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

the very letter, historical facts. All that can be claimed for them is,
that in some there is simply a substratum of history, the edifice
constructed on this foundation being purely inventive, to serve us a
medium for inculcating some religious truth; in others, nothing more
than
an idea to which the legend or myth is indebted for its existence, and
of
which it is, as a symbol, the exponent; and in others, again, a great
deal
of truthful narrative, more or less intermixed with fiction, but the
historical always predominating.
Thus there is a legend, contained in some of our old records, which
states
that Euclid was a distinguished Mason, and that he introduced Masonry
among the Egyptians.[149] Now, it is not at all necessary to the
orthodoxy
of a Mason's creed that he should literally believe that Euclid, the
great
geometrician, was really a Freemason, and that the ancient Egyptians
were
indebted to him for the establishment of the institution among them.
Indeed, the palpable anachronism in the legend which makes Euclid the
contemporary of Abraham necessarily prohibits any such belief, and
shows
that the whole story is a sheer invention. The intelligent Mason,
however,
will not wholly reject the legend, as ridiculous or absurd; but, with a
due sense of the nature and design of our system of symbolism, will
rather
accept it as what, in the classification laid down on a preceding page,
would be called "a philosophical myth"--an ingenious method of
conveying,
symbolically, a masonic truth.
Euclid is here very appropriately used as a type of geometry, that
science
of which he was so eminent a teacher, and the myth or legend then
symbolizes the fact that there was in Egypt a close connection between
that science and the great moral and religious system, which was among
the
Egyptians, as well as other ancient nations, what Freemasonry is in the
present day--a secret institution, established for the inculcation of
the
same principles, and inculcating them in the same symbolic manner. So
interpreted, this legend corresponds to all the developments of
Egyptian
history, which teach us how close a connection existed in that country
between the religious and scientific systems. Thus Kenrick tells us,
that
"when we read of foreigners [in Egypt] being obliged to submit to
painful
and tedious ceremonies of initiation, it was not that they might learn
the
secret meaning of the rites of Osiris or Isis, but that they might
partake
of the knowledge of astronomy, physic, geometry, and theology." [150]