Manly P. Hall: Growing by Degrees: Modern Freemasonry

A recent issue of Life Magazine (Oct. 8, 1956) gave a considerable and very interesting outline of the modern activities and structure of Freemasonry. To a great degree, this article pointed up the practical phases of this society and its operation in the modern world.

There are some things, however, it seems to me, should be added, and in so doing, we should clarify one point in connection with the subject. Namely, that Freemasonry, not being a dogmatic organization, does not attempt to formulate a credo, or to present any a firm system of obligations or rules relating to the beliefs or general activities of the individual.

Masonic philosophy is grounded in its symbols, a vast assembly of ancient beliefs, doctrines, ideas, patterns, design, emblems, and figures. These are offered for consideration, and the individual is invited to examine them in terms of himself. In terms of such content as he may find useful in his own life and thinking.

Because of this attitude, it would not be fair or reasonable for any person to formationary as a philosophy in an official capacity but merely to present personal experience in connection with reflection upon these symbols, emblems, and basic concepts. And the story we want to face certain phases of these concepts, uh, in the terms of our own primary interests, interests in philosophy, comparative religion, a related field.

It is interesting and remarkable that in our modern world with so many divided interests and activities, and for the most part, so little consideration for the great monuments of traditional wisdom, that a society such as masonry should stand and should continually remind individuals, strange and almost unknown to them, and bring out and perpetuate parts, at least fragments, of the great religious Mysteries and philosophical schools of the past. They stand for upon a certain broad foundation, entirely non-sectarian and non-denominational, entirely in essence and principle non-racial, nationally. Resents certain ideas, and these ideas are most of them derived originally from older sources, so that actually, it is the modern manifestation of a very long and old tradition.

As probably most of you realize, the symbolism of masonry is derived principally or basically from the symbolism of architecture. It is a descent of ideas paralleling, is not exactly coinciding with, the dionysian artifices of Greece, the Roman collegia, and the cathedral builders of Europe. Thus, the entire concept relates to buildings, to the recognition of creativity, the dignity of labor, and the inalienable right of the individual who makes a positive contribution to the social life, the cultural existence of the world in which he lives.

Under the terms of architecture, therefore, are unfolded the rules and laws governing the building of human society, which was and always has been the principal concern of the great dionysian culture. Under the story of the house, the temple, the palace, the monument, the tomb, was always concealed a series of social patterns. One of these patterns being the inevitable division of human activity, and the second, the inevitable dedication of human activity.

Masonry, as a group today, does not demand any religious affiliation, nor does it require the individual to be Orthodox or unorthodox. It requires religiously only one basic principle, namely, that by the candidate must, on the solemn obligations, affirm that he believes in the existence of a supreme, fall principle or being signifying absolute good at the root of life. A materialist, therefore, is not eligible. We must believe in the sovereignty of something superior and eternal. We must recognize deity as universal mind, universal spirit, universal consciousness, or universal being. And they must accept as part of its natural obligation, its moral duty to that being, through that supreme power, and must recognize that his earthly labors constitute his perpetual adoration of this mystery. Therefore, he labors not for himself, but in the name of a supreme architect, a great builder, whose body is the universe, whose noblest masterpiece is the human consciousness, his greatest labor is the perfection of human society.

On this very broad religious putting, therefore, it is not surprising that many of the outstanding interpreters, exponents, writers on the subject of masonry have been clergymen. They have found nothing whatever in masonry to interfere with the basic concept of the reality of God or the dignity of religion. And in various parts of the world, Masonic obligations are taken upon many sacred books, including the Quran and other writings of peoples who acknowledge the existence of one's supreme being.

Acknowledgment of this existence, to the builders from the very earliest time, set them in their way of life. All labor was a form of prayer. And we can go back to the ancient Essene formula that probably was involved in the first beginnings of Christianity. The Essene sect in Syria declared that the sweat of honest toil was the true water of baptism, and that the individual who did not labor to build a better world was lacking in the essential principles of religion. Religion is not merely the salvation of self; it is the preservation and extension of good throughout the world and throughout the entire sphere of human activity. The truly religious person was a builder, contributing something, leaving this world in some way better than he found it.

And while it is not necessarily, uh, that the builder must be a carpenter or a bricklayer or a stonemason, still, on some level, scientific, artistic, cultural, religious, philosophical, mystical, on some level of his activity, the true worshiper is a builder, a creator, one who is releasing through himself the tremendous dynamic of universal potential.

Now, in the early days of the operative crafts, at a time when organizations such as masonry were concerned principally with failures, with occupations themselves, with the actual physical performance, who is of the builder, the contractor, carpenter, the stone mason. During these days, the members gathered together in a great system known as the guilds. Conceptually, Meister singers of Nuremberg sings the glory of the guilds, and these guilds more or less preceded and anticipated the trade union and later the labor union organizations of the world.

The difficulty with nearly every organization, however, that has grown out of the guild has been that such organizations have perpetuated only a part of the great guild tradition. Today, we think largely of labor organizations as protecting the right of the laborer to reasonable compensation for his endeavors. The older groups, the guilds, the temple, the guilds were the moral structure which dominated and controlled and directed the activities of the individual. To in giving allegiance to the guild, uh, the member did not break his allegiance with his country, with his family, with his neighbor, with society in general, nor did he compromise his allegiance to God. In the service of the guild, he gave a new meaning to all of these things, applying them directly to the principles by which he sustained himself on an economic level.

Therefore, the guild meeting, whether it was a carpenter's guild or a plumber's guild or a tailor's guild or a watchmaker's guild, the guild meeting opened with a simple but solemn sacrament of dedication. Individually made shoes was critically convinced and was taught to accept without question that this useful labor was a form of worship. That the individual who filled houses, built not only for the profit of the selling of the house or for the wages which he earned, but he filled with the solemn hope in his heart that he was creating a home in which human life would be better, in which families would be strong, and in which children would grow up in a happy atmosphere to honor their parents and worship their gods. He felt that he was laboring for a principle beyond profit, and it was this overtone, this principle beyond the problem, it was actually the glory of the guilds. It was this principle which maintained the high integrity of these ancient labor organizations and prevented them from falling into the difficulties which fill our newspapers today in connection with organized labor.

It would have been utterly impossible in those days for a leader of a guild who had absconded with the funds of the group. It would have been other incredible that these individuals, you would have used any unfair, unreasonable method for attaining their ends. They did not need you. They lived in a social order in which the guilds had certain inevitable prerogatives. It had rights and privileges which could not be assailed. These rights were the rights of directing the activities of the group itself, maintaining its place in society, and instructing and educating each member of the guild so that wherever he went and under whatever position or condition he found himself, he was a truly noble representative of the collective group from which he came.

It was therefore incredible that a member of a guild in good standing should adulterate products, perform shoddy labor, keeping his way of doing things or improve into his project anything inferior, unworthy, or unreasonable. It was a disgrace to himself and a disgrace to his guild, for each action that he performed either elevated or lowered the collective respectability of his group. Therefore, he was not likely in any way to damage his own reputation or to break faith with those who employed him or use any unfair means for accomplishing any desired end. His respectability, his career, it was his whole, his conscience, his free action.

This concept carried with it a number of overtones which have no longer survived to us in practical activities. World conditions have changed, arrangements of mankind have altered, and by degrees, no barriers or walls of the guilds have been broken down. But most of all, in our modern way of life, the average person has forgotten, ignored, or chosen to disregard the great ethical overtones of labor. He is no longer the feeling that by what he does, he is forever honoring the great power which is the source of all things.

So, in the guild system, uh, we have one of the most valuable and useful, uh, common instruments of education, and that instrument is the dual theory of progress through apprenticeship. In ancient times, when all learning was communicated on the level of action, it was very, very little theoretical knowledge as we know it today. Those who knew thought, and no man thought what he did not know. The individual also did not teach on the basis of theory; he taught by example. He taught by doing the thing well, and all instruction was based upon the actual performance of the labor itself.

Those who members sought to join the various guild groups, they were placed under apprenticeship systems. This apprenticeship policy, to succeed and to be valuable, had to be centered around the power of the masters of the guild to teach. They had to have outstanding actual attainment. The individual did not go to school and study carpentry from a teacher who had never used a plane or driven a nail. He did not learn from books; he did not learn in mass, nor did he learn and pass on paper the examinations of his trade. He performed the actions, and his apprenticeship was considered to be complete when it was shown and demonstrated by his own ability that he had mastered the principles, was able to apply them easily and naturally and skillfully, and at the same time that his moral character had so developed and his recognition of the dignity of his labor had so deepened that it was almost inconceivable that he would in any way use shoddy or easy methods that might be detrimental to the final integrity of the product.

Thus, the apprenticeship came into existence as a system. It is the system that goes back to the dawn of time. It even goes into the animal kingdom, where the young animal grows by a kind of an apprenticeship. It will go, it grows by doing what the older animals do, watching them, observing them, taking upon itself their ways and their habits. Thus, by observation and by doing, the individual gains a secure skill.

God is obvious that today the apprenticeship system is not involved in most instances. There are some cases where it is, but again, it has been weakened because today the apprentice is passing through a miserable period of adjustment in which he is striving primarily to earn the wages of a master, the only concern being how soon he can get paid. This was not the ancient way. For a low-level system, frequently the master did not make great wages because the master might be so dedicated to his work that he would spend far more time and energy than he was compensated for in the process of producing a better piece of work. The great compensation of the master in the trade or the union was that other men should say that his work was outstanding. He was not measured by his pay, but by a reputation built upon the complete adequacy of his knowledge and the high standard of his product.

Was in the apprenticeship system, we had the beginning of this idea of growing by degrees. The individuals passed from one state of learning to another, beginning with the simplest lesson which he had to master, and then, as he had achieved adjustment and achieved skill, the little ceremony of his advancement into another level in which still further skill was induced or further knowledge was communicated. It was the right and privilege of the guild masters to bestow their choicest secrets and their greatest attainment in skill and knowledge and experience to those apprentices who gradually merited this special consideration.

Here again, we have a word introduced that is very important, and that is the merit system, the system in which the individual has the words that no arbitrary consideration could be substituted for it, and man could not enter a guild because he had the price. Of consideration could be substituted for it, and man could not enter a guild because he had the price. He could not enter into the gift and of other lines of activity had to begin his apprenticeship and perhaps go for years in obedience to a local carpenter in order to earn their right to be seated in the council of the guild. There was practically no possibility of the individual finding his way in for the reason that there is no way of buying experience, nor is there any way of bestowing that internal understanding. It must come from knowing and doing and serving.

So, the apprenticeship system became the foundation of the great economic and industrial pattern of the ancient and medieval worlds. It was the apprenticeship system which produced the cathedral builders, these tremendous groups of artisans who labored together competitively, without you, with almost no problem such as we recognize today, each receiving the wages that he was entitled to, and each one recognizing that his greater power lay in the glory of his labor.

The gradual loss of this psychology has brought with it a great deal of human difficulties. For one reason, one thing, it has set so many people at animosity with their work. Work is a drudgery; it is simply a means of making a living; it is a painful necessity. And as the overflow of the dignity of the thing that is done, pride in natural and simple but true achievement, as this type of reaction, uh, diminished, we found more and more dissatisfaction among people who had to form various groups or alliances in the perpetuation of their trade or even of their individual endeavors.

So, we have this beginning in the system of will training. Now, guilds also suit for something in the ancient world, particularly in the medieval world, which we don't appreciate so well today, and that was the problem of education. Modern Freemasonry is particularly concerned with education. It regards education as absolutely necessary to the maintenance of a democratic and free way of life. Legislation in the old days was a haphazard problem; it was divisible into only one or two major brackets and was largely dominated by theory. Education also had extraordinary boundaries which limited the applicability of the average person taking advantage of it.

In the innumerable small villages and towns that scattered through Europe during the medieval or Middle Ages, the little medieval world or Middle Ages, there were very few schools. What there were were nearly always associated with the cloisters. Only a small percentage of the people could read or write. The possibility of higher education and educational advantage as we know it today, these things did not exist. Therefore, the guild had to take over the problem of education. And we have to remember that we are told of Christopher Columbus receiving his education from a guild.

In general, the guilds of God were not, uh, institutions of higher learning for the most part, but the guilds did emphasize the fact that there were two kinds of education: the schooling which was difficult to secure and which had large and largely to do with the development of special mental attitudes or mental ability. There was also a general education, an education which might make a man educated even though he could not read or write, because it gave to him a foundation in principles, in values. It could take the simplest person, perhaps illiterate, who would never darken the door of the schoolroom, and help that individual to recognize the sovereign dignities of his responsibilities to his God, to his family, to his country, to his neighbor, and to himself.

Therefore, that this individual, in whatever level he might be, perhaps he was a fishmonger, raptor, sailor going down to the sea in ships, but whatever he happened to be, he was a better human being. And being a better human being, he was a noble ornament in the world in which he lived. This creation, therefore, of ways of becoming better, of gaining an essential kind of knowledge, not in knowledge that necessarily was a substitute for skill in mathematics or art or things of this nature, but a knowledge with which other education could work cooperatively and constructively, but a kind of knowledge without doing all other kinds of education must fail.

So, there was a basic principle we should and must be disseminated throughout the basic levels of human society, namely, that man is never truly educated until he is truly good. That the candidate and must be a perpetual dissemination of principles, that this man must be honest, sincere, honorable in his dealings, conscientious, willing to accept his responsibilities, unwilling to misrepresent or fabricate, respecting the rights, properties, lives of these associates, and dedicated in every way possible to set actions as would advance the common good on the level on which he functions.

Thus, a kind of basic education which might extend far beyond the boundaries of the guild came to be part of the overtone of guild apprenticeship. Most of the guild masters were devout men. They lived simple, open, stone firm lives. They were very much like the patriarchs of old. They had their dignities and their honors which could not be easily compromised, and they had a rough, ready paternalism for those who were to follow after them.

It was the unwritten but inevitable duty of the guild master that his secrets must not die with him. In the course of years, he must find those who would carry on, and when he was convinced that he had found the successor, then he bestowed upon him all of the goods of his knowledge, all of the skills and aptitudes which he had gained. This was his duty because it was not only the leader of the guild, but he was the father of the new guildsmen who were to come on, who must carry on and keep the work of the world going. As mastery later stone, then he laid it through and firmed so that those who came after could place another stone upon it with absolute occurrence. He must leave this power, not only the good foundation, but the skill, the place, another stone, and there she did by giving his secret and communicating his knowledge to those who be regarded as worthy. Though because within the guild, his sons, the future bearers of his glory, and he must pass on to them his good reputation, his knowledge, his ability, and his blessings.

It was a very simple but very firm structure, and it resulted in the survival, in many ways, of the strength of this tremendous power which we call the middle class of humanity. Beneath the surface, the upper crust, which is ever changing and being blown and talked about by political, military, economic situations, this rise of the suddenly, this fall of the sudden rich, all these levels above, on the surface of which men live, must be supported by this vast body of people who must be, which must be right, it must be essentially true. And while it may lack the brilliance and glitter of the intellectual, it is the tremendous honesty, the tremendous sincerity, the instinctive contents of the great body of mankind that must preserve the world. And it was to see if this conscience, clean, the deepest foundation, through that the ancient guilds labored so carefully and so wisely.

Now, very often in the descent of guild knowledge from master to master, secrets were also communicated that transcended the general knowledge of the time. The laws of the guilds were derived from laws of nature; they were also derived from principles of mathematics, astronomy, music, and all the tremendous mathematical formulas that had been part of ancient learning. The guild master might not be able to define all of these elements, but he used them every day, just as the great artist instinctively uses proportion and uses dynamics in the arrangement of his compositions. He's masters, because they were practiced, not only perpetuated all laws but continually rediscovered them.

There is an ancient document relating to this that is rather interesting. They knew that the Carpenters' Guild in one European city, in the building of one of the townhouses or one of the guild halls, issued a statement of the principles of universal knowledge that they had rediscovered in the building of this structure. These principles refer to almost every branch of human experience, or in the setting of the timbers, in the bracing of the house, the problems of stress and strain, and in all these intricate matters, these guildsmen rediscovered eternal principles, laws that had always been, and regarded themselves as peculiarly fortunate and privileged because they had actually been able to see the universe unfold as the result of their own labor. They were cupping abstract principles, discovering why they were true, and in this way, as they expressed it, not only becoming truly and deeply astonishing, whatever more reverent and worshipful, is merciful in their understanding of the divine principle that was at the root of all these, all these archetypal truths.

Thus, the combination of labor with thoughtfulness, the recognition that we learn by doing, not only do we learn what is necessary for the doing, but we also learn many other things, extending out into other phases of our living. So that the laws governing the guild were also good laws in the society, in the home, in the family. They were the laws of order, of reasonable and proper growth, of the unfoldment of young things into their maturity, of the global responsibilities of advancing years, and also rest and refreshment for the ages.

And it was among the guilds, for example, that there arose the two great problems which were mentioned and stressed as early as a thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era, and these two problems were the care for the young and the protection of the ages. It became the duty of the guild to make certain that those who labored in it and who gave their lives in the useful work of building a better world should receive in turn certain protection in time of need. And therefore, in the old communities that were governed by the given laws, there was no problem of the neglected widow, no problem of the orphaned child, no problem of the forgotten agent.

Is the part of a great complete concept, the very obligations of the guild found the individual to the protection and prayer of those who were in need, and he became the protector of the innocent. But we, and the salon, thus is giving labor caused him to be a less glamorous but no less useful knight. Parents, as in the days of chivalry, the knights went out in shining armor to protect the wheat and the knight, and the order of knighthood, incidentally, was a guild. Though the simpler guilds of the clovers and the farmers and all these other groups had their orders of chivalry, their natural obligations by which they performed those extra labors, those other things not immediately demanded of man, which he could evade if he wished to be smugly self-tended, but there could be no self-centeredness in this because the world finally was the great guild, and all of those who labored in it were working for the same great end and were entitled to the same cooperation and health.

There could be no happiness for any man, it goes around him were not able to have the necessities and securities of life. The dionysian artifices with their great concept of universal buildings bestowed upon Athens, the great city of Greece, the glory for which it is greatly and eternally remembered. Athens was the ancient citadel of democracy, and while it passed through numerous vicissitudes, it was in this tremendous culture of the world guild, social came into existence. Democracy arose from guild consciousness; it arose from the equality of the labors of men. It was based upon the fact that individuals have different abilities, of different levels of intelligence, might perform different labors, but all these labors, is sincerely and honorably done, were equally necessary for the security of the whole world.

Therefore, among those who labor, the only prerequisite was the honor of the worship, and in the Athens, we see the concept of the guild, of the qualities of opportunities, the right of each individual to the indivisible pursuit of life, happiness, improvement, and security. These things were given principles of the ancient dionysian Mysteries, and gradually they came into their first great political flowering in Greece. Here, for the first time, the guild laws were applied to a great city, and while these laws held, and while the city was able to maintain the integrity of these concepts, it produced this golden age of learning, a golden age which is perhaps never been equal in the cultural story of mankind.

But Athens was the city of the democracy of men, recognizing a common brotherhood, a common responsibility, and a universal God, so that truly deity was the parent of all creatures, and all men were brothers. This realization carried through into the glory of the leading evil guilds, and while, of course, human nature was such that none of these things can be perfected by imperfect creatures, the old dependency and the quality and the tone of the guild was paternal and fraternal. It sought to protect and advance, and it also preserved the right of its members, whose self-expression to the various duties and needs which ensured they are honest and sincere abilities and privileges.

All these things then flow down to fall apart of the great transitional motion that affected the world after the Renaissance. In the Renaissance and the Reformation, we find the emerging of your consciousness into society in general. By that time, nearly all of Europe was organized into guilds. These guilds had values, these guilds had principles, policies, concepts which were disseminated throughout the Messiah, throughout society, but beneath the level of the immediate and the obvious, millions of persons, not even perhaps in common communication, were therefore of a common mind, and that common mind had to do with the rights of the individual to grow, the right of the individuals of things, you have a life of his own, and to share his opinions and convictions with other men, the right of the individual to have a vote on a place in the laws and in the policies which governed the group to which he belonged.

The masters of the guild have the right, uh, to a certain legislative authority, and those who earned mastery through their growth and labors were entitled to have something to say about the management of the organizations to which they belonged. Thus, while the great courts of Europe were locked in their own autocratic ways, the people were gradually developing a strong social fabric, a fabric which ultimately broke through its limitations and flowed into the objective life of the individual and the collective. Before we find the great rise of humanism, we find the rise of the democratic principle, and the emergence of man from mental restrictions into new capacities and new abilities for thoughtfulness and for progress.

Now, it is quite obvious that under the stress and strain of such conflicts, there would be strong differences of opinions. It is quite certain that the so-called authoritarian would object to the rising tide of the guilds and the guild psychology. A lot of crap with fear democracy, uh, the dictator would fear universal education. Individuals whose futures and whose success depended upon the enslavement of mind would resent the freeing of those minds. It was obvious that when man became a self-motivating being, capable from within himself, affirming his own destiny intelligently, wisely, and constructively, that they would mean a tremendous change in the position of society. It would move the entire fabric under a merit system.

Now, very often, society at that time was governed without any regard for marriage. Uh, the leader who by wealth or by military power alone, or by despotism, or by birth, had attained a position of authority, might not be actually capable of administering it wisely or unselfishly. The history of European politics for a thousand years was largely a history of tyranny, with a huge benevolent exception. Thus, arbitrary leadership depending upon wealth and the army would see us, or would be gravely anxious if there was the possibility of the human mind suddenly escaping from bondage, escaping from the long-established rules which have been psychologically imposed upon it.

The struggle for liberty in the last 500 years of human history has therefore been the struggle of the human being to attain those things which were necessary and proper to him. Very often, this struggle has been unreasonable; they often it has gone off the deep end, as in the story of the French Revolution. Frequently, it has been exploited and abused, and one level of autocracy has been swept away only that another might be imposed upon the people. So-called democratic leaders, under temptation, have come themselves to the autocrats, and the story goes on.

Yet, in spite of all of the elements of the story, all of the mistakes that have been made, all of the cataclysmic crises that have come, perhaps almost unnecessarily into existence, in spite of all of this, of the things, the story of human growth has gone on. That story of human growth is now firmly grounded in the conviction that the free man must be intelligent, and that only the intelligent man can be free. Therefore, that freedom, instead of a great opportunity, is a profound responsibility. That the individual who really desires to be a self-governing creature must be peculiarly and specially educated for that purpose. He must pass through his apprenticeship in the concept of personal freedom. We must earn his right to have the wages of the master, and these wages are the privileges and opportunities that freedom bestows.

But in order to have these things, he must be fit to receive them, and in order to be fit to be a free man in a free world, he must attain that condition of internal conscience in which is cause him to perform an action contrary to the good of others. There can be no freedom while an individual is capable of perverting his own rights. As long as he is holy thinking of freedom as his right to be salted, there can be no true freedom, and man will stand constantly in the danger of having his free institutions overwhelmed, not overwhelmed primarily by his enemies, but overwhelmed by the enemy in himself, his own selfishness. If you live only for what he can get, he endangers the light of man to be free because he proves by so doing that freedom is not a benefit but a liability, and freedom must always be a liability until the free man has chosen his own code of life and I've made this call adequate to the powers and privileges which he enjoys.

So, in the more recent time of things, the great problem of building a free world has taken the place of the cathedral building and the monument buildings of the Middle Ages. Today, we are not so primarily concerned with physical architecture; we are concerned with moral architecture. We are concerned with the creating of the workmen who must build the invisible but real temple which must house such great projects as the United Nations. The United Nations cannot succeed because of a house of glass and steel in New York City; it can only succeed because the builders of human progress unite to sustain and create the invisible house of brotherhood among men.

Until this house of universal good, the archetype of world peace, is established and is then served by the faithful guild masters, the faithful builders on every level, some of you of which must you see one, others must bring the water, some will supply the materials, others will put them in place, but the whole of mankind must be organized into one great king if world peace is to build this house among men. To create this tremendous deed, there has to be a kind of education that is a little different from the schooling that we know, because the schooling that we know has not produced this food. The schooling that we know has not prevented antagonisms and animosities among people. School that we know has not to do intelligent practical idealists; it has not given the individual the kind of education which causes him to dedicate his abilities to his dreams. It has not caused him to put principles first in all things, and until he does so, he lives precariously and dies tragically.

So, the great problem of guild life moved from the physical, divisible, and the obvious with its overtone to a more positive footage. Man's life gifted from his physical existence in small villages to his mental existence in a large world. He now realizes as never before that his society as he knows it is his own collective mind. It can be no better than his own heart and mind, for what we turn the way of life as we know it originates in our minds and emotions, and until these are refined, disciplined, and civilized, we cannot have a civil state of relationship between human beings.

This is all defined, uh, civilization as that state in which men live together cooperatively and at ease. By this definition, we've had very little civilization up to the present time. We have had merely scientific barbarism. We've had a state in which the individual has used his knowledge to advance himself at the expense of others. The guildsman would say that such an effort, such a program, is really attempting to advance oneself at the expense of God, because in service of God is the service of others. Who neglect others is to neglect God. To work against others is to work against good, and where this situation is allowed to prevail, the blessings of freedom, democracy, liberty, and these cherished terms which we go devoutly speak but so seldom sustain in actions, these terms cannot have their right and proper meaning.

So, in the 17th century, we find a great change taking place in the guild. This does not mean that the old operative guilds ceased to exist. It does mean, however, that gradually, as the guilds forming themselves into what we call a Masonic fraternity, began to shift their patterns from the mere physical traits and crafts to the rise of what might be termed speculative maintenance. By this, we lean, and the term is used sometimes differently within Masonic work, by speculative masonry, we mean masonry seated now in the mental life of the individual. Some say that Elijah, the famous English and Aquarian, the founder of the Ashburtonian College at Oxford, was the first gentleman Mason.

Now, my gentleman Mason, we do not mean the first Mason who was a gentleman; we mean rather the first Mason to be accepted who had no building trade. He was not a stonecutter; he was none of these things, but he was permitted to join with others who were in various trades. The answer was, of course, that the guilds were recognizing a new trade; they were recognizing a new, uh, profession or a new craft, and that was the trade of knowledge in the sense of abstract knowledge. Ashmore was a great scholar, and so he was likewise a creative biography. He was laboring to help to spread knowledge, and this was just as much a class of taking guilds.

So, in accepting National into their own group, these craftsmen honored scholarship as a craft, and that goal was properly pleased because he suddenly was taught or was given to understand that knowledge was useful; it was no longer anonymous; it was not something that the individual learned in order that he could argue with his friends. Knowledge was now to make its contribution to the great collective progress of things. The painter, the musician, the sculptor, the poet, the astronomer, the physicist, these men were the new guilds. They were the ones to whom must be passed on the great dionysian dream, the dream that everything that men do must be done for the good of men. I have Lord Bacon expressing it in the New Atlantis, that all men shall learn all that is necessary and possible, and that all that he's learned shall be applied to the total good of man.

So, the gift walls opened, and the carpenter gave praise to the chemist, uh, the angular gave a place perhaps to the theologians, but all of these, these groups were similarly dedicated, dedicated that knowledge should not be for itself alone, but for the good that it could do. So, the new guilds, by degrees, within 50 or 75 years, most of the guild unions of England, particularly, he came speculative groups. There were still members of the operative guild, but these operative guilds then were finding their release in a way. Now, and the guild work was passed on to these intellectual groups, and from such groups indirectly regained the realization that there Isaac Newton, for example, was the president of one of these guild groups for a long time, and Sir Christopher Wren, the great architect who built St. Paul's Cathedral, was a master of his views, his guild.

Now, civil researchers, a game of men seeking to broaden the limits of understanding, as in the case of the Royal Society of England, which after it had been brought into existence in the advancement of knowledge, immediately communicated with foreign nations, even sending to India and China and other distant places for scientific information. The progress of growth that is, and the one thing that differs between the guilds of knowledge and the learning societies of today, for the day, we have practically every perfection, every craft, every art and science organized in some way, mostly for the purposes of protection only. We have risen things like the American Medical Association, and we have the legal societies, we have the psychological societies, we have within these groups smaller branches, we have philosophical societies, most of them established to maintain certain rules and ways of order.

But behind this, we will still rest this foundation of the guild concept, and this guild concept has gradually come to be neglected in practically all learned societies. These societies have gradually lost sight, in various ways, of the essential reason for their own existence. They exist not to protect their own members alone, but to advance the total good of mankind. The purpose of the medical fraternity is not primarily to protect the doctor alone, nor is it primarily to protect the patient alone. The final end is the dedication of the healing off to the total service of man, on the total glory of God, and until this happens, something's missing. And in the pattern as it is today, the thing that is usually missing is God.

Today, the sacredness of skill has been generally disregarded. That it is admirable, we admit that it is wonderful, we acknowledge and we give great products to the person possessing it, but we have forgotten that the tremendous burden of the skill lies in the acceptance of the responsibility which it brings into existence. For the possession of an ability challenges the individual to the dedication of that ability upon the altar of living in eternal truth. So, gradually learned societies became more and more immersed in their own human problems. Scientific organizations became so interested in the advancement of knowledge that they forgot to use it. Finally, when they did get around to using it, they found it into an economic situation so tight that in many instances, those who need most can have least.

By degrees, that the vital values of the great over system were ignored, forgotten, or at least neglected, and through this came the gradual rise of societies and organizations, either Masonic or based upon its principles, cutting through practically every division of human society, bringing today into integration members of all professions, all crafts, and praise from the highest to the lowest, but uniting them in a strange way, almost like some United Nations program, uniting them not on the level of their knowledge alone, but on the level of their integrity as human beings. In matter of the greatest and most vital significance today, out of this entire concept also has come the realization that there is a common kind of need. There is just as much experience by the atomic physicist as it is experienced by the carpenter, the plumber, or the bricklayer. His common need is the need for peace, the need for security, the need for internal integration. The individual not only must advance various lines of activity, but he must live with himself. He must find in his own nature peace of mind and peace of gold. And to do this, he must have dedications beyond material achievements.

No individual can do his best or be his best while he works for himself, and when he works only for a dollar, he is working for even less than himself. The only reason why we can find great joy in our labor is when we are convinced within ourselves that the things we are doing are important, and to be truly important, they must make a valid contribution to the total good of our world, not only now, but to establish foundations for a future good in future times. Thus, the validity of our labor closely associated with the integrity of our motives.

By this system, then, the development of a concept, an over-recognition that all of the works of men are suspended from the plan of God, that all of the things that we are doing have some relationship to the advancement of total nature, that what we call growth is merely divinity unfolding through us, and that the life within us is a sacred thing that cannot be profaned without penalty. The individual, therefore, who is not true to his own abilities, true to the light moving through him, true to the convictions which he most secretly holds to be true, this individual is creating conflict, conflict which will ultimately destroy himself and deprive the world of much of the good that he could have bestowed upon his fellow men.

To meet these problems, therefore, many modern persons have begun to re-evaluate the symbolism of ancient philosophies and religions, seeking for the basic roots of idealism, seeking for those essential keys by which mankind can be advanced to a state of security. Now, it is perfectly obvious that in this day and under these conditions, that there will be strong divergences of opinions, even on these matters. It is true, for the most part, that the individual is more inclined to compromise, compromises ideals for profit than he is to compromise his profit for ideals. Therefore, it is also obvious that wherever large groups of persons gather together under any broad pattern, all will not be of equal integrity, but there will be, and usually is, some good to be found or to be gained wherever there is a voluntary association of human beings for the purpose of attaining good.

And while this sincerity is at least reasonable, or at least partly active, some essential advancement will be achieved. Though there is, as I have said, no formal statement in masonry relating to the particular action of any individual relating to his moral or spiritual life, but he is brought into content and to contact with symbols, with concepts which in many cases undoubtedly unfold or constitute his basic religious convictions. And there are many men in this country, masonry is a powerful moral, ethical force, supplying them with certain elements of character building which they would not likely find emphasized in the world around them. These characteristics are intended to supplement what might be termed the normal educational advantages of the person.

Masonry does not believe in restraining or restricting education; it believes in exposing the individual to all possible useful knowledge, but it also reminds us that we can educate a maniac, that we can bestow knowledge upon a person totally incapable of using it wisely, and therefore that there must be and should be at all times a present program, an open invitation to wise usage. And through the dignity and importance of so large an organization as Freemasonry, where they clearly defined level of attitude, many, many men, millions of men in this country, have found a practical proof that principles which they may have regarded as being dead are still alive, and that these principles are inviting them to join with us of their kind, to join with an illustrious line that goes back for centuries of persons who have taken their basic Masonic obligations, really recognizing that these obligations in no way interfere with their duty to God, their country, their family, their. Is in these obligations nothing of treason, nothing of atheism, nothing of addiction to any particular creed, no restraint of the individual, do the activity of his own conscience. The actual obligation being to be himself, to be true to himself, and to be true to those great principles which are locked within him and which are the basis of world idealism. To be true to true and to realize that the only way that he can be true to truth is to become first aware of its existence, next respective to it, willing to acknowledge it, willing to humble himself in the presence of it, next to take.

The necessary disciplines and to be tried and to be tested as do his integrities. And finally, having attained to a certain degree of adjustment, having earned the wages of a master, that it is then his responsibility to call together his apprentices and to communicate to them and exemplify for them by his own conduct those basic social principles upon which the survival of our world must depend.

There is in this concept then tremendous emphasis upon the gradual unfoldment of principles. The individual is not born fully matured, nor does he by mere physical activity alone attain maturity. He is born once into this world at the time of his Nativity, but he must be born a second time. He must be born into his mental, moral, spiritual maturity. He does this not by affiliation with a Creed, but by re-establishment of contact with the Eternal within himself.

Now, this contact is not easily to be established. But if the individual is quiet, if he relaxes the external and artificial pressures of his living, he will make the astonishing discovery in most cases that he is actually a better person than he knew. He will realize that within himself, perhaps slumbering, are dreams, our hopes. That also within himself is a deep-rooted sense of fair play. And that actually each individual has available, if he will call upon him, efficient knowledge, sufficient understanding, and sufficient intuitive perception to know what is right for him.

If he will cling to that right, sacrificing to it all other things, the power of that right will grow within himself. And he will, by degrees, ascend this particular and special ladder of mysteries and will gain ever greater consolation and ever greater usefulness through dedication. To do this is no more that is the natural right of man. And in these activities, masonry and other fraternal orders are serving very useful purposes in society because they are maintaining very strongly the dignity of humanity in a time where the average person is exceedingly thoughtless about these values.

Though there are many complaints in and outside of masonic lodges concerning the failure of many of the deeper issues of masonry to be clearly vitalized, even among members, this however is one of those situations in which we cannot escape from human limitation. On the other hand, we cannot do expose individuals to opportunity for growth. No one can grow for another. No one can require and demand our voluntary allegiance. No allegiance other than that which is voluntary is valid.

If we can try or do try to force virtue, wisdom, and maturity upon other people, we place them in a false position. We damage them more than we help them. For an individual who tries to live above himself is in constant misery. If, however, the individual can be inspired to a search among the ancient landmarks, landmarks which were placed there by the noblest of all human beings, landmarks which are traced to the great teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Manu, Zoroaster, Moses, Christ. These great monuments, if they are heeded, if they are brought more and more to the attention of mankind, gain respect not only because of their integrity but because down through the ages the best of models have honored them and the best of mortals have not been ashamed to follow them.

In a sophisticated era, therefore, the realization, the true dignity through attainment, a true superiority, if we wish to call it that, lies rather in following in the footsteps of the Immortals, choosing our allegiance from that which is truly great rather than following in the footsteps of passing fads and fancies which will leave nothing important, no solid foundation upon which to build a future good. Thus, it may happen that if the individual discovers that there are several million men in this country who have assumed obligations of thoughtfulness, have actually restated in their own way that they are suspending their lives from principles rather than from passing policies, the other, other young people rising up, growing up, find that good things also have their passion, that the world is not composed totally of unbelievers, that the world is not composed totally of persons without at least a recognition of values.

This encourages other persons who realize that in their, in their hopes and in their dreams and in their ideals, they are not alone. And to many persons who have believed that perhaps a handful of citizens alone carried their thoughts, the study of masonry has come as an amazing revelation. They realize that the great institutions which we long consider dead are not dead. Perhaps they are sleeping, but they are not dead. They are being carefully watched and lovingly guarded, not always with full insight, but certainly with the deepest respect, veneration, and good intentions.

And from these things, the concept of a masonic philosophy gradually integrates. Integrates not within the statement of the craft itself, not by official pronouncement of the fraternity, but in the life of the member or the individual. This philosophy of growth, of essential growth, that man must mature step by step by the voluntary acceptance of the challenge of knowledge, that he must grow and develop not by hearing, not by seeing, but by doing. That he is a craftsman, that he is working with his equivalents of the mallet and the chisel and the square and the compass, that he is actually a builder, building the careers of his children, building the ethics of his business, building the strength of society, building the strength and security of his nation, building the peace of the sea, of the world.

And all this building, he might at first think to be for his own advantage, and to a measure, it will be to the advantage of man. He may not believe that he will ever live to see the perfection of the thing that he is doing, where he is working upon an everlasting house. But he knows that today, in the building of the temple, his real temple, the problem that confronts him, the temple fidelity, a voice of workmen or the sound of hammers, it is a building eternal in nature. It is a building of a better world.

Yet, even in this, it is not enough. Because this eternal building, this eternal remedy, repairing, redeeming of that false structure of fable, this new temple built of contrition, devotion, acceptance, and dedication, only succeeds if the Builder realizes that universal architecture, moral architecture, is religion. That religion is actually the individual building the house of God in his own heart, in his home, in his society, and in his world. Therefore, that the Builder is the eternal priest, that he is serving not for himself nor for physical things alone, for that the glory of the Lord might be made manifest. That he is building the house of God for the perfect society, the absolute commonwealth, the complete democracy, that which is the true abiding place of men, one people united in labor under the sun.

That this is the great work, this is the magnum opus, this is the great transmutation of alchemy by which all base inclinations and instincts in man are transformed into the purest substances. This is the discovery of the elixir of life, the remedy against the death of discord. This is the true search for the restoration of the Mysteries. This is the building of the house which is eternal. And regardless of what we do, we are builders, or else we are failing to build and to gain a new concept of religion, a working conquest, a concept in which we worship by advancing the will of the law in nature, that we worship by releasing God, which is the good in all things. That we worship also through the gentle and natural fraternity, for when we serve man, we serve God in man. And it is important that in the act of true serving, that we are expressing our own divinity and worshiping the God in another at the same time.

These principles, simple, direct, all the principles of the guilds, they do not interfere with any formal program of learning. They instill it, they enrich it. They require no individual to follow any creed or cult. They simply tell him to take the knowledge that he has, the skill that he has, the hopes that he has, and dedicate them totally upon the living altar of eternal good. In this way, he builds a better life. This way, he advances all ends which are useful and necessary for the common good.

In order to attain this purpose, naturally, it is important that all of the avenues, all of the means, and all of the methods by which human beings can be morally, intellectually, and emotionally educated must be kept open. In periods of tyranny, in World War II in Europe, the moment dictatorships came into existence was the lodges were closed because it was assumed that these lodges would be the place where these dictators would have their greatest fear, not because these lodges were actually and factually act in any reasonable manner, but that individuals gathering in them as free human beings, refusing to acknowledge man's bondage to man and accepting only man's service to God, that in these groups there would be levels of thinking which could never be controlled, could never be enslaved, and could never be brought down to the degradation which otherwise might have been possible.

And it is also in this spirit that the freedom of man becomes important to their growth. Even an idealistic culture imposed upon man would fail. No individual can succeed by being given security until he earns it. He does not value it until he has learned its methods. He cannot communicate it. And without having merited security, the individual cannot be stored as a heritage. About we can only share what we know, and we know only what we can do.

Thus, the simple process of action, the communication of value from the one who possesses it to the one who needs it. This is the great purpose of the initiation rituals of ancient times, not that the individual was to be given a secret, but that he was to be given a skill. The secret was he must earn it, must earn it by patience, by self-discipline, by consecration. And having given so great an amount of himself to the attainment of the skill, you should certainly not cease there, but you'd realize that if it was worth attaining, it must be valuable. And if it is valuable, it can be valuable finally in only one way. It is valuable because of the truth in it, and the truth that is in it is the God behind it.

And anything that is worth laboring for with diligence is worth using well. And to wait and to labor long and arduously for some skill, only to waste the products of it, only to take a great ability and live a useless or comparatively valueless life, only to work hard in a great profession to attain a fortune to be squandered, this is not good philosophy, nor is it good religion. The individual who is earning, who is laboring, should accept the responsibility not only for the skill and integrity of his labor but for the skill and integrity of his usage of that which accumulates from his labor. The power to do came from God. The rewards of the doing belong to God. A man returns the profits of his toil to God by using them for the benefit of his fellow men.

In substance, this seems to be the essential principle of masonic philosophy, the growing up of the individual to these responsibilities one by one. We speak in no way officially, but this is what it seems we should gather and imply from the great landmarks of this craft.