WE MEET UPON THE LEVEL

It is not often that one of the subjects of speculative thought becomes the burning issue of the hour, but that is what happened in our own national history between 185o and 1861 with the doctrine of equality. The whole matter, needless to say, was brought to the front by the slavery issue. Anti-slavery orators never wearied of reminding their southern friends that the fathers of the nation, in their Declaration of Independence, had openly proclaimed “that all men are created equal”: if that is true, they argued, then negroes deserve the rights of citizenship, for negroes are men. The pro-slavery advocates retorted by saying that the fathers of the country, many of them, had themselves been slave holders, and that they had really meant to say that “all men are created equal except negroes.” He who reads through the more important debates on that subject—such a one will be richly rewarded—will learn how exceedingly difficult it is to frame any definition of human equality that will at once do justice to things as they are and to things as they ought to be. Equality is an aspiration (in Masonry as elsewhere), a hope, a dream, an ideal, hard to capture in a net of words, difficult to envisage by the mind, so that one must remain content after all his thinking about the matter if he has not yet been able to think it through.

It is as difficult to arrive at a clear conception of equality from the history of Masonry as it is from the history of this nation. The old Craft Mason did not have any equality except in a very special sense. His guild was a helpless part of an aristocratic social order.

He himself had a place in his own guild determined by the most rigorous regulations laid down from above. The guilds themselves were graded in importance, and the members inside each guild were held fast in a similar hierarchy. There is no evidence to show that at any time prior to 1717 any form of Masonry explicitly taught and enforced the doctrine of equality. Subsequent to 1717 the doctrine has come to the fore, and in some countries has almost occupied the first place among Masonic teachings. But even so there have been many exceptions. In the Masonry of Latin countries equality has not, for obvious reasons, been very much emphasised. Even in England, the home of democracy, it has never had .a very rigorous application. When the Earl of Carnarvon inducted King Edward VII into his seat as Grand Master he was careful to remind that potentate that English Masonry had never been subversive of the monarchical system in England as it had been in other countries.
4.It is in France and in America that we find the Masonic doctrine of equality most in evidence, and most influential. The part played by Masonry in the French Revolution is, and perhaps will ever remain, pretty much of a mystery. But there is sound evidence to prove that Masonry had much to do with convincing the French masses that they had rights of their own. To this day liberty and democracy are widely understood in France in the equalitarian sense. “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality” is a slogan that has not yet lost its power of appeal.

But it is in our own land that equality has played its major part in Masonic history. It may be that it was Masonry itself (though this point is hotly disputed) that wrote into the; Declaration the words “All men are created equal.” It is certain that Masonry had much to do with the strain of equalitarianism that runs through the Constitution. It is certain that the Craft was in the forefront in demanding for the negro the full rights of that principle. And it is certain that at the present moment equality and Masonry are almost synonymous in many minds.

It is Russia, strange to say, that now finds equality a living issue. Sovietism, unless we have been all deceived as to its nature and purposes, goes in for equality as the chief good. To level all classes, to do away with distinctions, even such distinctions as those that exist between the learned and the unlearned, seems to be a part of the Soviet regime. It would be a curious experiment to send a questionnaire around to our Masonic leaders and spokesmen to ask them what they think of the Soviet programme, and if they would be willing to see Equality really tried out. The answers might not throw much light on the Russian experiment, but they would surely help us all to learn just what equality means to Masons.

I have my own theory as to what Equality means to Masons, and I shall give it: but I give it as nothing other than my own private opinion, and not as an expression of a generally held formulation of the doctrine. I wish that such a general interpretation could be made, because Masonic thinking demands it. Until we can work out such an interpretation the whole matter will ever remain as foggy as it seems to be now (if one may judge from Masonic books, speeches, and journalism), and not many Masons will understand what is meant when it is said that all Masons “meet upon the level.”

It is easiest to approach the subject by a process of elimination. By equality we cannot mean that all men are equal in the original endowment of their nature.

There are big men and little men, and we all know that in many cases a big man “was born that way,” and that a little man cannot become big by ever so much effort. Why this is so is a mystery, and appears to be (though it doubtless is not) a fundamental injustice in the very structure of the universe. I had this brought to mind recently while reading the third volume of “The History of the United States” by James Ford Rhodes, wherein he carries through several pages a comparison of Lincoln and McClellan. McClellan was spiteful, vainglorious, and ill-mannered; he was a good organiser, but he did not have the courage which naturally belongs to a general. He treated the President with rudeness, and wrote to his (McClellan’s) wife in such strains of pride as made her believe the fate of the Union depended on him alone. Lincoln was a great incarnation of human power, and could be magnanimous, meek, and patient for that very reason. In contrasting the two men one cannot help but believe that the sundering difference was a matter of original nature, and that at birth Lincoln was more of a human being than McClellan. An inequality like that, one that goes. down to the roots of being, is one that is hard to reconcile with our sense of the evenhanded justice of Nature. But the fact is there, and it is everywhere, for no two men have the same aboriginal endowments, let abstract theorists say what they may.

We cannot say that men are equal in nature: neither can we say that they are equal, or can be equal, in opportunity. That may possibly happen in small circles all the members of which live under the same conditions, as in the case of a family, or a neighbourhood, but it is untrue of the race when viewed in the large. The Australian Bushmen, to take an extreme example, never can have the opportunities for education, for wealth, for pleasure, fame, what not, as are enjoyed by the average American youth. Men should have equal opportunities, but they do not have them. They never can have them because the earth itself varies too much over its surface ever to make it possible for all men everywhere to be born into equal opportunities for the goods of life.

Men are not born equal in abilities. On this it is not needful to say much because that kind of inequality confronts us everywhere. It used to be the fashion among theorists to teach that if only all men could receive the same education and have the same chances at wealth, and live under equal laws, and be freed from unnatural restrictions, all would come up to the same average. Horace Mann firmly believed that if all the boys and girls of this nation could get into college all of them would turn out scholars, proficient in Greek, Latin, and the arts. But those who have had any experience with boys and girls in college know that nothing is more certain and unvarying than differences of ability. One student, no matter how hard he tries, cannot master the subjects; another seems to understand them by nature.

In the last place—there is no need further to multiply instances—there can be no such thing as social equality, if by that term one means social uniformity. Social classes there are, and always will be, because social needs and instincts are so various. If a social class (I use the word in its largest sense) is based on caste, or aristocratic privilege, or any other kind of special privilege, then it is an evil. But there are many social classes that are based not on the principle of the superiority of one group of persons to another but upon the fact of difference among men. I shall use a very homely example. In a small town a group of fifty persons organise themselves into a literary club, and in the activities of such a club meet each other socially, get acquainted with each other, and all share in the common enjoyment of literary art. Let us suppose, for clearness of illustration, that admittance to this club rests purely on the desire to share in the study of literature. It is plain that there will be a great number of persons in the community who will never desire membership, because in every community there are so many who, out of a lack of nature, care nothing for literature. This example, as I said above, is of trivial character in itself, but it may serve to remind us of how many social gradations, classes, cliques, clubs, etc., there are everywhere which rest not on any fact of superiority but upon the fact of the difference of interests, tastes, and aims among people. As long as such differences exist (which will probably be as long as there is a human race) there will never come a time when such social groupings will vanish away, and there will consequently never come a time when all men will enjoy the same social advantages. To work for the advent of such a social state, as the Communists have ever done (Owen, Fourier, St. Simon, etc.) is to strive for the impossible. Such social communism is not equality in any possible sense.

What, then, is Equality? Instead of attempting any exhaustive definition, I shall make a generalisation concerning it, and then trust to a series of examples to do the defining for me. The statement is as follows: Every man is entitled to the right, equal to the right enjoyed by other men, to the unhindered and normal functionings of his own nature.

Sir Isaac Newton had a great intellect, one of the very greatest, all historians agree, that has ever appeared on the earth. My intellect cannot in any sense be spoken of as equal to his. Nevertheless I claim the same right to use my intellect, such as it is, that he enjoyed; and he, if he were living, would have no right whatsoever, merely because of his own superiority, to deny me the prerogatives of thought. For him to do so, and for me to submit to such abasement would be a crime against nature. The right to use the mind is for all men everywhere and always the same right, whatever may be the inequalities of mental ability. Whenever this right is interfered with, or controlled in the interests of some clique or class, as has often happened, society suffers, individuals suffer, and a wrong is done that merits condign punishment.

The same thing holds good of practical ability. William Morris had an extraordinarily versatile genius. He could weave tapestry, carve wood, paint pictures, write poetry, make speeches, model in clay, print books, and a score of things beside, and do all with rare skill. There are few of us who could claim any such ability, but even so, we have the same right to use our powers, such as they are, that Morris had to use his. In that fundamental and all-important regard, William Morris was no better than the awkwardest apprentice in his workshops.

Every one of us is social by nature, and nearly every one of us appreciates the rare privilege of friendship. But some men seem to have a genius for friendship. Theodore Watts-Dunton, comparatively unknown himself, was the centre of a circle of friends almost every one of whom became famous in some line. Our own Charles Eliot Norton, than whom no rarer spirit has ever dwelt in this land, numbered among his close friends such men as Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Lowell, George William Curtis, Charles Darwin, Leslie Stephen, and nobody knows how many more such outstanding personalities. You and I may number our friends on the fingers of one hand, and they may be the humblest imaginable so far as attainments go, but for all that each of us has the right to friends, the same right as that enjoyed by Watts-Dunton and Eliot Norton. Such a statement may seem banal enough, but there are places in the world now, and have been many places in the past, where social life has been so rigidly classified and graded that custom and aristocratic dictation have made impossible to all but a few the unhindered exercise of so fundamental a thing in human nature as the cultivation of friendship.

The right of human equality has been oftenest violated, it seems, in religion, the one field in which men should enjoy the largest measure of it. What a tale of unrightful usurpation, tyranny, and aristocracy has been the history of the world’s religions! One no sooner thinks of the matter than examples flock to the mind in unmanageable numbers. During one great period of their history the Egyptian people were entirely abased beneath the feet of a priestly hierarchy that crushed out in the masses the very instincts of worship, or made use of that instinct for the advantage of their own class. After Buddha had unveiled to the eyes of his people the sacredness of each individual soul before the ineffable and eternal realities of the universe, the Brahmans came back with their castes and their engines of oppression and the people lost once again all uses of their own religious faculties. Jesus came forth to make each man know himself as a son of God, bound together in the great circle of brethren, but after time went on, and the priestly leaven had its opportunities to work, it required a Lutheran revolution to restore to Christians the “liberty of a Christian man.” The old lady across the street, who reads her Bible morning and evening, who arises and retires with prayer, and who lives in her humble and unlearned way such a religious life as she is capable of conceiving of, may be worlds removed in religious faculty from a Buddha, a Jesus, a Luther: but she is as much entitled as they to think her poor religious thoughts and to lead her life of little pieties.

From this it will be seen that equality is not a utopian theory which men have dreamed as being desirable in this harsh world. Far from it! Equality is a necessity of our nature, without which we live mutilated unhappy lives. It is a necessity, when properly understood, like food, clothing, and shelter. He who robs men of that equality which Nature ordains is committing a crime against human beings. He does something that must necessarily be followed by tragic consequences, as is true of the violation of any other condition made necessary by Nature herself. It is because of this that the doctrine is not a mere plaything for erudites but a pressing problem for every man, however busy he may be.

“But,” some reader may here rightfully interject, “that is all very good, and nobody will deny that equality is a right, but what about equality as a fact? One needs only look about him to see that even the simple and basic equality which you have described is not being enjoyed by the masses of people to any degree at all !”

“True enough,” I should reply, “but you have merely stated the complementary fact (complementary, that is, to what I have hitherto said) that equality is a task as well as a right, and it is precisely because equality is a right that it is for us all a task.” By that I mean, that if we are clear in our mind that every man is justly entitled to a reasonable measure of equality then it is for us all, insofar as we are good Masons and citizens, to see that every man gets it. To see that every man gets it is precisely one of the great missions in which Masonry is engaged.

Let us consider a moment equality before the law. There was a time in England when only the rich had access to the protection of the “law” at all, and when the priesthood had its own courts where priest administered the law to priest. Poor men were arrested without warrant; sentenced without being tried; and often executed without evidence. It all depended upon the whim of the earl, or the baron, or bishop, or king, or what-not. But very gradually there was developed in England a genuine equality before the law, as may be traced through the following important watermarks of the evolution of the freedom of English people: 1. Magna Charta; 2. The petition of Rights, 1628; 3. Habeas Corpus, 1679. In our Colonial days these gains made by the people of England naturally were enjoyed by the early settlers, and they at last, after writing a Declaration of Independence, incorporated basic equality before the law in the Constitution, and in the first seven or eight amendments thereto.

But, as may be expected, equality before the law is not yet a realised fact for all. The lawyer for a great corporation told me that his employers were so powerful through their wealth that he would guarantee to keep any case indefinitely in the courts, and thus wear out any adversary, however just might be that man’s claims. “The law’s delays,” is often a sad calamity for a poor man. In my own old home community I knew of two men whose opposite experiences illustrate this unfortunate fact. One was the president of a great corporation who in a federal court was found guilty on ten serious counts, but being a corporation president, and very wealthy, and very prominent, he paid not a cent of fine and did not spend a day in jail. When he returned to his home city he was met at the depot by a band and a long procession. The other man about whom I knew stole a coil of copper wire from a car-barn in the same city and served two years in the penitentiary for so doing! The reader knows of such cases, I have no doubt, and so does everybody. But this is only to say that any right which humanity gains is always imperfectly held and must ever be more and more completely won, and that every right must evermore be carefully guarded, for the whole tendency of human society, if men relax their vigilance, is to slide backwards. Equality before the law as we now enjoy it in this country is found nowhere else in the world save in England, France, and a few other nations. In the great portion of the world it is a thing unknown. If that equality is not yet a perfect thing, the challenge is to us; it is in no sense a proof that the doctrine of equality is an impossible thing.

What holds true of equality before the law holds true of equality in every right and just sense. And we Masons are under a peculiar obligation to devote ourselves to the task of making equality everywhere a fact. For equality is one of our central tenets. The Fraternity never permits us to forget that; the ritual impresses it upon the candidate in every way; the lodge is so organised that every one “meets upon the level.” The candidate is made to feel that without the assistance of his fellows he is a poor, naked, blind, destitute thing without hope: the member is made to know that every Mason has Masonic rights equal to every other Mason, and pays the same dues, enters on the same conditions, holds office on the same terms, and shares equally with all others the burdens and obligations of the Order.