THE BUILDER APRIL 1919
A PREFACE TO MASONIC SYMBOLISM

BY BRO. RESCUE POUND, DEAN, HARVARD SAW SCHOOL

IT is not so long ago that a learned man could take all knowledge
for his province. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century it
seemed to Preston entirely feasible to sum up all human learning
and expound its main principles to the ordinary hearer in three
lectures. At the end of that century men believed that a learned
jurist by sheer reasoning might work out by himself a complete code
to govern all men in all places in all times. Even later compendia
of universal knowledge were projected seriously. In the nineteenth
century men's attitude changed completely. Reaction from this
boundless faith in the intellect, born of the Renaissance, led to
an era of separate sciences, of minute subdivision of learning, of
distinct fields of knowledge intensively cultivated by individual
scholars. In place of the general schemes of knowledge, we got
narrowly limited, water-tight compartment sciences, each self-
sufficient, each content to rest on its own basis, and each assured
of finding within itself a critique of itself.

All learning in the last century suffered from the self-imposed
narrowness of this water-tight compartment conception. But Masonic
learning suffered peculiarly. For modern Masonic learning had its
inception in the eighteenth century and had still to go through
some preliminary stages of development when it found itself cut off
from learning at large and divided into separate, self-sufficient
compartments. Thus we got a Masonic history without general
historical method, a Masonic philosophy divorced from the general
current of human thought, and a Masonic symbolism ignorant of
psychology. Nowhere is the process of breaking down compartments
and letting in air and light from the outside, a process that is
going on rapidly on every side nowhere is this more needed than in
Masonic learning. Gould long ago did this work thoroughly for
Masonic history. But it is still to be done for Masonic symbolism.
We must view this subject for a season as but a phase of a general
science of symbols; we must lay its foundation not only in Masonic
history, nor solely in the history of rites and mysteries, but in
psychology as well.

Symbols are visible objects which apart from their own immediate
and proper significance, represent to the mind something which is
not shown but is realized by association with it; some ideal
content which the symbols suggest, but cannot embody. They are said
to be of two sorts, natural symbols and conventional symbols. In
the former phrase "natural" is used in the sense of rational and
refers to those symbols which appeal to natural reason and so
achieve their purpose with the unlearned. Conventional symbols, on
the other hand, have their basis in tradition and appeal

only to those who know. The former may or may not be new. At any
rate, they rest on analogies that are associated with the ideas of
today, as, for example, when light is taken as a symbol for
knowledge or truth, black for mourning, and so on. But it will be
perceived that often in such cases we have simply a strong
traditional association without any necessary association for all
men in the absence of tradition. In consequence, well-known symbols
may easily be borrowed and put to new uses, as many assert happened
in the case of more than one pagan symbol taken over by the early
church. Thus there is an easy transition from one type of symbol to
the other. Traditional or conventional symbols rest on habitual
rather than rational association with the subjects they suggest. In
origin, no doubt, they were natural symbols. But after the
circumstances that determined their choice have passed away,
constant association with the object symbolized, kept alive by
tradition, enables them still to function as symbols. A great many
Masonic symbols are of this character, as, for example, the shape
of the lodge, symbolizing the world, or the triads, of which
Masonry in all rites is so full, symbolizing perfection.

Natural symbols require little or no study or exposition. But as
the analogies upon which traditional or conventional symbols
proceed have usually ceased to appeal to us, as the ideas that
suggested them have been forgotten and sometimes their applications
have been wholly lost, exposition of them, investigation of their
history, and attempts to reconstruct their applications afford a
tempting field for study. The Masonic student is attracted to them
specially because symbols are among the most important of our
traditions. Our ceremonies themselves are largely allegorical or
symbolic and employ symbols at every stage and on every hand. To
make the most of these symbols they must be studied. Accordingly,
apart from its interest as a pure science, the study of symbols has
a practical side for the Mason and symbolism has been recognized
from the beginning as one of the chief departments of Masonic
scholarship.

Psychologists have generally rested symbolism upon association.
Some, however, have sought a more intimate connection. Thus Lotze
says of symbols in art, "We live over again in the object the
motion to produce it." Symbols are obviously associated with the
things symbolized. But many have felt that there is a sympathy
involved that is not true of ordinary associations. It has been
said that there is "an investiture of the object with the
observer's own idea and feeling in a more intimate manner than is
implied by the term association." This controversy as to the
psychological basis of symbolism has gone on chiefly in connection
with aesthetics and the conclusions reached are not very applicable
to Masonic symbolism. Unhappily, no Masonic student of symbolism
has taken up this fundamental question.

Another branch of learning which has been much concerned with
symbols is logic. Here the theory of symbols has been treated
fully, especially in connection with the nature of knowledge. Thus
Leibnitz distinguished between intuitive and symbolical knowledge.
The word "intuitive," so used, is deceptive. Leibnitz took it in
its original, etymological meaning, in which it refers to what we
know by looking on it or by seeing. Accordingly he uses the phrase
to include all knowledge which we gain directly through the senses
or by immediate communication to the mind. Symbolical knowledge, on
the other hand, is that which we cannot gain directly through the
senses, which, therefore, must be represented to us. Thus writers
on logic remind us that we may learn by the direct evidence of our
senses what a square or a hexagon is, but we cannot expect to earn
in this way what a chiliagon or figure of one thousand sides is. If
one doubts this, let him attempt y looking at them to tell the
difference between a figure of one thousand sides and one of a
thousand and fine sides. Such conceptions can be known to us only
symbolically. And this is true of all large numbers also, for the
velocity of light (186,000 miles per second) or the distance of the
sun (91,000,000 miles) are beyond reach of our imaginations. So we
speak of infinity, of zero, of nothing. But there is nothing here
that may be perceived through the senses; nor can one realize in
the mind, such conceptions as "the unthinkable," the
inconceivable," the "impossible," about which we speak continually.
Such things are only to be treated symbolically.

Symbols, then, enable us to know what we cannot now directly
through the senses and enable us to keep in mind or to keep before
the mind what is not and cannot be directly and immediately
represented to it. Hence symbols play a great part in all that we
do. Art is largely symbolic, endeavoring to present to us through
symbols what we cannot apprehend directly. Religion uses symbols in
the same way "as sensuous emblems of spiritual acts and objects."
Ritual is symbolic, and so are even the sacraments in one aspect of
their significance. In this aspect religion often makes use of art.
For as the objects of religion are unseen and intangible, there is
obvious need of "helping the imagination by means of sensuous
objects which may serve as fitting materializations of the
spiritual." Even the architecture of churches is symbolic. The
building is not merely adapted to certain functions. Even more, the
very form of the building seeks to express the spiritual import of
those functions.

Symbols are no less important in practical affairs. Large parts of
mathematics are symbolic. Chemistry is full of symbols. Even in
biology we are coming to think that genus and species are symbols
by which we are able to represent knowledge of types, none too
clearly defined, in a universe of infinitely diverse individual
creatures.

No less a role is played by symbols in the social sciences. In
primitive law symbols are used on every side, since primitive man
has no general ideas and the abstractions of developed legal
science are beyond him. He cannot conceive of litigation over an
abstraction called a title, so in the beginnings of Roman law a bit
of turf from the land in dispute was brought in before the
magistrate and the parties went through the form of a fight for the
possession of it, in which the magistrate intervened. If a flock of
sheep was in dispute, a bit of wool from the flock was the subject
of the simulated fight, and so on. Again, the Roman used the spear
as a symbol of title to property, and Tacitus tells us of a like
symbol among the ancient Germans. All Masons know the Jewish symbol
in case of sale and redemption. In our own law the formal ceremony
of conveying land by livery of seisin was highly symbolic, and we
still speak of symbolic possession where one makes delivery in case
of gift, for example, by delivering the key by means of which the
donee may obtain actual control.

Likewise in government symbols are made use of to keep before men's
minds the idea of sovereignty, to enable them to comprehend the
abstraction called the State, to hold up before them some visible
sign of authority. The king is a symbol. His image, his monogram,
his superscription stand for the State to many who can keep before
their minds the ownership and the rights of George and the duties
due to Alfonso or Victor Emmanuel when the State as an abstraction
would appeal to them but dimly. In the same way we speak of loyalty
to the flag, love of the flag, and the like, thinking and speaking
of the visible symbol rather than the invisible and intangible
things for which the symbol stands. So also we speak of Uncle Sam
or John Bull as symbols for the abstractions of the American or the
English people. Sociology devotes much consideration to ceremonial
institutions as means of social control. But these are symbolic.
Homage, coronation, investiture, inauguration, are outward signs of
something which is not tangible or visible. Says Professor Ross:

"The picturesque, dramatic, or sensational will serve to impress an
event upon the memory; hut the ceremony that modifies the feelings
must be full of meaning. It dwells on what would be overlooked,
reminds of that significance that would be forgotten, and so
reveals the full significance of what is being done."

Such, then, are the uses of symbols. They enable us to reason
abstractly; to extend our knowledge far beyond what we can know
immediately and directly through the senses; to hold before us
through the aid of a visible sign things invisible and intangible
which are of the highest import in our daily life. They enable
government to keep men conscious of its reality. They enable
society to exert a necessary control by keeping before men in
outward forms and ceremonies the abstract principles by which they
must be governed in a life measured by reason.

On the other hand, symbols are liable to abuse, and some of these
abuses have crept into Masonic symbolism. The chief abuse is that
symbols readily lead the careless to confuse the symbol with the
thing symbolized, to think that there is some real bond between
them other than association in the mind of the observer. This may
easily run into nominalism; it may give rise to a belief that
realities are wrapped up in names, that if one knows the name of
anything, he knows the thing itself, and that in reasoning about
names he is reasoning about things. "There is no worse habit for a
student or reader to acquire," says William James, "than that of
accepting words instead of a knowledge of things." Look at our
Fellow Craft lecture and note how it is full of definitions. We
have had to learn in other connections, too, that one has by no
means mastered a thing simply because he is able to repeat an
abstract definition of it.

Another abuse of symbolism is to be seen in the idea that a symbol
not merely helps to comprehend a thing but thereby gives us control
over it. We see this in its crudest form in witchcraft, when the
warlock makes a wax figure of his victim and puts the latter to the
torture of rheumatism by sticking the figure full of needles. We
see it in its highest form in metaphysics. Thus, William James
says: "Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of
quest. You know how men have always hankered after unlawful magic
and you know what a great part in magic words have always played.
If you have his name . . . you can control the spirit or whatever
the power may be. . . . So the universe has always appeared to the
natural mind as a kind of enigma of which the key must be sought in
the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That
word names the universe's principle, and to possess it is after a
fashion to possess the universe itself.... Matter, Reason, the
Absolute, Energy, are so many solving names. You can rest when you
have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest." Many
study symbolism in the same way, consciously or subconsciously, as
if by penetrating into the original meaning of symbols, as
disclosed by their history, or the true meaning of them as
disclosed by logical or mystical principles of symbolism, they
could acquire some sort of control of realities, some sort of power
over the universe.

With this prelude as to symbols generally, a preface to Masonic
symbolism may proceed to the primitive uses of symbols and next to
the philosophical use of symbols, thus paving the way for a
treatment of the Masonic use of symbols as a resultant or product.

Primitive society resorts to symbols for four purposes: (1) To
convey messages, (2) to give instruction, (3) as a means of social
control, and (4) to obtain control over nature. Before alphabets
and writing have evolved men make use of ideographs and
hieroglyphics, which sometimes attain their ends by picturing the
very thing to be suggested to the beholder, but often appeal to the
latter symbolically. Thus the Chinese ideograph for what we should
call "a row" is a conventionalized picture of two women under one
roof. For symbolism seems to play a much larger role in human
psychology than we had perceived. A great part of what we do
subconsciously is symbolic. Indeed psychologists believe that our
dreams are largely symbolic.  The undeveloped primitive mind,
incapable of abstract reasoning, proceeds subconsciously by means
of symbols.

Primitive teaching proceeds wholly by imitation and by symbols.
What is not done by simple imitation of the master, is done by
imparting the symbol and explaining it. Thus the primitive tribe
inducts the boy into manhood by symbolic ceremonies to teach him
that the boy is no more and that a man with a man's duties and a
man's responsibilities has arisen in his place. Even more the
primitive secret societies that grow out of these ceremonies employ
symbolic dress and symbolic implements. One phase of this use of
symbols has attracted much attention from Masonic scholars. It has
been asserted that the ancients used symbols at the same time to
teach the initiated and to conceal from the uninitiated. Albert
Pike dwells much upon this aspect of ancient symbolism. No doubt
there are such cases in primitive rites. But it is hard to be sure
that we have any authentic cases since we are in no very good
position to judge. It is seldom possible to be sure how such
symbols were meant to be interpreted. There are, however, clear
cases in later symbolism, and eighteenth-century French Masonry
furnishes a notable example in its teaching of liberty of thought
under the symbol of a contest for liberty of passage a symbol known
to one of our rites today. It is not unlikely that this device is
as old as symbolism.

The chief use of symbols in primitive society is as a means of
social control. Primitive man forgets authority unless its visible
sign is always before him. He forgets his duty unless the duty is
visibly represented to him. Law and order as abstractions have no
hold on him. They must be kept before his mind by symbols. The gods
must be represented to his eyes by idols or statues or he cannot
regard them. In short, morals, religion, and government get and
keep their hold upon him largely through symbols. Hence symbolism
is highly developed among primitive peoples and primitive secret
societies have independently more than one symbol of which we speak
and think as Masonic only.  

Developing confidence from these notable achievements by means of
symbols, primitive man becomes ambitious of greater things and
seeks to control external nature in the same way. This attempt to
control the thing symbolized through the symbol gives us, along
with magic, the crude beginnings of metaphysics and the crude
beginnings of medicine. In the one case the quest is for a single
simple principle of nature, wrapped up in some symbol, possession
whereof will enable the possessor to direct natural forces; in the
other there is a quest for the fundamental principle of disease in
general or of some particular disease, which again is to be wrapped
up in some symbol whereby the disease may be controlled. To
primitive man the occult was a serious practical business. He
looked upon it as we look upon physics or upon the study of
electricity.

It was a means whereby nature might be harnessed to man's use. We
make a great mistake today when we attribute any more profound
significance to primitive symbols of this type.

Passing to symbolism in philosophy, we may begin with the
Pythagoreans. For even if we may not for other than ritualistic
purposes refer to him as "our ancient friend and Brother," Masons
must always feel a kinship to Pythagoras because he called
symbolism to the aid of cosmology. Prior to Socrates the problem of
philosophy was to lay hold upon the original ground or basis of
things which outlasts all change; to discover how this original
basis changes into the particular things which we see about us, and
how it changes these things back into itself. The Milesians sought
to find this original basis of the universe in some element. The
Atomists sought it in primordial indivisible constituents of
matter. The Eleatics sought it in a unity of nature. Heraclitus
thought he had found it in a perpetual but rhythmical flux or
change. Attacking the same problem, the Pythagoreans conceived that
this permanent being which men were seeking was to be found in
numbers. They held that in contrast with changing things of
experience, numbers, as regards their content, possess a validity
independent of time; that they are eternal, without beginning,
imperishable, unchangable, immovable. Thus, so they reasoned,
numbers possess the unity and permanence sought by the Eleatics and
the rhythmical order insisted on by Heraclitus. They found the
abiding essence of the universe in mathematical relations,
particularly in numbers, and as their solution was more abstract
than that of the Milesians, more possible to represent to the
imagination than that of the Eleatics, and far clearer than that of
Heraclitus, naturally it had much influence.

But the Pythagorean solution of the problem of cosmology readily
went into symbolism. For they believed that in the antithesis
between the limited and the unlimited they recognized the
antithesis between the odd and the even in numbers, and they
identified this antithesis with that between the perfect and the
imperfect, the good and the bad. They put over against the limited,
the odd, the perfect, and the good; antithesis of the limitless,
the even, the imperfect, and the bad. Yet they conceived that both
principles were united in the number one, which had the value both
of an even and of an odd number, so that in the universe as a whole
these antitheses were adjusted to form a harmony. In other words,
they conceived of the universe as a harmony of numbers, and with
this idea they exerted themselves to make an order of things
corresponding to the system of numbers by assigning the fundamental
conceptions in every department of knowledge to various numbers and
on the other hand by assigning to every individual number,
especially to those from one to ten, determining significance in
the various spheres of reality. As Windelband says: "The fantastic
nature of the symbolic interpretation into which they fell in doing
this must  . . . not cause us to overlook the fact that the attempt
was made thereby to recognize an abiding order of things which
could be grasped and expressed in conceptions and to find the
ultimate ground of this order in mathematical conceptions." In a
phrase, the Pythagoreans attempted to comprehend and represent the
universe by means of mathematical symbols. Thus they have a real
place in the history of human thought. But today we have better
ways of trying to comprehend and represent the universe. We do
little honor to the Pythagoreans when we solemnly retail the letter
of their speculations as if they had some intrinsic validity, when
their true significance lies in their attitude toward and their
spirit of approach to a great philosophical problem. Let us
approach the modern problem of philosophy with the same
determination to achieve a reasoned result whereby permanence and
stability may be assured, rather than continue to repeat the
details of their speculations as to the exact numerical equivalent
of this or that. Otherwise symbols be come our masters rather than
our servants.

Thus far the task of philosophy has been to comprehend external
nature and to represent it. After Socrates the interest in
philosophy turned from the outside of man to the inside, and when,
following the the conquests of Alexander the Great, in the period
of decadence after the great age of Greek intellectual activity,
the Helenistic culture spread over the civilized world, the revived
symbolism of the Neo-Platonists was a higher symbolism, for it
attempted to symbolize the spiritual. They thought of the world
immediately the about us as chiefly significant in pointing the way
to a higher world. Its value was not in what it was but in what it
revealed. It was the sign and symbol of a higher being. Thus their
doctrine, instead of seeking symbols of the actual world of sense,
treated that world as having a symbolic character. Presently there
came a succession of debasements of this philosophy in the writings
of the Hellenizing Theosophists, the mass of writings that go by
the name of Hermes Trismegistus, the Gnostics, and later the
Cabbala. Albert Pike has studied these attentively and has revived
much of their elaborate symbolism- But this symbolism is quite void
of meaning for us if we are ignorant of its philosophical pedigree,
and when we are able to comprehend it we can but see that there are
better ways to represent the more critical metaphysical knowledge
of the modern world.

With the revival of learning that ushered in the world of today
there came presently a revival of symbolism in philosophical
thought. The Middle Ages were wholly dominated by Aristotle, whose
powerful intellect, perhaps "the most powerful ever possessed by
any man," was yet limited to the exterior of things and unable to
reach beneath to the hidden forces by which things are moved. "It
was natural," says Benn, "that one who ranged with such consummate
mastery over the whole world of apparent reality, should believe in
no other reality.. . . The visible order of nature was present to
his imagination in such precise determination and fulness of detail
that it resisted any attempt he might have made to conceive it
under a different form." When the reign of Aristotle came to an end
and men sought once more to comprehend and to represent the unseen
and the unseeable, a flood of symbolistic writing resulted.
Chemistry has its roots in the half charlatan symbolism of Alchemy.
The symbolic medicine of the revolt from Galen has an important
place in the history of modern medicine, and the hermetic
philosophers, who busied themselves with alchemy and symbolic
medicine and attempted to adapt and apply the fusions of Oriental
mysticism and NeoPlatonic symbolism of the Hellenistic decadence,
are in the right line of descent of our Masonic symbols.

Later the rationalism of the age of "enlightenment" turned men away
from symbolism. For a time men's faith in reason was boundless. The
age of Preston cared nothing for symbols except as they might be
made convenient vehicles of rational instruction. Indeed Preston
indulges in an obvious sneer at those who would employ symbols
otherwise than to impart "wise and serious truths." And when
presently reaction from this age of reason came with the
Romanticists of the nineteenth century, it was felt chiefly in art,
and the revival of symbolism was most conspicuous in aesthetics.
There was no adequate philosophical apparatus to guide the revived
Masonic symbolism of Pike, snow in consequence the subject is still
disfigured by too much of Hermetic charlatanism. With the clearer
light afforded by psychology and the gesture appreciation of the
role of symbols in man's subconscious life and the effects thereof
upon his conscious activities which it reveals we may hope
presently for a more truly scientific study of our mass of
traditional symbols. This will build, indeed, upon the historical
studies of Pike and will use much of the results of his instinct
for interpretation. But it will have a critical method unknown to
his time that will enable Pike's successor in Masonic symbolism to
do for that subject what Gould did for Masonic history. And so with
one further suggestion this preface to that work may be brought to
an end. As we now think, things are important not so much for what
they are as for what they do. Institutions are significant
functionally rather than intrinsically. Thus our student of Masonic
symbols will investigate the history of the symbols employed by the
Craft and will seek their original meanings and the development of
their interpretations. But above all he will ask, and will seek to
know by means of their history and their development, how they
function today, what they teach today, and how they teach it, and
even more what they may teach and how we may make them effective
for teaching it.

