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

seem to him who has examined the history of this ancient institution to
have sprung around it, like mushrooms bursting from between the roots
and
vegetating under the shade of some mighty and venerable oak, the
patriarch of the forest, whose huge trunk and wide-extended branches
have
protected them from the sun and the gale, and whose fruit, thrown off
in
autumn, has enriched and fattened the soil that gives these humbler
plants
their power of life and growth.
But there is a more important deduction to be drawn from this
narrative.
In tracing the progress of Freemasonry, we shall find it so intimately
connected with the history of philosophy, of religion, and of art in
all
ages of the world, that it is evident that no Mason can expect
thoroughly
to understand the nature of the institution, or to appreciate its
character, unless he shall carefully study its annals, and make himself
conversant with the facts of history, to which and from which it gives
and
receives a mutual influence. The brother who unfortunately supposes
that
the only requisites of a skilful Mason consist in repeating with
fluency
the ordinary lectures, or in correctly opening and closing the lodge,
or
in giving with sufficient accuracy the modes of recognition, will
hardly
credit the assertion, that he whose knowledge of the "royal art"
extends
no farther than these preliminaries has scarcely advanced beyond the
rudiments of our science. There is a far nobler series of doctrines
with
which Freemasonry is connected, and which no student ever began to
investigate who did not find himself insensibly led on, from step to
step
in his researches, his love and admiration of the order increasing with
the augmentation of his acquaintance with its character. It is this
which
constitutes the science and the philosophy of Freemasonry, and it is
this
alone which will return the scholar who devotes himself to the task a
sevenfold reward for his labor.
With this view I propose, in the next place, to enter upon an
examination
of that science and philosophy as they are developed in the system of
symbolism, which owes its existence to this peculiar origin and
organization of the order, and without a knowledge of which, such as I
have attempted to portray it in this preliminary inquiry, the science
itself could never be understood.