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

engaged in reading petitions, hearing reports, debating financial
matters,
it is said to be occupied in _business_; but when it is engaged in the
form and ceremony of initiation into any of the degrees, it is said to
be
at _work_. Initiation is masonic labor. This phraseology at once
suggests
the connection of our speculative system with an operative art that
preceded it, and upon which it has been founded. This operative art
must
have given it form and features and organization. If the speculative
system had been founded solely on philosophical or ethical principles,
if
it had been derived from some ancient or modern sect of
philosophers,--from the Stoics, the Epicureans, or the Platonists of
the
heathen world, or from any of the many divisions of the scholastics of
the
middle ages,--this origin would most certainly have affected its
interior
organization as well as its external form, and we should have seen our
modern masonic reunions assuming the style of academies or schools. Its
technical language--for, like every institution isolated from the
ordinary
and general pursuits of mankind, it would have had its own technical
dialect--would have been borrowed from, and would be easily traced to,
the
peculiar phraseology of the philosophic sects which had given it birth.
There would have been the _sophists_ and the _philosophers_; the
_grammatists_ and the _grammarians_; the _scholars_, the _masters_, and
the _doctors_. It would have had its _trivial_ and its _quadrivial_
schools; its occupation would have been research, experiment, or
investigation; in a word, its whole features would have been colored by
a
grammatical, a rhetorical, or a mathematical cast, accordingly as it
should have been derived from a sect in which any one of these three
characteristics was the predominating influence.
But in the organization of Freemasonry, as it now presents itself to
us,
we see an entirely different appearance. Its degrees are expressive,
not
of advancement in philosophic attainments, but of progress in a purely
mechanical pursuit. Its highest grade is that of _Master of the Work_.
Its
places of meeting are not schools, but _lodges_, places where the
workmen
formerly lodged, in the neighborhood of the building on whose
construction
they were engaged. It does not form theories, but builds temples. It
knows
nothing of the rules of the dialecticians,--of the syllogism, the
dilemma,
the enthymeme, or the sorites,--but it recurs to the homely implements
of
its operative parent for its methods of instruction, and with the
plumb-line it inculcates rectitude of conduct, and draws lessons of