Mystic masonry, or, The symbols of freemasonry and the greater ...

Principles of Education and Ethics. 5^
ture by trying to demonstrate that the struggle for
existence is a necessary condition of all improvement
;
and that only the sharpest tooth and the longest
claw can survive. The ideal thus held aloft by
both religion and science is selfishness. Selfpreservation
is regarded as the "first law of life."
The result is materialism in the strictest and
broadest sense, and this has paralyzed, where it has
not utterly destroyed, all higher ideals.
Is it not reasonable to suppose that if we were
possessed of real knowledge we might so govern our
actions, and so shape our lives as to avoid the pitfalls
of ignorance, and set our feet on the line of
the higher evolution? Religion offers Faith, with a
system of rewards and punishments, and inculcates
Charity, which is more often interpreted as the
giving of alms ;
but religion does not give us Knowledge.
Science offers a theory, or a working hypothesis,
but still does not give us Knowledge. So
long as It requires all of our energies to barely
maintain existence on the physical plane, and to
help those who can not do even that, unaided, we
have little opportunity to seek for higher things.
The complicated system under which we are
working is the result of many centuries of ignorance
and superstition, and of many generations of evil-