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

The old charges, published in the original Book of Constitutions in
1723,
contain the following regulation:
"No Master should take an Apprentice, unless he be a perfect youth
having
no maim or defect that may render him uncapable of learning the art."
Notwithstanding the positive demand for _perfection_, and the positive
and
explicit declaration that he must have _no maim or defect_, the
remainder
of the sentence has, within a few years past, by some Grand Lodges,
been
considered as a qualifying clause, which would permit the admission of
candidates whose physical defects did not exceed a particular point.
But,
in perfection, there can be no degrees of comparison, and he who is
required to be perfect, is required to be so without modification or
diminution. That which is _perfect_ is complete in all its parts, and,
by
a deficiency in any portion of its constituent materials, it becomes
not
less perfect, (which expression would be a solecism in grammar,) but at
once by the deficiency ceases to be perfect at all--it then becomes
imperfect. In the interpretation of a law, "words," says Blackstone,
"are
generally to be understood in their usual and most known
signification,"
and then "perfect" would mean, "complete, entire, neither defective nor
redundant." But another source of interpretation is, the "comparison of
a
law with other laws, that are made by the same legislator, that have
some
affinity with the subject, or that expressly relate to the same
point."[59] Applying this law of the jurists, we shall have no
difficulty
in arriving at the true signification of the word "perfect," if we
refer
to the regulation of 1683, of which the clause in question appears to
have
been an exposition. Now, the regulation of 1683 says, in explicit
terms,
that the candidate must "_have his right limbs as a man ought to
have_."
Comparing the one law with the other, there can be no doubt that the
requisition of Masonry is and always has been, that admission could
only
be granted to him who was neither deformed nor dismembered, but of hale
and entire limbs as a man should be.
But another, and, as Blackstone terms it, "the most universal and
effectual way of discovering the true meaning of a law" is, to consider
"the reason and spirit of it, or the cause which moved the legislator
to
enact it." Now, we must look for the origin of the law requiring
physical