Presented by Paul J Hughes on September 30, 1983
Six hundred years ago the writer of our oldest known ancient manuscript, enumerated the seven liberal arts and sciences and made a brief statement about each one. He then said, "These be the sciences seven, who useth them well may he have heaven."
Discussion of them today has all but vanished from English ritual except for mention, and the majority of our English brethren know their Masonic significance only if they are researchers and readers of the history of the craft. Our Scott and Irish brothers still retain some discussion of them in their rituals.
As nearly as I can determine, rituals of all U.S. grand jurisdictions retain a discussion of the liberal arts and science but widely vary in extent and length of the discussion. Many say even less about them (except for geometry) than did the Regius Poem in 1390. Conversely, the monitors of some grand lodges give a discussion of them which makes the Middle Chamber lecture as much as an hour and 30 minutes long to the distress of the senior deacons.
In the latter half of the 18th century William Preston, a prominent mason, was very influential in English Masonic affairs. He was a printer by trade, was largely self educated, and read extensively. He advocated that all masons should be not only well informed but well educated. This was in a time when the general public, masons and non-masons alike, were often illiterate. Preston believed that masonry had an obligation to inform and educate its craft. He undertook to do this through what we now know as the Prestonian Lectures.
Preston's lectures were in question and answer form and some of them lasted as long as four hours. Needless to say, many brothers preferred to remain uneducated and the lectures never became very popular.
Nevertheless, much of his material, greatly abbreviated, found its way into the English ritual and eventually to American rituals. Here it was again worked over by ritualists such as Thomas Smith-Webb whose work probably is the basis of all or most American rituals.
The seven liberal arts and sciences have generally survived much ritual revision. Preston retained and elaborated on them because he believed they were the sum and total of human knowledge. He regarded them on a higher plane and separated them from the mechanical arts which were practiced by handicraftsmen.
The term "liberal" was derived from the "liberalis homo", of the middle ages which referred to a man who was his own master-thus free and independent. Preston's philosophy of masonry was that the craft should have as its primary goal the education of masons and spreading of light through the process of teaching.
As early as 1000 A.D. writers were dividing the liberal arts into two groups: the trivium which was grammar, rhetoric and logic, and the quadrivium which was arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The process of education was instruction through these branches of learning, progressing from one to another.
Regarding the trivium and quadrivium, Enfield said: "He who was master of these was thought to have no need of a preceptor to explain any books or to solve any question which lay within the compass of human reason. The knowledge of the trivium having furnished him with the key to all language and that of the quadrivium having opened to him the secret laws of nature. To be master of both was sufficient to complete the character of a philosopher." (1)
Mackey said that Freemasonry of the middle ages utilized the seven liberal arts and sciences as an essential part of the body of masonry. This, he said, accounts for their inclusion, not only in the Regius Poem, but many other old Masonic manuscripts. They were thought to constitute the entire "circle of the sciences." (2)
Originally they were made a part of the entered apprentice degree. We cannot be certain, but it was probably Preston who was responsible for making them a part of the fellowcraft degree. The number seven was associated with the seven masons who composed a lodge of apprentices, the steps of the winding stairs which was also regarded as a symbol of progress of knowledge.
Dr. James Anderson, in his Book of Constitutions opens his work with the words, "Adam, our first parent, created in the image of God, the Great Architect of the Universe, must have had the Liberal Sciences, particularly Geometry, written on his heart. . ."
Brother Preston borrowed ideas and thoughts as well as actual words from many sources. Never did he give credit to those whom he plagiarized but we cannot judge him too harshly. In those days when few men were literate or even fewer educated it was the accepted practice.
For example: he said, "Music teaches the art of forming concords so as to compose delightful harmony, by a mathematical and proportional arrangement of *acute, grave and mixed sounds. This art, by a series of experiments is reduced to a demonstrative science ... It inquires into the nature of concords and discords and enables us to find out the proportion between them by numbers." etc.
Our ancient brother, Pythagoras wrote about concord in music by numbers. He said that by experimentation with lengthing and shortening of a vibrating string the concordant intervals of the scale could be reduced to numerical ratios and that these ratios could be further reduced to their common denominator representing whole numbers. (3)
It is easy to see where Brother Preston got some of his ideas for the discussion of music.
According to the Book of Genesis, music was the domain of Jubal. During the reigns of Kings David and Solomon music reached a peak in ancient times. The psalms of David and Solomon were set to music and we read of David accompanying himself on the harp, singing before Saul to sooth him in his madness.
Music was considered to be the most humanizing of the arts. As Preston said, ".... it touches and gently agitates the agreeable and sublime passions; it wraps us in melancholy and elevates us in joy; it dissolves and inflames, it melts us in tenderness and excites us to war."
"In the early portion of his work, The Inferno," Dante is traveling in the region known as Limbo. He said,Commenting on this passage of Inferno, Longfellow wrote: "This is the noble castle of human wit and learning, encircled with its seven scholastic walls, the trivium, Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music."
H. Cart De La Fontaine tells us that in the medieval system of academic studies the trivium constituted the first portion of the curriculum. It was an undergraduate course and lead to a bachelor's degree. The quadrivium represented the second portion and acquisition of knowledge of these four liberal arts was required for a master's degree. (4)
In the medieval college grammar was the first course stressed. Of course, this meant Latin grammar which led to the study of rhetoric. Latin grammar was considered essential for anyone who wished to attain any education. Rhetoric was necessary for legal of civil education.
Brunette Latini, in a book Le Livre du Tresor said, "Rhetoric is a science which teaches us to speak fully and perfectly that those who hear shall be captivated by strong argument and beauty of expression."
Preston said, "Rhetoric teaches us to speak copiously and fluently on any subject, not merely with propriety alone, but with all the advantages of force and elegance, wisely contriving to captivate the hearer by strength of argument and beauty of expression, etc . . ." Here, again, it is easy to recognize Preston's source of idea.
Aristotle said that rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are stronger than their opposites.
Logic was one of the four main departments of philosophy. The great philosopher, Frederick Maurice said, "The science of logic is of purely Greek invention. Though logic, in a formal narrow sense, is considered as the antagonist of poetry, yet only a most imaginative and poetical nation could have given it the statue-like perfection which it has attained in Greek hands. Zeno is believed, on the best grounds, to be the inventor of logic."
Zeno studied under various philosophers for twenty years and then opened a school. His students met at the so-called poets stoa or poets porch and since they met on the porch or stoa they were called "stoics", a term still in use as a branch of logic.
Arithmetic originally looked on as the science and theory of numbers. It was numerical measure and is used to designate sequence. We say page 8 of a book or we speak of 30 masons at lodge.
Man started in arithmetic with what is commonly called a "quinary system." In all probability this came into being because man has five fingers on each hand - - ten on two hands and led to first simple counting. This lead to the system most commonly now in use, the denary or decimal scale. In this ten is the prominent number.
Pythagoras said, "All things are in numbers. The world is a living arithmetic in its development - a realized geometry in repose."
Joseph Fort Newton wrote, "Nature is a realm of numbers; crystals are solid geometry, music, of all arts, the most divine and exhaulting and cannot free itself of numbers without dying away in discord." (5)
De La Fontaine said, "This art or science may be usefully employed by a mason in order to subtract nothing from the character of his neighbor, to multiply his benevelence to his fellow-creatures and to divide his means with a suffering brother."
Euclid did not invent or discover geometry but we cannot mention it without immediately thinking of him. The significance and symbolism of his 47th problem for masons needs no discussion here. Geometry was probably first used by Egyptians to survey and reestablish land boundry lines after flooding of the Nile.
For over 2,000 years Elements of Euclid has been regarded as a standard geometry text. It consists of thirteen books and it was this which caused Euclid to be regarded as the father of geometry. Operative masonry and geometry are regarded together. They first executed the designs developed by the latter. Speculative masonry derives some of the most important symbols from this science.
Benjamin Franklin, noted mason, wrote, "As to the usefulness of geometry, it is certain that no curious or mechanic work can either be invented or improved, or performed without its assisting principles .... Though Plato's censure that those who did not understand the 117th proposition of the 13th book of Euclid's Elements ought not to be ranked among rational creatures, was unreasonable and unjust; yet to give a man the character of universal learning, who is destitute of a competent knowledge of the mathematics, is not less .... Philosophers do generally affirm that human knowledge to be most excellent which is conversant among the most excellent things. What science then can be more noble, more excellent, more useful for man, more admirably high and demonstrative than this of the mathematics?"
Plato said, "God is always geometrizing. Geometry rightly treated is the knowledge of the Eternal." And above the porch of his school in Athens he wrote, "Let none who is ignorant of geometry enter here." (6)
The words of one of Preston's lectures are: "Geometry is a part of our system because architecture, the basis of many sciences supposes a sufficient knowledge of geometry to understand the art of building and other subjects to which masons direct their attention.
"The proper subject of geometry is magnitude and extension and for this reason we gradually proceed in our researches from the point to the line, from the line to the superficies and from the superficies to a solid."
Preston's words regarding the advantages of geometry are among the most stirring and beautiful of any in our ritual. He says it is the first and noblest of sciences and the basis on which the superstructure of masonry is erected.
The origin of the science of astronomy is lost in the mists of antiquity. The earliest men knew and were attracted by the splendor of the firmament. Freemasonry is intimately connected to astronomy. The Blazing Star of our symbolism was to the ancient Egyptians a representation of Anibis, the Dog Star, whose rising signaled the flood of the Nile and led to the discovery of the science of geometry.
Astronomy has been a tool of navigators long before King Solomon1 dhows brought treasure from the mines of ophir for the forge of Hiram Abif. Temples long have been oriented to the rising sun. Our modern astronauts soar through the emptiness of space and have walked on the moon. Space probes have explored other heavenly bodies.
Living in the southwest United States we have all about us reminders of its importance in the observatories in the Santa Catalina Mountains and the world renowned observatory on Kitt Peak in the Quinlan Mountains. If we need a reminder of the antiquity of this science, we here in Arizona have it all about us. The primitive Stone Age men, now vanished from the earth, who lived here long before the white man came, have left ample evidence of this. Although so primitive they made their tools and weapons of sharpened sticks and chipped stones, they lived in hovels in the ground and shelters in the rocks, they none the less knew astronomy, though they did not know the wheel.
In Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and again in the Arizona Petrified Forest (and numerous other places) they constructed complicated solar calendars of stone. In each of these places at certain times of the year a dagger of sunlight through a crevasse in the rock pierces the center of a spiral petroglyph to mark the solstices - -the exact time the seasons change. (7)
In a cave on the Tucson Mountains ten or twelve miles from this lodge a parade of animals painted on the cave wall march in a line points to the exact spot on the south eastern horizon where the constellation Orion rises on the night of the spring equinox. Watching from this cave 1500 years ago these men, though primitive stone age savages knew astronomy. The stars told them that winter had passed; that spring had arrived and it was time to plant corn and squash.
In the Tortilita Mountains, 15 miles north of Tucson these same Stone Age men constructed an enormous medicine wheel or Zodiac wheel. In many ways it is reminiscent of Stonehenge in southern England. With a great arrangement of massive stones they could compute the azimuth of the moonrise, the precise change of seasons. They could foretell eclipses. They marked the precise time of the change from fall to winter and from spring to summer, the times which we call solstices and which we, as masons, observe as the feasts of St. John the Evangelist and St. 3ohn the Baptist.
The ancient significance of this science caused Preston to advocate that masonry had an obligation to bring light and the candidate in our second degree is changed: "The study of the liberal arts, that valuable branch of education which tends so effectually to polish and adorn the mind, is earnestly recommended to your consideration . . . ."
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