The Builders: A Story and Study of Masonry

[100] There is a beautiful lecture on the moral meaning of Geometry by Dr. Hutchinson, in The Spirit of Masonry—one of the oldest, as it is one of the noblest, books in our Masonic literature. Plutarch reports Plato as saying, "God is always geometrizing" (Diog. Laert., iv, 2). Elsewhere Plato remarks that "Geometry rightly treated is the knowledge of the Eternal" (Republic, 527b), and over the porch of his Academy at Athens he wrote the words, "Let no one who is ignorant of Geometry enter my doors." So Aristotle and all the ancient thinkers, whether in Egypt or India. Pythagoras, Proclus tells us, was concerned only with number and magnitude: number absolute, in arithmetic; number applied, in music; and so forth—whereof we read in the Old Charges (see "The Great Symbol," by Klein, A. Q. C., x, 82).

[101] Faerie Queene, bk. ii, canto ix, 22.

[102]Lost Language of Symbolism, by Bayley, also A New Light on the Renaissance, by the same author; Architecture of the Renaissance in England, by J.A. Gotch; and "Notes on Some Masonic Symbols," by W.H. Rylands, A. Q. C., viii, 84. Indeed, the literature is as prolific as the facts.

[103] J.V. Andreae, Ehreneich Hohenfelder von Aister Haimb. A verbatim translation of the second line quoted would read, "Unless in God he has his building."

[104] When, for example, Albert Pike, in his letter, "Touching Masonic Symbolism," speaks of the "poor, rude, unlettered, uncultivated working Stone-masons," who attended the Assemblies, he is obviously confounding Free-masons with the rough Stone-masons of the Guilds. Over against these words, read a brilliant article in the Contemporary Review, October, 1913, by L.M. Phillips, entitled, "The Two Ways of Building," showing how the Free-masons, instead of working under architects outside the order, chose the finer minds among them as leaders and created the different styles of architecture in Europe. "Such," he adds, "was the high limit of talent and intelligence which the creative spirit fostered among workmen.... The entire body being trained and educated in the same principles and ideas, the most backward and inefficient, as they worked at the vaults which their own skillful brethren had planned, might feel the glow of satisfaction arising from the conscious realization of their own aspirations. Thus the whole body of constructive knowledge maintained its unity.... Thus it was by free associations of workmen training their own leaders that the great Gothic edifices of the medieval ages were constructed.... A style so imaginative and so spiritual might almost be the dream of a poet or the vision of a saint. Really it is the creation of the sweat and labor of workingmen, and every iota of the boldness, dexterity and knowledge which it embodies was drawn out of the practical experience and experiments of manual labor."

This describes the Comacine Masters, but not the poor, rude, unlettered Stone-masons whom Pike had in mind.

[105] Letter "Touching Masonic Symbolism."

[106] Some Lodges, however, would never admit such members. As late as April 24, 1786, two brothers were proposed as members of Domatic Lodge, No. 177, London, and were rejected because they were not Operative Masons (History Lion and Lamb Lodge, 192, London, by Abbott).

[107] "On the Antiquity of Masonic Symbolism," A. Q. C., iii, 7.

[108]Historical Essay on Architecture, chap. xxi.

[109] Those who wish to pursue this Quixotic quest will find the literature abundant and very interesting. For example, such essays as that by F.W. Brockbank in Manchester Association for Research, vol. i, 1909-10; and another by A.F.A. Woodford, A. Q. C., i, 28. Better still is the Real History of the Rosicrucians, by Waite (chap. xv), and for a complete and final explosion of all such fancies we have the great chapter in Gould's History of Masonry (vol. ii, chap. xiii). It seems a pity that so much time and labor and learning had to be expended on theories so fragile, but it was necessary; and no man was better fitted for the study than Gould. Perhaps the present writer is unkind, or at least impatient; if so he humbly begs forgiveness; but after reading tomes of conjecture about the alleged Rosicrucian origin of Masonry, he is weary of the wide-eyed wonder of mystery-mongers about things that never were, and which would be of no value if they had been. (Read The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, or Christian Occult Science, by Max Heindel, and be instructed in matters whereof no mortal knoweth.)

[110]The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masons, by Edward Conder.

[111]Ibid., Introduction.

[112] Whether Sir Christopher Wren was ever Grand Master, as tradition affirms, is open to debate, and some even doubt his membership in the order (Gould, History of Masonry). Unfortunately, he has left no record, and the Parentalia, written by his son, helps us very little, containing nothing more than his theory that the order began with Gothic architecture. Ashmole, if we may trust his friend, Dr. Knipe, had planned to write a History of Masonry refuting the theory of Wren that Freemasonry took its rise from a Bull granted by the Pope, in the reign of Henry III, to some Italian architects, holding, and rightly so, that the Bull "was comfirmatory only, and did not by any means create our fraternity, or even establish it in this kingdom" (Life of Ashmole, by Campbell). This item makes still more absurd the idea that Ashmole himself created Masonry, whereas he was only a student of its antiquities. Wren was probably never an Operative Mason—though an architect—but he seems to have become an Accepted member of the fraternity in his last years, since his neglect of the order, due to his age, is given as a reason for the organization of the first Grand Lodge.