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

definition has it that Masonry is "a science which is engaged in the
search after divine truth;"[163] but that is vague, indefinite, and
unsatisfactory, lacking any sense of the uniqueness of the Order, and
as applicable to one science as to another. For surely all science, of
whatever kind, is a search after divine truth, and a physical fact, as
Agassiz said, is as sacred as a moral truth--every fact being the
presence of God.
Still another writer defines Masonry as "Friendship, Love, and
Integrity--Friendship which rises superior to the fictitious
distinctions of society, the prejudices of religion, and the pecuniary
conditions of life; Love which knows no limit, nor inequality, nor
decay; Integrity which binds man to the eternal law of duty."[164]
Such is indeed the very essence and spirit of Masonry, but Masonry has
no monopoly of that spirit, and its uniqueness consists, rather, in
the form in which it seeks to embody and express the gracious and
benign spirit which is the genius of all the higher life of humanity.
Masonry is not everything; it is a thing as distinctly featured as a
statue by Phidias or a painting by Angelo. Definitions, like delays,
may be dangerous, but perhaps we can do no better than to adopt the
words of the German _Handbuch_[165] as the best description of it so
far given:
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_Masonry is the activity of closely united men who, employing
symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade
and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind,
striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and
thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which
they aspire to exhibit even now on a small scale._
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Civilization could hardly begin until man had learned to fashion for
himself a settled habitation, and thus the earliest of all human arts
and crafts, and perhaps also the noblest, is that of the builder.
Religion took outward shape when men first reared an altar for their
offerings, and surrounded it with a sanctuary of faith and awe, of
pity and consolation, and piled a cairn to mark the graves where their
dead lay asleep. History is no older than architecture. How fitting,
then, that the idea and art of building should be made the basis of a
great order of men which has no other aim than the upbuilding of
humanity in Faith, Freedom, and Friendship. Seeking to ennoble and
beautify life, it finds in the common task and constant labor of man
its sense of human unity, its vision of life as a temple "building and
built upon," and its emblems of those truths which make for purity of
character and the stability of society. Thus Masonry labors, linked
with the constructive genius of mankind, and so long as it remains
true to its Ideal no weapon formed against it can prosper.
One of the most impressive and touching things in human history is
that certain ideal interests have been set apart as especially
venerated among all peoples. Guilds have arisen to cultivate the
interests embodied in art, science, philosophy, fraternity, and
religion; to conserve the precious, hard-won inheritances of humanity;
to train men in their service; to bring their power to bear upon the
common life of mortals, and send through that common life the light
and glory of the Ideal--as the sun shoots its transfiguring rays