FREEMASONRY: ITS HISTORY AND AIMS. 



2G1 



indiscriminately, warrants were sold to tavern- 

 keepers, creating them Masters of their lodges 

 for life, others were forged or antedated, as were 

 documents of every description ; lodges of adop- 

 tion were formed for women, and one experi- 

 ment was made of a mixed lodge, with a result 

 too serious even for French sense of propriety. 



In 1740 the Chevalier Ramsay, a supporter 

 of the Young Pretender, appeared as the Apos- 

 tle of high degrees. The vanity of Frenchmen 

 was nattered, and the coffers of Charles Edward 

 were filled by the sale of degrees, orders, and 

 high-sounding titles, .which flowed in an uninter- 

 rupted stream from Ramsay's fertile brain. But 

 even Ramsay was surpassed by the " divine Cagli- 

 ostro," as the French called him. This man, 

 whose real name was Joseph Balsamo, was, with- 

 out exception, the most impudent impostor that 

 ever breathed. He initiated into high degrees 

 of Masonry, professed to make gold, to perform 

 miraculous cures, and to restore youth to the 

 most broken-down debauchee. Exposed in Rus- 

 sia, he became the idol of Parisian society, until, 

 flying from the French police, he fell into the 

 hands of the Inquisition at Rome, and there 

 came to a miserable end. 



The history of Freemasonry in France pre- 

 sents a spectacle almost without a parallel of ab- 

 surd vanity, childish credulity, shameless impost- 

 ure, and clumsy forgery. Pompous and absurd 

 orders, Scotch and Egyptian, Emperors of the 

 East and West, Knights Templars and Philos- 

 ophers, engaged in internecine strife. Many of 

 these have shared the fate of the Kilkenny cats ; 

 two rival Grand Lodges alone remain, the ortho- 

 dox Grand Orient, and the Conseil Supreme of 

 the so-called Scottish rite. Peace has been ob- 

 tained, but only by giving legal sanction to every 

 absurdity of spurious Masonry. 



Germany received back Freemasonry in its 

 modern form from England in 1737, and though 

 for a short time French influence, and that expir- 

 ing flare of magic, alchemy, and theosophy, which 

 preceded the rise of true science and philosophy, 

 threatened to mar its fair form, yet the danger 

 was averted by the efforts of the more judicious 

 brethren. A society which could number among 

 its most zealous and sincere members such men 

 as Lessing, Goethe, Herder, Wieland, and Fichte, 

 might be tossed but could not founder in the 

 storm ; and it must be confessed that Freema- 

 sonry is now more select, has greater inhereut 

 strength, and is more of a reality, in Germany 

 than in any other country. 



The English Masons have, indeed, preserved 



the form pure, but for our own part we do not 

 view with much satisfaction what we must call 

 its excessive growth. There is not much ear- 

 nest life, not much insight into the philosophy 

 of Masonry ; yet it is but fair to give our Eng- 

 lish brethren credit for the fullest practice of 

 " charity and brotherly love," though they be de- 

 ficient in the " search after truth." 



American Masonry may be briefly described as 

 French Masonry without French pugnacity. They 

 certainly can boast of more Grand Lodges, mem- 

 bers, and more degrees of masonic folly than the 

 whole of the Old World combined. 



Freemasonry is proscribed by law in Russia, 

 and except in Italy, where it is an offshoot of the 

 French Orient, in the other European countries it 

 is not sufficiently numerous or influential to call 

 for separate notice. 



To enable us to form a just notion of the 

 true relation in which we stand, as well to the 

 old Steinmetzen as to the mystic associations of 

 antiquity, we cannot do better than attend to 

 Krause's statement of the several kinds of histor- 

 ical connection which may subsist between insti- 

 tutions of different periods : 



" When we find, in any nation or age, social ef- 

 forts, resembling in aim and organization those of 

 Freemasonry, we are by no means justified in see- 

 ing any closer connection between them than such 

 as human nature everywhere, and in all ages, has 

 in common, unless we are thoroughly convinced 

 by most trustworthy facts that a really historical 

 connection exists. And even such historical con- 

 nections are very various in kind, for it is one 

 thing when an institution flourishes through being 

 constantly renewed by the addition of new mem- 

 bers, though its field of action and constitution 

 undergo at the same time repeated changes ; an- 

 other when we learn from history that from an 

 already existing institution a perfectly new one 

 takes its rise ; and again, still different is it when 

 a newly-formed society takes for its model the 

 views, field of action, and social forms, of one long 

 since extinct." 



With the pagan mysteries and Eastern sects 

 of mystics, Freemasonry has nothing in common 

 but the mere fact of its having a secret and sym- 

 bolic system; with the collegia fabrorum the 

 connection, if any, is but of the third degree, 

 though it is more than doubtful whether the 

 founders of the earliest masonic lodges had ever 

 heard of the building societies of imperial Rome ; 

 but, though perfect continuity can only be assert- 

 ed with the reorganized lodges of 1717-27, the 

 fraternity had for a century and a half been so 



