Foundling

“ In short, his whole person wanted all that elegance and beauty which is the very reverse of clumsy strength, and which so agreeably sets off most of our fine gentlemen; being partly owing to the high blood of their ancestors, viz., blood made of rich sauces and generous wines, and partly to an early town education. ”

“ But to them that follow after, the children that reap of the little founder's sowing, to them that have builded his England, have honoured his founding, have given her life and her greatness, have spoken with the lips of her learning, in the words of her wisdom, have sprung from her schools and her colleges, to them the little founder has been a symbol of all good things, he cast the bread upon the waters & they have found it after many days. ”

“ If the division between the noble and the common of the human race, as established by birth, by hereditary rank, by unalterable caste, were stronger and deeper and less eradicable than at this day, the real division, as visible in his nature, between man and man, of the noble and the common, the difference in his tastes, his enjoyments, his pleasures, his capacity no less than his power of enjoying, was a mere nothing then, to what it is to-day. ”

“ Both systems were in their origin essentially ethical reforms born of the generous ardour, the lofty aspirations, the tender compassion of their noble Founders, two of those beautiful spirits who appear at rare intervals on earth like beings come from a better world to support and guide our weak and erring nature. ”

“ I believe in the institution of hereditary monarchy as a divine idea, imparted to mankind, and answering to true and healthy instincts implanted in them—like in kind, if differing in degree, to the institution of a priesthood or clergy. ”

“ Hence, we at once see the fitness of the symbolism which commences the aspirant's upward progress in the cultivation of knowledge and the search after truth, by recalling to his mind the condition of civilization and the social union of mankind, as necessary preparations for the attainment of these objects. In the allusions to the officers of a Lodge, and the degrees of Masonry as explanatory of the organization of our own society, we clothe in our symbolic language the history of the organization of society. ”

“ As descendants, in whole or in part, from that illustrious people who, after conquering nature by their industry and perseverance, achieved liberty by their determined valour, and learning and science by their intellectual vigour, I rejoice to see you instituting bonds of union, for the purpose of preserving the remembrance of such an honourable lineage, and the ties of a common origin. ”

“ Having taken the one downward step, the founder would be called upon constantly to repeat it, his moulds would remain set, some to the right, some to the wrong standard, and every type he cast would make it more impossible for him or his posterity to recover the simple standard from which he had erred. ”

“ The great world then comprised the Court and its entourage, the Ministers, and the Corps Diplomatique, the military, naval, and literary stars, the leaders of the fashionable and political world, the cream of the aristocracy of England; and—at the time of which I write—the old Catholic cousinhood clan used to hold its own. You must either have been born in this great world, or you must have arrived in it through aristocratic patronage, or through your talents, fame, or beauty. Nowadays you only want wealth! ”

“ Let us not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and the new arises; the night is spent, the day is come forth ”

“ Science, like a hundred-handed Briareus, working in many a field, yet watching with the eyes of an Argus all the richly varied ingathering, has learned how to probe among the very roots of social thought, and speech, and action. The hands of the mighty Titan have found the clan ideas, the clan facts, at the roots of property and political institutions, of legal rights, religious doctrines, and moral principles. ”

“ We know, further—so far at least as we have yet succeeded in deciphering the record,—that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms;—that, in short, in the imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession the magnates should walk first. ”

“ And we, building upon the same foundation, with an added story to our edifice, modify, to suit legislation and a higher public sentiment and a broader conception of justice, both the foundation and the roof whenever a new principle is born or some great soul floods the world with light. ”

“ The rich of one generation might, in the next, seek for a house there, either in their own persons or in those of their representatives. Perhaps the son and heir of the founder might have no better refuge. There should be occasional sunshine let into the story ”

“ EVOLUTION OF THE MORES
All modern social institutions arise from the evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions—mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble origin. ”

“ That which, in medieval thought, establishes unity in the very dissimilar meanings of the word, is the conviction that every one of these groupings represents a divine institution, an element of the organism of Creation emanating from the will of God, constituting an actual entity, and being, at bottom, as venerable as the angelic hierarchy. ”

“ Everything else but reason dominates them. The gift of a founder, the decree of a king, parliament, or pope, the decision of some ancient conclave of the superstitious and ignorant, or the imperious will of some interested body of lords, plutocrats, monks, or political usurpers, establishes the mould in which opinions are cast; and the soft brains of inexperienced and unreflective youth are easily compressed into the form of the established mould, and from that deformed condition they seldom or never entirely recover true symmetry. ”

“ The never-dying nature of their institutions set aside in all their undertakings every calculation as to time and age. Whether they built or planted, they set the generous example of providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth, and greatness of generations upon generations yet unborn. ”

“ But in both cases the circle of those who are regarded as fathers is entirely different. The character of an institution can only be perfectly understood, if we examine its connection with the entire organization, and, if possible, trace its metamorphoses in the preceding stages.... ”

“ For the body political is informed and denominated from the pars imperans, the governing part or head: therefore as a head of divine institution, authorized for the spiritual or pastoral work, denominateth the society accordingly; so a civil head can make but a civil society, and a head of man's making, but a human society. ”

“ They perhaps claim some knight or nobleman as the founder of the race, although he may have really done nothing for the practical advantage of the family; the true founders being merely proprietors of land, dignified as J.P.'s, and sometimes sheriffs, throwing off branches into the clerical and legal professions. ”

“ For there are only two divisions in this world of ours, only two companies, only two flocks. The kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light, the Lord's people and those who are none of His, the sheep and the goats. ”

“ The assumption that the wills of Founders were for ever inviolable, in spite of the lapse of ages and the total change of circumstances, had led, as it must always lead, to a perpetuity of perversion and to the defeat of the main object of the Founders themselves. ”

“ The chains of convention, an external life grown out of proportion with that of the heart and mind, have destroyed, for the most part, this dignified beauty. There is no longer, in fact, an aristocracy in England, because the saplings are too puny to represent the old oak. ”

“ To create a better leadership of men,—to form a new order and union of men,—a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine of their own nature, and in league for its advancement, to seize the 'thoughts' of those whose law is the law of the larger activity, and 'inform them with nobleness,'—was the plan. ”

“ Using the word ‘tradition’ in the wide sense just now indicated, the traditions of a people may be said to include the recognised social organisation of the whole people into classes, castes, clans, phratries, or groups of any kind, whose relations to one another and whose place in the national system are determined by law, custom and conventions of various kinds. ”

“ Less complete because it does not cover the individual altogether in all the acts of life is the creation of secret associations, professional unions, learned societies, etc. The founder conceives an ideal of complete living or one limited to a given end, and puts it into practice, having for material men grouped of their free choice, or by coöptation. ”

“ And if such conduct is correct in the general concerns of private life, how much more is it proper when we remember the duty we owe to the founders of great principles,—to the founders of great states,—of great states that have grown into great nations! ”

“ All the people of a state are interested in the founder of their state. All states that have harmonized into a common form of society, are interested in their respective founders. All men are interested in their ancestors. All men love to look back into the days that are past. In these circumstances traditional national poetry is reconstructed and brought like chaos into order and form. ”

“ So that in thinking of the Masters in relation to our own Society, we must bear in mind how very wide are their relations to all great spiritual movements, to all religions, and that all who are spoken of in the different faiths as Founder or Founders of a particular religion would fall under the name, Master. ”

“ The hereditary dynasties of the old world were all unconscious of the rapid growth of this power, which was soon to involve them in its new and prevailing influence. The hour of revolution was at hand, promising freedom to conscience and dominion to intelligence. ”

“ Should it be faithfully carried into effect, with an earnestness and sagacity of application, and a steady perseverance of pursuit, proportioned to the means furnished by the will of the founder, and to the greatness and simplicity of his design, as by himself declared, 'the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men,' it is no extravagance of anticipation to declare that his name will be hereafter enrolled among the eminent benefactors of mankind. ”

“ At last the founder of a race again goes forth from hence, and is so fortunate as to stamp a distinct character upon his descendants, and by that means to unite them for all time to come into a great nation, inseparable through all changes of place or destiny. ”

“ In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some one descendant of the family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense, and practical energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the original founder. ”

“ A reformer in the deepest sense, he accepted Church and hierarchy as they existed, and never dreamed of resisting them. Everything that the sixteenth century called into question is to be found in his writings. ”

“ Later, as men formed themselves into groups, clans and tribes, each recognized the interests of the immediate group as of supreme importance, but feared the other groups.247 This was the origin of “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land.” Those families that obeyed their natural leader, the patriarch, held together and survived ”

“ They forced the hierarchy to recognize the existence of something higher without it and above it, and also to learn to respect the right of men to form their own opinions and to give utterance to them. ”

“ Generally speaking, these establishments do not for any length of time carry out the intentions of their founders, and it sometimes happens that they become diametrically opposed to them. It is as much as one can do to trace after many long years a few vestiges of their founders' original intention. ”

“ Its educational ideal is blinkers and an obedient youth looking neither to the right nor the left, but pursuing the one right path.
But the sustaining factor of life is death. Happily, most happily, Founders die, and their codes and constitutions, their classical utterances, die and pass away. ”

“ He rather favours the opinion of those who hold the fear and hate of the world which distinguished the early Christian ages, to have been founded on an erroneous comprehension of the doctrine and example of the great Founder, who, as far as we are able to learn, facilitated the creation of real art. ”

“ We think we do not overrate it when we say that no man of the nation of which he was the founder did so much as he towards giving shape to the methods of government, to the forms of worship and to the mode of life which prevailed for about a thousand years among that people. ”

“ Authority, tradition, and custom are wholly or partially destroyed. And since authority, tradition, and custom are the cement of the social structure, there results a general dissolution of that structure into its component individuals. ”

“ The followers of this doctrine judge and affirm that, as this world is created, there must be a Creator; the mukt or “emancipation,” in their opinion means striving to approach the origin of beings, not uniting like the warp and the web, the threads of which, although near, are nevertheless separate from each other. ”