lives. They become mere shams, governed by ministers, favorites, or
courtesans, like those old Etruscan kings, slumbering for long ages in
their golden royal robes, dissolving forever at the first breath of day.
Let him who complains of the shortcomings of democracy ask himself if he
would prefer a Du Barry or a Pompadour, governing in the name of a Louis
the Fifteenth, a Caligula making his horse a consul, a Domitian, "that
most savage monster," who sometimes drank the blood of relatives,
sometimes employing himself with slaughtering the most distinguished
citizens before whose gates fear and terror kept watch; a tyrant of
frightful aspect, pride on his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly
seeking darkness and secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to
make solitude. After all, in a free government, the Laws and the
Constitution are above the Incapables, the Courts correct their
legislation, and posterity is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on
them. What is the exclusion of worth and intellect and knowledge from
civil office compared with trials before Jeffries, tortures in the dark
caverns of the Inquisition, Alva-butcheries in the Netherlands, the Eve
of Saint Bartholomew, and the Sicilian Vespers?
* * * * *
The Abbé Barruel in his _Memoirs for the History of Jacobinism_,
declares that Masonry in France gave, as its secret, the words Equality
and Liberty, leaving it for every honest and religious Mason to explain
them as would best suit his principles; but retained the privilege of
unveiling in the higher Degrees the meaning of those words, as
interpreted by the French Revolution. And he also excepts English Masons
from his anathemas, because in England a Mason is a peaceable subject of
the civil authorities, no matter where he resides, engaging in no plots
or conspiracies against even the worst government. England, he says,
disgusted with an Equality and a Liberty, the consequences of which she
had felt in the struggles of her Lollards, Anabaptists, and
Presbyterians, had "purged her Masonry" from all explanations tending to
overturn empires; but there still remained adepts whom disorganizing
principles bound to the Ancient Mysteries.
Because true Masonry, unemasculated, bore the banners of Freedom and
Equal Rights, and was in rebellion against temporal and spiritual
tyranny, its Lodges were proscribed in 1735, by an edict of the States
of Holland. In 1737, Louis XV. forbade them in France. In 1738, Pope
Clement XII. issued against them his famous Bull of Excommunication,
which was renewed by Benedict XIV.; and in 1743 the Council of Berne
also proscribed them. The title of the Bull of Clement is, "The
Condemnation of the Society of Conventicles _de Liberi Muratari_, or of
the Freemasons, under the penalty of _ipso facto_ excommunication, the
absolution from which is reserved to the Pope alone, except at the point
of death." And by it all bishops, ordinaries, and inquisitors were
empowered to punish Freemasons, "as vehemently suspected of heresy," and
to call in, if necessary, the help of the secular arm; that is, to cause
the civil authority to put them to death.
* * * * *
Also, false and slavish political theories end in brutalizing the State.
For example, adopt the theory that offices and employments in it are to
be given as rewards for services rendered to party, and they soon become
the prey and spoil of faction, the booty of the victory of faction;--and
leprosy is in the flesh of the State. The body of the commonwealth
becomes a mass of corruption, like a living carcass rotten with
syphilis. All unsound theories in the end develop themselves in one foul
and loathsome disease or other of the body politic. The State, like the
man, must use constant effort to _stay_ in the paths of virtue and
manliness. The habit of electioneering and begging for office
culminates in bribery _with_ office, and corruption _in_ office.
A chosen man has a visible trust from God, as plainly as if the
commission were engrossed by the notary. A nation cannot renounce the
executorship of the Divine decrees. As little can Masonry. It must labor
to do its duty knowingly and wisely. We must remember that, in free
States, as well as in despotisms, Injustice, the spouse of Oppression,
is the fruitful parent of Deceit, Distrust, Hatred, Conspiracy, Treason,
and Unfaithfulness. Even in assailing Tyranny we must have Truth and
Reason as our chief weapons. We must march into that fight like the old
Puritans, or into the battle with the abuses that spring up in free
government, with the flaming sword in one hand, and the Oracles of God
in the other.
The citizen who cannot accomplish well the smaller purposes of public
life, cannot compass the larger. The vast power of endurance,
forbearance, patience, and performance, of a free people, is acquired
only by continual exercise of all the functions, like the healthful
physical human vigor. If the individual citizens have it not, the State
must equally be without it. It is of the essence of a free government,
that the people should not only be concerned in making the laws, but
also in their execution. No man ought to be more ready to obey and
administer the law than he who has helped to make it. The business of
government is carried on for the benefit of all, and every co-partner
should give counsel and co-operation.
Remember also, as another shoal on which States are wrecked, that free
States always tend toward the depositing of the citizens in strata, the
creation of castes, the perpetuation of the _jus divinum_ to office in
families. The more democratic the State, the more sure this result. For,
as free States advance in power, there is a strong tendency toward
centralization, not from deliberate evil intention, but from the course
of events and the indolence of human nature. The executive powers swell
and enlarge to inordinate dimensions; and the Executive is always
aggressive with respect to the nation. Offices of all kinds are
multiplied to reward partisans; the brute force of the sewerage and
lower strata of the mob obtains large representation, first in the lower
offices, and at last in Senates; and Bureaucracy raises its bald head,
bristling with pens, girded with spectacles, and bunched with ribbon.
The art of Government becomes like a Craft, and its guilds tend to
become exclusive, as those of the Middle Ages.
Political science may be much improved as a subject of speculation; but
it should never be divorced from the actual national necessity. The
science of governing men must always be practical, rather than
philosophical. There is not the same amount of positive or universal
truth here as in the abstract sciences; what is true in one country may
be very false in another; what is untrue to-day may become true in
another generation, and the truth of to-day be reversed by the judgment
of to-morrow. To distinguish the casual from the enduring, to separate
the unsuitable from the suitable, and to make progress even possible,
are the proper ends of policy. But without actual knowledge and
experience, and communion of labor, the dreams of the political doctors
may be no better than those of the doctors of divinity. The reign of
such a caste, with its mysteries, its myrmidons, and its corrupting
influence, may be as fatal as that of the despots. Thirty tyrants are
thirty times worse than one.
Moreover, there is a strong temptation for the governing people to
become as much slothful and sluggards as the weakest of absolute kings.
Only give them the power to get rid, when caprice prompts them, of the
great and wise men, and elect the little, and as to all the rest they
will relapse into indolence and indifference. The central power,
creation of the people, organized and cunning if not enlightened, is the
perpetual tribunal set up by them for the redress of wrong and the rule
of justice. It soon supplies itself with all the requisite machinery,
and is ready and apt for all kinds of interference. The people may be a
child all its life. The central power may not be able to suggest the
best scientific solution of a problem; but it has the easiest means of
carrying an idea into effect. If the purpose to be attained is a large
one, it requires a large comprehension; it is proper for the action of
the central power. If it be a small one, it may be thwarted by
disagreement. The central power must step in as an arbitrator and
prevent this. The people may be too averse to change, too slothful in
their own business, unjust to a minority or a majority. The central
power must take the reins when the people drop them.
France became centralized in its government more by the apathy and
ignorance of its people than by the tyranny of its kings. When the
inmost parish-life is given up to the direct guardianship of the State,
and the repair of the belfry of a country church requires a written
order from the central power, a people is in its dotage. Men are thus
nurtured in imbecility, from the dawn of social life. When the central
government feeds part of the people it prepares all to be slaves. When
it directs parish and county affairs, they are slaves already. The next
step is to regulate labor and its wages.
Nevertheless, whatever follies the free people may commit, even to the
putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the little
competent and less honest, despair not of the final result. The terrible
teacher, EXPERIENCE, writing his lessons on hearts desolated with
calamity and wrung by agony, will make them wiser in time. Pretence and
grimace and sordid beggary for votes will some day cease to avail. Have
FAITH, and struggle on, against all evil influences and discouragements!
FAITH is the Saviour and Redeemer of nations. When Christianity had
grown weak, profitless, and powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast
came, like a cleansing hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about
to be fought, the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at
the head of his clergy, with the Cross once so triumphant raised in the
air, came down to the gates of the city, and laid open before the army
the Testament of Christ. The Christian general, THOMAS, laid his hand on
the book, and said, _"Oh God! IF our faith be true, aid us, and deliver
us not into the hands of its enemies!"_ But KHALED, _"the Sword of
God,"_ who had marched from victory to victory, exclaimed to his wearied
soldiers, _"Let no man sleep! There will be rest enough in the bowers of
Paradise; sweet will be the repose never more to be followed by labor."_
The faith of the Arab had become stronger than that of the Christian,
and he conquered.
The Sword is also, in the Bible, an emblem of SPEECH, or of the
utterance of thought. Thus, in that vision or apocalypse of the sublime
exile of Patmos, a protest in the name of the ideal, overwhelming the
real world, a tremendous satire uttered in the name of Religion and
Liberty, and with its fiery reverberations smiting the throne of the
Cæsars, a sharp two-edged sword comes out of the mouth of the Semblance
of the Son of Man, encircled by the seven golden candlesticks, and
holding in his right hand seven stars. "The Lord," says Isaiah, "hath
made my mouth like a sharp sword." "I have slain them," says Hosea, "by
the words of my mouth." "The word of God," says the writer of the
apostolic letter to the Hebrews, "is quick and powerful, and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit." "The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God," says
Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus. "I will fight against them
with the sword of my mouth," it is said in the Apocalypse, to the angel
of the church at Pergamos.
* * * * *
The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but,
like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few,
remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the
mountains, leaving no token of power. It is nothing to the living and
coming generations of men. It was the _written_ human speech, that gave
power and permanence to human thought. It is this that makes the whole
human history but one individual life.
To write on the rock is to write on a solid parchment; but it requires a
pilgrimage to see it. There is but one copy, and Time wears even that.
To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it were, but one tardy
edition, and the rich only could procure it. The Chinese stereotyped not
only the unchanging wisdom of old sages, but also the passing events.
The process tended to suffocate thought, and to hinder progress; for
there is continual wandering in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her
last words, not on clean tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made
and often mended.
Printing made the movable letters prolific. Thenceforth the orator spoke
almost visibly to listening nations; and the author wrote, like the
Pope, his œcumenic decrees, _urbi et orbi_, and ordered them to be
posted up in all the market-places; remaining, if he chose, impervious
to human sight. The doom of tyrannies was thenceforth sealed. Satire and
invective became potent as armies. The unseen hands of the Juniuses
could launch the thunderbolts, and make the ministers tremble. One
whisper from this giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled
the Agora. It will soon be heard at the antipodes as easily as in the
next street. It travels with the lightning under the oceans. It makes
the mass one man, speaks to it in the same common language, and elicits
a sure and single response. Speech passes into thought, and thence
promptly into act. A nation becomes truly one, with one large heart and
a single throbbing pulse. Men are invisibly present to each other, as
if already spiritual beings; and the thinker who sits in an Alpine
solitude, unknown to or forgotten by all the world, among the silent
herds and hills, may flash his words to all the cities and over all the
seas.
Select the thinkers to be Legislators; and avoid the gabblers. Wisdom is
rarely loquacious. Weight and depth of thought are unfavorable to
volubility. The shallow and superficial are generally voluble and often
pass for eloquent. More words, less thought,--is the general rule. The
man who endeavors to say something worth remembering in every sentence,
becomes fastidious, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more
diffuse stream. The ornamentation that does not cover strength is the
gewgaws of babble.
Neither is dialectic subtlety valuable to public men. The Christian
faith has it, had it formerly more than now; a subtlety that might have
entangled Plato, and which has rivalled in a fruitless fashion the
mystic lore of Jewish Rabbis and Indian Sages. It is not this which
converts the heathen. It is a vain task to balance the great thoughts of
the earth, like hollow straws, on the finger-tips of disputation. It is
not this kind of warfare which makes the Cross triumphant in the hearts
of the unbelievers; but the actual power that lives in the Faith.
So there is a political scholasticism that is merely useless. The
dexterities of subtle logic rarely stir the hearts of the people, or
convince them. The true apostle of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality
makes it a matter of life and death. His combats are like those of
Bossuet,--combats to the death. The true apostolic fire is like the
lightning: it flashes conviction into the soul. The true word is verily
a two-edged sword. Matters of government and political science can be
fairly dealt with only by sound reason, and the logic of common sense:
not the common sense of the ignorant, but of the wise. The acutest
thinkers rarely succeed in becoming leaders of men. A watchword or a
catchword is more potent with the people than logic, especially if this
be the least metaphysical. When a political prophet arises, to stir the
dreaming, stagnant nation, and hold back its feet from the irretrievable
descent, to heave the land as with an earthquake, and shake the
silly-shallow idols from their seats, his words will come straight from
God's own mouth, and be thundered into the conscience. He will reason,
teach, warn, and rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit" is keener than
the brightest blade of Damascus. Such men rule a land, in the strength
of justice, with wisdom and with power. Still, the men of dialectic
subtlety often rule well, because in practice they forget their
finely-spun theories, and use the trenchant logic of common sense. But
when the great heart and large intellect are left to the rust in private
life, and small attorneys, brawlers in politics, and those who in the
cities would be only the clerks of notaries, or practitioners in the
disreputable courts, are made national Legislators, the country is in
her dotage, even if the beard has not yet grown upon her chin.
In a free country, human speech must needs be free; and the State _must_
listen to the maunderings of folly, and the screechings of its geese,
and the brayings of its asses, as well as to the golden oracles of its
wise and great men. Even the despotic old kings allowed their wise fools
to say what they liked. The true alchemist will extract the lessons of
wisdom from the babblings of folly. He will hear what a man has to say
on any given subject, even if the speaker end only in proving himself
prince of fools. Even a fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some
truth in all men who are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak
other men's thoughts. The finger even of the idiot may point to the
great highway.
A people, as well as the sages, must learn to forget. If it neither
learns the new nor forgets the old, it is fated, even if it has been
royal for thirty generations. To unlearn is to learn; and also it is
sometimes needful to learn again the forgotten. The antics of fools make
the current follies more palpable, as fashions are shown to be absurd by
caricatures, which so lead to their extirpation. The buffoon and the
zany are useful in their places. The ingenious artificer and craftsman,
like Solomon, searches the earth for his materials, and transforms the
misshapen matter into glorious workmanship. The world is conquered by
the head even more than by the hands. Nor will any assembly talk
forever. After a time, when it has listened long enough, it quietly puts
the silly, the shallow, and the superficial to one side,--it thinks, and
sets to work.
The human thought, especially in popular assemblies, runs in the most
singularly crooked channels, harder to trace and follow than the blind
currents of the ocean. No notion is so absurd that it may not find a
place there. The master-workman must train these notions and vagaries
with his two-handed hammer. They twist out of the way of the
sword-thrusts; and are invulnerable all over, even in the heel, against
logic. The martel or mace, the battle-axe, the great double-edged
two-handed sword must deal with follies; the rapier is no better against
them than a wand, unless it be the rapier of ridicule.
The SWORD is also the symbol of _war_ and of the _soldier_. Wars, like
thunder-storms, are often necessary to purify the stagnant atmosphere.
War is not a demon, without remorse or reward. It restores the
brotherhood in letters of fire. When men are seated in their pleasant
places, sunken in ease and indolence, with Pretence and Incapacity and
Littleness usurping all the high places of State, war is the baptism of
blood and fire, by which alone they can be renovated. It is the
hurricane that brings the elemental equilibrium, the concord of Power
and Wisdom. So long as these continue obstinately divorced, it will
continue to chasten.
In the mutual appeal of nations to God, there is the acknowledgment of
His might. It lights the beacons of Faith and Freedom, and heats the
furnace through which the earnest and loyal pass to immortal glory.
There is in war the doom of defeat, the quenchless sense of Duty, the
stirring sense of Honor, the measureless solemn sacrifice of
devotedness, and the incense of success. Even in the flame and smoke of
battle, the Mason discovers his brother, and fulfills the sacred
obligations of Fraternity.
Two, or the Duad, is the symbol of Antagonism; of Good and Evil, Light
and Darkness. It is Cain and Abel, Eve and Lilith, Jachin and Boaz,
Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon.
Three, or the Triad, is most significantly expressed by the equilateral
and the right-angled triangles. There are _three_ principal colors or
rays in the rainbow, which by intermixture make _seven_. The three are
the _blue_, the _yellow_, and the _red_. The Trinity of the Deity, in
one mode or other, has been an article in all creeds. He creates,
preserves, and destroys. He is the generative _power_, the productive
_capacity_, and the _result_. The immaterial man, according to the
Kabalah, is composed of _vitality_, or _life_, the breath of life; of
_soul_ or _mind_, and _spirit_. Salt, sulphur, and mercury are the great
symbols of the alchemists. To them man was body, soul, and spirit.
Four is expressed by the square, or four-sided right-angled figure. Out
of the symbolic Garden of Eden flowed a river, dividing into _four_
streams,--PISON, which flows around the land of gold, or light; GIHON,
which flows around the land of Ethiopia or Darkness; HIDDEKEL, running
eastward to Assyria; and the EUPHRATES. Zechariah saw _four_ chariots
coming out from between two mountains of bronze, in the first of which
were _red_ horses; in the second, _black_; in the third, _white_; and in
the fourth, _grizzled_: "and these were the four winds of the heavens,
that go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth." Ezekiel
saw the _four_ living creatures, each with _four_ faces and _four_
wings, the faces of a _man_ and a _lion_, an _ox_ and an _eagle_; and
the _four_ wheels going upon their _four_ sides; and Saint John beheld
the _four_ beasts, full of eyes before and behind, the LION, the young
OX, the MAN, and the flying EAGLE. _Four_ was the signature of the
Earth. Therefore, in the 148th Psalm, of those who must praise the Lord
on the land, there are _four_ times _four_, and _four_ in particular of
living creatures. Visible nature is described as the _four_ quarters of
the world, and the _four_ corners of the earth. "There are _four_," says
the old Jewish saying, "which take the first place in this world: _man_,
among the creatures; the _eagle_ among birds; the _ox_ among cattle; and
the _lion_ among wild beasts." Daniel saw _four_ great beasts come up
from the sea.
FIVE is the Duad added to the Triad. It is expressed by the five-pointed
or blazing star, the mysterious Pentalpha of Pythagoras. It is
indissolubly connected with the number _seven_. Christ fed His disciples
and the multitude with _five_ loaves and _two_ fishes, and of the
fragments there remained _twelve_, that is, _five_ and _seven_, baskets
full. Again He fed them with _seven_ loaves and a few little fishes, and
there remained _seven_ baskets full. The _five_ apparently small
planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with the two greater
ones, the Sun and Moon, constituted the _seven_ celestial spheres.
SEVEN was the peculiarly sacred number. There were _seven_ planets and
spheres presided over by _seven_ archangels. There were _seven_ colors
in the rainbow; and the Phoenician Deity was called the HEPTAKIS or God
of _seven_ rays; _seven_ days of the week; and _seven_ and _five_ made
the number of months, tribes, and apostles. Zechariah saw a golden
candlestick, with _seven_ lamps and _seven_ pipes to the lamps, and an
olive-tree on each side. Since he says, "the _seven_ eyes of the Lord
shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel."
John, in the Apocalypse, writes _seven_ epistles to the _seven_
churches. In the _seven_ epistles there are _twelve_ promises. What is
said of the churches in praise or blame, is completed in the number
_three_. The refrain, "_who has ears to hear_," etc., has _ten_ words,
divided by _three_ and _seven_, and the _seven_ by _three_ and _four_;
and the _seven_ epistles are also so divided. In the seals, trumpets,
and vials, also, of this symbolic vision, the _seven_ are divided by
_four_ and _three_. He who sends his message to Ephesus, "holds the
_seven_ stars in his right hand, and walks amid the _seven_ golden
lamps."