THE TEACHINGS OF MASONRY
THE BUILDER JUNE 1922

BY BRO.  H. L. HAYWOOD, IOWA

PART XII - THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN


OFTEN we hear it said by zealous reformers that we men must learn
to be social beings, that individualism, egoism, and all such
creeds are vicious in their effects, and-that the socializing of
life will bring in an era of which William Morris dreamed when he
wrote that "Brotherhood is heaven, the lack of brotherhood is
hell." (Or did he use the word fellowship?" It matters not.)
Admirable as is the spirit and intent of these reformers a
fallacy lies at the heart of their theory.  We men are already
social beings: we were born that way.  To tell us that we must
become social is like telling the fishes to live in the water.

When a human babe is born it finds itself from the first in the
midst of a family, and bound by indissoluble ties to father,
mother, brother, and sister.  After the child grows up a little,
it discovers itself to have neighbors all about it.  When school
years come he learns that there are hundreds of other little
people like himself.  After he has reached maturity he will marry
and have a family of his own.  If he engages in an occupation he
will find, almost without an exception, that his daily work is
made possible by the fact that there are ther human beings to
whom he is tied by all manner of common interests.

The social nature of man's world is reflected in the structure of
his own body and mind.  He is possessed of the faculty of speech,
which implies that there are others about him who have something
to communicate to him, and to whom he has something to
communicate. Nearly all his thinking has reference to his
relations with others.  When he sets himself to the task of
learning, most of his learning is about others, and what they
have been or done.  The very nature of his private
self-consciousness, so the psychologists have learned, is such
that if a babe could grow up alone on a desert island it would be
idiotic or insane, no matter how healthy it might be in body. 
There is no way in which a man can set out to become a social
being, because he is already a social being, and can never be
anything else. Sociality is an organic fact, built into the
nature of man and of man's world, from which a man can no more
escape than he can escape from his skin.  This fact, so it seems
to me, is absolutely essential to a right understanding of our
subject.

Give your own definition of "brotherhood." Carefully examine in
your own mind the idea that man is by nature a social being. Give
other facts than those in the second paragraph to prove that man
is a social being by nature.  Why would a person growm up on a
desert island necessarily be an idiot? What is the difference
between "sociality" and "sociability"? What has the social nature
of man to do with Freemasonry? Could Freemasonry succeed in its
mission if it were true that man's nature is essentially
egotistic and anti-social?

These facts are to us so self-evident that it seems impossible
that any mature person could ever have overlooked them: such
however has been the case, and that with millions, for this
understanding of man as by nature a social being is one of the
achievements of modern thinking and scientific research.  Once
psychologists assumed that man comes into existence as a lonely
individual untied to others, and that he gradually assumed social
relations.  Sociologists and political economists were hard put
to explain how a self-sufficient individuality like man ever came
to exist in communities. Rousseau advanced the theory of the
"Social Contract" as his explanation of the matter: Hobbes
brought forth another theory, and so on.  Economists began their
treatises with an account of some hypothetical man living on a
desert island and then tried to show how that man's economic
interests would lead him to form industrial associations with
others.  The theologians placed before their minds a picture of
an individual brought into existence as a solitary unit, who had
later to be brought somehow into relation with God with man.  All
such theorizing, then or now, for it still lives in some form or
other with many men, is useless because it begins by assuming
that man is a solitary unit who must become social by his own
effort, whereas the truth is that a man is a social being
already, and from the very beginning.

This being true it is easily seen that brotherhood is anything
but a merely sentimental aspiration, which sensitive people can
feel, and idealistic people can strive after.  On the contrary it
is already a fact, as hard and real a fact as the mother rock
that makes the foundation of the mountains.  To practice
brotherhood is to discover that we men are already brothers by
nature and that we can never be happy, or live in harmony with
the laws and forces of our own beings, until we learn to love
each other, and to cultivate the fraternal spirit.  Men make a
fatal mistake who suppose that we are really by nature such
beings as the wolf or the tiger, that we are kept from devouring
each other only by fear or custom, and that he who builds on raw
egotism is the only man who has Nature on his side. The only man
who has Nature on his side is he who builds on the fact that man
is a social being, and therefore that he can never be happy until
he is in harmony with his fellows.

Can you furnish other examples of how much of the thinking of the
past has assumed that man is by nature an un-social being? Who
was Rousseau? What is an "economist"? Is industry social by its
nature? Can you name any well known theological doctrines which
assume that man is by nature a separate unit? In what sense is it
true that "brotherhood" is already a fact? Were the French the
brethren of the German, and vice versa, during the battle of
Verdun? If they were not, when were they brothers? Are they
brothers now? How can they become brothers, if not? If they
really were brethren all the time may that not explain the horror
of the war? Do you habitually act on the supposition that each
man you know is by nature an egotistic being who must be coaxed
into being social? Is unselfishness as natural as selfishness?

Our present day psychologists, who are making such careful
investigations of instincts, tell us that the old idea that the
first and most powerful force in a man is the instinct of
self-preservation, and that everything else must be secondary to
that, is a fearful fallacy.  The truth is, so they aver, that the
instincts which look towards others, such as the instinct of
parenthood, and the instinct of sociality, are equally primitive
and equally powerful, and that the individual who stultifies
those instincts will suffer in a hundred ways.  Why is it that a
man who sees some person about to drown, and that one a total
stranger, will dart away from his own wife and children to leap
into the water, and there risk possible death? He doesn't reason
or argue about the matter, but acts on his instinct.  The need to
live a brotherly life is written in the very scriptures of blood
and tissue and bone, and he who lives in opposition to that need
will bring himself into an abnormal condition in which his
happiness will perish.  This, so it seems to me, is one of the
first laws of brotherhood: it is no mere sentimental luxury, but
a necessity, and that in the same sense that bread and air and
water are necessities.

One may describe brotherhood as the normal development of the
social instincts, or he may describe it as the wise, commonsense
adjustment of one's self to one's fellows.  When one makes that
wise and harmonious adjustment he makes it not in response to
some sentimental and pious wish that such things should be, but
in response to facts, to the way things really are with man's
being.  Just as a man must be in right relation with the food he
eats in order to maintain health, so must he likewise be in right
relation to his fellows if he would live in happiness.

The man who understands that brotherhood is one form of wisdom,
and that it is demanded by the way things really are in man's
world, will not be troubled by sentimental difficulties.  Neither
will he permit a few accidental private experiences to sour him
of all brotherly striving.  It may be that my neighbor and I have
natures that are the antipodes of each other.  What I admire he
detests.  What he loves I hate.  His temperament is antagonistic
to mine.  My vocation is one that is opposed to his interests. 
We cannot hold social intercourse because we discover too many
antipathies.  Such a thing has nothing to do with brotherhood
when it is rightly understood.  Brotherhood does not demand of us
that we privately like people who are obnoxious to us, or that
others should like us who find our company distasteful.  Such
things are in the domain of one's intimate likes and dislikes and
have to do with private friendship rather than with brotherhood.

If I cannot like this neighbor of mine I can be a brother to him
nevertheless.  I can give him exact justice in all my dealings
with him.  I can always refuse to do evil to him or speak evil of
him.  I can always maintain an attitude of good will to him, and
wish for him good fortune and happiness.  I can ever stand ready
to help him to fullness of life, insofar as circumstances make
that possible, and I can always refuse to place any obstacles in
his path. If I have a difference with him I can differ with him
as one man to another, honestly and openly, without childish
petulance.  Such in attitude is the brotherly spirit, and it can
flourish where private friendship is impossible.

Who are the "psychologists"? What are the various instincts at
the bottom of man's nature? Is the instinct of fraternalism as
deeply rooted as the instinct of self-preservation? What does
Brother Haywood mean by the phrase "in right relation to one's
fellows"? How do you get along with persons you do not personally
like? Does brotherhood demand that we have a personal liking for
every man? Could such a thing be possible? What is meant by the
saying in the V.S.L. that "We should love one another," and "Love
your enemies"? How can a man "love" his enemies? How can one
Mason love another Mason whom he personally dislikes?

Practical men of affairs usually like to think of brotherhood in
the terms of cooperation, and that is perfectly legitimate.  The
greatest things in the world - it is a banal statement to make -
are accomplished by a great many men agreeing to act harmoniously
together.  The National Masonic Research Society is an example of
this.  We who belong to it, and work for it (this includes you as
well as myself) have no desire (or opportunity) to make money out
of it, or to gain private ends by means of it.  We are all
interested to learn and teach more about Freemasonry and we have
therefore formed a society whereby we may the better accomplish
that purpose.  Such a thing is in itself brotherhood.  The great
Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, founded in England in 1884,
to which reference is so often made in these pages, is another
case in point.  The able scholars who toiled so diligently under
the aegis of the lodge, and who laid the whole Fraternity under
such an obligation to them, toiled without money and without
price, but solely in order that we could all know more about our
Craft.  In so doing those men acted as brothers in as literal a
sense as if they had all donned monk's habits and gone to live
somewhere in the communal society of a monastery.

Can you give two or three other examples of brotherhood as being
cooperation? Could one describe the cooperation, or "team play,"
of a baseball club as being brotherhood? Do you believe in
brotherhood sufficiently to practice it? to risk things on the
strength of it? 

In Freemasonry we speak of the bond which holds men together in
such endeavor as the "Mystic Tie." It is quite impossible to
describe or to explain that tie, those who know what it is by
experience, do not need it to be defined.  There is something of
private friendship in it, for I believe that the majority of
Masons have a feeling towards brother Masons that they do not
have towards outsiders, and there is something of the purpose of
cooperation in it, as described above.  It is a mixture of these
two things, plus many other things.

Be that as it may it is true that what we mean by that tie is
really the hope of the world.  It is only as men are bound by it,
whether they are Masons or not, that the race can go on towards
happiness. For after all is said and done the world is a unity,
and is one. That is the nature of mankind and mankind can never
be happy in living until all act in harmony with their nature. 
Those who make sport of the aspirations towards racial unity,
internationalism, all such endeavors to bind man closer to man,
woman to woman, know not of what they speak though they know it
not, it is they who are miss by sentimental illusions, and
imaginary mirages, the men who work to build life on the
foundations on which life was intended to rest.
 
In proportion as a man understands brotherhood and acts in
conformity with its demands, he will always work for human unity. 
In his lodge he will not be a dividing and distracting force.  In
his community he will be a good citizen who knows that the
community has a right to demand many sacrifices on the part of
its children.  He will uphold and maintain the principles of his
country, and oppose every influence that makes for its
degredation and division.  He will everywhere use his efforts to
break down racial antipathy, religious differences, and class
hatred.  War, fanaticism, national jealousies and unjust
ambitions, the base intrigues of false statesmen, and the public
conivance in public vices, he will everywhere and oppose.  It is
his task as a true soldier of brotherhood. 

Masonry has played a great part in bringing about these
conditions, and the part it is yet to play "is more than the
twelve labors of Hercules." It is a great thing for the world
that at a time when everywhere the spirit of strife and division
is so rampant there should be in existence a powerful
international body of men who preach and emphasize the need for
unity, harmony, and international comity.  I like to think that
the Fraternity is a kind of great school in which men learn
brotherhood by practicing it towards fellow Masons, because he
who begins by practicing it towards fellow Masons will come
sooner or later to practice it everywhere.  And I like to think
that Freemasonry is a world inside the world, and that in Masonry
those habits of fraternity are developing which will one day take
root everywhere.  While the winter winds are raging the gardener
sows the seed in the protection of his hothouse.  After a while
the plants will be carried outdoors to live under the sky. 
Inside the protecting arms of the Fraternity is growing a spirit
which, as rapidly as conditions permit, must make itself felt
everywhere.  The great work of the world must be done by the
combined and cooperating efforts of all the men of the world.  At
present that world lies dismembered about us, bleeding at every
pore.  This does not mean that brotherhood is a failure.  It
means that a world without brotherhood is a failure.  It is the
only practicable means of healing the hurts of mankind. Every
individual who learns in the lodge the lessons of brotherhood and
who goes through life everywhere practicing that lesson is
helping toward the new order of things wherein will dwell peace
for all men.

A thing that must achieve such a work as this cannot be a puny
growth of private sentimentality. It is a world power capable of
gigantic efforts. Those who think of it merely as a hand clasp
and a slap on the back are dealing with it like children.  It is
a world law, destined to change the earth into conformity with
itself, and as a world power it is something superb, awe-
inspiring, god-like.

I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of Democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms....
I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of
the whole of the rest of the earth;
I dreamed that was the new City of Friends; nothing was greater
there than the quality of robust love - it led the rest .....
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and ledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all men ever born are also my brothers and the women my
sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love. . . .
Is it a dream?
Nay, but the lack of it the dream,
And, failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream " 
(Whitman.)

(P.S. I may be allowed to refer the reader to another article of
mine on a different aspect of this me theme which appeared in THE
BUILDER for January 1917.  H. L. H.)

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