Before we go into the subject of our lecture, I must disclose that the bulk of my information is derived from a little-known book I found while searching for the works of Bro. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a German philosopher of the 18th century.

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In 1953 The Supreme Council 33° Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, published a collection of Masonic Writing and Addresses of Bro. Roscoe Pound, which includes his translation of Fichte's Masonic Lectures titled "Letters to Constant." The Supreme Council has given me permission to utilize the material contained in that publication.   Most of the information that follows is copied from that book.

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Let's begin with a question, a question many non-Masons (and Masons alike) ask:

What is Freemasonry?   What made this FRATERNITY to exist, and continue to exist even today, almost 300 years after coming out of the closet?

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In most parts of the world the social, political, religious, and moral environments have continually changed from that of the 18th century England. Our view of the world and of life in general has changed, our needs have changed, but men have continued to join the fraternity. Why?

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Here is how Fichte describes Masonry to Constant:

"You know that in the first decades of the eighteenth century, in London, a society came into public notice, apparently from nowhere, about which no one knew what it was, and what it sought.   It spread, notwithstanding, with inconceivable rapidity and traveled over France and Germany, into all states of Christian Europe, and even to America. Men of all ranks, regents, princes, nobles, the learned, artists, men of business, entered it; Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were initiated and called one another "Brother."

"It is true, wise and virtuous men busy themselves earnestly with the order. It is a fact. But with what do they busy themselves?

 

With the order as it is, or how and what it, and indeed through it, may come to be? … As certainly as wise and virtuous men at any time busy themselves earnestly with the order of Freemasons, so certainly it can have a reasonable, good, and lofty purpose. This purpose, possible or actual, we shall now find as we go forward upon this path. That is, we can know what the wise and virtuous man can will, what he necessarily must will, so certainly wisdom and virtue are but one and are determined by eternal laws of reason. Therefore, we must now investigate what the wise and good man may aim at in such a society. Then we have found with demonstrated certainty the one possible purpose of the order of Freemasons."

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"Masonry raises all men above their vocation. In that it trains men, it directly trains the most serviceable members of the greater society–the amiable and popular, the learned and wise, not only the skillful but also the men of affairs possessed of judgment, the humane warriors, the good heads of households, and good bringers-up of children. Whatever human relation one may think of, Masonry has the most advantageous influence upon it."