THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and _artisan_,
without ever meddling with any practical part of life." By a
Speculative Mason, then, is meant a man who, though not an actual
architect, sought and obtained membership among Free-masons. Such men,
scholars and students, began to enter the order as early as 1600, if
not earlier. If by Operative Mason is meant one who attached no moral
meaning to his tools, there were none such in the olden time--all
Masons, even those in the Guilds, using their tools as moral emblems in
a way quite unknown to builders of our day. 'Tis a pity that this light
of poetry has faded from our toil, and with it the joy of work.
[96] _History of Masonry_, p. 66.
[97] For a single example, the _Diary_ of Elias Ashmole, under date of
1646.
[98] Time out of mind it has been the habit of writers, both within the
order and without, to treat Masonry as though it were a kind of
agglomeration of archaic remains and platitudinous moralizings, made up
of the heel-taps of Operative legend and the fag-ends of Occult lore.
Far from it! If this were the fact the present writer would be the
first to admit it, but it is not the fact. Instead, the idea that an
order so noble, so heroic in its history, so rich in symbolism, so
skilfully adjusted, and with so many traces of remote antiquity, was
the creation of pious fraud, or else of an ingenious conviviality,
passes the bounds of credulity and enters the domain of the absurd.
This fact will be further emphasized in the chapter following, to which
those are respectfully referred who go everywhere else, _except to
Masonry itself_, to learn what Masonry is and how it came to be.
[99] _Livre du Compagnonnage_, by Agricol Perdiguier, 1841. George
Sand's novel, _Le Compagnon du Tour de France_, was published the same
year. See full account of this order in Gould, _History of Masonry_,
vol. i, chap. v.
ACCEPTED MASONS
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_The_ SYSTEM, _as taught in the regular_ LODGES, _may have some
Redundancies or Defects, occasion'd by the Ignorance or Indolence
of the old members. And indeed, considering through what Obscurity
and Darkness the_ MYSTERY _has been deliver'd down; the many
Centuries it has survived; the many Countries and Languages, and_
SECTS _and_ PARTIES _it has run through; we are rather to wonder
that it ever arrived to the present Age, without more
Imperfection. It has run long in muddy Streams, and as it were,
under Ground. But notwithstanding the great Rust it may have
contracted, there is much of the_ OLD FABRICK _remaining: the
essential Pillars of the Building may be discov'd through the
Rubbish, tho' the Superstructure be overrun with Moss and Ivy, and
the Stones, by Length of Time, be disjointed. And therefore, as