"31st Degree - Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander (Inspector Inquisitor)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

MORALS and DOGMA by Albert Pike

XXXI. GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER
[Inspector Inquisitor]

To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, and to decide impartially; these are the chief duties of a Judge. After the lessons you have received, I need not further enlarge
upon them. You will be ever eloquently reminded of them by the furniture upon our Altar, and the decorations of the Tribunal.

The Holy Bible will remind you of your obligation; and that as you judge here below, so you will be yourself judged hereafter, by One who has not to submit, like an earthly judge, to the sad necessity of inferring the motives, intentions, and purposes of men [of which all crime essentially consists] from the uncertain and often unsafe testimony of their acts and words; as men in thick darkness grope their way, with hands outstretched before them; but before Whom
every thought, feeling, impulse, and intention of every soul that now is, or ever was, or ever will be on earth, is and ever will be through the whole infinite duration of eternity, present and
visible.

The Square and Compass, the Plumb and Level, are well known to you as a Mason. Upon you as a Judge, they peculiarly inculcate uprightness, impartiality, careful consideration of facts and
circumstances, accuracy in judgment, and uniformity in decision. As a Judge, too, you are to bring up square work and square work only.

Like a temple erected by the plumb, you are to lean neither to one side nor the other. Like a building well squared and levelled, you are to be firm and steadfast in your convictions of right and justice. Like the circle swept with the compasses, you are to be true. In the scales of justice you are to weigh the facts and the law alone, nor place in either scale personal friendship or personal dislike, neither fear nor favour and when reformation is no longer to be hoped for, you are to smite relentlessly with the sword of justice.

The peculiar and principal symbol of this Degree is the Tetractys of Pythagoras, suspended in the East, where ordinarily the sacred word or letter glitters, like it, representing the Deity. Its nine
external points form the triangle, the chief symbol in Masonry, with many of the meanings of which you are familiar.

To us, its three sides represent the three principal attributes of the Deity, which created, and now, as ever, support, uphold, and guide the Universe in its eternal movement; the three supports of the Masonic Temple, itself an emblem of the Universe; Wisdom, or the Infinite Divine Intelligence; Strength, or Power, the Infinite Divine Will; and Beauty, or the Infinite Divine Harmony, the Eternal Law, by virtue of which the infinite myriads of suns and worlds flash ever onward in their ceaseless revolutions, without clash or conflict, in the Infinite of space, and change and movement are the law of all created existences.

To us, as Masonic Judges, the triangle figures forth the Pyramids, which, planted firmly as the everlasting hills, and accurately adjusted to the four cardinal points, defiant of all assaults of
men and time, teach us to stand firm and unshaken as they, when our feet are planted upon the solid truth.

It includes a multitude of geometrical figures, all having a deep significance to Masons. The triple triangle is peculiarly sacred, having ever been among all nations a symbol of the Deity.
Prolonging all the external lines of the Hexagon, which also it includes, we have six smaller triangles, whose bases cut each other in the central point of the Tetractys, itself always the symbol of the generative power of the Universe, the Sun, Brahma, Osiris, Apollo, Bel, and the Deity Himself. Thus, too, we form twelve still smaller triangles, three times three of which compose the Tetractys itself.

I refrain from enumerating all the figures that you may trace within it, but one may not be passed unnoticed. The Hexagon itself faintly images to us a cube, not visible at the first glance, and therefore the fit emblem of that faith in things invisible, most essential to salvation. The first perfect solid, and reminding you of the cubical stone that sweated blood, and of that deposited by Enoch, it teaches justice, accuracy, and consistency.

The infinite divisibility of the triangle teaches the infinity of the Universe, of time, of space, and of the Deity, as do the lines that, diverging from the common centre, ever increase their
distance from each other as they are infinitely prolonged. As they may be infinite in number, so are the attributes of Deity infinite; and as they emanate from one-centre and are projected into space, so the whole Universe has emanated from God.

Remember also, my Brother, that you have other duties to perform than those of a judge. You are to inquire into and scrutinize carefully the work of the subordinate Bodies in Masonry. You are to see that recipients of the higher Degrees are not unnecessarily multiplied; that improper persons are carefully excluded from membership, and that in their life and conversation Masons bear testimony to the excellence of our doctrines and the incalculable value of the institution itself. You are to inquire also into your own heart and conduct, and keep careful watch over yourself, that you go not astray. If you harbour ill-will and jealousy, if you are hospitable to intolerance and bigotry, and churlish to gentleness and kind affections, opening wide your heart to one and closing its portals to the other, it is time for you to set in order your own temple, or else you wear in vain the name and insignia of a Mason, while yet uninvested with the Masonic nature.

Everywhere in the world there is a natural law, that is, a constant mode of action, which seems to belong to the nature of things, to the constitution of the Universe. This fact is universal. In
different departments we call this mode of action by different names, as the law of Matter, the law of Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean by this, a certain mode of action which
belongs to the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in which commonly they are found to act, and in which it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of matter we know only from the fact that they are always obeyed. To us the actual obedience is the only evidence of the ideal rule; for in respect to the conduct of the material world, the ideal and the actual are the same.

The laws of matter we learn only by observation and experience. Before experience of the fact, no man could foretell that a body, falling toward the earth, would descend sixteen feet the first
second, twice that the next, four times the third, and sixteen times the fourth. No mode of action in our consciousness anticipates this rule of action in the outer world. The same is true of all the laws of matter. The ideal law is known because it is a fact. The law is imperative. It must be obeyed without hesitation. Laws of crystallization, laws of proportion in chemical combination, neither in these nor in any other law of Nature is there any margin left for oscillation of disobedience. Only the primal will of God works in the material world, and no secondary finite will.

There are no exceptions to the great general law of Attraction, which binds atom to atom in the body of a rotifier visible only by aid of a microscope, orb to orb, system to system; gives unity to the world of things, and rounds these worlds of systems to a Universe. At first there seem to be exceptions to this law, as in growth and decomposition, in the repulsions of electricity; but at
length all these are found to be special cases of the one great law of attraction acting in various modes.

The variety of effect of this law at first surprises the senses; but in the end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated mind. Looked at in reference to this globe, an earthquake is no more than a chink that opens in a garden-walk of a dry day in Summer. A sponge is porous, having small spaces between the solid parts; the solar system is only more porous, having larger room between the several orbs; the Universe yet more so, with spaces between the systems, as small, compared with infinite space, as those between the atoms that compose the bulk of the smallest invisible animalcule, of which millions swim in a drop of salt-water. The same attraction holds together the animalcule, the sponge, the system, and the Universe. Every particle of matter in that Universe is related to each and all the other particles; and attraction is their common bond.

In the spiritual world, the world of human consciousness, there is also a law, an ideal mode of action for the spiritual forces of man. The law of Justice is as universal an one as the law of
Attraction; though we are very far from being able to reconcile all the phenomena of Nature with it. The lark has the same right in our view, to live, to sing, to dart at pleasure through the ambient atmosphere, as the hawk has to ply his strong wings in the Summer sunshine and yet the hawk pounces on and devours the harmless lark, as it devours the worm, and as the worm devours the animalcule; and, so far as we know, there is nowhere, in any future state of animal existence, any compensation for this apparent injustice. Among the bees, one rules, while the others obey some work, while others are idle. With the small ants, the soldiers feed on the proceeds of the workmen's labour. The lion lies in wait for and devours the antelope that has apparently as good a right to life as he. Among men, some govern and others serve, capital
commands and labour obeys, and one race, superior in intellect, avails itself of the strong muscles of another that is inferior; and yet, for all this, no one impeaches the justice of God.