THE BUILDER SEPTEMBER 1916

THE DOCTRINE OF THE BALANCE
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON


READERS of Albert Pike will recall the stately pages with which
Morals and Dogma closes, setting forth, in a manner unforgetable,
the Doctrine of the Balance. Many had taught this truth before time
out of mind, no one more impressively than the man whom Pike was
richly indebted, (1) but his exposition is none the less his own.
With vast labor he brings together his findings, showing that to
this result the wisdom of the ages runs, what the sages have
thought equally with what the mystics have dreamed. Always it is a
triad, suggested by the ancient idea of the number Three, the
singular, the dual and the plural, the odd and even added, and the
great emblem of the Triangle--symbol of perfection. It is seen in
all Masonic symbolism, from end to end and at every step of the
Mystic quest for the secret which every Mason is seeking.

Eloquently, and with every variation of emphasis and illustration,
he lays the matter before us, carrying it into all the fields of
human activity and aspiration. Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction
and Repulsion, Fate and Freedom, each a fact of life and a force of
nature, are contraries alike in the universe and in the soul of
man, wherein we see eternity in miniature. As the earth is held in
its orbit by the action of opposing forces, so truth is made up of
two opposite propositions, as peace lies in the union of motion and
rest, and harmony is the fruit of seeming war. Here he finds the
solution of the problem of the One and the Many, of the Infinite
and the Finite, of Unity amidst Manifoldness: the principle of the
Balance, the secret of the universal equilibrium:

"Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Divine
Wisdom and the Infinite Divine Power; from which result the
Stability of the Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine Law,
and the Principles of Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of
it; . . Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine
Justice and the Infinite Divine Mercy, the result of which is the
Infinite Divine Equity, and the Moral Harmony or Beauty of the
Universe. By it the endurance of created and imperfect natures in
the presence of a Perfect Deity is made possible; . .

Of that Equilibrium between Necessity and Liberty, between the
action of the Divine Omnipotence and the Free-will of man, by which
vices and base actions, and ungenerous thoughts and words are
crimes and wrongs, justly punished by the law of cause and
consequence, though nothing in the universe can happen or be done
contrary to the will of God; and without which co-existence of
Liberty and Necessity, of Free-will in the creature and Omnipotence
in the Creator, there could be no religion, nor any law of right
and wrong, or merit or demerit, nor any justice in human
punishments or penal laws.

And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in ourselves, and which
Masonry incessantly labors to accomplish in its Initiates, and
demands of its Adepts and Princes (else unworthy of their titles
between the Spiritual and Divine and the Material and human in man;
between the Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense on one side, and the
Appetites and Passions on the other, from which result the Harmony
and Beauty of a well-regulated life." (2)  And so on, through a
passage of singular elevation both of language and of thought, we
are led by an ancient truth which becomes a vision in the mind of
a nobler thinker. My design is not to add to his exposition, but to
apply it with emphasis and illustration, if so that it may be
brought home to our "business and bosom" and be of real service to
us in the life which we live together, and in the life which each
must live alone. For it is the high service of Masonry that it puts
a man in the straight path which the wisest of the race have
walked, leading him midway between the falsehood of extremes, and
bringing the highest teaching of the past to the uses of the
present. After all, how to live is the one matter; and he is wise
who joins the goodly Shakespeare gospel of Courage, Sanity and Pity
with that other Gospel of Faith, Hope, and Love. Every man will
need all the aid he can get, unless he be content, as no real man
can be, to live in the world as a mere looker-on at a drama in
which others are actors,

"In God's vast house a curious guest, 
Seeing how all works take their flight."

From bottom to top life is a contradiction and a paradox, and the
beginning of wisdom is to know that fact and adjust ourselves to
it. Light and darkness, heat and cold, mind and matter, fate and
free-will, asceticism and indulgence, socialism and anarchy,
dogmatism and doubt, reason and authority--no man may ever hope to
live long enough, much less to think deeply enough, to harmonize
these paradoxes. The way of wisdom is to accept both facts in each
case, as the Two Pillars of a Temple of Truth, and walk between
them into the hush of the holy place. Either one, without the
other, is only a half-truth which ends in perversion, if not in
insanity, turning the hearty, wholesome, clear seeing spirit of
manhood into the pitiful narrowness and hardness of a bigot or a
fanatic.

For example: "All is free- that is false: all is fate--that is
false. All things are free and fated-- that is true." (3) It is
possible to make an argument in behalf of fatalism so freezing that
one is left with the feeling that he is no more responsible for his
thoughts and acts, than he is for the shape of his head and the
color of his eyes. Having listened to such an argument, each of us
may say, as Dr. Johnson did, (4) "I know I am free, and that's the
end on it." On the other side, one can present a thesis in proof of
the freedom of man so convincing that fate seems a fiction. Both
are true, and the great truth consists of two opposites which are
not contradictory--that it is the Fate of man to be Free if he
fights for it, approves himself worthy of it, uniting his will with
the Will of the Master of the World! Otherwise, we men are slaves
journeying downward "to the dust of graves," slaves of greed and
passion and a fatal folly.

Asceticism is one extreme, indulgence another. One would repress
every natural instinct in behalf of a pale, wan purity; the other
would follow every fancy, driven hither and yon by every gust of
passion, at the mercy of every caprice. Between the two lies
temperance, keeping the balance between two absurdities, making a
right use of everything, and abusing nothing; its motto the wise
words of the old Greeks, "In nothing too much." Socialism seems to
hold that the State is everything, the Individual nothing--or at
best only a cog in a vast machine, an atom in an indistinguishable
blur. Anarchy makes the State nothing, and the Individual
everything--each a law unto himself, and chaos at the end. Between
the two lies the way of wise government in which "Freedom slowly
broadens down from precedent to precedent," or grows gladly up from
the life of a just and intelligent people. There are certain things
which every man must surrender in behalf of the common good, and
other things which it were a sin to abdicate, the while a shifting,
zig-zag line runs between dividing the man from the mass.

By the same token, in religion Dogmatism affirms everything, makes
a map of the Infinite, and an atlas of Eternity, so certain is it
of things whereof no man knoweth. It talks of God as if He were a
man in the next room. It knows the origin of all things, and the
final destiny of humanity. Doubt denies everything, questions the
competence of the human mind to know Divine things, leaving us with
the assurance that nothing is certain but uncertainty; nothing
secure but insecurity. Again it is the doctrine of the balance, as
in the natural world peace is found amid the poise of powers.
Between dogmatism and doubt is a wise and reverent Faith, which
dares to say, "Now we know in part--a tiny part, no doubt--but
knowledge is real as far as it goes, and what we know gives us
confidence in the vast Unknown. And so we make bold to trust the
ultimate decency of things and the veiled kindness of the Father of
men, assured that He who has brought us to where we are will lead
us to where we ought to be !"

Of this fundamental paradox of life the Cross is the symbol. Older
than Christianity, as old, almost, as human life, it is the supreme
symbol of the race. When man first emerged from the "old dark
backward and abysm of time," he had a cross in his hand. Where he
got it, what he meant by it, many may conjecture but no one knows.
The Cross, like life itself, is also a collision and a
contradiction--its four arms pointing every whither, making it the
great guide-post of free thought. As long as a man keeps his poise,
never forgetting the profound paradox at the heart of all high
thought, he may think as far and as fast as his mind can go. For
many of us, of course, the Cross is hallowed anew and forever by
the name of One whose life was a tragedy, whose love was heroic in
its gentleness, who wins by "that strange power called weakness,"
whose character is the sovereign wonder of the world, and whose
spirit is the holiest tradition of humanity.

Since this is so, since the way of sanity, if not of salvation,
lies in keeping our balance, why is it that men lose their poise ?
No man of us, when he thinks of the days agone, but recalls acts
which he not only regrets, but which puzzle him by their strange
stupidity. He would give almost as much to be able to understand
them as he would to forget them. Why is this so? Shakespeare has
much to teach us here, much of abiding profit to remember, if so
that we may understand the past and make a better use of the
future. He everywhere shows that tragedy is the fruit of treachery,
and that treachery has its roots in obsession (5) -- some one thing
that gets so close to the mind that it can see nothing else, blinds
it, preys upon it, making a man first a fanatic, and then, it may
be, a criminal. Macbeth was a man of noble nature; his wife was a
lovely lady. They became obsessed with ambition for place and
power, and to what dark depths of sin and shame that mad blindness
led them that terrible tragedy tells us. This lesson, taught so
often by our supreme poet, is for each of us, teaching us to keep
our poise, and to flee an obsession as a plague. Whatever fastens
itself upon the mind, shutting out the light, marring the
proportions and perspectives of things, forebodes disaster.

Perhaps it is physical passion. If so, it will turn love into lust
and make the world a bawdy-house. It may be political ambition, and
a man throws everything to the winds in order to win, forgetting
that no office on earth is worth the sacrifice of integrity--and,
also, if he wins by trickery he is unfit to hold it. It may be
religion. Think of the crimes unspeakable, the brutalities
unbelievable, which have been committed by men in a frenzy of
fanatical bigotry--dipping their hands in blood and thinking they
were doing the will of God ! They were madmen. Plato said that all
men are more or less insane, and that the man whom we put in a
straight-jacket is only a little more emphatically out of his mind
than the rest of us. The more reason, then, why we should keep our
poise and walk the quiet way of sanity and charity, in love of God
and man.

After this manner we expound the Doctrine of the Balance, as taught
by Pike, reminding our Brethren, as we remind ourselves, that the
wisdom of life lies in freedom, serenity, and forgiveness, in
victory by selfsurrender to the highest laws of life, and that we
dare not turn either to the right or the left. By such teaching men
become happy and free; in this way we may grow old without being
sad, and wise without being cynical; and learn, at last, that
everlasting gentleness which is the highest wisdom man may win from
the hard facts and the often strange medley of his days. Let us
also lay to heart the prayer quoted by Pike:

"Let Him, the ever-living God, be always present in thy mind; for
thy mind itself is His likeness, for it, too, is invisible and
impalpable, and without form. As He exists forever, so thou also,
when thou shalt put off this which is visible and corruptible,
shalt stand before Him forever, living and endowed with knowledge."

(1) Eliphas Levi. Digest of his Writings. translated by A.E. Waite,
especially pp. 79-83.

(2) Morals and Dogma, pp. 859-60. 
(3) Life of F.W. Robertson, p. 32, note. 
(4) Life of Johnson, by Boswell. 
(5) Shakespeare, by John Masefield.

