's Time 
 
 Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, (3 ed.) 
 New York, 1902, Chapters I and XII. 
 
 II 
 
 Krause's Works 
 (1) Masonic 
 
 Hohere Vergeistung der echtiiberlieferten Grundsymbole 
 der Freimaurerei, in zwolf Logenvortragen, Dres- 
 den, 1809, 2 ed. 1820. 
 
 Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurerbru- 
 derschaft, Dresden, 1810-1813, 2 ed. 1819-1821. 
 There is a third edition. 
 
 Preface and notes to a translation of Laurie's History 
 of Freemasonry, Freiburg, 1810. 
 
go BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 (2) Philosophical 
 
 Entwurf des Systemes der Philosophie, Jena and Leip- 
 zig, 1804. 
 
 System der Sittenlehre, Leipzig, 1810. 
 
 Das Urbild der Menschheit, Dresden, 1811. 
 
 Abriss des Systemes der Philosonhie, Gottingen, 1825. 
 
 Vorlesungen iiber das System der Philosophie, Gottin- 
 gen, 1828. 
 
 (5) On the Philosophy of Law 
 
 Grundlage des Naturrechts, Jena, 1803. 
 
 Abriss des Systemes der Philosophie des Eechtes, 
 
 Gottingen, 1828. 
 Vorlesungen iiber Rechtsphilosophie (posthumous), 
 edited by Roder, Leipzig, 1874. 
 He also wrote extensively on logic and on mathematics, 
 music and philology from the philosophical standpoint. 
 
 On Krause's Life and Work 
 
 Roder, Vorbericht (in his edition of Krause's posthumous 
 System der Rechtsphilosophie) Leipzig, 1874. 
 
 Procksch, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, ein Lebensbild 
 nach seinen Briefen dargestellt, Leipzig, 1880. 
 
 Eucken, Zur Errinerung an Krause, Leipzig, 1881. 
 
 Hohlfeld und Wiinsche, Krause's Briefwechsel, zur Wiirdi- 
 gung seines Lebens und Wirkens, Leipzig, 1903. 
 
 Expositions and Critique of His Philosophy op Law 
 
 Ahrens, Cours de droit naturel (8 ed.) I, 25, 78 et seq. 
 Roder, Grundziige des Naturrechts (2 ed.) I, 10, 256. 
 
 Exposition and Critique of His General Philosophy 
 
 Windelband, History of Philosophy (transl. by Tufts) 610- 
 611. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Oliver's Works 
 
 (1) Masonic 
 
 See list ante p. 44, 45. 
 
 (2) Antiquarian 
 
 See list ante p. 42. 
 
 On Oliver's Life and Work 
 
 Freemason's Magazine, II, 88; III, 138; V, 166; XVI, 185, 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, XLII, 143-145. 
 On Philosophy in England in Oliver's Time 
 
 Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy (transl bv Mevpr<!l 
 New York, 1908, II, 139-143, 374-377. meyersj 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY gi 
 
 On Masonry and Religion 
 
 Hutchinson, The Spirit of Masonry, London, 1775; 2 ed. 
 1795, and three others in the author's lifetime (fifth, 
 1814, the last). Since the author's death there have 
 been many editions in Great Britain and in the United 
 States. 
 
 IV 
 
 Pike's Works 
 (i) Masonic 
 
 Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish 
 Rite, Washington, 1872. , 
 
 Ex Corde Locutiones, Allocutions as Sovereign Grand 
 Commander; Trans. Supreme Council, So. Jur. U. S., 
 Mar. 1860, 8; Nov. 1865, Apr). A, 3, App. B, 3; 
 Sept. 1869, App. 5; May 1870, App. 99; May 1872, 6; 
 May 1874, App. A, 1; May 1876, 4; May 1878, 5; 
 Oct. 1880, App. No. 1, 1; Oct. 1882, App. 3; Oct. 
 1884, App. No. 3; Oct. 1886, Anp. 3; Oct. 1888, App. 
 A, 1; Oct. 1890, App. 3. 
 
 (2) Miscellaneous 
 
 Poems, Little Rock, Ark., 1900. 
 
 As to his manuscript works, see ante p. 60. 
 
 On Pike's Life and Work 
 
 The most authentic account is to be found in the biographi- 
 cal sketch, by his daughter, Mrs. Lillian Pike Roome, prefixed 
 to the volume of poems above referred to. 
 
 See also the autobiography. Bull. Supreme Council, So. Jur. 
 U. S., X, 409; the biography by Hallum, Id. 414; the Memorial 
 address by Hatch, Id. 455; Van Deventer, Albert Pike, A Bio- 
 graphical Sketch (privately printed) Knoxville, Tenn. 1909; 
 Rose, The Supreme Court of Arkansas, 4 Green Bag, 417, 431-433. 
 As to Pike's military service and the controversies that grew 
 out of the participation of Indians in the Pea-Ridge Campaign, 
 the original sources of information may be seen in the Official 
 Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, vol. 8. 
 Pike's report is on p. 286. On pp. 886-887, full references will 
 be found to all the reports of the battle, and on p. 888 full refer- 
 ences to all the correspondence of Pike with his military su- 
 periors. 
 
 On American Legal and Political 
 
 Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century 
 
 Reference may be made to: 
 
 Merriam, History of American Political Theories, New 
 
 York, 1906, especially Chap. 2. 
 Pound, The Philosophy of Law in America, reprmted 
 
 from Archiv fiir Rechts und Wirthschaftsphilos- 
 
 ophie, VII, 1913. 
 
P£ BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 V 
 
 Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy (transl. by Thilly) New 
 York, 1907, xi-xv. 
 
 Eucken, The Problem of Human Life (trelnsl. by Hough and Gib- 
 son) New York, 1909. 
 
 Eucken, Life's Basis and Life's Ideal (transl. by Widgery) Lon- 
 don, 1912. 
 
 Eucken, The Meaning and Value of Life (transl. by Gibson and 
 Gibson) London, 1913. 
 
 Berolzheimer, The World's Legal Philosophies (transl. by Jas- 
 trow) Boston, 1912, 422-427. 
 
 Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, New York, 1908, especially 
 Chaps. 1-4, 10-11. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aesthetic individualism 79-80 
 
 Age of reason 12 
 
 American political philosophy 62-63 
 
 Andreae, J. V 24 
 
 Architecture: Preston's disquisition on 14 
 
 Christianity: Relation of Masonry to 53 
 
 CiT,rilization: Relation to Masonry 85 
 
 Crucefix 25, 46 
 
 Dalcho 25 
 
 Eighteenth century: Philosophy of 11 
 
 Eucken 77, 79 
 
 Fellowcraft lecture 13, 14 
 
 Formalists 21 
 
 Geometry: Preston's lecture on 14 
 
 Globes on the pillars 13 
 
 Grammar: Preston's lecture on 18 
 
 Greek philosophers : The search for the One 67 
 
 Hegel 63, 80 
 
 Hutchinson 51-52, 53, 66 
 
 Idealism 76-77 
 
 Initiatory ceremonies of antiquity 84 
 
 Krause : 
 
 Answers to problems of Masonic philosophy 38-39 
 
 Character of 26 
 
 Controversy of -with his Masonic superiors 25 
 
 Critique of his Masonic writings 27 
 
 Excommunicated by his lodge 25 
 
 Founder of a new Masonic literature 25 
 
 Founder of a school of legal and political philosophers . . 27 
 
 General philosophical system of 26 
 
 His philosophy of law 27 
 
 His view of the purpose of Masonry 34-35 
 
 His view of the social aim 30 
 
 Life of 25 
 
 Made a Mason 25 
 
 Organic theory of 29 
 
 Law: 
 
 Relation to morals 36 
 
 ■ Relation to religion and morals 33 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry 24 
 
g4 INDEX 
 
 Masonic philosophy: 
 
 Definition of 3 
 
 Problems of, Krause's view 38-39 
 
 Oliver's view 54 
 
 Pike's view 70-71 
 
 Preston's view 17 
 
 Twentieth-century view 86-88 
 
 Systems of 4 
 
 Masonry: 
 
 Fundamental principles of 4 
 
 Nature and purpose of 3 
 
 Place of in scheme of human activities 86 
 
 Purpose of 85-86 
 
 Relation to civilization 85 
 
 Relation to primitive secret societies 85 
 
 Relation to other human institutions 3 
 
 Relation to religion 41 
 
 Men's house 82-83 
 
 Men's house: Relation to Masonry 85 
 
 Modern philosophy: Characteristics of 74-75 
 
 Moral order 33 
 
 Natural law 24 
 
 Natural order 28, 30 
 
 Naturalism 78 
 
 Neo-Hegelianism 82 
 
 New idealism 81 
 
 Oliver: 
 
 Answers to the problems of Masonic philosophy 54 
 
 Antiquarian writings of 42-43 
 
 Character of 46-47 
 
 Considers Masonry a Christian institution 53 
 
 Controversy with his Masonic superiors 46 
 
 Critique of his Masonic writings 50, 54-55 
 
 His theory of Masonry 51-53 
 
 His philosophy of Masonry 50 
 
 His view of relation of Masonry and religion 51 
 
 His view of the purpose of Masonry 54 
 
 Life of 41-44 
 
 Made a Mason 43 
 
 Masonic record of 44 
 
 Masonic training of 43-44 
 
 Relation to romantic philosophy 49 
 
 Takes degree of Doctor of Divinity 42 
 
 Takes orders 42 
 
 Writings of '. 44.45 
 
 Paulsen 74-75 
 
 Philosophy: 
 
 Current, Critique of 76-80 
 
 Scope and subject matter of .'..'.'.'... 3 
 
 Philosophy of Masonry: 
 
 Definition of 3 
 
 Fundamental principles of .1^ 
 
 Problems of 3-4 
 
 Relation to general philosophy .74 
 
INDEX gs 
 
 Systems of 4 
 
 Pike: 
 
 Admitted to the bar 58 
 
 Answers to the problems of Masonic philosophy 70-71 
 
 As a lawyer 59-60 
 
 Bent for mysticism 57, 62, 64 
 
 Career as a Mason 60-61 
 
 Compelled to fight a. duel 59 
 
 Contributions to Masonic science 65 
 
 Experience in the Civil War 59 
 
 Frontier experiences 58 
 
 Growth of his Masonic philosophy 64 
 
 His learning and scholarly interests 60 
 
 His Masonic philosophy 64, 66 
 
 His "Morals and Dogma" 64-65, 68 
 
 His service to Masonic symbolism 66 
 
 His theory of equilibrium 68-70 
 
 His theory of manifestations of the Absolute 68 
 
 Holds Masonry a study of first principles 57 
 
 Life of 58-60 
 
 Relation to eighteenth-century political philosophy 61 
 
 Relation to nineteenth-century metaphysics 61 
 
 Relation to transcendental philosophy 57 
 
 Revises the statutes of Arkansas 59 
 
 Settles in Arkansas 58 
 
 Soldier in the Mexican War 59 
 
 Stands for individual Masonic development 66 
 
 Starts with a triad 67 
 
 Preston: 
 
 Answers to the problems of Masonic philosophy 17 
 
 Apprenticed as a printer 5 
 
 Becomes a judge of style and critic 6 
 
 Becomes Master of his lodge 6 
 
 Becomes Master of the Lodge of Antiquity 9 
 
 Begins writing Masonic lectures 7, 8 
 
 Conflict with the Grand Lodge of England 9 
 
 Death of 10 
 
 Elected to the Lodge of Antiquity 9 
 
 Endows the Prestonian lecture 10 
 
 Expelled by the Grand Lodge 10 
 
 Expounds his system before Grand Lodge officers 8 
 
 Forms a club of Masonic scholars 8 
 
 Goes to London 5 
 
 His idea of education 19 
 
 His lectures displaced by those of Hemming 10 
 
 His relation to the eighteenth century 23 
 
 His view of the purpose of Masonry 15, 16 
 
 His view of the symbols 18 
 
 "Illustrations of Masonry" 10 
 
 Institutes a school of instruction 8 
 
 Life of 5 
 
 Made a Mason 6 
 
 Organizes the Order of the Harodim 10 
 
 Qualifications as a Masonic writer 7 
 
g6 INDEX 
 
 Preston (continued) : 
 
 Relation to American lectures 4, 10 
 
 Restored to his honors 10 
 
 Will of 10 
 
 Primitive secret societies 82-85 
 
 Primitive secret, societies : Relation to Masonry 85 
 
 Problems of Masonic philosophy: 
 
 Krause's view of 38-39 
 
 Oliver's view of 54 
 
 Pike's view of 70-71 
 
 Preston's view of 17 
 
 Twentieth-century view of 86-88 
 
 Puberty initiations 83 
 
 Rhetoric: Preston's lecture on 18 
 
 Romantic philosophy ,47-50 
 
 Rosicrucian controversy 24 
 
 Seventeenth century: Philosaphy of 23 
 
 Social philosophies 78-79 
 
 Social order 32 
 
 Spencer, Herbert 67 
 
 Symbolic ceremonies of antiquity 84 
 
 Symbols: 
 
 Function of 36-38 
 
 Preston's view of 18 
 
 Toleration 54 
 
 Universality .20,' .54,' 82-88 
 
 Webb: His version of "Preston 13 
 
i