Part 66 (1/2)
The necessity of practising the moral truths is obligation. The moral truths, necessary to the eye of reason, are obligatory on the will. The moral obligation, like the moral truth which is its basis, is absolute.
As necessary truths are not _more_ or _less_ necessary, so obligation is not more or less _obligatory_. There are degrees of importance among different obligations; but there are no degrees in _the obligation itself_. One is not nearly obliged, _almost_ obliged; but _wholly_ so, or _not at all_. If there be any place of refuge against the obligation, it ceases to exist.
If the obligation is absolute, it is _immutable_ and _universal_. For if what is obligation to-day may not be so _to-morrow_, if what is obligatory for _me_ may not be so for you, the obligation differing from itself, it would be relative and contingent. This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is certain and manifest. _The good_ is the foundation of obligation. If it be not, obligation has _no_ foundation; and that is impossible. If one act ought to be done, and another ought not, it must be because evidently there is an essential difference between the two acts. If one be not good and the other bad, the obligation imposed on us is arbitrary.
To make the Good a _consequence_, of anything whatever, is to annihilate it. It is the first, or it is nothing. When we ask an honest man why, despite his urgent necessities, he has respected the sanct.i.ty of a deposit, he answers, because it was _his duty_. Asked why it was his duty, he answers, because it was _right_, was _just_, was _good_. Beyond that there is no answer to be made, but there is also no question to be asked. No one permits a duty to be imposed on him without giving himself a reason for it: but when it is admitted that the duty is commanded by justice, the mind is satisfied; for it has arrived at a principle beyond which there is nothing to seek, justice being its own principle. The primary truths include their own reason: and justice, the essential distinction between good and evil, is the first truth of morality.
Justice is not a _consequence_; because we cannot ascend to any principle above it. Moral truth _forces itself_ on man, and does not _emanate from him_. It no more becomes subjective, by appearing to us obligatory, than truth does by appearing to us necessary. It is in the very nature of the true and the good that we must seek for the reason of necessity and obligation. Obligation is founded on the necessary distinction between the good and the evil; and it is itself the foundation of liberty. If man has his duties to perform, he must have the faculty of accomplis.h.i.+ng them, of resisting desire, pa.s.sion, and interest, in order to obey the law. He must be free; therefore he is so, or human nature is in contradiction with itself. The certainty of the _obligation_ involves the corresponding certainty of _free will_.
It is the _will_ that is free: though sometimes that will may be ineffectual. The power _to do_ must not be confounded with the power _to will_. The former may be _limited_: the latter is _sovereign_. The _external effects_ may be prevented: _the resolution_ itself cannot. Of this sovereign power of the will we are conscious. We feel in ourselves, before it becomes determinate, the force which can determine itself in one way or another. At the same time when I will this or that, I am equally conscious that I _can_ will the contrary. I am conscious that I am the master of my resolution: that I may check it, continue it, retake it. When _the act_ has ceased, the consciousness of _the power_ which produced it has not. That consciousness and the power remain, superior to all the manifestations of the power. Wherefore free-will is the essential and ever-subsisting attribute of the will itself.
At the same time that we judge that a free agent has done a good or a bad act, we form another judgment, as necessary as the first; that if he has done well, he deserves compensation; if ill, punishment. That judgment may be expressed in a manner more or less vivid, according as it is mingled with sentiments more or less ardent. Sometimes it will be a merely kind feeling toward a virtuous agent, and moderately hostile to a guilty one; sometimes enthusiasm or indignation. The judgment of merit and demerit is intimately connected with the judgment of good and evil.
Merit is the natural right which we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural right which others have to punish us. But whether the reward is received, or the punishment undergone, or not, the merit or demerit equally subsists. Punishment and reward are the satisfaction of merit and demerit, but do not const.i.tute them. Take away the former, and the latter continue. Take away the latter, and there are no longer real rewards or punishments. When a base man encompa.s.ses our merited honors, he has obtained but the mere appearance of a reward; a mere material advantage. The reward is essentially moral; and its value is independent of its form. One of those simple crowns of oak with which the early Romans rewarded heroism, was of more real value than all the wealth of the world, when it was the sign of the grat.i.tude and admiration of a people. Reward accorded to merit is a debt; without merit it is an alms or a theft.
The Good is good in itself, and to be accomplished, whatever the consequences. The results of the Good cannot but be fortunate.
Happiness, separated from the Good, is but a fact to which no moral idea is attached. As an effect of the Good, it enters into the moral order, completes and crowns it.
Virtue without happiness, and crime without misery, is a contradiction and disorder. If virtue suppose sacrifice (that is, suffering), eternal justice requires that sacrifice generously accepted and courageously borne, shall have for its reward the same happiness that was sacrificed: and it also requires that crime shall be punished with unhappiness, for the guilty happiness which it attempted to procure.
This law that attaches pleasure and sorrow to the good and the evil, is, in general, accomplished even here below. For order rules in the world; because the world lasts. Is that order sometimes disturbed? Are happiness and sorrow not always distributed in legitimate proportion to crime and virtue? The absolute judgment of the Good, the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and demerit, continue to subsist, inviolable and imprescriptible; and we cannot help but believe that He Who has implanted in us the sentiment and idea of order, cannot therein Himself be wanting; and that He will, sooner or later, reestablish the holy harmony of virtue and happiness, by means belonging to Himself.
The Judgment of the Good, the decision that such a thing is good, and that such another is not,--this is the primitive fact, and reposes on itself. By its intimate resemblances to the judgment of the true and the beautiful, it shows us the secret affinities of morality, metaphysics, and aesthetics. The good, so especially united to the true, is distinguished from it, only because it is truth put in practice. The good is obligatory. These are two indivisible but not identical ideas.
The idea of obligation reposes on the idea of the Good. In this intimate alliance, the former borrows from the latter its universal and absolute character.
The obligatory good is the moral law. That is the foundation of all morality. By it we separate ourselves from the morality of interest and the morality of sentiment. We admit the existence of those facts, and their influence; but we do not a.s.sign them the same rank.
To the moral law, in the reason of man, corresponds liberty in action.
Liberty is deduced from obligation, and is a fact irresistibly evident.
Man, as free, and subject to obligation, is a moral person; and that involves the idea of rights. To these ideas is added that of merit and demerit; which supposes the distinction between good and evil, obligation and liberty; and creates the idea of reward and punishment.
The sentiments play no unimportant part in morality. All the moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to them. From the secret sources of enthusiasm the human will draws the mysterious virtue that makes heroes. Truth enlightens and illumines. Sentiment warms and inclines to action. Interest also bears its part; and the hope of happiness is the work of G.o.d, and one of the motive powers of human action.
Such is the admirable economy of the moral const.i.tution of man. His Supreme Object, the Good: his law, Virtue, which often imposes upon him suffering, thus making him to excel all other created beings known to us. But this law is harsh, and in contradiction with the instinctive desire for happiness. Wherefore the Beneficent Author of his being has placed in his soul, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet, delightful force of sentiment. Generally he attaches happiness to virtue; and for the exceptions, for such there are, he has placed Hope at the end of the journey to be travelled.
Thus there is a side on which morality touches religion. It is a sublime necessity of Humanity to see in G.o.d the Legislator supremely wise, the Witness always present, the infallible Judge of virtue. The human mind, ever climbing up to G.o.d, would deem the foundations of morality too unstable, if it did not place in G.o.d the first principle of the moral law. Wis.h.i.+ng to give to the moral law a _religious_ character, we run the risk of taking from it its _moral_ character. We may refer it so entirely to G.o.d as to make His will an arbitrary degree. But the will of G.o.d, whence we deduce morality, in order to give it authority, itself has no moral authority, except as it is just. The Good comes from the will of G.o.d alone; but from His will, in so far as it is the expression of His wisdom and justice. The Eternal Justice of G.o.d is the sole foundation of Justice, such as Humanity perceives and practises it. The Good, duty, merit and demerit, are referred to G.o.d, as everything is referred to Him; but they have none the less a proper evidence and authority. Religion is the crown of Morality, not its base. The base of Morality is in itself.
The Moral Code of Masonry is still more extensive than that developed by philosophy. To the requisitions of the law of Nature and the law of G.o.d, it adds the imperative obligation of a contract. Upon entering the Order, the Initiate binds to himself every Mason in the world. Once enrolled among the children of Light, every Mason on earth becomes his brother, and owes him the duties, the kindnesses, and the sympathies of a brother. On every one he may call for a.s.sistance in need, protection against danger, sympathy in sorrow, attention in sickness, and decent burial after death. There is not a Mason in the world who is not bound to go to his relief, when he is in danger, if there be a greater probability of saving his life than of losing his own. No Mason can wrong him to the value of anything, knowingly, himself, nor suffer it to be done by others, if it be in his power to prevent it. No Mason can speak evil of him, to his face or behind his back. Every Mason must keep his lawful secrets, and aid him in his business, defend his character when unjustly a.s.sailed, and protect, counsel, and a.s.sist his widow and his orphans. What so many thousands owe to him, he owes to each of them.
He has solemnly bound himself to be ever ready to discharge this sacred debt. If he fails to do it he is dishonest and forsworn; and it is an unparalleled meanness in him to obtain good offices by false pretences, to receive kindness and service, rendered him under the confident expectation that he will in his turn render the same, and then to disappoint, without ample reason, that just expectation.
Masonry holds him also, by his solemn promise, to a purer life, a n.o.bler generosity, a more perfect charity of opinion and action; to be tolerant, catholic in his love for his race, ardent in his zeal for the interest of mankind, the advancement and progress of humanity.
Such are, we think, the Philosophy and the Morality, such the TRUE WORD of a Master Mason.
The world, the ancients believed, was governed by Seven Secondary Causes; and these were the universal forces, known to the Hebrews by the plural name ELOHIM. These forces, a.n.a.logous and contrary one to the other, produce equilibrium by their contrasts, and regulate the movements of the spheres. The Hebrews called them the Seven great Archangels, and gave them names, each of which, being a combination of another word with AL, the first Phnician Nature-G.o.d, considered as the Principle of Light, represented them as His manifestations. Other peoples a.s.signed to these Spirits the government of the Seven Planets then known, and gave them the names of their great divinities.
So, in the Kabala, the last Seven Sephiroth const.i.tuted ATIK YOMIN, the Ancient of Days; and these, as well as the Seven planets, correspond with the Seven colors separated by the prism, and the Seven notes of the musical octave.
Seven is the sacred number in all theogonies and all symbols, because it is composed of 3 and 4. It represents the magical power in its full force. It is the Spirit a.s.sisted by all the Elementary Powers, the Soul served by Nature, the Holy Empire spoken of in the clavicules of Solomon, symbolized by a warrior, crowned, bearing a triangle on his cuira.s.s, and standing on a cube, to which are harnessed two Sphinxes, one white and the other black, pulling contrary ways, and turning the head to look backward.