JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE

Philosophy Of Masonry: Letters To Constant

Translated by

ROSCOE POUND

Past Master of Lancaster Lodge, No. 54, Lincoln, Nebraska

Past Deputy Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts

With an introduction by the Translator

Summarized in an Address before the

Supreme Council 33°, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite.

Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, U.S.A.

Buffalo, New York: September 29, 1943.

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INTRODUCTION

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the great idealist philosophers of the end of the

eighteenth and fore part of the nineteenth century, was born at Rammenau in upper

Lusatia (Ober Lausitz) May 19, 1762. Lusatia, a district between the Elbe and the

Oder, was then a part of Saxony. In the settlement after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815

it became part of Prussia. Fichte’s father was a ribbon weaver and he seems to have

had a strict bringing up under straitened circumstances. But he had the best of education

at the famous school at Pforta and at the Universities of Jena and Leipzig.

From the beginning he showed the high and stern sense of duty which characterized

him throughout life. It is told of him that as a small boy he had the task of tending a

flock of geese. Some one had given him an illustrated book of Greek mythology and

hero stories which he took with him. Looking up from the book, in which he had been

absorbed, he saw that the geese were straying and some were likely to get away. He

jumped up, brought his flock together again, and then, shocked at his momentary neglect

of his duty, threw; away the book which had tempted him to overlook it.

Faguet has said: “A philosopher, however eminent, setting out his system, is

only a man who is explaining his own character and perhaps his temperament.” In

Fichte we have a man prepared in his heart to be a Mason.

After leaving the university he acted for a time as a private tutor in different

families in Saxony and a private teacher. Later, he went to Zurich, then back to

Leipzig, and for a time was a private tutor in Warsaw. After many ups and downs of

fortune, he visited Kant at Konigsberg. To attract Kant’s attention, he wrote an essay

entitled Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Essay Toward a Critique of all Revelation)

in which he applied the principles of Kant’s critical philosophy to investigation

of the conditions under which religious belief was possible. Kant approved the essay

and helped find a publisher. It was published anonymously in 1792 and was generally

attributed to Kant. The latter corrected the mistake, commended the essay, and the

reputation of the author was established. In 1793, he became professor of philosophy

at Jena and at once proved an outstanding teacher. During the next five years he

published a succession of books which make up his system of philosophy. In 1798,

as editor of the Philosophical Journal, he received from a friend a paper on the “Development

of the Idea of Religion” which he prefaced with a paper on “The Grounds

of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe” and printed in the Journal.

Theological ideas were rigid at that time, and a bitter controversy arose as a result of

which Saxony and all the German states except Prussia suppressed the Journal, and

Fichte in 1799 resigned his professorship and went to Berlin. He lived in Berlin until

1806, except that he lectured at Erlangen in the summer of 1805. While in Berlin he

wrote some of his most important books. But in 1806, the French occupation drove

him out, and he lectured for a time at Konigsberg and at Copenhagen. He returned to

Berlin in 1807 and on the founding of the University of Berlin (for which he had drawn

up the plan) he was its first rector (1810-1812). In one of the epidemics of typhus

which accompanied the Napoleonic Wars, he was taken with what was called hospital

fever, and died on January 27, 1814—at the age of fifty-two.

It is not easy to make an intelligible statement of Fichte’s metaphysics in short

compass. He conceives that the fundamental problem of philosophy arises from this,

that along with the ideas of individual consciousness, which come and go voluntarily

and contingently, there are in contrast ideas of another type which maintain themselves

and are characterized by a feeling of necessity. It is the task of philosophy to

make this necessity intelligible. The system of those ideas which come forth with a

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feeling of necessity is called experience. Hence there is the problem: What is the basis

of experience? Fichte holds that there are two ways of solving this problem. Since

experience is an activity of consciousness directed toward objects, it must be derived,

and derived only, either from things or from consciousness. The solution which

begins with things he calls dogmatism. It regards consciousness as due to things.

The activities of intelligence are taken to be due to mechanical necessities of causation.

Hence, the dogmatic solution leads to fatalism and materialism. The solution

which begins with consciousness is called idealism. It considers things as products of

consciousness and consciousness a free function determined only by itself. The two

solutions, as he sees it, are irreconcilable. As he sees it, if one does not wish to fall a

victim to skeptical despair he must choose one or the other. As each is a consistent

system, which system one will choose depends on what sort of a man he is. The ethical

interest in Fichte naturally inclined him toward idealism. This is the metaphysical

background of his Masonic philosophy.

In his Theory of Right and Law (Rechtslehre) and Theory of Morals

(Sittenlehre) he goes forward upon the metaphysical basis. The conscious ego becomes

aware of its own freedom, and the existence of other egos and the existence

of a world in which they may act are conditions of consciousness of freedom. This

follows from the ego’s coming to consciousness. Hence the absolute (i. e. the unconditioned)

ego from which all individual egos derive is not subject to these conditions.

It freely discovers itself to them. This absolute ego he defines as the moral will of the

universe. It is God from Whom all individual egos have sprung and in Whom they are

included. God is the absolute Life, the absolute One, becoming conscious of Himself

by self separation into the individual egos. God, the infinite will, manifests Himself in

the individual; and contrasted with the individual there is the non-ego or the thing.

“Knowledge,” he says, “is not mere knowledge of itself, but knowledge of being, and

of the one being that truly exists, that is, God.” It will be seen that here we have the

religious background of his Masonic philosophy.

In his ethical system, Fichte sought a synthesis of the individualist ethics which

Kant and the French Revolution gave to the nineteenth century and the social ethics

which we are familiar with today. In his political theory he considered it wrong to identify

the ideal moral whole with the state. Society and the state were to be distinguished.

Society, he held, had specific positive values above those represented by

the state. He had a universal, a cosmopolitan ideal of humanity, which naturally inclined

him toward Masonry.

Fichte was made a Mason in Zurich in 1793, the year in which he went to Jena

as professor. But in Jena there had been no lodge since 1764, so he affiliated with

the Gunther Lodge of the Standing Lion at Rudolstadt (in Thuringia, 18 miles from

Jena) of which the reigning Prince was patron. When he went to Berlin in 1799 he

met Fessler, the Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge Royal York of Friendship,

in which he soon became active. This had begun in 1752 as of French constitution. It

did not work in German till 1778. In 1796 Fessler undertook a thorough reform. In

1798 it became a Grand Lodge, with three subordinate lodges, and through Fessler’s

exertions by 1801 there were sixteen. Fessler also undertook revision of the ritual,

which had been that of the Rite of Perfection. At first he proposed the English system

of the three degrees of symbolic Masonry and no more. But the Masons of the time

were too much accustomed to the higher degrees. He had to give up this idea and,

instead, worked out a rite of nine degrees wherein the first three—those universally

recognized—had superposed upon them six called “the higher knowledge” in which

there was a critical examination of the theories as to the origin of Masonry, of the ori-

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gin of different rites, systems, and mysteries, and a critical history of all that was

comprehended in the Masonry of the time. Later this rite was abandoned and the

right of the English Ancient Grand Lodge was adopted instead. It was this rite of

Fessler’s, which Masonic scholars agree was the most learned and philosophical of

all Masonic systems, for which Fichte for a time cooperated on its philosophical side.

Fessler gave up his office of Deputy Grand Master in 1802. In the meantime, Fichte,

at Fessler’s instance, had written two lectures on the philosophy of Masonry, the

manuscript of which he gave to Johann Karl Christian Fischer, the Master of the Inner

Orient, who published them as “Letters to Constant” in 1802-1803 in a periodical

in two volumes entitled Eleusinians of the Nineteenth Century, or Results of United

Thinkers on the Philosophy and History of Freemasonry. The author of the “letters”

was not named, but the publisher pointed him out clearly enough. Yet in spite of his

high esteem for the author, the publisher did not treat the manuscript with much respect.

He changed the two lectures into fifteen letters to an imaginary non-Mason,

and interpolated a complete letter (the second) in which he discussed at much length

what Masonry is not and inserted a bit of apologetic literature which interrupts the

strict logical construction of Fichte’s lectures. He also added short prefatory statements

at the head of many of the letters and sometimes conclusions in epistolatory

style. He admitted that he had inserted “certain illustrative additions and what the

chosen dress [i.e. publication in the form of letters] demanded.” These additions and

interpolations are easily detected, since Fichte’s style is characteristic and unmistakable.

In the second of the two volumes (which contains letters six to sixteen) the publisher

professes to have been more restrained in his additions, “so that the brethren

may receive the ideas of the great man almost entirely in his own words.” But there

are not a few fairly long interpolations in some of the later letters. The preface to the

second volume closes with a call to Fichte to continue his deductions.

In the standard edition of Fichte’s complete works, published by his son in

1845, the letters were not included. They were reprinted by Reitzenstein in the first

volume of his Masonic Classics. But they seem generally to have escaped the notice

of Masonic scholars. I find no mention of Fichte in the Masonic encyclopedias nor in

any of the summaries of Masonic philosophy. Indeed, I had no suspicion that any

such lectures or letters were in existence until about twenty years ago I came upon a

little book of eighty-three pages in which they were newly published with a very valuable

introduction by Wilhelm Flitner (Leipzig, 1923). I have used Flitner’s text and

drawn freely upon his introduction.

As the editor of the reprint in 1923 says, since the original manuscript is undoubtedly

lost, we cannot be certain of reproducing Fichte’s original text. Not only

were additions made but transitions from one topic to another were stricken out and

introductions and conclusions in epistolatory style were substituted. All that can be

done, therefore, is to follow the text of the Eleusinians. The editor in 1923 indicates

by square brackets the interpolations and additions and also indicates the second

lecture as beginning with the eighth letter. He does this on internal evidence and his

conclusion seems eminently sound. It is clear that the eighth letter introduces a new

proposition and a new chain of thought. Both lectures deduce Freemasonry. The first

develops the idea of a separate society for general human development and so

comes to the setting up of a theory of sociableness. The second lecture develops the

purpose and form of Masonic instruction through myth and ritual from the point of

view of making cultivated men. Thus there is a different theme for each.

I have followed the text of the 1923 reprint, leaving out the obvious interpolations

and additions. But I have kept the form of letters, as in the original publication,

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since we cannot say that Fichte may not have wished or been content to have it so.

As Fessler’s rite did not maintain itself, the lectures, even if adapted to use in the

lodge, could not be used as such permanently, and the form of letters was not inappropriate.

You will ask naturally, as I asked myself at once, why letters to “Constant”?

One thinks naturally of an important character in a Scottish Rite degree, and for a

number of reasons I am satisfied that it is he who was intended. It is true the editor of

the 1923 reprint assumes the letters are addressed to “an imaginary non-Mason,”

and one of the interpolations states expressly that the Constant addressed is not a

Mason. Indeed, in the third paragraph of the first letter Fichte suggests as much. But

the reason for this is not far to seek. Six years later, when Krause published his lectures

on higher spiritualization of the genuine traditional symbols of Masonry and afterwards

when he published his great work on the oldest professional records of Masonry,

the limits of permissible public discussion of Masonic matters were not clear,

and the liberty of the individual Mason to interpret for himself was not generally conceded.

It will be remembered that the very rumor of Krause’s book led to serious agitation.

Great efforts were made to prevent its publication, and Krause was subjected

to what amounted to persecution. It is small wonder, therefore, that Fischer in 1803

thought is wise that what he published seem to be letters addressed to a non-Mason

by one who professed only to know what, on philosophical principles, Masonry ought

to be.

On the other hand, five points seem to me decisive.

1. Fessler undoubtedly used the ritual of the rite of perfection in working

out his rite. Clavel and Ragon say he used, among others, that of the Chapter of

Clermont. Probably that means the ritual developed in France, independently of the

Chapter of Clermont, under the Council of Emperors of the East and West and its

successors. But the twenty-fifth degree of the rite of perfection is the thirty-second of

our system. The Royal York Lodge of Friendship worked in French till 1778 and under

the French ritual put into German till 1798 or 1799. Thus Constant was a personage

well known to continental Masonic scholars.

2. The letters regularly address Constant in the second person singular,

appropriate to a brother, instead of in the second person plural, appropriate to a non-

Mason. In German usage this is clear enough. The second person singular is now so

unusual in English usage that I have in the translation regularly used “you” instead.

3. Fichte himself addresses his lecture to some one in the second person

singular and, in a number of places in passages undoubtedly genuine, addresses

Constant by name.

4. The lectures were written for a lodge, and hence were addressed to

Masons originally.

5. It can hardly be a mere coincidence that a name was chosen for the addressee

of the letters which is of real significance to the Mason and means nothing to

the non-Mason. Nor can it be that a Mason would choose that name as appropriate

to a representative non-Mason.

For these reasons I have retained Fischer’s title, “Letters to Constant” in addition

to what was no doubt the original title, given to the manuscript by Fichte, “Lectures

on the Philosophy of Masonry.”

Fichte is far from easy to put into English. Even philosophers find his

Wissenschaftslehre hard to understand. One reason is his characteristic use of

words in unusual meanings. It is necessary to acquire a Fichte vocabulary, not merely

of technical philosophical terms but of everyday words which he uses frequently

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with meanings of his own or shades of meaning not in dictionaries and requiring to be

drawn from the context. Again his mode of writing needs to be learned. Often he debates

with himself, and after stating both sides he may leave the reader to draw the

conclusion for himself, as something which had become evident from the two statements

or he may sum up the discussion in a clear pronouncement. Hence, unless

one reads carefully there may seem to be contradictions and inconsistencies which in

fact do not exist. Moreover, we have in English no term exactly corresponding to the

German word Bildung which appears either itself or in some compound word on almost

every page of letters. Primarily in such connections it means the shaping or creating

of a cultivated man. But it may mean culture, civilization, education, training, or,

in composition, development. I have not pretended to be consistent in rendering it,

but have looked to the context to suggest what will best bring out what seems to be

the idea. For the rest, I have not hesitated to break up the long and involved sentences

of the original and to resort to paraphrases so as to make what I take to be

the idea of the text more easy of understanding by the American Mason of today. As

to what Masonic writings Fichte may have used, all that I can be sure of is Preston’s

Illustrations of Masonry, 1772, second edition, revised and enlarged, 1775. By 1802

there had been six other English editions and a German edition, any of which Fichte

could have seen. It seems clear that he is arguing against Preston’s idea of knowledge

and Preston’s theory of education and that he presupposes, as one might expect,

Preston’s version of the history of the Craft and the story of its continuity from

antiquity. He does not consider these adequate to point out a purpose for the order,

much less to justify its existence. Hence, he seeks to construct a philosophy of Masonry

independently on the basis of a metaphysically derived theory of society and of

man in society.

Three fundamental questions have been put by philosophers of Masonry since

Preston. They are:

(1) What is the purpose of Masonry as an institution? For what does it exist?

What does it seek to do? To Masonic philosophers this has always presented itself

as a question of what ought to be the purpose—of what Masonry ought to seek

as its end.

(2) What is—and to the philosopher this means what should be—the relation

of Masonry to other human institutions? What is or ought to be its place in a rational

scheme of human activities? (3) How does Masonry go about and how ought it

to go about attaining the end which it seeks? In seeing how Fichte answers these

questions we must not lose sight of the social, political, and economic conditions of

the time and place in which he wrote nor of the condition of Masonry in that time and

place.

1. the purpose of masonry. Fichte assumes that Constant knows nothing of

this. The Masonic literature of the time, for which the philosopher had a not unnatural

contempt, did not discuss the question. Mostly derived from or elaborated on the basis

of the Old Charges, it had to do with a largely mythical story of the transmission of

civilization from the biblical patriarchs and by the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the

Greeks, and the Romans to the Middle Ages. Fessler’s rite was taken up with a historical

critique of systems and rites and degrees and was well adapted to produce

Masonic scholars in the sense of men deeply grounded in rites and rituals. But it did

not touch upon the three questions of Masonic philosophy except incidentally and inferentially.

What was to be had from Preston’s Illustrations, from French discussions

of the symbols, and from some pious discourses which had begun to appear, could

not satisfy a philosopher. In short, Constant knew no more of the philosophy of the

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Craft than did the uninitiate. For the purposes of philosophy he must begin at the beginning.

Philosophical systems grow out of attempts to solve concrete problems of a

time and place. The philosopher finds a satisfying solution and puts it in abstract, universal

terms. Then he or his disciples make it or seek to make it a universal solvent,

equal to all problems everywhere and in all times. Accordingly, Fichte starts with the

urgent concrete problem of Masonry in his time. It appeared to be hopelessly divided

into systems and sects and rites. In England, the schism of the self-styled Ancients

had produced two Grand Lodges, each claiming to be the true successor of the Masonry

which had come down from antiquity through the Middle Ages. On the Continent,

the pulling and hauling of rival sovereign bodies, the claims of self-constituted

leaders to property in the high degrees and the downright peddling of them, had produced

an even worse condition. In Germany, the charlatanry of the Strict Observance

had led to scandals which inflicted serious injury on the order. Hence it was necessary

to go back to first principles and determine what Masonry could be and what it

ought to be.

Where was one to begin such an inquiry? Fichte saw that he could get no satisfactory

starting point from the literature of Masonry as it then was. The Old Charges

and the mythical history of the transmission of civilization did not help. It was necessary

to resort to reason. What in reason was there to be done which an immemorial

universal brotherhood could do and should be doing? In answering this question

Fichte had before him also the social, political, and economic condition of Europe,

and in particular of Germany, in his time, and the problem thus presented to the

philosopher possessed of an ideal of human perfection or, if you will, civilization.

What impressed him as a child of the people who had come up through adversity

(his brother is said to have died an agricultural laborer) was the gulf between the

cultivated, professional man, the less cultivated practical man of business, and the

uncultivated man in the humbler walks of life, each, however wise in his calling and

however virtuous, suspicious of the others, unappreciative of the others’ purposes,

and very likely intolerant of the others’ plans and proposals. Thus there was in society

the same unhappy cleavage which he saw in the Masonry of the time. He saw the

same phenomenon also in the political order of the time. The medieval academic ideal

of political unity of Christendom in “the empire” had broken down in the sixteenth

century and had been superseded by nationalism. Since that time Christendom had

been torn by successive wars between nations seeking political hegemony, and,

when Fichte wrote, the wars of the French Revolution and empire were still waging.

Society in western Europe seemed hopelessly divided into states unable to work together

except in fluctuating alliances and then not toward any common goal of humanity

or of civilization but only toward political self-aggrandizement. In Germany,

not yet unified politically, but divided into more than two dozen states, in more or less

constant strife with each other, the political condition of Europe was reflected in aggravated

form.

A like phenomenon was appearing in the economic order. The relationally organized

society of the Middle Ages had broken down. The French Revolution had put

an end to feudal society in France and it was passing in central Europe. Economic

freedom of the middle class had given it increasingly complete political control. But

the proletariat was emerging to class consciousness and was making continually increasing

demands. Thus there was growing up a class-organized society which has

been a conspicuous feature of the economic order with the progressive industrialization

which has gone on everywhere since the end of the eighteenth century. States,

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classes, professions, and walks of life alike were suspicious of each other, prejudiced

against each other, intolerant of each other. Society in Europe, which was culturally a

unit and had inherited a universal tradition from the Middle Ages, was internally

chaotic, and in a condition of internal strife and conflict which stood in the way of the

progress of civilization. Even the unity of the church, which had held men together to

some extent during the Middle Ages, had disappeared at the Reformation, and sects

and denominations were suspicious, prejudiced and intolerant among themselves.

Thus Fichte looked at the problem presented by the condition of Masonry in

his time and place sub specie æternitatis as part of a problem of all humanity, along

with one of social, political, economic, and religious organization of mankind, and

sought a solution that would enable Masonry to meet or help meet a great need of

mankind. Indeed, his Masonic philosophy is in a sense a part of a larger social and

political philosophy in which it is now considered that he laid the foundation of much

of the social philosophical thinking of today. But that is too large a subject to go into

here.

What was demanded, as Fichte saw it, was an allaround development of the

individual man which would enable him to cast off or prevent his acquiring the suspicions

and misunderstandings and prejudices which stand in the way of cooperation

with others toward developing human powers to their highest possibilities. As it was,

each man was trained or trained himself for some profession or vocation or walk of

life and as he perfected himself for the purposes of that profession or vocation or

walk of life he narrowed his outlook upon the world and came to look upon it and

upon his fellow men as it were through the spectacles of that calling. Looking at other

callings through these spectacles, he became suspicious, prejudiced, and intolerant

and so largely incapable of assisting in the maintaining and furthering of civilization.

There was need, therefore, of an organization in which men were to be given or led

to an all-round development, instead of the onesided vocational development which

they acquired in a society based on division of labor. While in society at large they

were adequately trained toward effective division of labor, in Masonry they must be

adequately trained for effective cooperation toward the highest human development.

The purpose, then, must be an all-round development of men as men; not merely as

fellows in a calling, citizens of a state, members of a class or adherents of a denomination,

but as men fully competent and attentive to their duties as members of a profession,

as citizens, as churchmen, and yet conscious also of duties as men to rise

above suspicion, prejudice, and intolerance, and appreciate and work sympathetically

with their fellows in every walk of life, of every political allegiance, and of every

creed.

Today, when exaggerated nationalism and aggressive class consciousness

are threatening to disrupt civilization, thinkers are approaching Fichte’s position not

from metaphysics, as he did, but from the standpoint of social psychology. We are

told that no man can form an objective and unbiased judgment of a situation in which

he is emotionally interested. Hence, he unconsciously looks at every one and everything

from the standpoint of a profession or trade or calling or class or nation or denomination

and so, even with the best of motives, proceeds upon prejudices and misconceptions

which impede his relations with others. Whether in business or industry

or politics or international relations, we see this manifested every day. We have had

illustrations in strikes, in race riots, and in wars. It is recognized as giving us a major

problem of social control. Every social agency, the law, administration, international

law, and all attempts at international organization must reckon with it. Many of those

who are urging some sort of world organization to secure peaceable adjustment of in-

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ternational relations are writing very much in view of the second world war in a generation

as Fichte did during the Napoleonic Wars. We must concede that he has set us

a task which transcends time and place.

2. the relation of masonry to other human organizations and activities. Fichte’s

conception of individual personality and its value led him to oppose any idea of merging

the moral unit in the political or any other organization. Such theories misconceive

the nature of organizations. They organize certain of men’s activities without including

their personalities. Thus each of us may be in any number of groups or associations

or relations which organize our activities in different directions while still leaving

us free in all others. In consequence, there is no incompatibility in being an efficient

professional man or man of business, a faithful worker in some calling, a loyal,

patriotic citizen, a devout churchman, and a Mason striving for the universal while attentive

to the particular. Fichte urges that one may be a better citizen of the world for

being a good citizen of his state, and a better citizen of his state for being a good citizen

of the world. We should seek to shape many-sided men, but not so many-sided

that we cannot find any particular side. Masonry is not to supersede calling, government,

or church; it is to supplement them. It is to help us be complete, well-rounded

men as well as the efficient, patriotic, devout men which we are or should be outside

of the Order. It is not hard to see why absolute personal governments in the eighteenth

century and totalitarian governments in the present century have suppressed

Masonry. An order which considers that any organization of men’s activities can

stand in any degree on a plane with the omni-competent state cannot be allowed by

such governments.

As to the relation of Masonry to the church, we must remember that down to

the Reformation and in parts of Europe much later, and down to the French Revolution,

the church had vigorously repressed freedom of thought and free science and

had by no means made for the development of man’s personality to its highest unfolding.

The church, says Fichte, cannot make men devout. The man who is devout

from fear or from hope of reward only professes devoutness. Devoutness is an internal

condition, an enduring frame of mind, not a temporary product of coercion or cupidity

of reward or emotional excitement. Like or along with the state, the church may

be a wholesome agency of social control in restraining men’s instinct of aggressive

self-assertion. It can point out to men their relation to the life to come and the duties

they ought to be adhering to for the very and sole reason that they are duties. Thus

the church can be working towards shaping the fully developed man. But that is not

its real, its primary function. Remembering what the state churches were for the most

part in Europe in the era of the French Revolution, we can understand why Fichte

passes over this agency of human development very lightly. As he says, religious instruction

through the churches had then taken on a mass of the incidental and onesided

from which Masonry had the task of delivering men. On the other hand, Fichte

does the fullest justice to religion, although without identifying it with Masonry as Oliver

seems to do.

As to morality, it will be remembered that Krause considered that the purpose

of Masonry was to put an organization behind morals as the church was an organization

behind religion and government or the state an organization behind law. Fichte

holds that morality means the doing of one’s well understood duty with absolute inner

freedom, without any outside incentive, simply because it is his duty. Hence, there is

no specific Masonic morality and hence also morality needs no special organization

behind it. Like religion it is an integral part of the fully developed man.

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3. How does masonry Go about attaining the end which it seeks? Both from

his knowledge of the institutions of antiquity and from the Old Charges, Fichte had

learned that throughout recorded history there had been systems of secret instruction

designed to perfect those who were inducted. Indeed, we know today that the primitive

secret society is one of the oldest of human social institutions. We know that ceremonies

of termination of boyhood and raising up of a man are among the oldest of

human rites. Hence Fichte assumes that alongside the open training of men for their

special work in society there has always gone on a secret instruction, a system of

mysteries or a brotherhood which have supplied the deficiencies of the one-sided

training in society and sought to train men as such and not as followers of some particular

calling. Such instruction, he holds, can properly be given orally in contrast with

the open training which may use books or manuscripts, and may be dogmatic where

the open training may be carried on by debate or argument or experiment. It may be

carried on by myths and allegories and symbols. Men of every walk of life, meeting

on an equality and associating in a common course of instruction can, by hearing the

oral lectures over and over, by listening to and enacting the myths and symbols, divest

themselves of the one-sidedness they have received in the training for their special

calling and become the all-round men demanded for civilized society. As the purpose

is to rid us of the incidental and one-sided in their training, this instruction, while

keeping to the old landmarks, may admit of much variation from age to age in order

to meet the exigencies of the incidental which has accumulated in the time and place

and calls for laying aside.

But now let Fichte speak for himself.

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FIRST LETTER

You cannot reasonably ask that I concede to you any other acquaintance with

the order than that it exists. What you would know from your books as to the nature

of its existence I cannot recognize since all this literary trash has begotten no knowledge

in you and has only entangled you in contradiction and doubt. What writers are

you to trust if you have no measure by which to test them and no means whereby to

reconcile them? And as to what you believe or, as you say, you may find more or

less likely by a historical critique, I appeal to your own feeling as I assert that your actual

knowledge of the matter, taken strictly, extends to no more than the existence of

the order.

But this is complete enough for me and I invite you to add to this sure knowledge

conclusions quite as sure. Then shall we find what the order of Free Masons is

in and of itself? No, not that. But what it can be in and of itself, or, if you like, what it

ought to be.

This question will surprise you since you have never put it. But it is the one

question that you can put. What the order is, so far as I am concerned, you can, if it

satisfies you, learn from The Smashed Freemasons.1 What it can be you can create

from a better source, namely, your reason. But if you know it, you will not believe, as

something consistent therewith, that it is actually in and of itself what it can be according

to your logical conviction. You will at least not be able to assert it (but also

not be able to deny it) since for that you would have to be an adept. You would first

be in full right a Masonic lawgiver before you could make this assertion with some

justification.

In this field, where everything is shaking, let us seek a fixed point on which we

can put our foot securely, and from which we can go on from uncontroverted facts.

You know that in the first decades of the eighteenth century, and, indeed, in

London, a society came into public notice, which apparently had arisen earlier, but

about which no one knew how to say whence it came, what it was, and what it

sought. It spread, notwithstanding, with inconceivable rapidity and traveled over

France and Germany, into all states of Christian Europe,2 and even to America. Men

of all ranks, regents, princes, nobles, the learned, artists, men of business, entered it;

Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were initiated and called one another “Brother.”

The society, which one knows not why, at least, as I bid you believe, quite accidentally,

called itself the Society of Free Masons, drew upon itself the attention of

governments. It was persecuted in most kingdoms, e.g. in France, in The Netherlands,

in Poland, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Bavaria, Naples, was visited with the ban

of two Popes, was loaded with the most contradictory accusations, and every suspicion

which is hateful to the great mass of the people and would make it hateful to

them was thrown at it. But it maintained itself under all these storms. It spread into

new kingdoms and from capitals was transplanted into provincial cities where formerly

one had scarcely heard the name. Unexpectedly, it found in one place protection

and support, while in another it was in peril of extinction. In one place it was decried

as the enemy of the throne and fomenter of revolutions, and in another won the trust

of the best rulers.

Thus it has continued to our days. You see how today the members of this society

ask themselves earnestly and continually, whence do we come? What are we

1 This refers to some eighteenth-century expose of Masonry.

2 A large part of southeastern Europe was then under Turkish rule.

11 11

and what do we seek? You see how they gather from all places in order to answer

these questions, how they look earnestly at each other, each awaits the answer from

his neighbor, and finally all either aloud or in silence acknowledge that none of them,

none of those who have assembled, knows. What do they now? Do they go home,

declare the general ignorance of their brothers, release themselves reciprocally from

their vows, and part ashamed? Not at all. The order endures and spreads itself as

before. The society has undergone even harder things. The question as to its secrecy

was more pressing. It was brought to general knowledge in published writings, e.g.

exposes of the uncovered secrecy of the Freemasons, of the overthrown, of the betrayed,

Freemasonry.3 Someone extols the purpose of certain Masonic sects directed

to perfect certainty. He then finds that here and there Masonry has only served for a

wrapping of objectionable purposes and brings these purposes to a light fatal to it.4

What happens then? Do the Freemasons give up the betrayed secrets and, in order

to free themselves from all suspicion of dishonest purposes, at once put the expose

in the lodge library? No. The society endures as if no slander had been spoken of it,

nothing had been printed about it, and it had preserved inviolable silence.

Finally, the society is torn apart internally. All unity ceases. It splits into sects

which are called systems. They brand each other as heretical, excommunicate one

another, and repeat the plan of a church with an exclusive plan of salvation. Servati5

asks, If I wish to become a Freemason, where dwell the genuine masters? In his

thick volumes he does not know what to answer, since the Masons of shade and sign

answer with one accord, “Nowhere, nowhere than with us.”

What follows? The uninitiate, who formerly had at least respect for the name of

Brother, now finds the Masons persecuting each other and branding each other as

heretics, ridiculous, and what for Masonry is Worse than all persecution, the scoff

and mockery of the elegant world. Now, without doubt the dissolution of the wonderful

society will follow? Again, no. It maintains itself and spreads as ever, and many a

cowardly brother, who again and again blushed if some one in his elegant circle said

he was a Freemason, goes scrupulously to the lodge as before.

So, as it was said sometimes in jest that the greatest secret of the Freemasons

was that they had none, the most open and yet secret of the Freemason is that they

exist and endure. What is it then, what can it be, that binds together all these men of

the most diverse modes of thought, modes of life, and education, and has held them

to one another under a thousand difficulties in this time of enlightenment and criticism?

Let us go further and more closely consider these men themselves who adhere

to Masonry. Perhaps they are weak-hearted, enthusiasts, hypocrites, intriguers,

or ambitious, who have bound themselves together? It is conceivable how the dishonest

and crafty can unite with fools in order to manage them for his purposes or at

least to make fun of their foolishness. It is conceivable how the ambitious capture the

enthusiasts in their quest of secrets, in order to humble their pride and are able to

take under their command men who in other respects stand above them in rank and

dignity. It is conceivable how the intriguing can unite with the weak-headed in order

to tell them, and allow them to pay for, what shall fall to their lot. But no. In all ages

we find the wisest, most honest, most honorable men in talent, learning and charac-

3 There were three of these published in Germany between 1742 and 1747.

4 I suppose this refers to the Strict Observance.

5 Author of a book on the history of German Freemasonry, 1787.

12 12

ter, in the order. Above all these are many —there is certainly one—into whose arms

you would throw yourself with full trust as the leader and guide of your life.

Yet, for I leave no possible objection behind me, this wise and honest man

may through some accident or whim of youth have been enticed into an order the inner

nature of which was unknown to him. He becomes acquainted with it, finds it

nothing, and running off to childish play. But he cannot go back. A certain pride hinders

him from showing himself a victim of deceit. His inner shame leads him to give

himself to the empty thing and he goes back to it quietly, without looking up. Is this

the true history of all honorable and wise men in the order? If so, we are at the end of

our investigation. We are ashamed that we have bestowed so much attention upon

the order and give it up with smiles to the well-meaning enthusiasts and self-seeking

intriguers.

But that this is not so, your experience and mine testify. The true, wise and

honorable men, whom or below being a man, lies outside of the circle of his thinking,

striving, and acting. we know, have gone forward in the order, have busied themselves

with it earnestly, have worked for it for its own sake, and even have sacrificed

for it other important ends.

And now I am at the point which I hold fixed and sure for you, for the non-Mason,

and for ever)’ consistent reason:

As truly as only an indisputably wise and virtuous man busies himself earnestly

with the order of Freemasons, so truly it is no play, so certainly it has an earnest and

lofty purpose.

Thus we have found the standpoint from which we may survey all that remains

and set foot further with deliberation.

But before we do this, I hear you speak thus: “It is true, wise and virtuous men

busy themselves earnestly with the order. It is a fact. But with what do they busy

themselves? With the order as it is, or how and what it, and indeed through it, may

come to be? Perhaps they only work so far as to make something of it and write

something worthy of them upon the tabula rasa of Freemasonry? If this is so, then

you by your deduction have only proved what is known, namely, that the wise and

virtuous do not play but yet win nothing for Freemasonry.” All, Constant, that I along

with you can win for it! And, since I cannot otherwise answer you whether it is likewise

entirely sufficient for my final purpose, I conceive my thesis thus:

As certainly as wise and virtuous men at any time busy themselves

earnestly with the order of Freemasons, so certainly it can have a

reasonable, good, and lofty purpose.

This purpose, possible or actual, we shall now find as we go forward upon this

path.-That is, we can know what the wise and virtuous man can will, what he necessarily

must will, so certainly wisdom and virtue are but one and are determined by

eternal laws of reason. Therefore we must now investigate what the wise and good

man may aim at in such a society. Then we have found with demonstrated certainty

the one possible purpose of the order of Freemasons.

13 13

THIRD LETTER

That which the wise and virtuous wills, that which is his end, is the end-purpose

of mankind. The one end of human existence upon the earth is neither heaven

nor hell, but solely the quality of being men, which we have here in ourselves, and its

highest possible development. We know nothing else, and what we call godlike or

devilish or animal is nothing other than human. What is not included in the highest

possible development, what does not relate to this or bear upon it, either as part or

as means, cannot be the purpose of man nor be set to the wise and virtuous as an

end either in the most general or in the most special case. What lies above

In some measure that purpose is obtained by all men, without their thinking it

clearly or intentionally promoting it, simply through their birth to the light of day and

through their life in society. It seems as if it were not their purpose but a purpose with

them. But the enlightened thinks of it clearly. It is his purpose. He makes it an intended

aim of all that he does.

How is it furthered in the great human society? Does everything work toward it

with united powers directly and without shift? It seems not. Society does not think

and work with clarity and enlightenment as does the wise individual man. The faults

of the world before are a burden upon it, and, busied with expatiating these, it has

hardly time to work for a posterity which again will have to work for another. It must

stand up to the great battle with refractory nature and slothful time. It seeks to win the

judgment over both and has underlying its task a disadvantageous but inevitable condition.

It has divided the whole of human development into parts, has distributed the

branches and special tasks of these and has allotted to each station in life its special

field of cooperation. Just as in a factory time and cost are saved in this that one workman

during his whole life only makes one kind of pen or pencil or wheel or vessel,

only lays on these colors, only drives or steers this one machine, and another likewise

during his whole life does some other sort of work, and at length an over-foreman

unknown to them unites what they have done in a whole, even so it is in the

great workshop of human development. Every station in life works and makes something

for all the others beyond what each must do for his share and for his own person;

and they make also for him for what he, otherwise engaged in his own welfare,

has neither time nor skill.

The unseen hand of Providence leads all the work of the individuals to the welfare

and development of the whole. Thus the learned man proceeds to the depths of

mind and knowledge in order to further today what in some age may be generally

useful, and in the meantime the farmer and the laborer feed him and clothe him; the

public official administers justice, which without him the community itself would have

to administer; and the soldier protects against foreign power the defenseless who

maintain him.

Now every individual develops himself specially for the station in life which he

has chosen. From youth on, either thorough choice or chance he has been destined

exclusively for one vocation. That education is held best which prepares the boy

most suitably for his future calling. Everything is left on one side which does not

stand in the nearest relation to this calling or, as we say, cannot be used. The young

man destined to be a scholar spends his whole time learning languages and sciences,

indeed with choice of those which further his future breadwinning and with

14 14

careful putting aside of those which promote the general development of scholarship.

All other stations in life and activities are foreign to him, as they are foreign to each

other. The physician directs his whole attention only to medicine, the jurist to the law

of his country, the merchant to the particular branch of trade in which he is engaged,

the manufacturer only to the making of his product. In his specialty he knows with

much clearness and thoroughness what he needs to know. It is specially clear to him.

He looks on it as his acquired property. He lives in it as in a home. And all this is

good. In this way every one does his duty: The reverse would not promote all the advantages

of society but would be ruinous to the individual as well as to the whole.

But out of this there arises necessarily with all a certain incompleteness and

one-sidedness which commonly, though not necessarily, passes into pedantry.

Pedantry, which we commonly attribute only to the learned walk of life (perhaps because

it is most noticeable here, perhaps because here men are more intolerant)

prevails in all stations of life and its fundamental principle is everywhere the same,

namely, to take the particular training for its special walk of life for the common training

of mankind and thence to strive to make it such in practice. Thus the pedantic

man of learning has regard only for science and rejects all other values; his lectures

and speeches in mixed societies seek to bring to his. hearers some particle of his

learning and to make them long for his precision in thought. The pedantic merchant,

on the other hand, despises the scholar and cries out: “Only reckoning and money,

money is the watchword of the sensible and happy life.” The soldier despises both,

prizes only bodily strength and dexterity, warlike spirit and assertion of honor, according

to his conception of it, and would draft any one who is moderate. The theologian

especially (since his profession has of all the most influence because of love of

Heaven or fear of hell) seeks to bring up all men, even the village children, as thorough

theologians and steadfast dogmatists. “Strive above all for the kingdom of God,

the rest is a trifle.” So say the theologians and with them all other vocations— and we

know what they understand by the kingdom of God.

Thus one-sidedness prevails everywhere, useful here and injurious there.

Thus each individual is not simply a learned man; he is a theologian or a jurist or a

physician. He is not simply religious; he is a Catholic or a Lutheran or a Jew or a Mohammedan.

He is not simply a man; he is a politician or a merchant or a soldier. And

so everywhere the highest possible development of vocations hinders the highest

possible development of humanity, which is the highest purpose of human existence.

Indeed, it must be hindered since everyone has the indispensable duty to make himself

as perfect as possible for his own special calling, and this is almost impossible

without one-sidedness.

With these presuppositions, we must now turn back to Freemasonry, not to depart

from it again, and build upon them certain significant conclusions. Masonry cannot

aim at any of the ends with which any of the vocations, regulating agencies or orderings

in human society are already openly and notoriously busied. It can tread in

the path of no other organization or go on beside it. If it did, it would be superfluous

since it would seek to do what would be done without it. It could not excuse itself on

the ground that a public institution beside which it would go on and whose aim it

would adopt was defective and faulty. It is mere presumption to seek to make better

as a secondary concern what another cannot make better as its chief concern. It is

foolishness to pronounce a judgment of condemnation against institutions which perhaps

we know only as to their external difficulties and not as to the unsociable difficulties

which they find in the object of their activity. Each of these institutions in the

15 15

state carries the germ of what is better in itself and strives toward perfection, and the

question for Masonry can only be whether an institution for a certain purpose is there,

not whether it is good. Others must care for that. If Masonry were to take hold actively

of the plan of another institution, it would only spread the disorder more widely

since it would only disturb and confuse the carrying out of the plan. It would be highly

injurious in that it must add this activity secretly since, indeed, it is not known to have

taken over any single branch of human development.

If such a society might busy itself with ecclesiastical or political, philosophical,

learned, or mercantile subjects, if the wise and virtuous man could not support it,

much more, when its confused existence became known to him must he destroy it.

And to that end it would require no further trouble than to advertise it, since it is the

highest interest of the whole human society and of each of its branches, of the state,

of the church, of the learned and of the trading public to blot out such a miseducation

so soon as he became acquainted with it.

Thus every purpose with which any calling in society is already busied would

be wholly and unqualifiedly excluded from Masonry; and it would be just as foolish

and ridiculous if its members sought secretly to make good shoes with it as to seek to

reform the state as a whole or in particular. Every Mason who would gainsay this

would put not only his good will and Masonic insight but also his sound judgment under

suspicion.

But it must have some purpose, since otherwise it would be an idle, empty

sport, and the wise and virtuous could have no more to do with it than if it had set itself

the harmful purpose above described.

But this could only be such a purpose: A purpose for which the greater human

society has no special institution, a purpose for which according to the nature of the

purpose and of the society it can have no special institution.

If it could have such an institution, then it would the more be the duty of the

wise and virtuous to put this institution in the bosom of the great society and allow it

to proceed therefrom than to seek to further its aim through separation from this society.

The nature of the great society and the nature of the purpose inhering in it would

demand absolutely that he make the state mindful in this almost incomprehensible

way of this until now forgotten branch of the order’s activity. He must then leave it to

the great society unconditioned, whether he wishes to find institutions for it or not. In

no case may he, in order to be efficient for this purpose, set himself apart along with

a special society since he in no case belongs to it for this sort of activity.

Now comes the question whether there can be such a reasonable and good

purpose for which the greater society, according to its nature, can have no special institutions,

and what this purpose may be. If so, the one possible purpose of Masonry

(pure and considered as a special society) will be found.

FOURTH LETTER

I shall at once further clear up your suspicion whether I, perhaps, intend to set

forth Freemasonry as an end in itself, if I put before you the second conclusion from

what we have considered above with respect to the greater human society as the

keystone of this arch of thought.

We have recognized it as an evil that education in the greater society is always

bound up with a certain one-sidedness and superficiality which stands in the way of

16 16

the highest possible, i.e. purely human, development and hinders the individual man

as well as mankind as a whole from a happy progress to the goal.

We now have a purpose given us which the greater human society cannot aim

at, since it lies outside of that society and is first manifest through the existence of society,

a purpose which can only be reached by going out from society and setting

apart from it. The purpose is: To do away with the disadvantages in the mode of education

in the greater society and to merge the one-sided education for the special vocation

in the all-sided training of men as men.

This is a great purpose since it has for its object what is of most interest to

man. It is reasonable in that it expresses one of our highest duties. It is possible

since everything is possible that we ought to do. It is almost impossible to attain in

the great society, at least exceedingly hard, since walk of life, mode of living, and relations

entangle man with fine but fast ties and pull him around in a circle, often without

his being aware of it, where he should go forward. Hence the purpose is only to

be attained by getting apart. But not by an everduring departure, since a new onesidedness

would arise from that; since thereby the advantages for society of what

has been won for pure human development would be lost; and since thereby we disregard

that we are to merge both forms of training and thereby to elevate the needful

training for vocations. Nor are we to attain the purpose by turning back to isolation,

since this would strengthen our one-sidedness more than it would remove it and

overlay our heart with an egoistic crust. Therefore we shall attain the purpose only

through a society distinct from the greater society which does no injury to any of our

relations in that greater society, which has prepared us to see and take to heart in

time the purpose of humanity, to make it intentionally ours, and which works through

a thousand means to wean us from our vocational and social crudities and raise our

development to a purely human one.

This or none is the purpose of the society of Freemasons; so certainly the wise

and virtuous man may occupy himself with it. The Mason who was born a man, and

has been shaped through the training for his vocation, through the state, and through

his other social relations, may be developed again on this platform wholly and thoroughly

to a man. This only can be the purpose of a separate society, and it answers

the question put to us: What is the order of Freemasons in and of itself, or, if you prefer,

what can it be?

But, you say, this purpose is in part too wide, in part too narrow: the latter because

the end can be reached in other ways, by meditation, by travel, by going about

among men, and in sociable life; the former because no society of any sort, from its

very nature, can realize the full attainment of that purpose. As to the former, about

which the necessary light will come in what is to follow, for the moment I make only

this short answer: A man can drag himself out in the ways you have described and

maintain a course which goes out beyond his walk of life. He can learn to efface the

pedantry from his outside appearance and to raise his thought to a greater generality.

But his inner self remains untouched by all this. He goes on in his old way: only he

does so behind hedges and elegant walls. Perhaps by meditation he can efface the

professional spirit in himself; but may give the more stiffneckedness to his individual

character, which is still very different from the character of pure humanity. That which

in this connection ought to be brought about in all seriousness can only happen in a

separate society, as we have deduced it, and, as you will soon come to think with

me, in accord with its whole activity.

17 17

The second proposition which you have pointed out is more important, and I

add to my statement of the purpose the following important limitation: In so far as

such development is possible through a society expressly set up for this purpose.

There is a general human kind of development for which every one takes himself,

his conscience and God for witness and judge, namely, moral freedom. You

know my conviction on this point: “Everyone who is honest with himself,” so I wrote

some years ago, “must watch himself unremittingly and work toward his perfection.

This must through practice become, as it were, natural to him. But this is something

which from its very nature cannot be communicated. I come to a painter whom I wish

to see work. He shows me all his paintings, even those not yet finished. But, as much

as I have begged him to, he is unwilling to work upon them before my eyes. He assures

me that works of genius are arrived at only in solitude. This led me to the work

of the moral genius in us, and I suspected the truth that in this matter, too, one must

be alone. I found it always more confirmed that true striving to perfect oneself was

very delicate and bashful so that it drew within itself and could not be communicated.

I had never brought my betterings of myself before myself in words. How could I

clothe it in words before others? Enough. I took another course and my friends, as I

myself, knew the growth of the plant only by the fruits. Accordingly, one should never

make his selfbettering a show; he should never abase himself to a mere confession

of his faults but should leave them off. We should be disgusted with them; then we

shall not, as it were, turn them about this way and that in order to express them precisely

and elegantly. If one wished, out of a mistaken feeling of duty, out of a certain

heroic spirit, in friendship or for the sake of the purpose of some society, to compel

himself thereto, he would not make himself trusted, win love for himself; at any rate,

no more fear the existence of faults which one has so roundly condemned; at any

rate, corrupt himself with the confession in that he would reckon it to himself as a bettering.”

And so it is. His development for moral freedom in order to make it a social

affair, to speak about it with others, to let himself be drawn into a reckoning about it,

and to confess it or let himself confess, destroys the spirit from the ground up, since it

violates holy modesty; it makes one a slanderous hypocrite before himself, and a society

which has to do with this leads in effect to the darkest monkish asceticism. Thus

Masonry has nothing to do with this sort of training for pure humanity, nor has any

society which is not made up of fanatics and has understood Horace’s saying:

Insani sapiens nomen feret, aequus iniqui Ultra, quam satis est, virtutem si

petat ipsam.6

All that looks to differences among men, whether to skill in art or learning or

virtue, is before Masonry profane. But Masonry itself is profane in comparison with

moral freedom since that is the allholiest compared to which even the holy is common.

This conception, firm and thoroughly defined and clear in itself, we must undoubtedly

make a canon of Masonry and a principle of critique of everything Masonic

if we have to set up such a critique.

Another is, to be sure, to put it shortly, the training of the spirit and the impetus

to receptivity for morality, the training of external morals and of external uniformity to

law. This of course belongs to Masonry.

Now the picture of Masonry, as it is in and of itself, or uniquely can and should

be, will govern your soul.

6 “The wise shall bear the name of fool, the just of unjust, if he seeks even virtue beyond what is

enough.” Epistles, I, 6, 15.

18 18

I draw this picture as yet with few strokes. Here men of all walks of life come

freely together and bring into a hoard what each, according to his individual character,

has been able to acquire in his calling. Each brings and gives what he has: the

thinking man definite and clear conceptions, the man of business readiness and ease

in the art of living, the religious man his religious sense, the artist his religious enthusiasm.

But none imparts it in the same way in which he received it in his calling and

would propagate it in his calling. Each one, as it were, leaves behind the individual

and special and shows what it has worked out within him as a result. He strives so to

give his contribution that he can reach every member of society, and the whole society

exerts itself to assist this endeavor and in this way to give his former one-sided

training a general usefulness and all-sidedness. In this union each receives in the

same measure as he gives. Just through this that he gives it is given him, this is to

say, the skill to give.

FIFTH LETTER

Now, first, I answer your question: Can we not put Freemasonry as an end in

itself? This will give me occasion for some further definitions.

As you admit, you have come upon this idea through comparisons of Freemasonry

with religion. One may ask, what is the purpose of the church? It is the furthering

of religion. What is the purpose of religion? Without doubt its purpose is itself,

since it is purely the result, the requirement of the harmonious spirit and heart, the

product of our enlightenment, the highest blooming of our reason, the dignity of our

nature. For what, then, shall it further be good or serve as a means? What can it be a

purpose toward? Thus the order of Freemasons is to be upheld and cultivated for the

sake of Freemasonry. It is not good toward something, it is good toward and for itself;

not a means toward any other purpose. What still beyond this shall it have in view?

The true Mason must know what it does and can do, what it has brought forth in him

and will bring forth in others—and that is Freemasonry.

Directly, on the whole, it would be idle to inquire about a purpose of Freemasonry,

to answer this question, and (as we have done) to propose such a purpose. It

would be for the sake of oneself, whereas it ought to exist immediately and would be

a constituent part of the absolute.

There is certain sense in which this proposition can well be conceived in which

it is true and important. But it seems not definitely enough expressed. One often

speaks (whether with philosophical precision I will not say at this time) of a widest

and wide, of a narrow and narrowest sense of words and propositions in philosophy.

So one may say, if I call Masonry an end in itself, I mean Masonry in the narrowest

meaning. But this is to me precisely that general, pure human training which has

been set forth as the end of Masonry. According to this, the purpose is—itself.

The thing is right. But the words are somewhat unintelligible. Man is an end in

himself and the purely human training is an immediately required method whereby

men are directly a constituent part of what is an end in itself or of the absolute. But

should one acknowledge Masonry and a general human training for equivalent expressions?

The Masonic frame of mind (according as the term was at the beginning

precisely explained) might be called an end in itself. But does Masonry or the order of

Freemasons mean as much as the Masonic frame of mind? Masonry is not a training

or a frame of mind but a society or union. I cannot say: Brother NN has done this

laudable act according to his Freemasonry —it is rather a proof of his good Masonic

19 19

frame of mind. Or: Mr. NN has Freemasonry in himself, without having been taken

into the order, although he can have the true Masonic frame of mind—the frame of

mind of a general human training. But when the word Masonry denotes an organization,

it cannot be an end in itself but only a means, since an organization for a given

purpose is only a means and cannot exist directly but only under the condition of a

certain state of the world as it is at the moment. For the special society is founded

only because the purpose which it sets before itself cannot be attained in the greater

society as it is at the time. It can be thought of in the sphere of reason very differently;

at least without the qualification pointed out above in the training of the individual.

Much more it should always go forward to the better, and this better consists particularly

in the equality and harmony of the development of all individuals. If it does this,

in the measure in which it goes forward in doing it, the special society is less necessary;

and as it has reached its goal is superfluous and out of place. Can we say of a

thing so relative that it is a constituent part of the absolute?

One could say that it is a purpose of mankind as a whole to form a single great

organization such as today the Masonic organization should be.7 But of itself the very

existence of Masonry shows that what we have called an end in itself has not yet

been attained.

The example which is made use of for that proposition will put the contrary in

clearer light. It is said: One cannot inquire about a purpose of religion (or, more precisely,

of devoutness, of the religious frame of mind) but rather about a purpose of

the church. Quite right. But the conception of Masonry does not correspond to the

conception of devoutness; much more instead to the conception of pure human development.

To that of the church there corresponds directly the conception of Masonry

or (what is the same thing) of the order of Freemasons. Masonry means, therefore

(to put the matter in short) not the frame of mind but the organization; but this, in order

to bring about the frame of mind, is conditioned by something incidental which

just as well could not be and in fact ought not to be. Masonry is not directly an end in

itself—as little such as is the church in the proper sense before mentioned, and as to

both one may inquire, with all philosophical justification as to their purpose and may

propose it clearly and definitely.

I hope to have done this as to Masonry. But we have not yet come to the end.

We have not only still to investigate what and how Masonry works both upon its

members and upon the world, but also to explain in detail the fundamental principles

above set forth and apply them further in order that they may become more apt and

adequate to judgment of the present condition of Masonry and of the Masonic

achievement.

SIXTH LETTER

Our first question will be this: What does the order bring about in the Mason?

The second: What does it bring about in the world? I will express myself briefly and

be content with fruitful hints. If the organization is not wholly fruitless, without doubt

one who belongs to it, let him be in any degree of culture that he will, must come

nearer to ripeness than the same individual outside of it. This is true of the alert man

with respect to every new relation into which he enters.

7 [Author’s note] Certain Masonic symbols seem to point this way.

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In this connection I take ripeness and general human development to be synonymous;

and rightly so. One-sided development is always unripe. Also if on one

side there is over-ripeness, because of this there is sure to be on other sides bitter,

sour unripeness.

The principal sign of ripeness is strength softened by graciousness. Violent

anger and extended attacks and assaults are the first and indeed necessary wrenchings

and stirrings of developing strength. But they are no longer when development is

complete and the beautiful spiritual form is in itself rounded off. Or, if I may say it in

the words of art of the school: As ripeness ensues, gracious poetry is joined to clearness

of head and righteousness of the heart and beauty comes into union with wisdom

and strength.

This, as I think, is the picture of the ripe, developed man: His mind is free from

prejudices of every sort. He is master in the realm of ideas and looks out over the region

of human truth as widely as possible. But truth is for him only one—a single indivisible

whole, and he puts no side of it before another. To him, development of the

spirit is only a part of the whole development, and it does not come into his mind to

have entirely completed it, even so little as it comes into his mind to wish to be deprived

of it. He sees very well and does not hesitate to acknowledge how much others

in this respect behind him are backward, but he is not overzealous about this

since he knows also how much here depends upon luck. He obtrudes his light, and

much less the full shine of his light, upon no one, while yet he is ever ready to give to

anyone who asks it so much as he can carry, and to give it to him in such dress as is

most agreeable to him, and does not mind if no one asks enlightenment of him. He is

righteous throughout, scrupulous, strict against himself within him self, without externally

making the least fuss about his virtue and obtruding it upon others through assertion

of his integrity through great conspicuous sacrifices, or affectation of high seriousness.

His virtue is as natural and I might say modest as his wisdom; the ruling

feeling as to the weaknesses of his fellow men is good-hearted pity; in no wise angry

indignation. He lives in faith in a better world already here below, and this faith in his

eyes gives value, meaning and beauty to his life in this world; but he does not press

this faith upon others. Instead, he carries it within himself as a private treasure.

This is the picture of the perfected man; this is the ideal of the Mason. He will

not ask nor boast a higher perfection than mankind everywhere can attain. His perfection

can be no other than a human and the human perfection. Each man must be

busied continually in approximation to this goal. If the order has any efficacy, every

member must visibly and consciously occupy himself with this approximation. He

must keep this picture before his mind as an ideal set up and laid next to his heart. It

must be, as it were, the nature in which he lives and breathes.

It is very likely that not all, yes perhaps no one, of those who call themselves

Masons will reach this perfection. But who has ever measured the goodness of an

ideal or only an institution by what individuals actually attain? It depends on what

they can attain under the given circumstances; on what the institution through all given

means wills and points out that its members should attain.

Moreover, I do not say that Masons are necessarily better than other men, nor

that one cannot reach the same perfection outside of the order. It is quite possible

that a man who had never been taken into the society of Freemasons could resemble

the picture set forth above, and there actually comes to mind at this moment the picture

of a man in whom I find it eminently realized; and he at most knows the order

only by name. But the same man, if he had become in the order and through it what

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he has become by himself in the greater human society, would be more capable of

making others the same as he is, and his whole culture would be more social, more

communicable, and directly, also, essentially modified in its inner self. What comes

into being in society has in practice more life and strength than what is produced in

retirement.

These are the hints that I wished to give you as to the working of the Society of

Freemasons upon its members. Either it must effect a happy approximation to the

ideal set forth above, or nothing at all. More than that cannot be achieved. What is

less can be achieved everywhere. It is a matter of course that the members must be

susceptible to their salutary influence, also that the institutions must be of such a nature

that the most and the least susceptible nevertheless in his just relation profits in

it and goes forward.

And now the next question will be whether this organization has effect upon

the world.

SEVENTH LETTER

Can, indeed, this question be put forth seriously as a doubtful one? Can one

still ask whether the order has effect upon the world, upon the great human society?

Does not the man so trained in the sanctuary of the order remain as before in the

world and keep his place therein? Does he not remain, as before, husband, father of

a family, companion, member of the profession to which he belongs in the world?

Can his training acquired in the order, which has now become thoroughly his own,

which constitutes an essential part of his personality, which he cannot take off at will

when he leaves the lodge, fail to be visible in all these relationships? And so does not

the order through its members work most beneficially upon the world?

I remind you of one matter which you in your own thinking will support: No one

occupies his place in the greater society more suitably than he who can look out beyond

his place; who looks through and over not only his place but the fine boundary

lines which it transcends or trenches upon in the greater society, so that he is the

greater and clearer scholar who looks out over not only his own branch of learning

but also those adjoining it and even the whole field of knowledge. Only one who

stands in his place in this way conducts himself for the world intelligently and consciously.

The other is a blind machine which, perhaps, works rightly in its place, but

the operation of which is first directed to its true aim through the whole. The former

knows how at the right time now to relax the requirements and rules of his vocation,

now to hold strictly to them, now to sharpen them. The latter does not understand

this, but he goes like a machine today and tomorrow his fixed accustomed way. But it

is Masonry which raises all men above their vocation. In that it trains men, it directly

trains the most serviceable members of the greater society—the amiable and popular,

the learned and wise, not only the skilful but also the men of affairs possessed of

judgment, humane warriors, good heads of households, good bringers-up of children.

Whatever human relation one may think of, Masonry has the most advantageous influence

upon it.

Moreover, human society must be in a process of continual progress. All its relations

must continually become purer and perfect themselves. In particular, a well

ruled state progresses in legislation, in administration, in educational institutions, and

has even an ear open for proposals and improvements. Such a state, occupied with

progress toward perfection, can undertake nothing with agents who have never

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looked out beyond the narrow sphere of their special calling and can only go on in

the old rut. They are useless when an improvement goes forward. They have no desire

to be useful, and so resist improvement, and either turn all their influence to hinder

them or prepare for them a bad result, even with good intentions of furthering

them. Where the majority of the agents of a state is so constituted, it will ever remain

out of date. Indeed, already a wellgrounded study of the sciences rises above this

narrow circle of routine and tradition. Science shows the interdependence of all human

relations and indicates the point from which further progress must be made. But

does science actually have this influence upon the world? If the majority of men were

wont to study fundamentally when they study, if they were not in the habit of thoroughly

forgetting a few years later what perchance they bring away from the university,

if it were not for all this, what help is mere knowledge without practice? Here,

where nothing further can help, Masonry comes in as an institution of practice for

many-sidedness, and fills a gap which the great civil society must needs leave.

I remind you here in passing of the state in which we both live and to which

one would not without the highest injustice deny the fame of striving for perfection. I

will not decide whether this tendency also goes along with the Masonry which has

flourished in that state for a long time or whether and how it has been supported by

Masonry; but I can definitely pronounce that for the future this tendency must find a

good support in the order.

Consider also the following observation. In a remarkable writing in which men’s

callings are divided into two classes, and those are put in the first class which concern

themselves with training of the minds and hearts of others as well as with governing

them, and in the second, those which care for the needs of living on earth—in

this writing it is pointed out that the chief ground of the imperfection of many human

relations lies in the difficulty of exchange of effect and of reciprocal influence of these

two classes upon each other, and that it cannot become fundamentally better until

this reciprocal influence is thoroughly restored. Now if with me you hold that want of

cohesion and influence to be an evil, you will hold the order of Freemasons to be the

best antidote and take it to be the most suitable instrument of thorough-going improvement.

It unites in itself at least both ends of these two classes and brings both

nearer to each other without regard to the business of their professions and callings.

On this account it is urgently necessary that in a lodge (as indeed usually happens)

there be not only the learned but also the unlearned and that the learned sit side by

side with them, and not of the others be jealous because he is this and another that.

A member of the second class of callings who learns here to lay aside his mistrust or

reserve or fear or hate or contempt, at least with respect to the members of the first

class who are his brothers in the order; a member of the first class who learns to put

away his disdain at least as to the members of the second class who are his brothers,

will indeed take this frame of mind with him out of the lodge into the world, extend

his better opinion of these classes also to other members of them who are not

members of the order, and impart this better opinion to other uninitiated members of

his class. An upright citizen who had perchance learned that a scholar is not necessarily

a pedant, will no longer so unqualifiedly take this for granted outside of the order

and will impart this to other upright citizens who are not brothers. A scholar who

perhaps has learned in the order that an untaught official or citizen is not at the same

time an ignorant and unintelligent man, with whom one cannot talk reason and from

whom he can learn nothing, will also outside of the order treat such men with esteem

and spread about his discovery in speaking and writing. And so the Masonic order

23 23

may be one of the most important institutions for the world, which without it is essentially

defective.

Finally, although I can only point this out in a swift sketch, the order can work

for the state, for the church, and for the learned public, and can be useful to all societies

in order gradually to prepare and lead up to improvements whereby it is possible

to foresee resistance to one-sidedness.

You now have data enough as to the adaptability to its purpose, the utility, yes

and the indispensableness of the order of Freemasons in the great human and civil

society. What it can achieve is clear to you from natural and just deductions from the

statement of its purpose. Its effectiveness must follow if it has the purpose that its

members seek in this organization to acquire a general purely human training in contrast

to a special vocational training. But it must so surely have this reasonable and

irreproachable purpose that earnest, wise, and virtuous men will enduringly occupy

themselves with it.

EIGHTH LETTER

We will now develop our discussion to the end that the fundamental principles

hereinbefore set forth may in their application be sufficient for forming a judgment on

Masonic subjects, and hence for judging of the present condition of Masonry in general,

for judging of Masonic ritual, laws, and regulations, especially of the Masonic

contributions of individual lodges and brothers, and finally even, in case a reformation

should be found needful, where and how it should be properly reformed. But in order

that those fundamental principles appear actually sufficient thereto, they must now be

formulated separately in detail and more broadly applied. For this purpose we must

turn back once more to the first fundamental principles and agree upon them.

First Fundamental Principle. The end-purpose of human existence is not at all

in this present world. This first life is only preparation and germ of a higher existence,

the certainty of which we feel within, notwithstanding we can think nothing as to its

condition or kind or manner.

Second Fundamental Principle. The purposes which are laid down for the

present life, as well as this present life itself, obtain for us only through worth and

meaning, in that the former are commended us and only in the latter can these purposes

be carried out. All our possible behavior only presents itself and can only

present itself to us as a furthering of that highest purpose of the present life. There is

no direct work and preparation for eternity, but one prepares himself for it and apprehends

it here below only through this, that one with the most honest will has furthered

the commanded purposes of the present life.

We have to do, therefore, above all and immediately with the present life. The

proposed purpose of that life is the only apprehensible one. It must be furthered by

the good and wise man with clear consciousness. We will lead it back to three principal

points, and thus more definitely describe it and set it off.

First: The whole of humanity ought to make a single purely moral and devout

community. This is the purpose of the church; of course, the church in the idea which

as visible church is still ever in existence. Toward this purpose all development of the

spirit is related as means.

Second: All humanity ought to constitute a single thoroughly just state. The relation

of individual men to one another in states, the relation of these states to one

another on earth, ought to be thoroughly ordered by the eternal rules of right pre-

24 24

scribed by reason. This is the purpose of all lawmaking in the individual states and of

all covenants and treaties of peoples with each other. A good part of the sciences is

related to this if one does not look only at the training of the spirit to be maintained

thereby (as this happened above in another connection) instead of at its actual content

as the means to ends.

Third, finally: The rational existence should thoroughly prevail over irrational

nature and the dead mechanism be subjected to the command of a will. Any purpose

which any rational being, led through its nature, can propose to itself, ought to be capable

of being carried out outside of it in lifeless nature, and nature should be fitted to

the rational will. Mechanical art and a good part of the sciences, according to their

content, are means thereto.

Let us now apply these principal ideas more closely to our purpose.

The furthering of these ends, or better of this one common end of humanity, is

something now in the greater human society divided among many single vocations,

so that the members of these vocational groups develop themselves almost exclusively,

and at least particularly, only for their calling and later through their calling.

You see that it is a natural result of this arrangement that the members of the occupational

group only obtain a part of human development, in no wise the whole; and

more or less one-sidedness of the spirit and of culture is the lot of the individual. Because

of this necessary arrangement and under these circumstances, it is difficult to

find anywhere a whole real man. One must construct such a man out of many persons

of different and opposed callings. One could scarcely find him in the great field

of general human society and its customary institutions of training.

Now it is a matter of consequence to bring this one-sided vocational culture to

one place and to recast it to one which is general and purely human, as it were (if I

may keep to the picture set forth above), to make actual the proposed construction of

a whole, real man out of a number of persons, and not merely in thought but so that

in this recasting each individual for himself, so far as possible, should be in fact this

real whole man. This problem is nowhere solved in the great society. This, I have

shown you, is the one possible and permissible purpose of a smaller society, made

up from all callings and all developed peoples, arisen by setting off from the greater

society, which now calls itself Freemasonry. From this we derive further the following

and quite evident conclusion that every subject of human culture which can be attained

in society, yet in another manner than in the greater society, is likewise a subject

of Masonic culture, and that it is good and needful that the Mason make his own

the greatest part of the training, let it be through sciences, through art, or through

business and experience. Only, everything one-sided, that is, what in the greater society,

through the setting off of a branch of culture from the whole mass of culture,

falls upon this single branch and depends upon it, and furthermore all that is fortuitous,

which has been established through the circumstances of the time and the

place, in some one department of this culture —that in Masonry all this be separated

there from and after the recasting remain behind as caput mortuum. So, in order to

adduce but one example, religious training is no doubt a part of Masonic education;

but the religion of the Mason is something wholly other than that of any existing

church or indeed any particular sect, or even of the superficially philosophizing and

dishonestly expounding deists and interpreters of the Bible.8

8 He refers to a group of thinkers in the eighteenth century who sought to construct a natural religion

on the basis of reason alone, rejecting all Revelation.

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NINTH LETTER

Before we now take a step further, I must discuss first an important truth and

refute a common opinion, the presence of which in your soul would powerfully disturb

the impression of what I still have to say to you. If this truth has not as yet been heard

by you, and fitted in the series of what has heretofore been set forth, attend to the following

proposition and you will find how precisely it prepares for and introduces this

truth.

I put my proposition in clear form: all training in society which depends upon

will proceeds from training of the understanding. It is, indeed (thus I anticipate the

possible objection) by far not enough to know the truth. One must have also the

strong will to obey it, and this resolution of the will in no wise proceeds from mere

knowledge, and no one can demonstrate it either to himself or others from first principles.

It is something different, independent of mere insight; and there is no logical

consecutiveness in the proposition: he must understand this, therefore he must will it.

But even the best will, if it were possible where there is great darkening of the

understanding, would be of no use and no value if one could not apprehend what he

wishes to will with his good will. Those, therefore, who cry out to the unwelcome

learner who endures instruction under them: “Have nothing to do with knowledge;

that may do for the schools; do, do, that is the thing”—they without doubt, to speak

most gently of them, know nothing of what they speak.

To do is, no doubt, the thing; it is the consummation of the thing. But how will

you do without long investigation of what it is you are to do? Will you act blindly like

the animal? That is truly not the thing. One who would speak in this way and knew of

himself how to apprehend everything about doing, he seems to me like a blind man

who would retort to the physician who engages to restore his sight: “What help to me

is mere seeing; the mere glimpse, which is all you can give me? My knowledge will

not be enriched thereby. The eyes fasten upon an object, they let themselves rest

upon it, contemplate it and survey it—that is the matter of consequence, that is the

thing.” Stupid—of course that is the thing. Would you cast your recovered glimpse

dumb and dull upon objects, like a bull, and leave the forms flowing into one another

before him to stagger past? Thus, of course, you would glimpse nothing with your

glimpse. Only await this fixing and adjusting and abiding of your sight in vain from

any physician or any eye salve. This you must take from yourself, from your own

power. But you can direct and adjust no glimpse unless you first have a glimpse; and

this I will give you as preliminary. The right use of it will be your affair.

You see that to will is not to will because of knowledge, but to will the known

because of the willed.

What shall one say, therefore, to those who, when they observe that everyone

everywhere works for clear knowledge, call out to him, “But man is not simply and

only understanding.” Certainly he is not that alone. Also I say will is for itself. But no

one can immediately produce effects upon the will of another nor, as it were, will into

it, or put in motion or move it. This comes ever from inward out; never from outward

in.

I, for my person, know only two kinds of influence upon men. The first and by

far the most important is through instruction. But here knowing does not make doing.

To this end everyone must determine of himself. In order to bring him thereto, there

remains nothing except the good example by which one points out to him partly the

practicability of the precept, partly the loveliness of its achievement.

26 26

I, for my person, I repeat, know only these two sorts. Yet I remember you know

still a third for which you stand up: You will also to make men better through emotion

and shock, through what you call the heart and through fantasy; a meaning which all

public speakers are attached to. Believe me, Constant, so certain it is only enduring

improvement of the will deserves to be called improvement, so certainly nothing is to

be accomplished by the proposed method—indeed, the frequent use of it is absolutely

harmful. Through this that one is moved and sheds a flood of tears or is intoxicated

with elevated thoughts, he can indeed be brought to a transient good deed or restrained

from a bad deed. But when the mental smoke is past he is again the man he

was before, and we have won nothing by the external act, upon which we must never

rely if we seek the true purpose. It can very easily happen that one who often and

readily sheds tears takes it that because of that he is a good man, and neglects the

self-examination and self-cultivation which alone could have saved him.

Just as, therefore, in this institution of training the instruction is the most real,

so is it also in Masonry. In the following letters I shall proceed upon those presuppositions

to relate the objects of Masonic training above set forth to instruction and to

answer the question: If the matter stands as I have said above, what in consequence

is the object of Masonic instruction and how and through what, according to its essential

character, is that instruction Masonic?

TENTH LETTER

I gave you as the common purpose of mankind that it should achieve a single

purely moral church, a thoroughly just state, and subject irrational nature to the command

of a will. I stop now at the first part of this purpose, the training toward pure

morality and devoutness, and begin with an assertion wholly discrepant from the one

usually made, that is, that there is no Masonic education and training toward morality.

Even more, there is in general no such education, and there can be none; and it is

without doubt one of the most pernicious tendencies of our time that men should still

believe this, since one indicates openly thereby that he does not know true morality

and confuses it with gentility, conformity to law, and the like, for which, to be sure,

there is an education.

Morality (one speaks often of pure morality when he means simply morality,

since there is no impure morality and what is impure is therefore not moral) —morality,

therefore, is that one do his well understood duty, with absolute inner freedom,

without any external incentive, simply because it is his duty. This resolution is one

that a man can only choose for himself. It cannot be taught or demonstrated, much

less entreated or worked up through emotion or coerced.

This morality residing within is everywhere but one, the just now proposed

good will, something positive which is capable of no increase or diminution, of no

change and no alteration through circumstances. There cannot, therefore, be any

special Masonic morality, as sometimes supposed. I meant the single true morality

when I wrote in a former letter that there were objects which, since they were everywhere

no object of social development, could also not be object of Masonic development;

about which everyone could go into judgment only with himself and God, but in

no wise with any other and in respect of which even Masonry would be a profanation.

There are undoubtedly special duties which Masonry enjoins upon its members,

which they would not have if not members of this society. Whether one observes

27 27

these duties out of pure love as a duty or on other grounds, that is something which a

man determines for himself and not as a Mason.

Even if, therefore, there is no special Masonic morality, is there yet a special

Masonic religion, or —in order to obviate all misunderstanding—a specially Masonic

view of religion and on that account a Masonic training toward religion? We are

speaking here of moral not of ecclesiastical organized religion, with which Masonry

everywhere has nothing to do. We will consider this more narrowly.

In accordance with the definition we have given, Masonry has to separate from

every single branch of human culture the incidental which the conditions of time and

place have attached to them and moreover to separate what is one-sided or exaggerated,

arising necessarily from the cutting off of this branch from the whole stem of

culture, and must put back in the whole all that is human in its purity and in its coherence.

This is its character, which it must verify also in the given case.

Now religious training in the greater society has undoubtedly taken on a mass

of the incidental and one-sided, and if it is needful that the influences of this manner

of training be put an end to, it must be done in the Masonic manner. The religious

opinions of peoples, as could not be otherwise, have annexed to their customs and

usages, to their views of life, to their sciences and art; and in these respects one is

as right as another. No doubt the Godhead has appeared to all of them and has

mightily manifested itself among them; to the Jews in their wonderful deliverance

from servitude to Egypt, to the Romans in the founding of their eternal capitol, to the

Arabs as a man out of their ranks united the scattered nomadic tribes and bade a

huge empire arise almost out of nothing. Only if they quarrel with one another, if the

one contradicts the history of another and seeks to force its own upon his as the only

truth, then they begin to be wrong.

Every man who is born in society is necessarily born in some part of it, under

some nation, and keeps along with the rest of the products of this nation, its external

national form of the religious. The theologians of all nations have exerted themselves

from the beginning to raise the spirit of their profession to the place of the general human

spirit; and they have succeeded only too well. The perfectly developed man

must utterly lay aside this wholly incidental form, which is not pure human but is a

sketch of a man. He who has religion should not be a Jew, or an uncircumcised associate

of Jews, or a Roman or an Arab, but he should be absolutely a man.

Religious opinion in the greater society, through cutting itself off from the rest

of human culture and surrendering to a special organization, the visible church, must

keep an obvious one-sidedness. To the man who has nothing to do and will do nothing

more than lead others to devoutness, the religion which he will bring to others is

no doubt a purpose and the only purpose of his life. He knows it for this and in that

respect is entirely right. Without the pure human frame of mind, he will easily be

tempted to wish to make all about him to his like, and to make for all religion—which

here does not mean the one which they bring to others but much more the one which

they ought to have—to make this religion also the single purpose and business of

life. From that he will easily be tempted to exhort those entrusted to him to confine

themselves, in order to become truly pious, to seeking the eternal outside of freedom.

Some will believe him and obey him and— it is the mildest that I can say it—will have

a very one-sided devoutness.

Such is not the true Mason. To him, this striving for a devoutness existing for

itself appears wholly like the striving of a man who aspires to swim and to swim elegantly

without going into the water. He knows of no aspiring to the eternal beyond the

28 28

conscientious furtherance of the temporal out of pure love of duty; it does not befall

him to aim at the heavenly jewel which he cannot perceive. He aims only at the

earthly goal which is set up for him, in the firm trust that the heavenly is latent behind

it and that it will come to him without his doing more if only he has attained his earthly

goal.

To him, devoutness is nothing isolated and existing for itself, so that a man can

be very strong in piety but in other respects weak and backward and a bad man. He

is not religious, but he thinks and acts religious; to him religion is not an object, but

only the ether in which all objects appear. He puts his whole strength to every task

which comes to him at the moment, and the observer might think that he had nothing

to do but attain this purpose and that this filled out his whole existence and all his

motivation. But in fact he has nothing to do with the mere existence, and it has not

the least value for him in and of itself and because of itself. Only he strives for the

eternal and to him invisible and incomprehensible which is latent behind this earthly

husk, and only on account of this that is latent has what the observer sees got any

meaning for him. His frame of mind is ever in eternity, his powers are ever with you.

But it does not occur to him only to live in heaven in proud fashion with his mind and

to leave his powers at rest on earth; since there is no mind without effective power to

yield something to think out.

ELEVENTH LETTER

The special calling to which the religious bringing up of the greater society is

entrusted, which sees nothing which goes beyond the ministry of its office, and cannot

see it, since in fact if it pursued the true aim that must remain invisible to it, can

easily be tempted to endeavor toward usefulness and to make its ministry a visible,

tangible activity, its business a social and political influence. One who thinks of the

members of this profession in this way will have recourse to the usual means of

bringing men to morality through fear of punishment hereafter and hope of eternal reward,

and call this religion. Poor fellow! He knows not that what he brings about

through fear and cupidity of reward is absolutely not morality but only external respectability

and conformity to law and that he, so far as is in his power, contributes to

deaden forever, both for morality and for religion, those upon whom he works.

It is not so with the Mason. He knows that in the greater society where there is

no ethical custom at least external conformity to law must be coerced. He knows that

it is a false and, more than this, a highly dangerous pretense to take this conformity

to law as preparation for morals; that it only exists and must be supported with all

strength in order that human society may endure. But he will never give himself to

this purpose since he knows also that the state has provided prisons and houses of

correction and other well known institutions to that end, and he is far from wishing

that religion, the holiest thing mankind has, should be degraded to the position of an

inefficient policeman.

What concerns the Mason himself and the Masonic society is so understood

that one who needs desire for reward and fear of punishment in order to remain an

honorable man does not belong in the society since he, widely removed from standing

in need of attempt to improve his received training for the society, has himself

hardly that training; so that such a person is to be left out of account in Masonic arrangements.

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The Mason must do good and shun vice out of a feeling of duty or at very least

a feeling of honor even if he also (although this is not possible) knows or believes not

the least of God or religion; and this not as Mason but as man who, as we conceive

it, is only just capable of Masonry. Therefore, the Mason cannot wish to consider or

use religion as a stimulus to virtue; even if only on the one ground already adduced

above, since religion cannot be this inasmuch as all that is based upon an external

motive ceases to be virtue.

Religion could be used to calm the mind and heart; toward calm at seeing the

apparent contradiction between the law of duty and the course of the world, but is not

used for this by the perfect Mason since he does not need to be calmed in any such

way.

To be sure, everyone is first led to religion through perceiving that contradiction.

That last earthly purpose of humanity is set up for me through my most inner

self. Acts, works, sacrifices are imposed upon me for this purpose. I cannot in my

heart refuse obedience to this voice. But if I am attentive to the march of events and

destiny of the world, all my labor for this purpose seems lost; indeed, sometimes it

seems a hindrance to the purpose. Everything seems as well or ill directed exactly as

it goes, wholly without regard to my work, through an invisible and blind power. It is

this consideration, Constant, which soon forces itself upon the conscientious coldly

observing man—it is this which leads a man to religion, and sets up for him, instead

of the earthly purpose, as to which he doubts, although he does not give up, an invisible

and eternal purpose. Therefore, perhaps, it is necessity which leads him to religion,

but the completely developed man, in which category I will now for once think

of the Mason, does not remain standing on this step. Now he has religion; it has become

an essential part of himself. He needs it no more just because he has it. The

law of duty and the course of the world contradict each other no more because he

now knows a higher world of which this one is only a practicing appearance. He is

now forever freed from the doubt which drove him to belief. Through this now even

his religion preserves the character which I attributed to it above, so that it is to him

no more an object of his activity but instead, if I may so express it, limb and instrument

of all his activity. But is not to him something which he makes for himself, which

he remembers and calls to notice, but something through which he makes himself

unconsciously wholly another. It is the eye of his life, which he, when he resigns himself,

if it is not reflected back to him by the mirror of artificial reflection, does not see

but by which he sees everything else which he sees.

And now I believe I have exhausted what from a Masonic point of view has to

do with the first part of the collective purpose of humanity. I have been at the greatest

length about it because it serves to explain what follows and because I wished to

give you for this most important part a detailed example of Masonic teaching and

doctrine.

TWELFTH LETTER

The second chief point in the collective purpose of humanity, according to my

eighth letter, has to do with bringing about a thoroughly just organization among men,

of the citizens in the state and of the states with one another, whereby all mankind finally

constitute a single state, ordered and ruled by eternal rules of right derived from

reason. We come now only to this, to set forth the state of mind and mode of thought

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of the Mason through which he cooperates to bring about this chief purpose of humanity.

I can do this briefly and definitely as follows:

As one in his eyes relates the earthly purpose to the eternal, even so the

present, proximate purpose of the state in which he lives is related to the earthly purposes

of collective mankind. As everything earthly only means to him the eternal, and

only through the eternal, for the husk of which he recognizes the earthly, does the

earthly have value for him, so all laws and ordinances of his state and all occurrences

of his time mean for him only the whole human race and bring themselves

into relation for him only to the whole human race and have only worth and meaning

for him in this respect.

Only I do not believe that the perfectly trained man will thereby be withdrawn

from his state and be given over to a cold, inert cosmopolitanism. He will, on the contrary,

become through this disposition the most perfect and useful citizen. Just as in

respect of religion, notwithstanding his mind is wholly with the eternal, he dedicates

his whole strength to the state, to his city, to the office to which he belongs, to the

particular little spot of earth where he lives, notwithstanding his mind goes upon the

whole. In his frame of mind love of fatherland and sense of world citizenship are most

intimately united, and, indeed, stand both in a definite relation. Love of fatherland is

his act, sense of world-citizenship is his thought; the first is the phenomenon, the

second is the inner spirit of this phenomenon, the invisible in the visible.

Then even so, Constant, as a religion which would exist for itself is vain and

perverted and ridiculous, so a cosmopolitanism which would exist for itself and exclude

patriotism is perverted and vain and foolish. “The individual is nothing,” says

the cosmopolitan, “I think and care and live only for the whole; may it be better for the

whole, may order and peace spread abroad over it.” Good! But tell me, how you expect

to get at this whole with the salutary state of mind which you assert you entertain

with respect to it? Whether you will to do well toward it in general and as it were

in the lump? Is then the whole something different from the single parts united in

thought? Can it in any way be better in the whole if it does not begin to be better in

any single part? But if only you seek first to make yourself better and then to make

your two neighbors on the right and left better, I think the whole will now undoubtedly

be better, since it has one or two or three individuals who have certainly become better.

The Mason recognizes this, and on that account manifests his cosmopolitanism

through the strongest activity for the very place where he stands. So also as

defectively as the civil laws under which he lives may be drawn up, and as deeply as

he may see their deficiency, he obeys them as if they were expressions of pure reason

itself, since he knows that defective laws and constitutions are better than none

at all; that defective laws are the precursors of better ones, and that no one of them

can be altered or abrogated without the intent of all; that no one can abrogate them

merely by simple tacit disobedience. Only if the charges which the state gives him

are directly and incontrovertible contrary to right it goes without saying that he does

not undertake to carry them out and on this account will go to destruction—and this

not only as a Mason but also as a mere upright man. Except for this one case, he

performs with a care and applying of his strength as if he had nothing else to do, the

things which have to do with the tasks and purposes of the state, so far as that after

him they may be much better, and according to his insight those tasks and purposes

ought to be achieved. Then he has for the time nothing to regulate but only to obey;

and he knows that the going on of the whole is reckoned upon his obedience. Only in

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this is he different from those who obey out of fear or for profit or from custom, that

he does it all entirely for the whole world and for the sake of the whole world.

As to what belongs to the third part of the collective purpose of humanity, the

purpose that non-rational nature be subjected completely to the rational will, and that

rational being rule over dead mechanism, it is essentially part of the Mason’s mode of

thought that he know this, that he recognizes therein the purpose of humanity, and

that on this account he respect and esteem from this point of view every human occupation,

however insignificant it may be. Acquaintance with this purpose and respect

for it, serves him to the end that he value men not according to the greater or

smaller place which they chance to occupy but according to the fidelity with which

they exercise its duties. From this point of view the lowliest mechanical labor is on an

equality with the highest mental employment, since the former as well as the latter

advances the dominion of reason and extends its conquered realm. A peasant or a

day laborer who performs his work with real fidelity and attention, on account of his

duty and for the sake of the whole, and brings it to successful conclusion, has his station

in the eyes of reason above the ineffective scholar and the useless philosopher.

One who masters this point of view will not only value justly the world and its relations

but also will brighten his own value through the elevated standpoint which he

has attained.

To bring about, to fortify, to animate this mode of thought, toward this, my

friend, all instruction which I call Masonic must proceed. You will now be able to estimate

how this instruction must be given and taken as well as how without this instruction

nothing can be gained.

THIRTEENTH LETTER

Let us in a few words look back over the whole path which we have traveled

over.

Freemasonry, according to our investigation, is an institution which has to efface

the one-sidedness of the training which a man receives in the greater society

and to elevate that mere half training into one general and purely human. We asked,

what are the parts and objects of human cultivation which are to be received in this

society? And we answered: Training toward religion, as citizen of an invisible world,

for the state, as citizen of a part of the visible world, and finally for readiness and skill

as a reasonable being to rule over irrational nature. Again, we asked, what are the

means employed by the society to bring this cultivation to its members?

And we answered: Instruction and example. And now first the question to be

answered was: How can it be actually that Masonic instruction and Masonic example

further the ultimate purpose?

We answered: In religion, separation of everything incidental which the conditions

of time and place have brought into the religious opinion of the society, whereby

religion is put forward one-sidedly as either something single, separate from all our

acts, or as means for some material purpose. In respect to the training for law and

right: The most intimate union of the sense of world citizenship with the sense of

state-citizenship, in which the Mason obeys the laws of his land and the regulations

of its ruling authorities with the most punctilious precision, but not as if only his land

existed (the devastating patriotism of the Romans) but because it is a part of the

whole of humanity. Finally, in respect of the purpose of subjecting nature to reason,

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acquaintance with this purpose serves in part to encourage him to fidelity to his calling

and to point out to him a higher point of view for his apparently unordered employments,

in part to give him the true measure of respect for a true promoter of the

purpose of humanity, no matter what his position may be.

Upon what Masonic example as such depends, how a procedure becomes evident

among the members of the society in which one cannot fail to appreciate the

many-sidedness of their state of mind, the purity of their mode of thought, in which

each strives to cooperate toward the welfare of the other, without arrogance or conceit,

with sacrifice of his claims as citizen, scholar, or artist, and with sole regard to

fruitful usefulness toward living to the effect upon pure human development—all this,

Constant, you will be able to abstract and set off by itself from what has been said.

We will not busy ourselves only with Masonic instruction and, after we have considered

its matter, will seek further: How can such a thing originate, be propagated, and

be increased?

Also we persist in this inquiry, as in all that have gone before, immovably upon

the standpoint of the uninitiated, who knows nothing historical about mysteries and

orders, as that which is commonly known, which he, on the other hand, reaches as a

conclusion loving the truth and consistently.

So long as men, we now argue further, do not train themselves actually in the

state of nature, and are trained consciously, with design and according to rule but

through the circumstances to which they passively yield, there is no speaking about

the training which we mean here, neither of one which is public in the greater civil society,

nor of a secret one in a special narrower organization. Mankind ripens in these

circumstances only at first to capacity for a thought out and calculated training.

This maturity comes and there come forth special callings, religious institutions,

or a priesthood, laws, constitution and magistracy; there arises, in a word, that

whole condition of mankind which I described in one of the first letters.

Since according to my presupposition all proceed from the state of nature from

the same point, at first the difference in their cultivation cannot be very noticeable nor

the one-sidedness and superficiality of this cultivation be very great.

But the separation continues. The new races of man are born from now on in

certain callings and for certain callings. With each new age the different callings are

more sharply cut off from one another, and now gradually along with the advantages

of social cultivation come the disadvantages described above, and especially this disadvantage,

the need of helping it out through a separate organization.

It is not unknown to me that in a number of states and systems of government,

especially in antiquity, there were various wholly public contrivances and institutions

which opposed so sharp a separation of walks of life as we see in the modern world

and brought about a tolerable balance in the cultivation of all. But I know at the same

time that these contrivances were only in a very few states of the old world and that

they were far from producing full evenness of cultivation of the mind.

In a word: The deficiencies in human development, which, according to our

conclusions, can only be done away with by an organization such as we think the

Masonic society as it exists in the present is, must be almost as old as the whole

constitution of society, since they are a necessary consequence there of. But if they

existed, so no doubt there were always superior men who observed them. If, however,

they were observed, so without doubt those who observed them found the one

possible means of remedying them, namely, separation in close societies for the purpose

of pure human training, and have joined with like-minded others in order to car-

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ry out their ideas. It is, therefore, in the highest degree likely that from the beginning

in addition to the public training in society there was a secret training which went on

beside it, rose and fell with it, had an unobserved influence upon the former and, on

the other hand, was gained or tolerated through the influence of the former. For example,

there was Pythagoras and his famous band in the states of Magna Græcia.

Hence we put as the first proposition which deserves our attention the following: It

may well be, so far as history reaches, there were always secret institutions of training

separate and necessarily separate from the public institutions.

FOURTEENTH LETTER

It is only where there are no institutions for training through the ordered greater

society that we find no secret institutions for training. With raw savages or nomadic

pastoral peoples there is no need of an institution to efface the one-sidedness of the

priesthood or of the lawmaking, since they have not yet matured even to priesthood

or lawmaking. With them, therefore, one has no mysteries to seek. There is then an

absurd superstition. There are no mysteries which direct and elevate their authorized

national truth, for they have as yet no natural truth.

We know fairly well through history what course the public training has taken. It

is true the origin and first source of this training is hidden in secret darkness or is covered

up in mythical poetry, and so we have later found peoples with a high degree of

cultivation (as to this think only of the Hindus and the Chinese) the history of whose

development does not at all join on to the chain which we have reviewed and makes

no part of it; but which alone could only represent a higher source of culture for our

race than that which our history knows.

Nevertheless, we see also in our own history a progress and an unbroken

chain of culture, which goes forward from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from them to

the people of Asia Minor, from them back to the Greeks, from them to the Romans,

and from them after the union with Christianity which arose in the East, to the new

peoples of Europe.

In this whole sequence there was need of secret institutions of training. It is

probable, according to our first proposition above, that they did actually exist.

The whole public culture in the time and series of peoples described is always

one and the same culture; a continuous thread which took on the impression of the

national character of each people to which it came, and through the progress of the

human spirit, was won and fully developed with each people.

It is therefore in the highest degree likely—and this is the second natural conclusion

which we come to from the standpoint of the uninitiated—that a like continuous

chain of secret culture by the side of that thread of public culture, ran on through

the same times and peoples, and like the public culture has come down to our times.

It is possible that, just as Christianity, coming out of another source, united with the

public culture, at the same time also the existing secret culture annexed the secret

culture of the same eastern peoples among which public Christianity arose.

FIFTEENTH LETTER

As to the public culture, it would unquestionably be suitable that anyone, so far

as he is susceptible of it, have the easiest access to it which is possible, so that it

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could be laid away in enduring monuments after the time that the art was found of

giving to the fleeting thoughts and fugitive words permanence and visibleness to the

eye. But not every man is to have access to the secret culture, but, according to its

nature, only he who has already undergone the public culture and has already completed

it so far as possible. As is clear from all that has been said, the secret culture

cannot proceed from the public culture; much more it presupposes the public culture.

Even so little can it go by the side of the public culture without the purposes of both

becoming vain. It can only come after it. But now one can—let me always carefully

explain this point—attain in two ways to the proper end of all secret culture, that is,

the purely human development. It can be done either of itself alone, by talent, deep

meditation, and investigation, by cultivation of the mind and heart according to the results

of this meditation, or through a society, which, then, can be, not the greater civil

society (since even here one would find that isolated condition) but only a smaller,

separate society.

In the first case, as what we are viewing has come into existence by way of

meditation, it takes on the form of meditation. It is argued, tried by dialectic, demonstrated;

its conclusions are refuted and verified. Nothing hinders that one in this form

preach it from the house tops, or if one will, write it out or allow it to be printed.

So it is quite possible, in order to take the most enlightening example from fact,

that I in these letters have sought to set forth the most intimate spirit of all possible

mysteries according to my best knowledge and power, and in no way have kept anything

back to myself, while I always made use of the form of argument and ordinary

speech. But at the same time I am very sure that I have not in the least revealed either

to you or to anyone who might chance to read these letters what he may not

know and I may not say. For there are in all bookstores books for open sale which,

although indeed they treat of Masonry, yet do not reveal a syllable of Masonry.

But on the other hand—and mark this diligently— there are in all bookstores

books of Masons and of non-Masons which make no mention of Masonry, whose authors

perhaps did not know one word of Masonry, which nevertheless are throughout

genuinely Masonic.

Therefore, I repeat, nothing hinders one from making common the pattern of

the mysteries, so long as the speech and writing are common—but not the mysteries.

One who has it not in himself already will never apprehend it. To him the speech will

convert itself into a series of unintelligible tones, the writing into white paper; or if a

sense comes out of it, it is a confused and half sense, not at all the whole and full

sense which was intended. It then becomes disputed and a treaty of partition is concluded

as to how far one at all events would leave what has been asserted to hold

good, and how far not. Something is always won thereby; at least the way is prepared

for the truth. But not understanding or misunderstanding brings about a very

small injury; one which is as good as none. What is it then, finally, which is misinterpreted,

but a philosophy? What is it to which damage has been done except to the

glory of the author of this philosophy, who, if he had only a spark of true spirit, would

put no value upon his glory.

But now with respect to the second case, when one receives pure human culture

through a secret (that is merely separate) society, the instruction which is prescribed

for the closed society may easily have taken on a wholly different form—not

of arguments, which leads to disputing, in that it proposes grounds of reasoning,

challenges to proof of these grounds, and will hold true no further than the grounds

will reach, but in the simple telling: “So it is once for all, we know it; and every one

35 35

who presents himself as like us will know it.” This instruction must be applied, not like

the first exclusively to the understanding, but instead to the whole of the man, so as

not to admit any disputing. But it is needful, finally, that, according to the presupposition

it came down from the hoariest antiquity and be clothed in metaphorical expressions

and pictures.

If such instruction comes to one who is not susceptible of it, he will, it goes

without saying, understand it as little as the first—the philosophical, argumentative.

But one does not dispute him nor engage in compromises, since he himself offers

none and wishes to be agreed to in toto. Men reject him at once as fundamentally

false and visionary, or if he is dependent on the pictures, as nonsensical and absurd,

deride him and give him the reward of the common subject of laughter. From now on

it is not, as in the first case, an individual that is blamed, but the whole purpose of a

necessary society is forever made vain.

This instruction of the separate society—and this is what I wished to point out

—can never be laid down in enduring monuments for everyone whom accident might

lead to them. It can only be communicated to him whose susceptibility has been maturely

tried and investigated. With one who does not understand it, it perishes before

birth. One who actually understands it and values it, as he should, gives it out further

surely and not without enlightenment. Since one may err in trial of a person, so he

must make use of external means such as solemn engagements, in order to assure

secrecy even in respect of the external forms.

And now I come to my third significant conclusion: It is most highly probable,

so I conclude, that the secret teaching can only be transmitted through oral and in no

wise through written tradition. Written communication must be strictly forbidden. If our

supposition stated above, that an unbroken chain of secret culture, along with the

public culture, has come down from antiquity to our times, has a sound basis, so one

must seek the secret teaching in no wise in books but only in a still persisting oral

transmission. Also this supposition seems to be confirmed by the circumstance that

at the time of arising of the earlier mysteries publication of ideas in writing was not

truly possible, and in secret and holy things men continued in the customary practice.

I know very well all the disadvantages of the oral transmission and the whole

difficulty of delivering to the succession of members something of such a tradition all

the way to a demonstrable truth. But I know also that there is a remedy against that

disadvantage, there are mitigations of all difficulties to be found through mere meditation,

without historical instruction. In a word, I know that everywhere a proof of the

genuineness of such an oral transmission is possible, the conveying of which, however,

would carry me too far afield. Only one observation presses itself upon me here

which I recognize as important and I cannot forbear making. It is as follows: It could

not fail to be that a present secret culture have influence upon the public culture and

that many occurrences of public history which stand there in discontinuity, may be

fully comprehended through the secret culture; that individual persons who were participants

of the secret tradition also stand out as notable persons in public history. It

is, therefore, entirely thinkable that public history can be clarified out of the secret history.

On the contrary, it would be necessary, according to the fundamental proposition

just set forth, that one who possesses the secret learning let sink all which

through any fault of his got abroad to public knowledge, renounce it and no longer

build upon it, so that forthwith the secret history of culture should not be proved by

the public history, and that no datum of the latter could be likewise a datum of the for-

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mer. Whatever came to public hands, at once through this ceased to be a part of the

secret science, and therefore the endeavor to put together a secret history out of the

public history may be undertaken with great caution.

SIXTEENTH LETTER

In this way a secret instruction could actually be brought into existence and

come down to our time which would now be preserved in the interior of a special society.

But what value and what meaning could the instruction, which has come down

through the course of time, have for us? I ask this as well in my name as in yours.

Shall it perchance lay fetters upon freedom and the progress of reason, to strike

down through authority the free urge toward research and command blind faith?

Boldly and as loud as possible and upon every risk I cry out: Far be it from the Mason,

who should have laid aside all fetters of authority that here he allow himself to

fight in new secret fetters; far be it from him, who strives to attain pure human development

and everywhere to live only in the spirit, that here he allow himself to be

bound to a new fetter; far be it from the society which scorns all spirit of a calling, that

it should itself change into a calling. What were, then, they who deposited the first

germ of this possibly extant instruction, those later who developed it, completed it, increased

it? What were they which their later successors were not also? What had

they in themselves which the latter do not equally have in themselves? With what

right did they do what they did that the latter do not have the same right?

The public culture has gone forward with the progress of time; the secret culture

has probably done the same. The public culture will go on further, and the secret

culture cannot stand still and remain behind the former. But every traditional instruction,

if there is such a thing, can have no other authority than that which its venerable

age gives it, none other than that which any man and any human work covet over

other men: That one voluntarily presupposes that wisdom may be concealed in it,

that one earnestly strive to find this wisdom, and that one joyfully take it up after he

has found it, and has verified it in his own understanding and heart.

This traditional instruction could and should be nothing other to the initiate than

what Homer, Sophocles, Plato are to us as sharers in the public culture. That one

faithfully preserve this survival, that he do not adulterate it, or where it is adulterated

that he restore it to its original purity, is reasonable and is required by proper respect

for antiquity. That one in all instruction should start out from this and make it, as it

were, the text of his reflections, would be proper in order to preserve the unity of the

traditional chain and give it over to the world to come always as just the same. That

one declare and use it toward the only possible purpose of all mysteries, so that pure

and general human development be aimed at, is plainly necessary and any other

avowal is wrong.

This restoration of the old, moreover this added interpretation adapted to the

culture of the time is what every age adds to it, whereby the ensemble of instruction

is increased and broadened, which was the second part of my proposition.

Thus each builds upon that basis of the traditional what he has—one firm

building materials, another (to apply here a picture used by a holy writer9) straw and

stubble. But both must be confirmed through the test of time and be preserved for the

9 The reference is perhaps to Exodus, 5: 11-12.

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age to come, which then may decide whether these materials shall be added to the

old treasure or rejected as unserviceable.

But, you have already long since asked, how, if the purpose of Masonry is so

thoroughly defined, as has been set forth and explained in these letters, can any Mason

(as the profane well know it) so misjudge it as to pass on wholly unserviceable

and foreign contributions? This goes with another complaint which I have often heard

reported, so that the same answer is to be given to each. I mean the complaint about

the frightful contrast of the ideal set up by Masonry with what is the common reality. I

answer: Everywhere by no means are all those Masons who bear this name, but all

should be and no one who carries this name should be given up. So long as this happens,

so long as there is striving only for this ideal, the society is Masonic—conceding

also that no one of its members attains this purpose, and conceding further that

up to this day the actual purpose of existing Masonry has been to seek its purpose.

So if this purpose is established, let us not merely know but do and zealously

do over, the more we can always find the actuality in our meaning is behind the ideal.

One who in viewing the deficiency in human relations, the unserviceableness,

the perverseness, the corruption among men, drops his hands and passes on and

complains of evil times, is no man. Just in this that you are capable of seeing men as

deficient, lies upon you a holy calling to make them better. If everything was already

what it ought to be, there would be no need of you in the world and you would as well

have remained in the womb of nothing. Rejoice that all is not yet as it ought to be, so

that you may find work and can be useful toward something.

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