Fraternity comes First

Every Minnesota Freemason, apart perhaps from those few made masons at sight, has heard the following words upon first being admitted to the lodge room:

“Vouchsafe thine aid, Almighty Father of the Universe, to this our present convention; and grant that this candidate for Masonry may dedicate and devote his life to Thy service, and become a true and faithful Brother among us. Endue him with a competency of Thy divine wisdom, that by the secrets of our Art, he may be better enabled to display the beauties of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth, to the honour of Thy holy name.”

We live at a time when many businesses, educational institutions, charities, and other organizations feel it necessary to have a “mission statement.” If there ought to be a mission statement for our Craft, we could do worse than choosing “to display the beauties of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth.”

I propose to take these objectives in reverse order.

Truth

“What is truth?” In the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, verse 38, this is the question asked of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, who then abandoned Him to the baying mob. Pilate was not an admirable character, but his question is a good one.

A common definition of truth holds that it is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. Another definition holds that truth is the aim of belief, whereas falsehood is a fault.

When we seek to define truth more minutely, it quickly becomes apparent that there are different avenues to truth, because there are different ways of knowing.

In mathematics, truth is arrived at by deduction from first principles. The theorems of mathematics must be so proven. And while mathematical proof may be difficult and time-consuming (Fermat’s last theorem, posited in 1637, was not proven until 1995), all of mathematics exists in embryo in the human mind. Plato describes knowledge as a sort of recollection (anamnesis), and in the dialogue Meno, Socrates famously elicits the solution of a mathematical problem – the one we know as the Pythagorean theorem, or the Forty-Seventh Problem of Euclid – by asking a series of questions of a young and ignorant slave boy. The latter, prompted by them, shows that he understands it. Mathematical knowledge is, to put it in terms of our computerized age, hard-wired in the human memory, needing only to be retrieved.

Natural science, on the other hand, proceeds by disproof rather than proof. Unlike a mathematical theorem, a scientific theory can be demonstrated many times, but can never be proved. It is, on the contrary, true only until further notice. Science is not merely a collection of facts, but another way of knowing – the scientific method. It begins with the observations of patterns in nature. A consistent pattern can be summarized in an hypothesis, which is then tested by experiment, and if not disproved, it becomes a theory. Yet theories are constantly re-tested by refined observation and experiment. It is the aim of experiment to disprove the theory it tests. Many, many results consistent with a theory can be invalidated by one experiment that disproves it.

It was, for example, the prevalent theory in the eighteenth century that combustion involved the liberation of a substance called phlogiston from the material being burned. Just about all things that burned lost weight in so doing, and this was attributed to their giving up their phlogiston. The chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier showed that when the element mercury was caused to burn by focusing the sunlight on it through a magnifying glass, the combustion product, which we now call mercuric oxide, weighed more than the mercury that was burned. Since such a result would require phlogiston to have negative mass, Lavoisier’s experiment disproved the phlogiston theory, which Lavoisier replaced with the theory of oxidation.

There are questions that cannot be answered either by mathematical analysis or by the scientific method. What is the good? What is the beautiful? What is the purpose of our existence? Why is there suffering? What happens to our consciousness after we die? Such questions fall into the field of philosophy.

The word philosophy is supposed to have been coined in 518 BC by our ancient brother Pythagoras, while at the court of Leon, tyrant of Phlios. The word “tyrant” at the time did not necessarily refer to a cruel or capricious ruler, merely to one who had seized power (often with popular support). Still, one had to be on his guard when in the presence of such a ruler, for he might prove to be cruel, capricious, or both.

Leon asked Pythagoras whether he was wise (sophos). Whether in complete sincerity, or out of caution, Pythagoras replied that he was not, but rather a lover of wisdom, a philosopher – from philos (love) and sophia (wisdom). This answer apparently satisfied Leon.

It is a testimony to the insights of the ancient Greek thinkers that while we have largely rejected their science, and though we still base our mathematics on theirs we have added much to it, on matters of philosophy we don’t seem to have advanced very far beyond them. Perhaps this is so because truth is harder to determine about many philosophical questions, and it often becomes evident only after a long time.

Although the Seven Liberal Arts are commended to our attention in the extensive Middle Chamber lecture of the Fellow-Craft degree, the proper study of all Freemasons is philosophical, particularly as it has to do with ethics. The early American Masonic lecturer Thomas Smith Webb (1771 – 1819) described Freemasonry as “a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” This summary is monitorial in many U.S. jurisdictions.

Relief

We turn now to relief. Relief is another word for charity, the relief of the distress of our fellow human beings. Freemasonry has had a charitable aspect ever since it first came into being. Our obligations call upon us to contribute to the relief of a distressed worthy brother, his widow and orphans. Masonic hospitals, old-age homes, orphanages, schools, scholarships, and libraries abound around the world. Our own Minnesota Masonic Foundation, the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Masonic Home, and similar institutions supported by appendant bodies are too well known to require extensive description.

Yet, having taken some amount of time to examine on one hand Truth, or philosophy, and on the other, Relief or charity, we are compelled to admit that both are accessible outside the Craft as well as in it.

Brotherly Love

I submit that it is a distraction to concentrate upon Masonic philosophy or charity without acknowledging the primacy of Brotherly Love – Fraternity.

If it were not for Fraternity, we would not have Masonic philosophy, extensive as it is. Without Fraternity, what would have induced Albert Pike to write Morals and Dogma – what would have inspired the Masonic encyclopedias of Albert Gallatin Mackey or Robert Freke Gould, or the 136 volumes published to date of Ars quatuor coronatorum? Without Fraternity, what would have given rise to the charitable foundations, hospitals, old-age homes, or all of the other charitable works the Craft has built since the foundation of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1717?

Fraternity came first – and it should continue to come first. If it should ever fail to do so, then the superstructure of Masonic philosophy and charity built upon it would crumble, and all that remained would be a ruin, like those of a past civilization that had ceased to exist.

As some of you will know, in addition to being a printer and publisher, I’m a community banker. I started in that business not as an employee but as an owner; my father had been a director, later the board chairman, and a principal stockholder. I became a stockholder myself almost fifty years ago and on my dad’s death I was elected to the board. When that happened, the then chairman – my father’s friend and successor – told me “I’m going to put you on the discount committee. You’ll learn a lot about human nature on the discount committee.”

The discount committee, I should note, is the board committee that approves or declines loans – and deals with their collection, when people can’t or won’t pay the bank back. That’s one occasion when you learn a lot about human nature.

But what else have I learned? It is very simple – trust makes the world go around. Banks operate by enabling depositors to pool their money, which the bank then lends to borrowers. For a bank to succeed, its depositors must have faith that the bank will give them back their money when they want it. The bank must have faith that its borrowers will pay bank their loans – plus interest – in full and on time. The word credit shares the same Latin root – credo (meaning “I believe”) – as do creed, credibility, etc. Extending credit is an act of faith in one’s fellow man.

What has been remarkable to me about my experience in this business is how the great majority of people are true to their words, and do exactly what they have promised. Very, very small numbers of people fail to do so, and these are – needless to say – the source of the vast majority of problems at any bank. There are other sources of risk in banking, but simple credit risk is the most common of them.

A simple formula all bankers know is called “the Five C’s of Credit.” The C’s stand for what qualifies a borrower: in order, Character, Capacity, Collateral, Capital, and Conditions. Note which of these comes first!

The financial industry is exhaustively regulated. We are required to document everything. Regulators don’t like to leave much to discretion. There must be a written policy for everything. Banks are subject to regular examinations, in which government agencies look into how they have conducted their businesses.

One doesn’t have rules unless there has been a previous problem with behavior that the rule is made to prevent. There are good reasons for bank regulation.

Nonetheless, some of the regulatory measures to which we are subject present odd contradictions.

The oddest of these was a time when the examiners looked at my bank’s policies, and they criticized our inclusion of the Five C’s of Credit. What they particularly didn’t like was the inclusion of character. They said it was too subjective.

If you wonder why our country has economic problems, look at the people governing us, and ask why they dislike a reference to character.

If the Five C’s of Credit are part of the foundation of our economy, character is the cornerstone.

And this is what brings us back to Fraternity. Our Craft admits no one knowingly into its ranks who is unworthy of our trust – who lacks character. Moreover, the candidate must reciprocate by trusting us – how else is he to follow his guide and fear no danger?

This is not to say that there are not those among us who have failed to live up to their obligations, but in my experience such persons are very few. Fraternity is based on trust, and I have to say that I have very, very seldom found a brother to betray that trust. This is a rare and valuable thing. It is consistent with the experience of just about every Mason with whom I’ve ever discussed it.

Masonic brotherhood and the trust it inspires are based on character. We are defiantly old-fashioned in insisting upon it, and long may we continue so doing. Without character, there can be no trust; without trust, there can be no fraternity; and without fraternity, there can be no Freemasonry. So mote it be!