Lectures On The Philosophy Of Freemasonry

Excerpt from Lectures on the Philosophy of Freemasonry These lectures were first delivered before the Harvard Chapter of the Acacia Fraternity in the schoolyear 1911-12, except the lecture on Krause, which was first delivered before the Grand Lodge of Nebraska in 1903, and was originally printed in the proceedings of that body for that year. Afterwards all five lectures, revised and corrected, were delivered before the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1914, and appear in its proceedings for that year. In the latter form they were published in successive numbers of The Builder, from January to May, 1915, from which they are now reprinted. From the foregoing statement it will appear that in their original form all but one of the lectures were prepared for students who had come fresh from a certain general philosophical training in college. Undoubtedly the reader who has not had such a training will find them somewhat difficult. But it is believed the difficulty is involved necessarily in the subject itself. There is no more a popular road to learning than there was once a royal road. Learning which costs no effort is worth no more than it costs. The perennial problems of the nature of reality, the conduct of life, and the relation of the human individual to the universe cannot be stated in words of one syllable, nor can solutions of them which are of enough value to justify the time spent in achieving them, be ladled out as predigested food for mental digestions too weak to assimilate the ideas of Krause and Pike undiluted and untempered. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. THE PERFECTION TO WHICH OPERATIVE OR SCIENTIFIC MASONRY WAS CARRIED IN THE EARLIEST TIMES. Those tents thou saw'st so pleasant, were the tents Of wickedness, wherein shall dwell his race Who slew his brother; studious they appear Of arts that polish life, inventors rare, Unmindful of their Maker, though his Spirit Taught them, but they his gifts acknowledged none. Milton. The study of Freemasonry in its several branches, and under every designation by which it has been recognised in all ages from the creation, cannot fail to enhance the moral dignity of man, from the influence which it has ever exercised over human institutions, whether civil or religious.1 The political relations which the nomadic tribes of antiquity sustained towards each other, were cemented by the awful sanction of its local name, as the sacred vehicle of religiousmystery; and the rites of initiation conveyed privileges which constituted a bond of union amongst individuals of every clime and every language; while under another form, as a medium for the development of scientific knowledge, its influence was no less felt, by its command over the arts which dignified and adorned nations, and contributed to the necessities and elegancies of social and domestic life. 1 In tracing the divine origin and government of a system, dimly seen through the veil of many thousand years, and to be sought out through the imperfect tale which has reached us by tradition, it is of course necessary to dwell much on the minutest points of traditionary story, to fill up the chasms where they exist, by looking to probabilities, and by speculating deeply on causes and their effects. It is in this search for the precious jewel of truth, that the anxious Mason will meet with his reward. The cloud-cap...