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

altogether and at once abolished by this union, but continued also to
exist and teach their half-truthful dogmas, for ages after, with
interrupted success and diminished influence, until, in the fifth
century
of the Christian era, the whole of them were proscribed by the Emperor
Theodosius. From time to time, however, other partial unions took
place,
as in the instance of Pythagoras, who, originally a member of the
school
of Spurious Freemasonry, was, during his visit to Babylon, about four
hundred and fifty years after the union at the temple of Jerusalem,
initiated by the captive Israelites into the rites of Temple Masonry,
whence the instructions of that sage approximate much more nearly to
the
principles of Freemasonry, both in spirit and in letter, than those of
any
other of the philosophers of antiquity; for which reason he is
familiarly
called, in the modern masonic lectures, "an ancient friend and
brother,"
and an important symbol of the order, the forty-seventh problem of
Euclid,
has been consecrated to his memory.
I do not now propose to enter upon so extensive a task as to trace the
history of the institution from the completion of the first temple to
its
destruction by Nebuchadnezzar; through the seventy-two years of
Babylonish
captivity to the rebuilding of the second temple by Zerubbabel; thence
to
the devastation of Jerusalem by Titus, when it was first introduced
into
Europe; through all its struggles in the middle ages, sometimes
protected
and sometimes persecuted by the church, sometimes forbidden by the law
and
oftener encouraged by the monarch; until, in the beginning of the
sixteenth century, it assumed its present organization. The details
would
require more time for their recapitulation than the limits of the
present
work will permit.
But my object is not so much to give a connected history of the
progress
of Freemasonry as to present a rational view of its origin and an
examination of those important modifications which, from time to time,
were impressed upon it by external influences, so as to enable us the
more
readily to appreciate the true character and design of its symbolism.
Two salient points, at least, in its subsequent history, especially
invite
attention, because they have an important bearing on its organization,
as
a combined speculative and operative institution.