What a Fellowcraft Should Know

THE BUILDER, FEBRUARY, 1924

This article was written in response to a number of requests, most of which,
strangely enough, have come during the past few weeks.  It appears that
in the scope of available Masonic literature the Second Degree has suffered
from a certain unfortunate neglect.  What follows is not in any sense
designed to fill this gap, or to deal exhaustively with a rite deserving of a
volume to itself, but a hint and a suggestion written in the hope that other
scribes may be inspired to write on the same theme.  It would be profitable
and delightful to have in these pages several discussions of this noble
degree.


IN the old days of English Operative Masonry a man was first made an
Entered Apprentice; after being bonded (or indentured) to a Master Mason
for a period of some seven years he was then made a Fellow of the Craft
By this is meant that he was instated a member of the lodge in full standing
with every right enjoyed by all other Masons, and that he had become a
master of his trade, or Master Mason, the two terms thereby meaning the
same thing.  From that time on he was free to travel where he wished in
search of employment, to receive Master's wages (an Apprentice received
no wages except his board and keep, and possibly something in the way
of "findings," i.e., and apron, gloves, a few tools perhaps), and to become,
if good fortune befell, an employer, or Master of workman, or perhaps to
superintend the erection of some building.

It is difficult at this far remove in time to know what manner of ceremony
was employed at the entering of an Apprentice, but we may be sure that
some kind of ritual was practiced for the Apprentice was made to listen to
a traditional history of the Craft, such as have been preserved in our Old
Charges; was made to take an oath (very simple in its form) to keep
inviolate all the secrets of the trade and of the household of the master and
his dame with whom he would live; and it is also probable that the Master
of the lodge would give him certain bits of advice at the time, perhaps in
the shape of what we should now call "lectures." Many Masonic historians
have believed that no ceremony at all was used when this workman, freed
from his bonds, was made a Fellow of the Craft, but it would appear
reasonable to suppose that such a step, involving as it did so complete a
change of status and having its own secrets, such as grips and words,
some kind of ceremony was used.  If this was the case then two degrees
were employed by the old Operative Masons, the second being the Fellow
Craft or Master Mason ceremony.

After the formation of the first Grand Lodge of Speculative Masons in
London, 1717, these two degrees (or the original one degree, if one
prefers) were so amplified (why and by whom it is impossible to say) that
at last they were re-divided into three degrees, a system that has since
become so firmly established in the Craft that it will remain as long as
Freemasonry endures.  Our Second Degree, therefore, in its present form,
dates from early in the eighteenth century, but that does not mean that the
material built into it came then into the Craft for the first time, for such was
not the case, as some of it must have existed before 1717.

So much by way of history.  It would be interesting to trace the degree's
development from the time it left the hands of Desaguliers and his fellows,
through Dunckerley, Hutchinson, Preston, Webb and the others, but that
would leave no space for an exposition of the ideas embodied in its
symbolism as it now stands, which is the present purpose.

THE DEGREE OF MIDDLE LIFE

From old monitors it is evident that the men who gave its present shape to
the degree intended it to cover that part of a man's career which falls
between his youth and this old age.  The lodge symbolizes the world as a
whole; the Apprentice the youth entering it, the Master Mason one about
to leave it, the Fellowcraft a man in the heyday of his powers, equipped to
carry its burdens and trained to do its work.

This "work of the world"! this great enterprise of organized human life! How
is it to be carried forward? Not by ignorance, surely, for it is the essence of
ignorance to be helpless; neither can it be done by unskilled hands, for life
is complicated and involves an endless amount of technique.  No, it rests
on the shoulders of those who have knowledge, skill, and experience, and
such is the principal idea of the Fellowcraft Degree.  It is the drama of
education, the philosophy of enlightenment.

As such it deserves far more attention than usually is accorded it if one
may judge by lodge practices in general.  Frequently there are not half as
many brethren present in lodge as when the "first" or the "third" is
exemplified, and in too many cases the paraphernalia used, the manner in
which the work is "put on," and the general atmosphere of the occasion are
such as to suggest that to the lodge the "second" is a kind of a half-way
ceremony that doesn't deserve much thought or skill for its exhibition.  The
irony of such a thing cannot escape notice, because the Fellowcraft rite is
dedicated, as even a tyro can see, to enlightenment, which is in itself one
of the grand aims of the Order.  Of all the degrees in the entire hierarchy
of ceremonies, from the first degree until the last of the "Higher Grades," it
would appear to be precisely that degree which should receive at the
hands of the Craft its most loving care, its most anxious attention.  It would
not be an exaggeration to say that in itself it should more than repay any
man for the effort and cost of his Masonic initiation, it is so wise in its
teachings, so profound in its truths, and so useful to have in one's mind. 
To know and to practice it is to be made wise in the art of life, than which
no other art can ever be half so important, or nearly so valuable.

THE PILLARS AND THE PAVEMENT 

The great pillars that figure so prominently in its ceremonies are reminiscent
of the two mighty columns that stood out in front of King Solomon's
temple, not to support its roof but as symbolical reminders of truths and
forces in government and in religion.  Our earlier monitorialists made much
of the names of these pillars, perhaps because they suggested the massive
powers which, pillar-like, uphold the, universe, the vast scheme of things,
with its immeasurable spaces and its multitudinous worlds.  Before such a
Power as that it is meet that a man bow down in worship, especially in
order to have engraved inside his heart the truth that the Almighty Father
is Himself a builder and a maker, and that the most godlike man is he
whose life is the most constructive.

From another angle of vision the pillars suggest the fact of birth, which has
within it more and larger meanings than one will discover at first thought. 
One does not enter into a well-furnished manhood by chance, like a
drunkard blundering through a doorway, but by virtue of labour and
preparation: on the one side is the terrestrial globe, with its wisdom
concerning the earth, its facts of sense, its physical existence, its manual
tasks; and on the other the celestial globe, with its wisdom of the spiritual
life, of the intellect, the conscience, and the imagination.

The checkered pavement is most frequently explained as symbolizing the
checkered nature of human life, especially in middle life, when the heat is
intense, and the way is hard owing to the many burdens to be carried; but
one has the feeling that to the early builders it may have had another
suggestion.  The makers of the cathedrals loved mosaic work, especially
in Italy where the Cosmati family became famous for its ability to lay
checkered floors, or inlay with colored metals and glass. According to
some very old books and pictures (especially one by Holbein) the black
and white checkered pavement when laid in a church or cathedral
symbolized the eternity of the world, in contrast to which a man, as he
walked across the earth, was very humble and very transient.  There is
more than a merely pious sentiment in this, for it is a part of wisdom to
remember "that the sweet days die," that in a very little while the end will
come when we must lay down our tools and call the work finished.  The
trestle board of one's life should be adjusted to that scale, for though the
world is eternal, so that its white days and black nights stretch endlessly
on, one's own strength soon vanishes, therefore he is well advised who
attempts not more than he can do, or who learns not to waste the moments
that are so precious out of a boyish delusion that there is always plenty of
time ahead.

OPERATIVE AND SPECULATIVE MASONRY

The historical connection between Operative and Speculative Masonry is
so familiar, and is explained so well in the lectures, that there is no need
here to enlarge on the matter.  It is good to remember that we are an Order
of Builders.  Our forefathers in the Craft wrought at buildings which to this
day remain, many of them, in our midst to remind us of the majesty and
loveliness of the architectural art.  But we are builders of men; of ourselves
first, and next of the world of manhood at large, helping each other the
while as is meet that brothers do.  It is easy to tear down, to criticize, to find
fault, to destroy; it is a thing at which many beasts are expert; to construct,
to erect, to preserve, that is more difficult, and nobler, requiring art and a
mind that loves life with its values and its beautiful purposes.

A true Freemason will not waste his time, or demean himself, by tearing
down another's wall.  He respects every man's temple, though it be erected
to other gods than his own and carries in his heart a reverence for every
attempt made by anybody whatsoever to raise toward heaven the palaces
of our human dream.  One is reminded here of Nehemiah's bugle-like
sentence, "So builded we the wall!" Sanballat and his tribesmen were
obstructionists, iconoclasts, tearers down, but Nehemiah and his fellow
workers, fellows in the builder's craft, let them childishly throw stones and
try to pull down the edifice; theirs was to build the wall of the Temple, and
they did it.

Freemasons are Builders of the Brotherhood.  They are sworn and
dedicated to make good will to prevail in all the relations of life, so that in
society at large will be felt the same kindliness that makes a family circle
so delightful.  There is nothing merely sentimental in this; it is not a vague
dream floating gossamer-like before our eyes, but an urgent necessity if the
human race is ever to win its ways out of the hells in which it now suffers:
it is the task of statesmen, the goal at which governments aim, and it is
something which if we men do not do it will never be done. There appears
to be something implacable in the nature of things, something that will not
bend or swerve to suit our human fancy or to enable us to escape the
consequences of our acts, but moves majestically onward, so that if we
men live in hatred and ill will we must suffer the results.  No arm is
stretched down out of the sky; no wholesale miracle is performed; we must
find a way to live happily together or else continue indefinitely to have
within our lives all the agonies due to war, hatred and unkindness. 
Brotherhood is for the salvation of the race from its misery and pain; is
there any task greater than that?

THE WINDING STAIRS

There were no winding stairs in Solomon's Temple, no stairs at all except
for the steps that led to the little rooms in the outer walls, therefore the
winding stairs in the Fellowcraft Degree are manifestly symbolical.  This is
made all the more obvious by the fact that the steps are divided into
groups of 3, 5 and 7, a thing; undoubtedly inherited from the days when
these numbers had for men a mystical significance that has perhaps
escaped us.  Concerning the definitely symbolical meanings of these things
there will ever be a deal of debate, but there call be little difference or
opinion concerning the general idea involved.  Human life, if it is ever to
achieve anything, if it ever arrives in the Holy of Holies, is, to quote the
beautiful old words of Emerson, "an ascending effort." We can never rest
on our oars.  Always it is effort, effort, and then more effort, climb after
climb, step above step.  Something in the depths of our souls seems to
demand it; the manner in which the world is built makes it necessary.

These steps do not stand vertical or in a straight incline, but wind.  It
reminds us of one of the most sparkling books of recent years, a volume
by Allen Upward called The New World, in which that learned English
barrister works out a theory that all vital activity in this world is spiral in its
pattern so that life itself winds about and about in its ascending effort. 
There is something more than fancy in this, if one may trust his own
experiences, for in our development upwards towards more strength,
wisdom and grace we now and again seem to return to some point from
which we started except that we are above it, and therefore see our old
truths in a new light.

THE LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

Educators of the Middle Ages divided their curriculum into seven branches,
in two groups, one of three and one of four, called respectively the trivium
and the quadrivium: the former comprised usually grammar, rhetoric, and
logic; the latter arithmetic, music, astronomy and geometry.  It is this
old-time arrangement of studies that remains in the degree to symbolize an
effective schooling.  There is no need to analyze this arrangement or to
attempt to justify its use in this day and age; the main point is that in
Freemasonry the Liberal Arts and Sciences symbolize an education.

There is however this thing to be said about the medieval curriculum: it was
a discipline in the humanities, and that is something worth thinking about. 
The tendency in schools nowadays is to give a student either a scientific
course, so as to equip him for one of the technical professions, or else a
course in business methods with a view to fitting him for office or factory. 
This is all well and good but it is not a complete education, and our
educators will some day regret their surrender to the utilitarians who have
demanded "a schooling that pays." Life is more than a profession, finer than
a trade, it has ends and needs above and outside of these, important as
they are.  One has a religious and also an imaginative relationship with the
universe which deserves to be developed and instructed; it is just as
important to look upon the stars with the eye of reverence or as things of
beauty as to measure their diameter or estimate their distances in space;
the fields and hills are to be loved for their own sake, as well as to be
converted into tillage and farmyards.  There are such things as art, poetry,
music, and worship, and these too are to have a place in school.  Also it
is necessary for a man to understand his own nature, and the nature of the
men and women with whom he lives, a need satisfied by literature, painting,
and music.  Every labourer is a man first, with neighbours and a family, and
a life to live; to give him nothing but a training in his craft is to rob him of
his most precious birthright.  The old ideal of the Liberal Arts, the
humanities, is nearer the truth and need of things than any ultra-modern
drill in scientific technique.  We need to understand nature; yes; but we
need quite as much to understand human nature.

GEOMETRY AND THE LETTER G

The first men in the world were childlike in mind to a degree difficult for us
to imagine.  The natural scheme of things must have puzzled them almost
beyond endurance.  What a medley it was! what a chaos! the simplest
sequences of events, such as the succession of the seasons, was unknown
to them so that they were like babes peering helplessly into the dark,
unable to make it all out.  To men living under such conditions the
discovering of order, of number, of geometry must have broken with a
surprise like the coming of a new religion.  Little wonder that they made so
much of numbers, calling them sacred and attributing to them all manner
of secret and occult properties, as if the relations among the forces and
substances of creation were the immediate operation of an Infinite Mind. 
If modern philosophy gives a different account of it that does not detract
from the value of the old thinking.

The rank and file of men, so it appears, have in the back of their minds a
vague notion that matter in itself is a formless thing without character or
structure, so that their picture of creation is that some outside Power took
charge of the original chaos of brute stuff and impressed upon it shape and
order in much the same manner that a clay modeller imposes upon a lump
of dirt the likeness of a human face.  According to this view there is no
such thing as order in the nature of things; order is fugitive and transient,
a something from without.  But such is not the finding of modern science. 
There is no such thing as matter by itself, matter as an abstract entity; there
are such things as water, air, gasses, wood, stone, metals, soil, etc., etc.,
and every such substance has a structure unimaginably complicated, so
that order is in the nature of things.  Geometry is a revelation of that order,
a reducing to line and diagram of the everlasting relations among all the
substances and properties of the universe.  Can anything be more sublime
than that?

There is reason to believe that the Letter G stood for this precious science,
though in our day and more particularly in American lodges it is a symbol
of T.S.G.A.O.T.U. In either event, and in the last analysis, the significance
is the same, because the Sacred Letter would have reference to that which
is the Origin of the Orderliness of the universe.

The God of Heaven and Earth is the beginning and end of all Masonic
mysteries; it is from Him that we have come, it is unto Him that we go, and
in all the journey between the canopy of His love is over us.  The definitions
of His nature, the description of His attributes may be left to the arguments
of the theologians and the disquisitions of the metaphysicians; the fact of
His existence admits of no argument; it is "sure as the most certain sure,"
the alpha and the omega of thought.

The grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley in a book recently published argues
that in our modern world men of scientific training are finding out a new
approach to God; instead of trusting to vague reports from the past or to
ancient traditions, they are examining, so he says, into the nature of life and
the structure of the universe at first hand.  If this be so the scientist will find
God as surely as the saint, because He is there.

We human beings are not intruders from another world, temporary pilgrims
from some realm outside the universe; we are part and parcel of the
universe, as much a part of the natural scheme of things as the blowing
clover or the falling rain.  There is but one system of reality; this is it; we are
a part of it.  The soul in us, the immortal spirit, our inmost thoughts and
ideals belong as much to this system of reality as clods or boulders, so that
in the very structure of the universe there is that out of which spirit can
come, self-consciousness, thought, love, prayers, and dreams, so that the
scheme of things is not a soulless mechanism, a pile of dirt, a flux of blind
forces, but a Something that can bring souls into existence, and sustain
them.  The Letter G is inscribed on the forehead of creation, it is written on
the tiniest atom.

It is a mistake to suppose that education is a mere device to train a man
in a handicraft, or a collection of pieces of information of more or less
practical use; education leads at last to truth, and God is the truth about
the universe.  This is the real Holy of Holies, the true Inner Chamber into
which, at the last, a Fellowcraft comes; and the vision he has there, the
consolation, the strength and the confidence of everlasting life together
make up the wages he receives.  Such wages are life indeed, to earn which
it is worth every man's most manly endeavour, and that at any price.

WHAT A FELLOWCRAFT SHOULD KNOW

This is what a Fellowcraft should know - the need, the nature, and the
purpose of education, along with the attendant realization of the
disastrousness of ignorance.  A human being begins life in utter
helplessness; he cannot even lift his head from the pillow.  The same
human being must at last become a man, full grown and equipped to do
his own share of the work of the world, live his own life as a man should,
and confront the universe as an intelligent being.  The sum total of the
influences that bridge this gap between helplessness and maturity is
education; books, schools, teachers, and experience are means to that
end.  It is the conscious shaping of the processes of growth, the purposive
direction of experience toward the end of a fully developed manhood that
is the grand end and goal of every Mason who must needs be "enflamed
with the study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high
hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, famous
to all ages."

