The Builders Part 8

III

This brings us to one of the most hotly debated questions in Masonic history--the question as to the number and nature of the degrees made use of in the old craft lodges. Hardly any other subject has so deeply engaged the veteran archaeologists of the order, and while it ill becomes any one glibly to decide such an issue, it is at least permitted us, after studying all of value that has been written on both sides, to sum up what seems to be the truth arrived at.[91]

While such a thing as a written record of an ancient degree--aside from the _Old Charges_, which formed a part of the earliest rituals--is unthinkable, we are not left altogether to the mercy of conjecture in a matter so important. Cesare Cantu tells us that the Comacine Masters "were called together in the Loggie by a grand-master to treat of affairs common to the order, to receive novices, and _confer superior degrees on others_."[92] Evidence of a sort similar is abundant, but not a little confusion will be avoided if the following considerations be kept in mind:

First, that during its purely operative period the ritual of Masonry was naturally less formal and ornate than it afterwards became, from the fact that its very life was a kind of ritual and its symbols were always visibly present in its labor. By the same token, as it ceased to be purely operative, and others not actually architects were admitted to its fellows.h.i.+p, of necessity its rites became more formal--"_very formall_," as Dugdale said in 1686,[93]--portraying in ceremony what had long been present in its symbolism and practice.

Second, that with the decline of the old religious art of building--for such it was in very truth--some of its symbolism lost its l.u.s.ter, its form surviving but its meaning obscured, if not entirely faded. Who knows, for example--even with the Klein essay on _The Great Symbol_[94] in hand--what Pythagoras meant by his lesser and greater Tetractys? That they were more than mathematical theorems is plain, yet even Plutarch missed their meaning. In the same way, some of the emblems in our Lodges are veiled, or else wear meanings invented after the fact, in lieu of deeper meanings hidden, or but dimly discerned. Albeit, the great emblems still speak in truths simple and eloquent, and remain to refine, instruct, and exalt.

Third, that when Masonry finally became a purely speculative or symbolical fraternity, no longer an order of practical builders, its ceremonial inevitably became more elaborate and imposing--its old habit and custom, as well as its symbols and teachings, being enshrined in its ritual. More than this, knowing how "Time the white G.o.d makes all things holy, and what is old becomes religion," it is no wonder that its tradition became every year more authoritative; so that the tendency was not, as many have imagined, to add to its teaching, but to preserve and develop its rich deposit of symbolism, and to avoid any break with what had come down from the past.

Keeping in mind this order of evolution in the history of Masonry, we may now state the facts, so far as they are known, as to its early degrees; dividing it into two periods, the Operative and the Speculative.[95] An Apprentice in the olden days was "entered" as a novice of the craft, first, as a purely business proceeding, not unlike our modern indentures, or articles. Then, or shortly afterwards--probably at the annual a.s.sembly--there was a ceremony of initiation making him a Mason--including an oath, the recital of the craft legend as recorded in the _Old Charges_, instruction in moral conduct and deportment as a Mason, and the imparting of certain secrets. At first this degree, although comprising secrets, does not seem to have been mystic at all, but a simple ceremony intended to impress upon the mind of the youth the high moral life required of him. Even Guild-masonry had such a rite of initiation, as Hallam remarks, and if we may trust the Findel version of the ceremony used among the German Stone-masons, it was very like the first degree as we now have it--though one has always the feeling that it was embellished in the light of later time.[96]

So far there is no dispute, but the question is whether any other degree was known in the early lodges. Both the probabilities of the case, together with such facts as we have, indicate that there was another and higher degree. For, if all the secrets of the order were divulged to an Apprentice, he could, after working four years, and just when he was becoming valuable, run away, give himself out as a Fellow, and receive work and wages as such. If there was only one set of secrets, this deception might be practiced to his own profit and the injury of the craft--unless, indeed, we revise all our ideas held hitherto, and say that his initiation did not take place until he was out of his articles. This, however, would land us in worse difficulties later on. Knowing the fondness of the men of the Middle Ages for ceremony, it is hardly conceivable that the day of all days when an Apprentice, having worked for seven long years, acquired the status of a Fellow, was allowed to go unmarked, least of all in an order of men to whom building was at once an art and an allegory. So that, not only the exigences of his occupation, but the importance of the day to a young man, and the spirit of the order, justify such a conclusion.

Have we any evidence tending to confirm this inference? Most certainly; so much so that it is not easy to interpret the hints given in the _Old Charges_ upon any other theory. For one thing, in nearly all the MSS, from the _Regius Poem_ down, we are told of two rooms or resorts, the Chamber and the Lodge--sometimes called the Bower and the Hall--and the Mason was charged to keep the "counsells" proper to each place. This would seem to imply that an Apprentice had access to the Chamber or Bower, but not to the Lodge itself--at least not at all times. It may be argued that the "other counsells" referred to were merely technical secrets, but that is to give the case away, since they were secrets held and communicated as such. By natural process, as the order declined and actual building ceased, _its technical secrets became ritual secrets_, though they must always have had symbolical meanings. Further, while we have record of only one oath--which does not mean that there _was_ only one--signs, tokens, and words are nearly always spoken of in the plural; and if the secrets of a Fellowcraft were purely technical--which some of us do not believe--they were at least accompanied and protected by certain signs, tokens, and pa.s.swords. From this it is clear that the advent of an Apprentice into the ranks of a Fellow was in fact a degree, or contained the essentials of a degree, including a separate set of signs and secrets.

When we pa.s.s to the second period, and men of wealth and learning who were not actual architects began to enter the order--whether as patrons of the art or as students and mystics attracted by its symbolism--other evidences of change appear. They, of course, were not required to serve a seven year apprentices.h.i.+p, and they would naturally be Fellows, not Masters, because they were in no sense masters of the craft. Were these Fellows made acquainted with the secrets of an Apprentice? If so, then the two degrees were either conferred in one evening, or else--what seems to have been the fact--they were welded into one; since we hear of men being made Masons in a single evening.[97] Customs differed, no doubt, in different Lodges, some of which were chiefly operative, or made up of men who had been working Masons, with only a sprinkling of men not workmen who had been admitted; while others were purely symbolical Lodges as far back as 1645. Naturally in Lodges of the first kind the two degrees were kept separate, and in the second they were merged--the one degree becoming all the while more elaborate.

Gradually the men who had been Operative Masons became fewer in the Lodges--chiefly those of higher position, such as master builders, architects, and so on--until the order became a purely speculative fraternity, having no longer any trade object in view.

Not only so, but throughout this period of transition, and even earlier, we hear intimations of "the Master's Part," and those hints increase in number as the office of Master of the Work lost its practical aspect after the cathedral-building period. What was the Master's Part? Unfortunately, while the number of degrees may be indicated, their nature and details cannot be discussed without grave indiscretion; but nothing is plainer than that _we need not go outside Masonry itself to find the materials out of which all three degrees, as they now exist, were developed_.[98] Even the French Companionage, or Sons of Solomon, had the legend of the Third Degree long before 1717, when some imagine it to have been invented. If little or no mention of it is found among English Masons before that date, that is no reason for thinking that it was unknown. _Not until 1841 was it known to have been a secret of the Companionage in France, so deeply and carefully was it hidden._[99] Where so much is dim one may not be dogmatic, but what seems to have taken place in 1717 was, not the _addition_ of a third degree made out of whole cloth, but the _conversion_ of two degrees into three.

That is to say, Masonry is too great an inst.i.tution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals upon which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity--its history a disclosure of its innermost soul in the natural process of its transition from actual architecture to its "more n.o.ble and glorious purpose." For, since what was evolved from Masonry must always have been involved in it--not something alien added to it from extraneous sources, as some never tire of trying to show--we need not go outside the order itself to learn what Masonry is, certainly not to discover its motif and its genius; its later and more elaborate form being only an expansion and exposition of its inherent nature and teaching. Upon this fact the present study insists with all emphasis, as over against those who go hunting in every odd nook and corner to find whence Masonry came, and where it got its symbols and degrees.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Our present craft nomenclature is all wrong; the old order was first Apprentice, then Master, then Fellowcraft--masters.h.i.+p being, not a degree conferred, but a reward of skill as a workman and of merit as a man. The confusion today is due, no doubt, to the custom of the German Guilds, where a Fellowcraft had to serve an additional two years as a journeyman before becoming a Master. No such restriction was known in England. Indeed, the reverse was true, and it was not the Fellowcraft but the Apprentice who prepared his masterpiece, and if it was accepted, he became a Master. Having won his masters.h.i.+p, he was ent.i.tled to become a Fellowcraft--that is, a peer and fellow of the fraternity which hitherto he had only served. Also, we must distinguish between a Master and the Master of the Work, now represented by the Master of the Lodge. Between a Master and the Master of the Work there was no difference, of course, except an accidental one; they were both Masters and Fellows. Any Master (or Fellow) could become a Master of the Work at any time, provided he was of sufficient skill and had the luck to be chosen as such either by the employer, or the Lodge, or both.

[84] The older MSS indicate that initiations took place, for the most part, at the annual a.s.semblies, which were bodies not unlike the Grand Lodges of today, presided over by a President--a Grand Master in fact, though not in name. Democratic in government, as Masonry has always been, they received Apprentices, examined candidates for masters.h.i.+p, tried cases, adjusted disputes, and regulated the craft; but they were also occasions of festival and social good will. At a later time they declined, and the functions of initiation more and more reverted to the Lodges.

[85] The subject of Mason's Marks is most interesting, particularly with reference to the origin and growth of Gothic architecture, but too intricate to be entered upon here. As for example, an essay ent.i.tled "Scottish Mason's Marks Compared with Those of Other Countries," by Prof. T.H. Lewis, _British Archaeological a.s.sociation_, 1888, and the theory there advanced that some great unknown architect introduced Gothic architecture from the East, as shown by the difference in Mason's Marks as compared with those of the Norman period. (Also proceedings of _A. Q. C._, iii, 65-81.)

[86] _History of Masonry_, Steinbrenner. It consisted of a short black tunic--in summer made of linen, in winter of wool--open at the sides, with a gorget to which a hood was attached; round the waist was a leathern girdle, from which depended a sword and a satchel. Over the tunic was a black scapulary, similar to the habit of a priest, tucked under the girdle when they were working, but on holydays allowed to hang down. No doubt this garment also served as a coverlet at night, as was the custom of the Middle Ages, sheets and blankets being luxuries enjoyed only by the rich and t.i.tled (_History of Agriculture and Prices in England_, T. Rogers). On their heads they wore large felt or straw hats, and tight leather breeches and long boots completed the garb.

[87] Gloves were more widely used in the olden times than now, and the practice of giving them as presents was common in mediaeval times.

Often, when the harvest was over, gloves were distributed to the laborers who gathered it (_History of Prices in England_, Rogers), and richly embroidered gloves formed an offering gladly accepted by princes. Indeed, the bare hand was regarded as a symbol of hostility, and the gloved hand a token of peace and goodwill. For Masons, however, the white gloves and ap.r.o.n had meanings hardly guessed by others, and their symbolism remains to this day with its simple and eloquent appeal. (See chapter on "Masonic Clothing and Regalia," in _Things a Freemason Should Know_, by J.W. Crowe, an interesting article by Rylands, _A. Q. C._, vol. v, and the delightful essay on "Gloves," by Dr. Mackey, in his _Symbolism of Freemasonry_.) Not only the tools of the builder, but his clothing, had moral meaning.

[88] _Tiler_--like the word _cable-tow_--is a word peculiar to the language of Masonry, and means one who guards the Lodge to see that only Masons are within ear-shot. It probably derives from the Middle Ages when the makers of tiles for roofing were also of migratory habits (_History of Prices in England_, Rogers), and accompanied the Free-masons to perform their share of the work of covering buildings.

Some tiler was appointed to act as sentinel to keep off intruders, and hence, in course of time, the name of Tiler came to be applied to any Mason who guarded the Lodge.

[89] Much has been written of the derivation and meaning of the word _cowan_, some finding its origin in a Greek term meaning "dog." (See "An Inquiry Concerning Cowans," by D. Ramsay, _Review of Freemasonry_, vol. i.) But its origin is still to seek, unless we accept it as an old Scotch word of contempt (_Dictionary of Scottish Language_, Jamieson).

Sir Walter Scott uses it as such in Rob Roy, "she doesna' value a Cawmil mair as a cowan" (chap. xxix). Masons used the word to describe a "dry-diker, one who built without cement," or a Mason without the word. Unfortunately, we still have cowans in this sense--men who try to be Masons without using the cement of brotherly love. If only they _could_ be kept out! Blackstone describes an eavesdropper as "a common nuisance punishable by fine." Legend says that the old-time Masons punished such prying persons, who sought to learn their signs and secrets, by holding them under the eaves until the water ran in at the neck and out at the heels. What penalty was inflicted in dry weather, we are not informed. At any rate, they had contempt for a man who tried to make use of the signs of the craft without knowing its art and ethics.

[90] This subject is most fascinating. Even in primitive ages there seems to have been a kind of universal sign-language employed, at times, by all peoples. Among widely separated tribes the signs were very similar, owing, perhaps, to the fact that they were natural gestures of greeting, of warning, or of distress. There is intimation of this in the Bible, when the life of Ben-Hadad was saved by a sign given (I Kings, 20:30-35). Even among the North American Indians a sign-code of like sort was known (_Indian Masonry_, R.C. Wright, chap.

iii). "Mr. Ellis, by means of his knowledge as a Master Mason, actually pa.s.sed himself into the sacred part or adytum of one of the temples of India" (_Anacalypsis_, G. Higgins, vol. i, 767). See also the experience of Haskett Smith among the Druses, already referred to (_A.

Q. C._, iv, 11). Kipling has a rollicking story with the Masonic sign-code for a theme, ent.i.tled _The Man Who Would be King_, and his imagination is positively uncanny. If not a little of the old sign-language of the race lives to this day in Masonic Lodges, it is due not only to the exigencies of the craft, but also to the instinct of the order for the old, the universal, the _human_; its genius for making use of all the ways and means whereby men may be brought to know and love and help one another.

[91] Once more it is a pleasure to refer to the transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, whose essays and discussions of this issue, as of so many others, are the best survey of the whole question from all sides. The paper by J.W. Hughan arguing in behalf of only one degree in the old time lodges, and a like paper by G.W. Speth in behalf of two degrees, with the materials for the third, cover the field quite thoroughly and in full light of all the facts (_A. Q. C._, vol. x, 127; vol. xi, 47). As for the Third Degree, that will be considered further along.

[92] _Storia di Como_, vol. i, 440.

[93] _Natural History of Wilts.h.i.+re_, by John Aubrey, written, but not published, in 1686.

[94] _A. Q. C._, vol. x, 82.

[95] Roughly speaking, the year 1600 may be taken as a date dividing the two periods. Addison, writing in the _Spectator_, March 1, 1711, draws the following distinction between a speculative and an operative member of a trade or profession: "I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and _artisan_, without ever meddling with any practical part of life." By a Speculative Mason, then, is meant a man who, though not an actual architect, sought and obtained members.h.i.+p among Free-masons. Such men, scholars and students, began to enter the order as early as 1600, if not earlier. If by Operative Mason is meant one who attached no moral meaning to his tools, there were none such in the olden time--all Masons, even those in the Guilds, using their tools as moral emblems in a way quite unknown to builders of our day. 'Tis a pity that this light of poetry has faded from our toil, and with it the joy of work.

[96] _History of Masonry_, p. 66.

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

[98] Time out of mind it has been the habit of writers, both within the order and without, to treat Masonry as though it were a kind of agglomeration of archaic remains and plat.i.tudinous moralizings, made up of the heel-taps of Operative legend and the f.a.g-ends of Occult lore.

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

This fact will be further emphasized in the chapter following, to which those are respectfully referred who go everywhere else, _except to Masonry itself_, to learn what Masonry is and how it came to be.

[99] _Livre du Compagnonnage_, by Agricol Perdiguier, 1841. George Sand's novel, _Le Compagnon du Tour de France_, was published the same year. See full account of this order in Gould, _History of Masonry_, vol. i, chap. v.

ACCEPTED MASONS

/# _The_ SYSTEM, _as taught in the regular_ LODGES, _may have some Redundancies or Defects, occasion'd by the Ignorance or Indolence of the old members. And indeed, considering through what Obscurity and Darkness the_ MYSTERY _has been deliver'd down; the many Centuries it has survived; the many Countries and Languages, and_ SECTS _and_ PARTIES _it has run through; we are rather to wonder that it ever arrived to the present Age, without more Imperfection. It has run long in muddy Streams, and as it were, under Ground. But notwithstanding the great Rust it may have contracted, there is much of the_ OLD FABRICK _remaining: the essential Pillars of the Building may be discov'd through the Rubbish, tho' the Superstructure be overrun with Moss and Ivy, and the Stones, by Length of Time, be disjointed. And therefore, as the Bust of an_ OLD HERO _is of great Value among the Curious, tho' it has lost an Eye, the Nose or the Right Hand; so Masonry with all its Blemishes and Misfortunes, instead of appearing ridiculous, ought to be receiv'd with some Candor and Esteem, from a Veneration of its_ ANTIQUITY.

--_Defence of Masonry_, 1730 #/

CHAPTER III

_Accepted Masons_

I

Whatever may be dim in the history of Freemasonry, and in the nature of things much must remain hidden, its symbolism may be traced in unbroken succession through the centuries; and its symbolism is its soul. So much is this true, that it may almost be said that had the order ceased to exist in the period when it was at its height, its symbolism would have survived and developed, so deeply was it wrought into the mind of mankind. When, at last, the craft finished its labors and laid down its tools, its symbols, having served the faith of the worker, became a language for the thoughts of the thinker.

Few realize the service of the science of numbers to the faith of man in the morning of the world, when he sought to find some kind of key to the mighty maze of things. Living amidst change and seeming chance, he found in the laws of numbers a path by which to escape the awful sense of life as a series of accidents in the hands of a capricious Power; and, when we think of it, his insight was not invalid. "All things are in numbers," said the wise Pythagoras; "the world is a living arithmetic in its development--a realized geometry in its repose." Nature is a realm of numbers; crystals are solid geometry.

Music, of all arts the most divine and exalting, moves with measured step, using geometrical figures, and cannot free itself from numbers without dying away into discord. Surely it is not strange that a science whereby men obtained such glimpses of the unity and order of the world should be hallowed among them, imparting its form to their faith.[100] Having revealed so much, mathematics came to wear mystical meanings in a way quite alien to our prosaic habit of thinking--faith in our day having betaken itself to other symbols.

Equally so was it with the art of building--a living allegory in which man imitated in miniature the world-temple, and sought by every device to discover the secret of its stability. Already we have shown how, from earliest times, the simple symbols of the builder became a part of the very life of humanity, giving shape to its thought, its faith, its dream. Hardly a language but bears their impress, as when we speak of a Rude or Polished mind, of an Upright man who is a Pillar of society, of the Level of equality, or the Golden Rule by which we would Square our actions. They are so natural, so inevitable, and so eloquent withal, that we use them without knowing it. Sages have always been called Builders, and it was no idle fancy when Plato and Pythagoras used imagery drawn from the art of building to utter their highest thought. Everywhere in literature, philosophy, and life it is so, and naturally so. Shakespeare speaks of "square-men," and when Spenser would build in stately lines the Castle of Temperance, he makes use of the Square, Circle, and Triangle:[101]

/P The frame thereof seem'd partly circulaire And part triangular: O work divine!

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

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