Brethren,
It is often difficult to distinguish between Masonry and the Enlightenment. The lofty ideas of brotherly love, charity, truth, religious tolerance fidelity, and uprightness of the philosophers and scientists of the time were the ideas of freemasons. Preeminent thinkers like Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Voltaire and our founding fathers were by in large intensely religious men who showed by studying nature and using our god given reasoning power we could see God’s work around us. They argued for education, religious tolerance and belief in a Supreme Being.
Education at the time divided the liberal arts (Trivium -Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic) and science (Quadrivium – Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy). These studies may be traced to centuries prior to the Enlightenment, but were quite individual subjects. Subject matter was very structured based on the Aristotle method, and taught in universities associated with rigid acceptance of the authority of both monarchies and the Church. This gave way to the age of reason and inquiry. The thinkers of the Enlightenment had individual specialties in one aspect or more of the seven liberal arts and sciences, yet they formed more complex and powerful ideas from the combination of all these studies. The Enlightenment thinkers focused more on the concrete concepts and rejected superfluous ornamentation. They transcended the basic context of these academic studies into the broader and philosophical ideals of the laws of nature, the danger in mixing religion and science, toleration and the premise of civil governments. Given the power of these ideals is it surprising that our ritual emphasizes the need to study the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences?
It is up to each of us not simply to understand these in the context of the past, or to think we have learned all that is possible in these studies. Rather, to expand our mind for a broader and more complex range of thought. In the future new discoveries as game changing as Newton’s “Laws of Gravity”, Locke’s ideas of civil freedom, and music as beautiful/meaningful as the “Magic Flute” await us. It is up to us to combine these with our principle tenants of Brotherhood, Relief and Truth – the intellectual and the spiritual. We must continue to grow in our steps toward the Middle Chamber. We cannot stand still.
Fraternally,
Russ Bauer, WM
