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

those fitted to receive them, and gave to others trite moral
explanations they could comprehend."[129] How gracious of them to
vouchsafe even trite explanations, but why frame a set of degrees to
conceal what they wished to hide? This is the same idea of something
alien imposed upon Masonry from without, with the added suggestion,
novel indeed, that Masonry was organized to hide the truth, rather
than to teach it. But did Masonry have to go outside its own history
and tradition to learn Hermetic truths and symbols? Who was Hermes?
Whether man or myth no one knows, but he was a great figure in the
Egyptian Mysteries, and was called the Father of Wisdom.[130] What
_was_ his wisdom? From such fragments of his lore as have floated down
to us, impaired, it may be, but always vivid, we discover that his
wisdom was only a high spiritual faith and morality taught in visions
and rhapsodies, and using numbers as symbols. Was such wisdom new to
Masonry? Had not Hermes himself been a hero of the order from the
first, of whom we read in the _Old Charges_, in which he has a place
of honor alongside Euclid and Pythagoras? Wherefore go elsewhere than
to Masonry itself to trace the _pure_ stream of Hermetic faith through
the ages? Certainly the men of the Grand Lodge were adepts, but they
were _Masonic adepts seeking to bring the buried temple of Masonry to
light and reveal it in a setting befitting its beauty_, not cultists
making use of it to exploit a private scheme of the universe.
Who were those "men of intelligence" to whom Pike ascribed the making
of the Third Degree of Masonry? Tradition has fixed upon Desaguliers as
the ritualist of the Grand Lodge, and Lyon speaks of him as "the
pioneer and co-fabricator of symbolical Masonry."[131] This, however,
is an exaggeration, albeit Desaguliers was worthy of high eulogy,
as were Anderson and Payne, who are said to have been his
collaborators.[132] But the fact is that the Third Degree was not
made; it grew--like the great cathedrals, no one of which can be
ascribed to a single artist, but to an order of men working in unity of
enterprise and aspiration. The process by which the old ritual,
described in the _Sloane MS_, was divided and developed into three
degrees between 1717 and 1730 was so gradual, so imperceptible, that no
exact date can be set; still less can it be attributed to any one or
two men. From the minutes of the Musical Society we learn that the
Lodge at the Queen's Head in Hollis Street was using three distinct
degrees in 1724. As early as 1727 we come upon the custom of setting
apart a separate night for the Master's Degree, the drama having
evidently become more elaborate.
Further than this the Degree may not be discussed, except to say that
the Masons, tiring of the endless quarrels of sects, turned for relief
to the Ancient Mysteries as handed down in their traditions--the old,
high, heroic faith in God, and in the soul of man as the one
unconquerable thing upon this earth. If, as Aristotle said, it be the
mission of tragedy to cleanse and exalt us, leaving us subdued with a
sense of pity and hope and fortified against ill fortune, it is
permitted us to add that in simplicity, depth, and power, in its
grasp of the realities of the life of man, its portrayal of the
stupidity of evil and the splendor of virtue, its revelation of that
in our humanity which leads it to defy death, giving up everything,
even to life itself, rather than defame, defile, or betray its moral
integrity, and in its prophecy of the victory of light over shadow,
there is not another drama known among men like the Third Degree of
Masonry. Edwin Booth, a loyal Mason, and no mean judge of the essence