THE BUILDER MARCH 1916

THE AESTHETICS OF MASONRY
BY BRO. CHARLES H. MERZ, OHIO

AESTHETICS is the term used to denote the "scientific
classification of the faculties through which we are enabled to
appreciate the beautiful and sublime and which gives us the
experience of the resulting emotions."

Aesthetics endeavors to translate our ideal conceptions into forms
which can be understood by the common mind.

The term aesthetics is often improperly employed as being
synonymous with affectation--the attempt to assume or exhibit what
is not real or natural and the association of an aesthetic culture
with Masonry is apt to be regarded with an indisposition to admit
of any possible connection between them.

The term aesthetics, broadly interpreted, applies to everything
that produces shapes and cultivates sentiment. To be aesthetic
implies a faculty of being able to perceive, comprehend and enjoy
the beautiful wherever it may be found.

As logic is the science of pure and formal thought-- aiming
ultimately at truth, and ethics is a system of rules and principles
concerning moral duty, so aesthetics appertains to the science of
the beautiful, that quality which appeals primarily to those
complex determinations of the mind which result from the
cooperation of our entire rational powers and moral feelings.

If one follows with a sympathetic insight, the progress of our
ritual and its comprehensive symbolism, which we believe to be the
direct expression of a great religious experience--the utterances
of men who sought to embody in terms not subject to times' law, the
broad fundamental truths of man's relation to the great unknown--
then we must admit that there is an aesthetic side to Masonry.

UTILITY AND BEAUTY

The human family has been submitted to various classifications by
philosophers. One has divided it into the utilizers and the
beautifiers of life and the world. The former class labors
strenuously for the accumulation of wealth and material comforts.
It fails entirely to appreciate a Dual Principle such as is
intimately incorporated into our Masonic system of teaching. It
evinces no interest in endeavoring to appreciate the duality which
characterizes the whole universe--riches and poverty, light and
darkness, good and evil, bitter and sweet and it ignores the fact
that it is the ultimate unity, so to speak, into which all the
"pairs of opposites" is resolved--the complementary aspect of
duality merged into perfect synthesis--that stimulates man to
strive constantly for perfection.

This class fails to realize that no man is at liberty to neglect
his own mental development and culture -- that no man in this busy
world of ours has a right to so involve himself in the pursuits and
cares of active life that it will be impossible for him to give
both time and attention to the improvement of his own mind.

The utilizers make the culture of mind subordinate to success in
the various employments of life and something to be pursued merely
as a means to an end.

In order to enjoy the arts and sciences, the mind must be tranquil
and at rest. The struggle for wealth or political supremacy is apt
to become a passion that enslaves and robs a man of that very
calmness necessary to enjoy even life itself. No reasonable man
will argue against the possession of property or the acquisition of
wealth through ordinary business pursuits but every thinking man
will admit that it is directly injurious to become a slave to
business or to engage in the pursuit of it at the expense of
nervous and mental force.

OUR GREAT MASONIC TRIAD

Men who neglect to cultivate an appreciation of the beautiful--one
of our great Masonic triad--who bury their talents in a one-sided
life devoted to material gain, find it difficult to regain in after
years what they have neglected and lost. They cannot but exclaim
with the prophet, "I have no pleasure in them."

Observe the efforts that such men often make to derive pleasure
from the very source they have neglected. Books, paintings and
other art treasures are collected at countless cost but there is no
genuine pleasure derived from them.

A love for the beautiful or at least a desire for it is inborn in
man. The full embodiment of the beautiful is found only in the
Great Architect of the Universe, and, as no man will ever reach
moral perfection nor comprehend his might and power, so no man will
ever conceive the beautiful in all its perfection, unless it be
revealed to him in the great hereafter. That the Great Architect
intended to develop within us a love for the beautiful is evidenced
by the fact that he has created this world in which we live on so
grand and wonderful a scale. He has given us the capacity for
enjoying the beautiful and he has surrounded us on every side with
works of surpassing and marvellous perfection and he intended that
aesthetic pleasures and influences should be one of the means of
advancing the human race.

Sensibility enables us to enjoy the beautiful and so distinguishes
us from the animal. The life of the affections is essential to the
full development and harmonious working of the intellect. Our
sensibilities and affections are our highest faculties. They give
us the nearest view of and strongest hold upon the truth. There
exists a very essential connection of cause and effect between the
life of the heart and that of the mind and the heights of
intellectual greatness have never been reached without a keen and
lofty vision and the great fundamental ideas and principles which
a love for the beautiful alone inspires.

THE INFLUENCE OF MASONRY

While religion and science have done much to bring about the degree
of culture which we enjoy, the influence of Masonry in this respect
must not be overlooked. "Our ancient friend and brother, the great
Pythagoras, taught that as God in himself is the all good--the
harmony and liberty of necessity--so are all his works
characterized by the imprint of harmony--that which we today teach
is the strength and support of all institutions. Nature has her
contrasts but these are blended into harmony. This unity in
multiplicity, this harmony in contrasts, he defined as the
beautiful. All his teachings were based upon the idea that in God
we find the beautiful in all its perfection. It is a, remarkable
fact that pagan philosophers should have built up a system which
Christianity with its revelation has been unable to either add to
or destroy. The Greek philosophy of the beautiful was recognized
and reiterated by the church fathers and when they endow man with
imagination and ideals of beauty, they accomplish nothing by way of
improvement.

We are taught that nature and man are sin cursed. The original
beauty in both is destroyed, and, as man endeavors to restore
within himself the proper moral equilibrium, he must draw upon the
Divine source and this, both religion and Masonry teach him to do.

The mind of man has ever employed itself with the lofty subject of
Beauty--which together with Wisdom and Strength, Masonry teaches us
are the attributes of God, whom to love and obey is the duty of all
mankind.

Study, the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful, which in
itself constitutes the highest form of self culture, enables us the
better to "discover the power, the wisdom and the goodness of the
great Creator as the vast proportions of the universe are revealed
to us."

BEAUTY AND LAW

Pure intellect and the reasoning powers alone can never lead to an
appreciation of the beautiful. Heart power and a love for study are
necessary inspirations. Inspiration is the power that leads man
onward, and great though it is, being of Divine origin, it must,
like all else, conform to law--the rules of the beautiful. There
must ever be a discernible principle of order and this discernment
is what gives us aesthetic, artistic pleasure.

Thousands of Masons hear the beautiful truths concealed in the
symbolism of our ritual but in the language of the Bible, "they
have eyes and they see not: they have ears and they hear not."

No full and true enjoyment of the beautiful in nature can be had
except by those who see the hand and hear the voice of the Eternal
in his works. The beauty of but one autumn day is more than has
ever entered the mind of man to conceive and such beauty makes us
feel that the combined intellect and skill of humanity for ages and
ages could fill but a single leaf of the immeasurable volume which
bears the great Creator's imprint. After all, every creation of man
is but a copy of the thoughts of God. Truth to nature is the sole
test of beauty and that which departs from the great plan of the
Supreme Architect has no place of honor in man's ideal world.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said:--"One story intellects; two story
intellects; three story intellects. All fact collectors who have no
aim beyond their facts, are one story men. Two story men compare,
reason and generalize, using the labors of other fact collectors as
well as their own. Three story men idealize, imagine, predict:
their best illumination comes from above through the skylight."

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

The true Mason appreciates the appeal that his Science and Art
makes to his intellect and looks upon it as a powerful universal
language, capable of awakening the noblest emotions.

Truth alone is worth seeking and to find the truth, no matter in
what direction the human mind may travel, must be the one great
effort of every intelligent Mason.

The true Mason should believe that the ideal of the beautiful here
on earth is in man himself, who is the temple of God. The true
thinker not only admires works of beauty and art, but still more
the human mind that creates them and the Great Architect who has
given the power to create them.

To read God's laws from the beauties of his creation is as heaven
born a commission as to read them from his book of Revelation. If
revealed religion be true, it has nothing to fear from Masonry for
there can be no contradiction between the two. Just as God in ages
past, sent his prophets to interpret the book of nature for man and
bring him back to the paths of rectitude and truth, so he raises up
men today to unfold before us the beauties of nature and her
wonderful proportions and through their works of true art and
interpretation, kindle and strengthen in us a love of the true and
the good. Art ever glorifies the Deity in rhetoric, logic,
geometry, music, astronomy and architecture and these liberal arts
and sciences have for centuries been embraced in our ritualistic
teachings.

Religion represents love and moral perfection, science represents
truth and art represents beauty, while Masonry represents them all.
Science is for the few, art for the many and Masonry for all.

SPIRITUAL BEAUTY

The appreciation of the beautiful rescues man from the exclusive
domain of sensual and physical enjoyment. We are unconsciously yet
irresistably drawn by a fellow feeling toward one who has studied
the same subjects as ourselves or one who has adapted and put into
vivid prominence that which we have perhaps felt but never
expressed. Such coincidences of mind with mind and heart with heart
are productive of the stimulating effect of mutual sympathy and the
pleasure so derived is called aesthetic.

The truest theory of the enjoyment of the beautiful is that it
raises man from the grosser cares of the world and gives him
glimpses of the higher life--all of which demonstrates that
religion, Masonry and Art are closely related in their origin and
effect and that the aesthetic appreciation of the beautiful
embodied in each, is intended to make every Mason a better and
purer man.

When we turn to the sciences, we find that Geometry does not
concern itself with the essence of natural bodies. It fixes upon
the notion of extension, a notion independent of the senses and
with this perfectly ideal and abstract datum, it develops the vast
series of its structures and theorems. It is an idea--not any being
in itself and hence is eternal and unchangeable. The angle
comprehended in the square, though the material square may decay
and crumble to dust, is indestructible and returns to God who gave
it. How beautifully this applies to the Masons' work with the use
of these simple implements and figures. They enclose and embrace a
great number of things under a comprehensive design and the study
of them has a tendency to make an easily comprehended whole out of
a numerous host of particulars.

THE LODGE JEWELS

As the sculptor and painter exercise the vocation of producing
portraits that shall hand down to future ages the precise
lineaments of men and women of their generation, so the
conscientious Masonic student who has cultivated a love for the
beautiful as embodied in his Lodge Jewels, in his last hour, cannot
feel that his work is done but deems it just begun as he emerges
from the routine of earthly duty into a larger and loftier sphere
of activity offered him in that "all perfect, glorious and
celestial Lodge above where the Great Architect of the Universe
presides."

There is danger that we look down, as from a superior point of
view, upon times when the symbolism of our ritual consisted of
"geometrical and mathematical verities that were the jealously
guarded secrets of a powerful priesthood"--when the very ability to
conceal the truths of nature was a measure of greatness--there is
danger that we fail to look up.

Beauty and truth are in sacred and holy harmony and the mind that
is influenced by the spirit of the beautiful is enabled to
comprehend more readily all the proportions, evidences and
relations of truth. It is at this point that man's soul, in which
the beauty of creation meets with an unhesitating response, enters
more easily and sympathetically into a close communion with the
Divine mind, which is the perfection of character.

While we of today have found many things better than men used to
seek and strive for, we may yet fall into the error of not
recognizing and fully appreciating the supremely good and beautiful
that everywhere surrounds us.


WORTH-WHILE LOVE

The nations all admire the man 
Who loves his native land, 
And quickly to its calls responds 
With willing heart and hand: 
Whose all is on the altar laid 
His country to protect; 
We always feel that such a man 
Has won the world's respect. 
We therefore love this land of ours, 
Its people, hills and plains; 
We strive to keep it pure and free 
From every vice that stains. 
Our starry banner waves to shield 
The cause of truth and right: 
Its land-marks are our joy and pride, 
Its triumphs our delight. 
But ought our love for any land 
Be so supremely great 
That we must treat a brother man 
With bitter scorn and hate ? 
Because his earthly lot is cast 
Upon another soil, 
Have we a right to blight his home 
And claim his all as spoil ? 
No, we must firmly hold this truth, 
And boldly for it stand, 
That love to man can never yield 
To love for native land. 
For did not God decree it thus 
When first the world began-- 
That nothing else could take the place 
Of love of man for man.
--Neal A. McAulay, Lyons, Iowa.

