The Age of Enlightenment and Freemasonry

The Royal Society, the premier and oldest learned society for the study of science, was founded in 1660 with the motto “Nullius in Verba” or “On the words of no one”. This date probably was the start of that remarkable period in the intellectual history of Europe that we call today “The Age of Enlightenment”.

European universities and intellectual climate at that time were still dominated by Aristotle and Scholastic systems of thinking, that of the “Disputatio”.

The way to arrive at truth was the method of “DEDUCTION”, axiomatic deductions from authorities. Who constituted the authorities? The sacred books, writings by ancient authorities and so on. Scant attention was paid to empirical evidence.

There was a very influential book which was used by the “Witch Hunters” of the time, called “Malleus Maleficarum” (1), and I quote from it:

Question 1: Whether the belief that there are such beings as witches is so essential a part of the Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion manifestly savours of heresy…

Answer: …for the divine law in many places commands that witches are not only to be avoided, but also they are to be put to death…This is the opinion of St. Thomas… for in the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy it is commanded that all wizards and charmers are to be destroyed. Also the 19th chapter of Leviticus says: The soul which goeth to wizards and soothsayers to commit fornication with them, I will set my face against that soul and destroy it out of the midst of my people… Moreover, this must be borne in mind, that on account of this sin Ochozias fell sick and died, IV Kings 1… We may also consult what St. Augustine says in The City of Gods, Book 18, c. 17… Very many other doctors advance the same opinion, and it would be the height of folly for any man to contradict all these and he could not be held to be clear of the guilt of heresy. (1)

One can see the logic of the argument. Based on the authorities of St. Thomas, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Kings 1 (the last three are books of the Bible) and St. Augustine, one must logically deduce that witches exist, and therefore it was heresy to say otherwise.

The Catholic Church’s pressure on Galileo to recant his heliocentric world view was based on a similar line of reasoning. The authority of the Bible and of Ptolemy clearly stated that the earth was immovable and was the center of the universe. (2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Even Martin Luther, the man who started the Reformation was steeped in the Aristotelian world view and was a follower of the method of scholasticism of his Age. He had this to say regarding the heliocentric world view: "This fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." (7)

That was the method of scholasticism: to draw axiomatic deductions by logic from premises, the veracity of which were based on authorities.

There were other problems associated with the rigid acceptance of authorities. Kings were thought to rule by the doctrine of “The Divine Rights of Kings” (8, 9), and the prevailing idea in social life was this: if “God” so willed, so be it. People just accepted their lot in life. Anyone who dare raise questions regarding the Church or the Aristocracy risked having the Instruments of the Inquisition applied to him. Nothing mattered save the worship of God. It was sinful to help man. If man suffered, it was God’s will and nothing should be done about it. (9)

Not only were “witches” burnt, other forms of superstition were also rampant. Amulets, candles, holy oil were the remedies for illness. There was even this wonderful tale of the Cult of St. Foutin where in the town of Embrun, France, the phallus of St. Foutin would be annointed with wine, and the wine dripping down would be collected and left to turn sour. This “Holy Vinegar” was drunk by women to cure their infertility. (10)

Religious Intolerance was also the norm of the day. 1562-1598 saw the French Religious Wars. These wars were ended by the Edict of Nantes, which was promulgated on 30 April 1598 by Henry IV of France. It granted religious freedom to the French protestants called Huguenots. It also protected French protestants from the Inquisition when traveling abroad. However, that limited tolerance was not granted to the Muslims. In 1610 they were expelled from France. Then in 1685 October, by the Edict of Fontainebleau, the Edict of Nantes was revoked. Huguenots emigrated from France.

Between 1618-1648, raging in central Europe was the Thirty Years War, again basically a religious war between the Protestants and the Catholics.

In 1588, the Catholic Spanish sent an Armada to try and invade Protestant England in order to restore a Catholic Monarch. In England, by the Royal Supremacy Act, it required all clergies to swear allegiance to the English Monarch, failure to do so was a treasonable offence. (11). Blind belief in the authority of one’s own religion was the breeding ground for such religious intolerance.

The Royal Society would have none of this: “Nullius in Verba” or “On the words of no one”. Truth is to be derived by induction from the particular to the general, by induction based on empirically collected data.

At first, the universities and the Church, by that I include both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches, steeped in the tradition of Aristotle and Scholasticism were against them. But in the end, the Age of Scholasticism gave way to the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment.

Three men were acclaimed as the Prophets of the Age of Enlightenment, they were Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, all Englishmen. Incidentally, they were called as such not by the Englishmen, but by the French!

Sir Francis Bacon fired the first shot that led to the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment. His two books “Novum Organon” or “New Instrument” and “New Atlantis” exerted tremendous influence on European intellectual society.

the mixing of religion and natural philosophy (science) to the detriment of both.

induction, from particulars to generalizations, tested by experiment. The question was not what follows from a given axiom, but from observing the particulars in the world.

Christian ethics entailed the use of knowledge in the service of charity and the betterment of mankind.

In the “New Atlantis” (13), he presented a Utopian society called Bensalem where the best and brightest citizens went to a college called “House of Solomon” where scientific research and discovery were conducted according to Baconian principles (14). Interestingly, the division of labors were all conducted by groups of three:” …we have three that collect the experiments which are all in books… we have three that try new experiments that they think good…we have three…. “

Was he a Mason? Probably not. But there are a number of intriguing questions associated with him.

The front cover of his book De Digniate Et Augmentis Scientiarum (1624) clearly shows a set of Compasses and Square at the bottom. (15). His use of the name “House of Solomon” and the teams of workers on the various projects in the New Atlantis were all in groups of three. Coincidence? Maybe.

His major works included “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (16), “Two Treatises on Civil Government” (17) and “A Letter Concerning Tolerance” (18).

The mind is a tabula rasa – blank slate – on which nature imprints its information and ideas

The mind then reflects on these experiences; new and complex ideas then come about.

Because of that, we won’t know what is the mind, only of how it behaves; not what is matter, but only how matter behaves.

because the mind is a tabula rasa, and knowledge is gained by experience, it is therefore of vital importance that human beings be given education

as knowledge is always based on experience and is subjected to correction, science is never about certainty, it is always subjected to review; the inductive process to knowledge means our knowledge is subjected to what is known as the “Black Swan” phenomenon. I shall quote from “The Black Swan” by Taleb (19) to illustrate what I mean: “Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan … illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single black bird.”

Power is just the right to make laws for regulating and preserving life and property.

Liberty does not mean license to do anything one wants, but in freedom from another’s arbitrary power.

Legitimate power is exercised only for the common good, and requires continuing consent of the governed.

In “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, Locke, unlike most people who saw uniformity of religion as the key to a well-functioning civil society, argued that more religious groups actually prevented civil unrest. Locke argued that civil unrest often resulted from Governments attempting to prevent different religions from being practiced. Locke's primary goal was to "distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion.". To him, the government’s main purpose is external, that of protecting its citizens’ right to life, liberty and propery, whilst the purpose of the church is “internal”, the promotion of salvation. As these two organizations served two different purposes, they were to be separte institutions and should not interfere in each other’s business.

The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania printed in the 1781 edition of the Ahiman Rezon, a letter by John Locke in which he says, speaking of Masons: “However of all their arts and secrets, that which I most desire to know is: ‘The skylle of becommynge and parfyghte,’ [quoting an ancient manuscipt]; and I wish it were communicated to all mankind, since there is nothing more true than the beautiful sentence, That the better men are, the more they love one another; Virtue having in itself something so amiable as to claim the hearts of all that behold it.” (20)

Was Locke a mason? The answer is probably yes. There is an entry on the “Leland Manuscript” in Albert Mackey’s “Encyclopedia of Freemasonry” (21) in which he quoted a passage by the famous Dr. Oliver in the Freemasons’ Quart. Review, 1840, p 10, where Dr. Oliver said, “… this great philosopher [Locke] was actually residing at Oates, the country-seat of Sir Francis Masham, at the time when the paper [Leland Manuscript] is dated; and shortly afterwards he went up to town, where he was initiated into Masonry. These facts are fully proved by Locke’s Letters to Mr. Molyneux, dated March 30 and July2, 1696”.

But since Grand Lodge of England does not have a record of his membership, one cannot say for sure 100% Locke was a member.

His work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, (22) demonstrates that the world operates along well defined laws. His discovery of the Laws of Gravity and Optics had these philosophical effects:

One could see through nature to nature’s laws and thence to it’s author – God.

Was Newton a mason? Yes, he was. Not only that, his personal secretary was none other then MWBro. JT Desaguliers, who in 1719 became the Grand Master of the Moderns.

Bacon, Locke and Newton were all intensely religious men. What they had achieved was to show that by studying nature, by using the reasoning power that God has given us, we could see God’s work all around us. They argued for education, for religious tolerance and for a belief in a Supreme Being, all Masonic tenets. Is it a wonder why our rituals continuously told us to study the “Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences”? Is it surprising when in the Second Degree we are told to “Study the Hidden mysteries of nature and of sciences”?

Below is a table showing the Grand Masters of the Moderns who were also members of the Royal Society (23):

To further underscore the strong links between the scientists of the day and their membership of the Craft, in 1723, of the 200 members of the Royal Society, 40 were masons. In 1725, 47 members of the Royal Society were masons, and in 1730, 97 members of the Grand Lodge of London (Moderns) were members of the Royal Society, or were future members of that society. (24).

This showed the strong links between the scientists who ushered in the Age of Enlightenment and the Craft.

These lofty ideas of Brotherly love, charity, truth, religious tolerance, fidelity, uprightness, “avdi, vide, tace”, ideas of the philosophers and scientists of the time, the ideas of the Freemasons, were the driving force of the Age of Enlightenment. Which was the cart and which the horse? Did these ideas gained grounds in Europe at that time because the masons were in important position of influence? Or, was it because these ideas were prominent among the intelligentsia of the time, they influenced the development of the Craft? There is no way to answer either of these questions.

Whatever might be the answers to those questions, there can be no doubt that a number of masons were prominent in the propagation of those ideas to the general population.

The Masonic career of Mozart was well known. He was initiated in Lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit on 14^th December, 1784, passed in Zur Wahren and Eintracht Lodge on 7^th January, 1785, and raised in his mother lodge on 22^nd April, 1785.

Isaac Kramnick, a scholar of the European Enlightenment had this to say of him (25): “Few have captured the spirit of the Enlightenment, its intellectual and social agenda, as has Mozart in his operas…Masonic imagery and symbolism abound in the opera, as the Freemasons Mozart and his librettist, Emamuel Schikaneder, bring the disdain for superstition and mystery in church and state…into their musical and literary texts.”

This was how Alfred Einstein, a noted musicologist described Mozart:“Mozart was a passionate and devoted freemason…We have from Mozart not only a whole series of important works but in fact his entire production that is steeped in Masonic feelings; a good many of his works – and not only The Magic Flute – are Masonic even though the non-initiated may doubt it.” (26)

In his Magic Flute, he portrayed a Queen of the Night – Darkness, Sarastro – the Priest of Light, in charge of the Temple of Wisdom, Virtue and Nature. When Sarastro discovered the daughter of the Queen of the Night, Pamino, was ordered by the Queen to kill him, Pamino was fearful that Sarastro would harm her mother. Sarastro responded by telling her that in the world of his temple, the revenge for hatred was love. There were two more major characters in the opera, a prince by the name of Tamino and his companion Papageno. When they were told that they had to undergo some initiation rites in order to enter the Temple and the initiation involved remaining silent no matter what happened and that they would have to undergo certain trials, Papageno responded by saying he would rather have “woman and wine” than wisdom. There was no doubt that Papageno was a good man. The message from Mozart was therefore very clear, while all Masons should be good men, not all good men were suitable to be masons.

Another opera of his, The Marriage of Figaro, was based on a novel of the same name written by Beaumarchais (1732-1799). That book was banned in Austria and France because it was considered seditious. Why? It was about Figaro, a servant of Count Almaviva and how he foiled the lewd plan of Almaviva. As late as the middle of the 17^th century, the lord of the land still had the seigeurial rights to the bride, ie the right to sleep with the bride of any men in his estate on their wedding night. Almaviva, while pretending to be modern and was prepared to give up that right to Susanna, the bride of Figaro, was actually scheming on how to do it. Figaro discovered his plan and outwitted him. The play was considered seditious because it championed the idea of the equality of men and showed how a commoner was more noble than a nobleman.

Nobility, a fortune, a rank, appointments to office: all this makes a man so proud! What did you (Count Almaviva) do to earn this? You took the trouble to get born – nothing more.”

Mozart, by his works, popularized the ideals of Freemasonry and the Enlightenment among the general public.

Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet. He was educated by the Jesuits, from whom he said, he only learnt Latin and some nonsense. Later, between 1711-1713 he studied law In his life he has been exiled and jailed in the Bastille for writing satirical articles against the Church and Aristocracy. He became a member of Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris. At his initiation, he was invested by Benjamin Franklin with the apron that was at one time worn by Helvetius, who was another famous figure of the Enlightenment.

Voltaire became famous for the case where he reversed the judgment regarding one Casal. In mid-18^th century France, Protestants were not allowed to be lawyer, doctor, grocer, bookseller, printer, etc. In Toulouse, one son of Calas hid the fact that he was a Protestant and became a lawyer. He was found out and punished. He committed suicide.

The father, age 65, was accused of having murdered him to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. He was tortured to extract a confession on the wheel, and died. Voltaire managed to reverse the case, even though the old man accused of the crime had died a terrible death already.

Another famous case of his was in 1765, when in Abbeville a wooden cross at the bridge over the Somme was vandalized, and another crucifix on one of the cemeteries was bespotted with mud. Two young Chevaliers were accused of the crime because they were seen to have kept their hats on when a procession bearing the Sacrament was passed in front of them. One of them also had in his possession Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary. One of the Chevaliers escaped to Switzerland the other was caught, tortured and died. Voltaire managed to clear the two Chevaliers of the alleged crime.

In his life, he has written many popular works which included Candide, A Treatise on Toleration, Oedipus, La Henriade, Lettres Philosophiques, Dictionnaire philosophique plus many others. Thus in France, he managed to disseminate the ideals of the Enlightenment through his novels and writings.

There are a couple of sayings of his that I think are very apt given our present world’s situation of the seeming revival of fundamentalism and extremism, which in his days, was an everyday affair:

“Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

At around that time, a group of intellectuals, were compiling the first ever Encyclopedia, and to the surprise of none, they were referred to as the Encyclopedists. They were French, and among them were many masons, most famous of whom were Diderot, Condorcet, D’Alembert, Helvetius, just to name a few.

Many of The Founding Fathers of America were masons, most famous of whom must be George Washington. But it included Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson. Though Marquis de Lafayette was not an American but a Frenchman, he was a mason and he helped in the American War of Independence. These men were the first to ever plan the Constitution of a country along the ideals of The Enlightenment. As was mentioned before, the major personalities who started the Enlightenment were all intensely religious. So is it not surprising therefore that whilst the Constitution of the USA, which insisted on the separation of Church and State, had printed on its Dollar Bill the words “In God We Trust”. In good old Masonic fashion, whose God was never defined.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson changed the words of Locke from “All men have the natural right to life, liberty and property” to “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Note the inclusion of the word “Creator” and the changing of the word “property” to “Happiness”. The Founding Fathers of the USA did not deny the existence of God, they only insisted on the separation of Church and State, an idea promulgated by the Enlightenment thinkers. They believed it was the Supreme Being’s wish that human kind pursuit happiness as one of its aims. Think back to the words of our District Grand Master’s address to the brethren at all Installation Meetings – “…we shall have one aim in view, to please each other and unite in the grand design of being happy and communicating happiness.”

There is no doubt that many of our precepts arose at the time of the Enlightenment. The only question is, which is the cart and which the horse.

Irrespective of the answer to that question, it is evident that we have inherited this legacy from our forefathers: a society of good men who come together to enjoy certain ceremonies and rituals, who come together to enjoy each other’s fellowship, who come together for charitable acts as these acts are the natural outcome of being ‘good men”, we also come together to assist each other in the search of truth, in understanding our relationship to God, to men and to ourselves.

The Craft is supported by the Tripod of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. It is not just about Fellowship, it is not just about Relief and it is not just about Truth. It is about all three together. No doubt fellowship and charity play a very large part in our Masonic lives, but let us not forget the intellectual and spiritual parts.

Tonight I have demonstrated how intimately our Craft is linked to the Enlightenment Period of European history. Many of our forefathers were at the forefront of the thinking of their day.

I have a challenge to issue today, are we like Tamino in Mozart’s Magic Flute, fearlessly going forward to face the trials of our life in search of Wisdom, Virtue and Truth, or are we Papageno, who would rather have wine, women and song and abandon the search for wisdom and virtue?.

Perhaps the two pictures below can sum up the choice we face. They are both pictures depicting masons. On the left is George Washington, one of the leading lights of the Enlightenment and Freemasonry, laying the Foundation Stone of Capitol Building with the help of a tripod and lewis. The other is the Master of a Lodge (you can see him with the collar of a Square) drunk and supported by his equally drunken Tyler (28). Which should be our role model? And to our more senior brethren, what role model are we presenting to our more junior brethren?

I mentioned the book Malleus Maleficarum, the manuel for witch hunters, at the beginning of my talk as an example of the Scholastism of the age. What happened to the witch hunts with the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment?

The Table below summarized the number of witches convicted and executed by the courts in the different territories of European civilization (29). It vastly underestimated the actual number of witches killed. Estimates had been as high as somewhere between 35,000 and 64,000. (30). It is not the actual number I want to draw your attention. It is the pattern of conviction and execution that I want to highlight:

One can see that the numbers rose to a crescendo from the middle of the 16^th century to the end of the 17^th century, and with the onset of the Age of Enlightenment, the number of executions abruptly dropped away.

The Witchcraft Act which first dated 1541, and it predecessor De hæretico comburendo of 1401 which prescribed the punishment of death by burning, were finally replaced by the Witchcarft Act of 1735 where a person supposedly using witchcraft and claimed that he/she could call up spirit or foretell the future, he/she would be treated as a fraud and a con artist, the punishment of which was a fine or imprisonment. He/she was no longer to be executed.

Unfortunately, there are still parts of the world where people still hold a belief in witches. As recently as 5^th Sept. 2007, BBC reported two women burnt to death in S. Africa for witchcraft! (31)

References

1. Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger: "Malleus Maleficarum", published 1486, (Dover Press, 1948 edition, p 1-3).
2. Psalm 104:5 "Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed". (KJV)
3. Psalm 96:10 "..the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved." (KJV)
4. Ecclesiastes 1:5 "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." (KJV)
5. Ptolemy, "Almagest" (originally written in Greek and known as µa??µat??? s??ta??? or Mathematike Syntaxis) published c 150
6. Joshua 10:12-14 "Joshua … said in the sight of Israel: Sun, stand still over Gibeon; and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped."
7. http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/14223.htm
8. Augustine: "The City of God": http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.html
9. Romans 13:1-2 "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." (KJV)
10. Jacquese Antoine Dulaure "Gods of Generation: Phallic Cults among Ancients and Moderns" pp 165-166, published by Kessinger Publisher, 2003
11. The Act of Supremacy, http://history.hanover.edu/texts/engref/er79.html
12. Novum Organon: http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm
13. New Atlantis: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.html
14. Baconian Principles: http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/Baconian_method
i. The first step in any investigation was seen as a description of the phenomenon to be observed. This really was a description only, and did not posit possible reasons or causes or causal connections with other phenomena, what today might be called a hypothesis. In addition, description and the following data gathering were to be done free of preconceptions about the nature and truth of phenomena.
ii. Second was observation and tabulation into three categories: all instances of a particular phenomenon or characteristic, all instances of its absence, all instances of its presence in varying degrees.
iii. Analysis and examination of commonalities in all categories, narrowing down the commonalities between the first and third category, and degrees of any commonality within the third category. This would lead, finally, to positing a causal relationship between the occurrence or characteristic and other conditions.
15. Front cover of De Digniate Et Augmentis Scientiarum (1624) :

16. John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding
17. John Locke: Two Treatises on Civil Government http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government
18. John Locke: A Letter concerning Toleration: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Letter_Concerning_Toleration
19. Nassim Nicholas Taleb "The Black Swan" published by Allen Lane, 2007.
20. Henry S. Bonneman, "Early Freemasonry in Pennsylvania", p 102.
21. Albert Mackey: "Encyclopedia of Freemasonry" pp 441
22. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, http://rack1.ul.cs.cmu.edu/is/newton/
23. Alain Bauer: "Isaac Newton's Freemasonry" pp73-74, Inner Traditions, pub. 2007
24. Alain Bauer: "Isaac Newton's Freemasonry" p. 75, Inner Traditions, pub. 2007
25. Isaac Kramnick in "The Portable Enlightenment Reader", p.ix, Penguin Press, 1995.
26. Mozart: His Character, His Work .p 104, Oxford: OUP, 1945.
27. http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Voltaire
28. Picture by William Hogarth, "Night", c1710
29. www.witchway.net/times/times.html
30. Richard Hutton: "Counting the Witch Hunt".
31. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6980439.stm