THE CANDIDATE
by: Unknown
Freemasonry first asks questions of the candidate for
initiation, then questions about him.
A lodge must be satisfied as to five important matters; a
petitioners motive for applying for the degrees; his physical being; his mental
equipment; his moral character and his political status, using the word in its
non-partisan sense.
It is highly important that Freemasons understand that a
mans motives for petitioning a lodge are proper, otherwise we cannot guard our
West Gate from invasion by those who will not, because they cannot, become good
Master Masons.
A man must ask for Light, of his own free will and accord.
Not only must he so declare in his petition, but nine times during his
initiation he must repeat the statement. Here grow the roots of that unwritten
but universally understood prohibition - no Mason must ask his friend to join
the Order.
It is easy to persuade a friend to join something. We enjoy
our country club - we would enjoy it more if our friend was a member. We put an
application before him and persuade him to sign it; quite right and proper. We
belong, perhaps, to a debating club or an amateur theatrical society, or a
Board of Trade or a luncheon club. Enjoying these activities, we desire our
friend also to have these pleasure so we ask him to become one of our circle.
An entirely proper procedure in such organizations but it is a wholly improper
course in Masonry. Unless a man petitions the Fraternity impelled by something
within himself, he must state an untruth nine times in his initiation. Unless
he is first prepared in his heart and not in his mind, he can never grasp the
simple but sublime essentials of brotherhood. To ask our friend to petition our
lodge, then, is to do him not a favor but an injury. In most Jurisdictions a
petitioner is required seriously to declare upon his honor, not only that he
comes of his own free will and accord, but uninfluenced by any hope of
financial gain. There are men who want to become Freemasons because they
believe that the wider acquaintance and the friends made in the lodge will be
good for business. So do men join the church or a bible class because they
believe they can sell their goods to their fellow members. But the man who
desires to become a member of a church that he may sell it a new carpet will
hardly be an asset to the house of God; he who would become a Freemason in
order to get the trade of his fellow lodge members will hardly be in a frame of
mind either sincerely to promise brotherhood or faithfully to live up to its
obligations. Hence Freemasonry need to obtain the most solemn declaration
possible of the secret intentions, the real motives, the hidden desires of
those who would join our Mystic Circle.
The Doctrine of the Perfect Youth is perennially a matter
for discussion in Grand Lodges. The origin of the requirement that a man be
perfect in all his limbs and parts goes back to the days before written history
of the Craft. Mackey states that the first written law on the subject is found
in the fifth article of the Old York or Gothic Constitutions adopted at York in
A.D. 926:
A Candidate must be without blemish and have full and proper
use of his limbs; for a maimed man can do the Craft no good. This requirement
has been repeated, and again repeated at various times in many different forms;
in the Ancient Charges at Making (1686) and in the Constitutions of 1722-23
which put into print the customs and enactments of the Mother Grand Lodge in
1717.
The same Masonic authority makes the 18th Landmark read:
Certain qualifications of a candidate for initiation are
derived from a Landmark of the Order. These qualifications are; that he shall
be a man - shall be unmutilated - free born and of mature age. That is to say,
a woman, a cripple or a slave, or one born in slavery, is disqualified for
initiation into the rites of Masonry. Just how strictly this law should be
interpreted is a moot question, and different Jurisdictions rule in different
ways upon it. In no Jurisdiction, for instance, is a man considered to be
ineligible because he wears glasses, or has a gold tooth! In most Jurisdictions
he must be perfect with two arms, two legs, to hands and two feet. In some
Jurisdictions, if he can conform to the requirements of the degrees, he may
lack one or more fingers not vital to the tokens; in other he may not.
The foundation of the doctrine was an operative requirement;
obviously a maimed man could not do as good work, true work, square work as the
able-bodied man. The requirement has been carried over in Speculative Masonry.
Its greatest importance today is less in the need for physical strength and
mobility than in undoubted fact that if we materially alter this Ancient
Landmark, these old usages and customs, then we can alter others; admit women,
elect by a majority vote, dispense with the Tiler and hold our meetings in the
public square! Physical qualifications have a further importance of a practical
nature; other things being equal, the maimed man and the cripple are more apt
to become charges upon the lodge than the strong and whole. Finally, the weak
and feeble of body cannot offer to their brethren that same assistance in
danger which the able-bodied may give.
Inspired by patriotism some Jurisdictions have relaxed the
severity of their physical requirements in favor of soldiers who have suffered
in behalf of their country. Into the argument pro and con as to the expedience
of such relaxations this Bulletin can not go. Suffice it here that the lodge to
which an applicant applies should be meticulously careful to see that the candidate
conforms literally to the requirements as laid down by the Grand Lodge. It is
hardly necessary to say that the petition of a woman cannot be entertained
under any circumstances whatsoever, nor need the reasons for it to be discussed
here.
The mental qualifications required of a candidate are
dictated more by the desires of the individual lodges than by any stated law.
Many Jurisdictions have ruled that a man who cannot read is not an eligible
petitioner, for the good and sufficient reason that he who cannot read cannot
search the Great Light, nor discover for himself the by-laws of his lodge, the
constitution of the Grand Lodge, or the Old Charges and ancient Constitutions.
The ability to read and write, however, important though it
is, does not make a man educated! Nothing is said in our Ritual about the need
of an education prior to becoming a Mason, but by implication a man is supposed
to have sufficient educational background to be able to study the seven liberal
arts and sciences. Sufficient education is a very broad phrase and may include
all sorts of men, of all sorts of education, as, indeed, it does. A man may not
know the multiplication table, murder the Kings English, and believe geometry
is something to eat; and yet be a hard-working, true-hearted, single-minded
brother to his brethren. But it will hardly be doubted that if all Freemasons
were of such limited educational equipment the Order would perish from the
earth from the lack of appreciation of what it is, where it came from, and
whither is it going! First the friend who presents the petition; next the
committee appointed to investigate; and finally the lodge must be the judge of
what constitutes sufficient mental equipment to enable a man to become a good
member of the lodge.
A few ritualistic lions are in the path. He who is silly, is
childish, in his dotage, who is insane, is known to be a fool - may not legally
receive the degrees. It is to be noted that dotage is not a matter of years but
of the effect of years. A man of four score, in full possession of his mental
faculties is not in his dotage. Premature senility may attack a man in his
fifties; he may truly be in his dotage. Similarly, a fool does not mean,
Masonically, a man without what we consider good judgment. Jones was a fool to
go into that stock - He is foolish to try to build that house - What a fool he
is to sell his store now - do not really express belief that the man is a fool
in the Masonic sense, merely that in these particular cases he acts as we think
a fool would act.
Masonically, a man is a fool who suffers from arrested
mental development. He is not mad, neither is he in his dotage, but he lacks
the ordinary mental equipment and judgment ability of the rest of humanity.
Such a one, of course, is ineligible to receive the degrees, since he can
neither comprehend not live up to their teachings.
The moral qualifications a petitioner should possess are
fully understood by all. The petitioner must express his belief in Deity. No
atheist can be made a Mason. He must be under the tongue of good report - i.e.,
have a good reputation in his community. He must obey the moral law. But just
how much is included in this phrase is an open question.
While a moral man may be hard to define, he is easy to
recognize. Committees seldom have much trouble in ascertaining that a man
morally fit to become a Mason is, indeed, so. The contrary is not always true -
moral unfitness often masquerades under the appearance of virtue - hence the
need for the competent committee. In some Jurisdictions a separate ballot is
taken on the candidate for the second and third degrees, to test his moral
fitness, but usually the ballot which elects a petitioner to the degrees is
considered to express the opinion of the membership on all his qualifications
at once.
The applicant for the degrees must be of mature and discreet
age (from the Old Charges). In this country that is the legal majority. In some
foreign Jurisdictions it varies from eighteen, for a lewis or son of a Mason,
to twenty-five.
Our requirement of legal age is dictated not only by the
fact that Masonry is for men, and a youth does not become a man until he is
twenty-one; but because to be made a Mason in the United States a man must be a
citizen, and citizenship, in its real sense, is not held by minors.
Our political requirements are most explicit upon the
question of being free born. Many have erroneously thought that such
qualification was read into the body of Masonry to keep out men of the colored
race. Unquestionably free born means not only not born a slave, but not born of
parents who have been slaves, or whose forebears were slaves. Thus free born
does bar men of African descent in this country from becoming a Mason. But the
provision was an integral part of Masonic law long before Africans were
imported into this country - see the statute from the Old York Constitution
already quoted. The custom even goes further into antiquity. In the ancient
Mysteries of Greece and Rome, from which Masonry derives something of its form,
similar law prevailed. No man born a slave, or made a slave, even if freed
(manumitted) could be initiated.
It is practically a universal requirement that the candidate
be a resident of the Jurisdiction to which he applies for a period of one year
prior to making the application. A man who has not resided for a reasonable
period in one place cannot have demonstrated to his neighbors the kind of man
that he really is. A committee is handicapped in making an investigation of a
man who is not among friends and neighbors. Grand Lodges are usually very
strict about this; but Grand Masters occasionally, upon a very good reason
being shown, grant dispensations to shorten the statutory period. A man who has
resided in a Jurisdiction for ten months, let us say, is ordered to Japan for
three years. He desires to become a Mason before he departs. If he is satisfied
that the applicant can show the committee his moral worth, a Grand Master may
permit him to make application and receive the degrees before he departs. During
the war, when all requirements seemed of less than the usual importance when
seen in the fierce white light of patriotism; length of residence in a
Jurisdiction was sometimes lost sight of. A man considered worthy to have his
petition placed before a Masonic lodge has much to recommend him. If the
committee has done its work well, and, if on the strength of that report the
lodge elects him. he may well feel that an important seal has been placed upon
his reputation and character. That some committees do their work ill is
evidenced by the occasional failures of brethren to walk uprightly. That the
vast majority of committees are intelligent and faithful is proven by the
reputation of the Fraternity and the undoubted fact that a man known to be a
Master Mason is almost universally considered to be a good man and true!
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