THE TEACHINGS OF MASONRY

BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, IOWA
THE BUILDER SEPTEMBER 1921


PART III - THE IDEA OF TRUTH IN FREEMASONRY

A CANDIDATE enters the Masonic lodge room in thick darkness.  There is no light within him, and there is none about him.  His progress from station to station is in quest of illumination; he passes from degree to degree seeking more light: when at last the scales fall from his eyes, and the illumination comes, the whole lodge greets the climax with a battery of exclamation.  The sun, the moon and the stars move through the symbolism of the three degrees as they pass through the houses of the sky.  References to daybreak and dusk, to midnight and to the meridian day, are omnipresent throughout the ritual.  Learned men debate with each other concerning the origins of this element in our symbolism, many believe it has descended to us from the Light Religions of the ancient world, be that as it may, all Masons understand that light is nothing other than the symbol of truth and knowledge, and the prevalence of that symbolism is an indication of the importance to be attached to truth and knowledge in any study of the greater teachings of the Fraternity.

Can you remember any "light symbolisms" not mentioned in the paper? Can you name two of the "Light Religions" of "the ancient world"? Why do you suppose, did ancient man worship the sun, moon, and stars? Can you find any traces of this early worship in the Bible? Why did "light" come to be taken as the symbol of Truth?

William Preston, to whom the Craft is so much indebted, and who largely shaped the Second degree as we now have it, believed it to be the chief end of Masonry to instil wisdom and convey knowledge. Under his hand the lodge became a school room; the Master, a teacher; the candidate, a pupil. In more or less orderly fashion a whole system of learning was set forth, ranging from the five senses to the fine arts, and it was made abundantly clear that no man can remain a genuine Mason who holds truth lightly or chooses to remain in ignorance.  The liar and the ignoramus may somehow get into Masonry, but no Masonry can get into them.

There is a difference between "truth" and "knowledge," it goes without saying, and that difference is not often lost to sight by the ritual, but on the whole our system uses the two words interchangeably.  Truth is sought for the sake of life.  We human beings are set in the midst of a world every element of which is ceaselessly influencing us.  Nature is not an inert background, but a system of positive forces; the sun warms us; the rain falls on us; our existence is bound up with natural processes.  Other human beings impinge upon us, their lives interacting with ours.  In our own selves, in our mind, body, emotions, volitions, forces are tirelessly at play.  A human being cannot stand immovable and uninfluenced in the midst of life as a rock stands in the wash of the tide.  His life goes on every moment influencing and being influenced.  And life is full and rich, happiness comes, when we so understand ourselves, and the world, and the forces of nature, that we harmoniously adjust ourselves thereto.  The report of what nature, the world, life really are, that is truth; and the items of information which we need to have in order to know the truth, that is knowledge.  A wise man desires truth and seeks knowledge, not in order to pose as a scholar or a learned man, but in order that he may live happily.

What was William Preston's conception of the lodge? Was there a public school system in England in his day? What is the difference between "truth" and "knowledge?" How would you define "truth?" Do you agree with the definition hinted at in the paper? Do we seek "truth" for "truth's" sake or for "life's"? What is the connection between truth and happiness?

How a man finds knowledge is a matter of comparative indifference; he may learn from books, or he may never read a page; he may attend school or not; he may gain information by himself or from a master.  That is for the man's own choosing, and Masonry offers no recipe for an education.  But enlightenment is a thing every Mason stands pledged to seek, and seek it he must if he is to be a Mason in fact as well as in name.

Do you believe that it is a Masonic duty to seek knowledge? Why? Are you seeking knowledge? How? What effect would it have on your lodge if all its members were well educated men? Would it make for the unity, harmony, and therefore the happiness of its members? Can you think of a legitimate excuse for ignorance? If a poor little negro like Booker Washington, too nondescript even to know his own name or birthday, could earn a splendid education while working in a coal mine, couldn't every man do as much, barring ill health?

From the point of view of Masonry, ignorance is a Sin.  Usually a man excuses himself for his ignorance by saying, "I had no opportunities.  I have had to work since a child.  I could not go to school." This self-justification is a fallacy all through, not only because many men have won a schooling in spite of poverty, but because one may gain an education without going to school at all.  We have night schools, free public libraries, daily papers, magazines, cheap books, and countless agencies which fairly beg men to learn.  Moreover, if a man is not content to remain in ignorance, he can always learn from experience, observation, and from his work.  Considering how ample are the opportunities to learn knowledge and truth, there is no excuse for ignorance, and the only reason for it is that a man is too lazy, or prefers darkness to light. Usually it is his indolence that is to blame.  Ignorance is sin.

I recently asked of the manager of a considerable business enterprise, "From which do you suffer the most, the dishonesty of your employees, or their general ignorance, indifference, stupidity?" "What we suffer from their dishonesty," he replied, "is as nothing from what we lose by their lack of knowing how to work, and knowing this business.  Deliver me from the ignorance of the majority of men.  Business suffers a thousand times more from stupidity than from dishonesty!" The whole world suffers from men's ignorance.  Children grow up diseased and unhappy because mothers and fathers undertook a family without learning anything about the right care of children.  The same children leave school with half-taught minds because so few school teachers understand teaching.  They embark in business and found families of their own through which to perpetuate their own lack of knowledge, and thus does the world go on.  Ignorance is a sin because of the unhappiness it causes inhuman life. It is a good thing for a great institution like the church to wage its war on viciousness and deliberate wrong.  It is equally a good thing for a great institution like our Fraternity to make war on that mental darkness which breeds quite as much evil in the world as the corruptions of conscience.

Do you believe that "ignorance is a sin"? What does our ritual teach concerning this? In what way is it a sin? Do you believe that the Great War would have happened if had not been in such ignorance concerning Frenchmen, and Englishmen, and Americans, and vice versa? Would the politicians of the world be able to deceive the masses so easily if those masses knew more about history and about the world as it now is? In what way would widespread knowledge make for human peace?

Truth must be sought for.  It is not an entity lying outside us, like a boulder on the path, but a living and changing thing, which must evermore be possessed anew, a fact which is so hauntingly bodied forth in our legend of the Lost Word, and our search therefor.  And each man must win it for himself, such is the law, for it is not a commodity which can be handed by one man to another, though there are countless ways in which we can help each other to find the light.  The institution which supposes itself to have discovered all truth, and to have it neatly organized into a creed, which may be received from it secondhand, as one may receive a legacy, is an institution that is deceiving itself and its followers.  No institution has captured the whole truth; none ever can.  No man can come into possession of the light by signing his name to a creed.  Masonry has no creed.  For each one of us men the truth is as a word that is lost, and each of us must himself go in search for it.

When Charles Darwin called our attention to a whole set of new facts about the development of living beings hosts of men turned on the great naturalist with revellings.  They had already made up their minds about the origin of life.  They were hoodwinked by their own theories.  The man who makes up his mind about a thing before he has learned sufficient about that thing is a man that wears a blindfold and cannot see the truth.  To be open minded; to be willing both to learn and unlearn; to be glad to revise one's old theories in order to conform to newly learned facts; and not to be afraid to depart from the crowd on its beaten path if the light leads in new directions - all this is necessary if one is to be a truthseeker, and it is all suggested to us by the symbol of the hoodwink.

A man must free himself if he is to find light; also must be glad and willing that others be equally free. If I must have a free mind then, by token of the same requirements, my neighbour must have a free mind, and I shall be glad to give him the rights of a free mind, unless I am a fool and a bigot.  This is toleration.  Toleration does not mean that one idea is as good as another, or that one truth is as important as another.  Neither does it mean (this should be thrice underscored) that one is indifferent to all ideas or theories as though it matters not what men believe. When toleration lapses into a mere indifference it becomes a vicious thing.  The real meaning of toleration is, When a man goes in search of his Lost Word, let him choose his own path, and place no obstacles therein.

But it has a greater meaning than that.  The greater truths are always too vast to be won by a single mind; always must a group of thinkers work together in a close corporation.  Toleration means that every such group be left free in its endeavours.  It is just here that one finds the church's most frequent crimes of intolerance.  When Vesaluis and his Renaissance contemporaries were working to discover the facts about the human body the church hampered them and thwarted them at every turn.  The same thing happened to the geographers who explored and mapped the earth; to Newton and his colleagues who built up the silence of physics; to DesCartes and his contemporaries in philosophy; to Paracelsus and his successors in medicine, and to Charles Darwin and the group of nineteenth century biologists of whom he was chief.  The same thing is happening today to the group of sociologists who are trying to learn the truth about the structure of human society.  It is bad enough when some individual is forbidden to think for himself, but it is far worse, it looms up as a crime against the race, when the race's own best thinkers, scientists, inventors, investigators, are prevented from carrying out in action that work from which alone we can learn the truth about ourselves and the world.

Mankind can never discover the whole of truth.  Always and always it opens before us, like an ever-receding goal; and evermore must we continue to seek it, even as the Masonic candidate, helped in such ways as is possible, and amid many obstacles, gradually through the darkness makes his "progress" from station to station, from degree to degree, seeking light, and more light, and that mystic Word which is truth itself.

How is truth found? How do you know a thing to be true? What does the ritual teach about the nature of truth?  What does the hoodwink suggest about the reasons for man not finding the truth? What is meant by a "prejudice"? How does it prevent our finding the truth? What is toleration?
SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

Mackey's Encyclopedia - (Revised Edition):

Free, The Word, p. 280; Free and Accepted, p. 281;  Free Born, p.281; Freedom, p. 281; Freedom, Fervency and Zeal, p. 281; Freemason, p. 281; Free Will and Accord, p. 284; The Letter G, p. 287; Hoodwink, p. 336; Landmarks, p. 421. Herein are laid down the bounds wherein a Freemason may confidently walk assured of his accordance thereby with the definitions generally accepted for his guidance. Library, p. 445; Light, p. 446; Lights, Greater, p. 447; Symbol, p. 751; Symbol, Compound, p. 752; Symbolic Degrees, p. 752; Symbolism, The Science of, p. 754; Toleration, p. 789.

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