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

uilding;" and he thinks that the success of the institution has
justified
this change of purpose and the disruption of the speculative from the
operative character of the Order.[208]
Eliphas Levi, who has written abstrusely and mystically on Freemasonry
and
its collateral sciences, sees very clearly an allegorical and a real
design in the institution, the former being the rebuilding of the
temple
of Solomon, and the latter the improvement of the human race by a
reconstruction of its social and religious elements.[209]
The Masons of Germany have elaborated this idea with all the
exhaustiveness that is peculiar to the German mind, and the masonic
literature of that country abounds in essays, lectures, and treatises,
in
which the prominent topic is this building of the Solomonic temple as
referring to the construction of a moral temple.
Thus writes Bro. Rhode, of Berlin:--
"So soon as any one has received the consecration of our Order, we say
to
him that we are building a mystical temple;" and he adds that "this
temple
which we Masons are building is nothing else than that which will
conduce
to the greatest possible happiness of mankind." [210]
And another German brother, Von Wedekind, asserts that "we only labor
in
our temple when we make man our predominating object, when we unite
goodness of heart with polished manners, truth with beauty, virtue with
grace." [211]
Again we have Reinhold telling us, in true Teutonic expansiveness of
expression, that "by the mystical Solomonic temple we are to understand
the high ideal or archetype of humanity in the best possible condition
of
social improvement, wherein every evil inclination is overcome, every
passion is resolved into the spirit of love, and wherein each for all,
and all for each, kindly strive to work." [212]
And thus the German Masons call this striving for an almost millennial
result _labor in the temple_.
The English Masons, although they have not treated the symbolism of the
Order with the same abstruse investigation that has distinguished those
of
Germany and France, still have not been insensible to this idea that
the
building of the Solomonic temple is intended to indicate a cultivation
of
the human character. Thus Hutchinson, one of the earliest of the
symbolic
writers of England, shows a very competent conception--for the age in