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

The political qualifications are intended to maintain the independence
of
the Order; because its obligations and privileges are thus confided
only
to those who, from their position in society, are capable of obeying
the
one, and of exercising the other without the danger of let or hindrance
from superior authority.
Of the moral, physical and political qualifications of a candidate
there
can be no doubt, as they are distinctly laid down in the ancient
charges
and constitutions. The intellectual are not so readily decided.
These four-fold qualifications may be briefly summed up in the
following
axioms.
_Morally_, the candidate must be a man of irreproachable conduct, a
believer in the existence of God, and living "under the tongue of good
report."
_Physically_, he must be a man of at least twenty-one years of age,
upright in body, with the senses of a man, not deformed or dismembered,
but with hale and entire limbs as a _man_ ought to be.
_Intellectually_, he must be a man in the full possession of his
intellects, not so young that his mind shall not have been formed, nor
so
old that it shall have fallen into dotage; neither a fool, an idiot,
nor a
madman; and with so much education as to enable him to avail himself of
the teachings of Masonry, and to cultivate at his leisure a knowledge
of
the principles and doctrines of our royal art.
_Politically_, he must be in the unrestrained enjoyment of his civil
and
personal liberty, and this, too, by the birthright of inheritance, and
not
by its subsequent acquisition, in consequence of his release from
hereditary bondage.
The lodge which strictly demands these qualifications of its candidates
may have fewer members than one less strict, but it will undoubtedly
have
better ones.
But the importance of the subject demands for each class of the
qualifications a separate section, and a more extended consideration.
Section I.
_Of the Moral Qualifications of Candidates._