SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.VIII May, 1930 No.5

    Freemasonry first asks questions of the candidate for initiation,  
 then questions about him. 
     A lodge must be satisfied as to five important matters; a  
 petitioner’s 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 man’s  
 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’s 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 King’s 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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