The Builders | Page 3

society and the state. Such is a bare outline of the purpose, method, plan, and spirit of the work, and if these be kept in mind it is believed that it will tell its story and confide its message.
When a man thinks of our mortal lot--its greatness and its pathos, how much has been wrought out in the past, and how binding is our obligation to preserve and enrich the inheritance of humanity--there comes over him a strange warming of the heart toward all his fellow workers; and especially toward the young, to whom we must soon entrust all that we hold sacred. All through these pages the wish has been to make the young Mason feel in what a great and benign tradition he stands, that he may the more earnestly strive to be a Mason not merely in form, but in faith, in spirit, and still more, in character; and so help to realize somewhat of the beauty we all have dreamed--lifting into the light the latent powers and unguessed possibilities of this the greatest order of men upon the earth. Everyone can do a little, and if each does his part faithfully the sum of our labors will be very great, and we shall leave the world fairer than we found it, richer in faith, gentler in justice, wiser in pity--for we pass this way but once, pilgrims seeking a country, even a City that hath foundations.
/$ J.F.N.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, September 7, 1914. $/

TABLE OF CONTENTS
/$ THE ANTE-ROOM vii

PART I--PROPHECY

CHAPTER I.
THE FOUNDATIONS 5
CHAPTER II.
THE WORKING TOOLS 19
CHAPTER III.
THE DRAMA OF FAITH 39
CHAPTER IV.
THE SECRET DOCTRINE 57
CHAPTER V.
THE COLLEGIA 73

PART II--HISTORY

CHAPTER I.
FREE-MASONS 97
CHAPTER II.
FELLOWCRAFTS 127
CHAPTER III.
ACCEPTED MASONS 153
CHAPTER IV.
GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 173
CHAPTER V.
UNIVERSAL MASONRY 201

PART III--INTERPRETATION

CHAPTER I.
WHAT IS MASONRY 239
CHAPTER II.
THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 259
CHAPTER III.
THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 283
BIBLIOGRAPHY 301
INDEX 306 $/


Part I--Prophecy

THE FOUNDATIONS

/# By Symbols is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay, if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to Sense of the mystic God-given force that is in him; a Gospel of Freedom, which he, the Messiah of Nature, preaches, as he can, by word and act? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real.
--THOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus #/
CHAPTER I
The Foundations
Two arts have altered the face of the earth and given shape to the life and thought of man, Agriculture and Architecture. Of the two, it would be hard to know which has been the more intimately interwoven with the inner life of humanity; for man is not only a planter and a builder, but a mystic and a thinker. For such a being, especially in primitive times, any work was something more than itself; it was a truth found out. In becoming useful it attained some form, enshrining at once a thought and a mystery. Our present study has to do with the second of these arts, which has been called the matrix of civilization.
When we inquire into origins and seek the initial force which carried art forward, we find two fundamental factors--physical necessity and spiritual aspiration. Of course, the first great impulse of all architecture was need, honest response to the demand for shelter; but this demand included a Home for the Soul, not less than a roof over the head. Even in this response to primary need there was something spiritual which carried it beyond provision for the body; as the men of Egypt, for instance, wanted an indestructible resting-place, and so built the pyramids. As Capart says, prehistoric art shows that this utilitarian purpose was in almost every case blended with a religious, or at least a magical, purpose.[1] The spiritual instinct, in seeking to recreate types and to set up more sympathetic relations with the universe, led to imitation, to ideas of proportion, to the passion for beauty, and to the effort after perfection.
Man has been always a builder, and nowhere has he shown himself more significantly than in the buildings he has erected. When we stand before them--whether it be a mud hut, the house of a cliff-dweller stuck like the nest of a swallow on the side of a ca?on, a Pyramid, a Parthenon, or a Pantheon--we seem to read into his soul. The builder may have gone, perhaps ages before, but here he has left something of himself, his hopes, his fears, his ideas, his dreams. Even in the remote recesses of the Andes, amidst the riot of nature, and where man is