MORALS AND DOGMA by Albert Pike



XI. SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE;
    or  PRINCE AMETH.
    [Elu of the Twelve.]

The duties of a Prince Ameth are, to be earnest, true, reliable, and
sincere; to protect the people against illegal impositions and exactions;
to contend for their political rights, and to see, as far as he may or
can, that those bear the burdens who reap

You are to be true unto all men. You are to be frank and sincere in all
things. You are to be earnest in doing whatever it is your duty to do.
And no man must repent that he has relied upon your resolve, your
profession, or your word.

The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is sympathy with his
kind. He recognizes in the human race one great family, all connected with
himself by those invisible links, and that mighty net-work of
circumstance, forged and woven by God.

Feeling that sympathy, it is his first Masonic duty to serve his
fellow-man. At his first entrance into the Order, he ceases to be
isolated, and becomes one of a great brotherhood, assuming new duties
toward every Mason that lives, as every Mason at the sa

Nor are those duties on his part confined to Masons alone. He assumes
many in regard to his country, and especially toward the great, suffering
masses of the common people; for they too are his brethren, and God hears
them, inarticulate as the moanings of

He labours equally to defend and to improve the people. He does not
flatter them to mislead them, nor fawn upon them to rule them, nor conceal
his opinions to humour them, nor tell them that they can never err, and
that their voice is the voice of God. He

He knows that if, after being released from the toils of war, the people
neglect the arts of peace; if their peace and liberty be a state of
warfare; if war be their only virtue, and the summit of their praise, they
will soon find peace the most adverse to

The people that does not subjugate the propensity of the wealthy to
avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and their
families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the poor, and
labour to raise the abject from the mire of vice an

These are the first enemies to be subdued; this constitutes the campaign
of Peace; these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and far
more honourable than those trophies which are purchased only by slaughter
and rapine; and if not victors in this

For if any people thinks that it is a grander; a more beneficial, or a
wiser policy, to invent subtle expedients by stamps and imposts, for
increasing the revenue and draining the life-blood of an impoverished
people; to multiply its naval and military for

Unfortunately, every age presents its own special problem, most difficult
and often impossible to solve; and that which this age offers, and forces
upon the consideration of all chinking men, is this--how, in a populous
and wealthy country, blessed with fr

For though we do not know why God, being infinitely merciful as well as
wise, has so ordered it, it seems to be unquestionably his law, that even in
civilized and Christian countries, the large mass of the population shall
be fortunate, if, during their wh

And He seems to have enacted this law--which no human community has yet
found the means to abrogate--that when a country becomes populous, capital
shall concentrate in the hands of a limited number of persons, and labour
become more and more at its mercy,

While every ox and horse can find work, and is worth being fed, it is not
always so with man. To be employed, to have a chance to work at anything
like fair wages, becomes the great engrossing object of a man's life. The
capitalist can live without employi

Fathers and mothers slay their children, to have the burial-fees, that
with the price of one child's life they may continue life in those that
survive. Little girls with bare feet sweep the street crossings, when the
winter wind pinches them, and beg piteo

How to deal with this apparently inevitable evil and mortal disease is by
far the most important of all social problems. What is to be done with
pauperism and over-supply of labour ? How is the life of any country to
last, when brutality and drunken semi-b

Masonry will do all in its power, by direct exertion and cooperation, to
improve and inform as well as to protect the people; to better their
physical condition, relieve their miseries, supply their wants, and
minister to their necessities. Let every Mason

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free
is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to
be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the
opposite of all these is the same as

And it is also sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the
constitution of Nature, that he who, from the imbecility or derangement of
his intellect, is incapable of governing himself, should, like a minor, be
committed to the government of another.

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great
brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore
bound to sympathize with each other.

For no tower of Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its possessor
above the trials and fears and frailities of humanity. No human hand ever
built the wall, nor ever shall, that will keep out affliction, pain, and
infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble

But the principle of misery is not an evil principle. We err, and the
consequences teach us wisdom. All elements, all the laws of things around
us, minister to this end; and through the paths of painful error and
mistake, it is the design of Providence to

Virtue is the truest liberty; nor is he free who stoops to passions; nor
he in bondage who serves a noble master. Examples are the best and most
lasting lectures; virtue the best example. He that hath done good deeds
and set good precedents, in sincerity i

Life is a school. The world is neither prison nor penitentiary, nor a
palace of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and spectacles; but a place
of instruction, and discipline. Life is given for moral and spiritual
training; and the entire course of the gre

Riches and Poverty, Gayeties and Sorrows, Marriages and Funerals, the
ties of life bound or broken, fit and fortunate, or untoward and painful,
are all lessons. Events are not blindly and carelessly flung together.
Providence does not school one man, and s

The prosperous man has been at school. Perhaps he has thought that it was
a great thing, and he a great personage; but he has been merely a pupil.
He thought, perhaps, that he was Master, and had nothing to do, but to
direct and command; but there was ever

If from prosperity we have learned moderation, temperance, candor,
modesty, gratitude to God, and generosity to man, then we are entitled to
be honoured and rewarded. If we have learned selfishness, self-indulgence,
wrong-doing, and vice, to forget and ove

The poor man also is at school. Let him take care that he learn, rather
than complain. Let him hold to his integrity, his candor, and his kindness
of heart. Let him beware of envy, and of bondage, and keep his
self-respect. The body's toil is nothing. Let

The ties of Society teach us to love one another. That is a miserable
society, where the absence of affectionate kindness is sought to be
supplied by punctilious decorum, graceful urbanity, and polished
insincerity; where ambition, jealousy, and distrust r

So, too, the social state teaches modesty and gentleness; and from
neglect, and notice unworthily bestowed on others, and injustice, and the
world's failure to appreciate us, we learn patience and quietness, to be
superior to society's opinion, not cynical

Death is the great Teacher, stern, cold, inexorable, irresistible; whom
the collected might of the world cannot stay or ward off. The breath, that
parting from the lips of King or beggar, scarcely stirs the hushed air,
cannot be bought, or brought back for

It teaches us Duty; to act our part well; to fulfill the work assigned
us. When one is dying, and after he is dead, there is but one question:
Has he lived well. There is no evil in death but that which life makes.

There are hard lessons in the school of God's Providence; and yet the
school of life is carefully adjusted, in all its arrangements and tasks,
to man's powers and passions. There is no extravagance in its teachings;
nor is anything done for the sake of pre

Let the Mason be faithful in the school of life, and to all its lessons.
Let him not learn nothing, nor care not whether he learns or not. Let not
the years pass over him, witnesses of only his sloth and indifference; or
see him zealous to acquire everythi

God, who counts by souls, not stations, Loves and pities you and me;
For to Him all vain distinctions Are as pebbles on the sea.

Nor are the other duties inculcated in this Degree of less importance.
Truth, a Mason is early told, is a Divine attribute and the foundation of
every virtue; and frankness, reliability, sincerity, straightforwardness,
plain-dealing, are but different mode

The bases of Masonry being morality and virtue, it is by studying one and
practising the other, that the conduct of a Mason becomes irreproachable.
The good of Humanity being its principal object, disinterestedness is one
of the first virtues that it requi

To pity the misfortunes of others; to be humble, but without meanness; to
be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every sentiment of hatred and
revenge; to show himself magnanimous and liberal, without ostentation and
without profusion; to be the enemy

It is because Masonry imposes upon us these duties that it is properly
and significantly styled work; and he who imagines that he becomes a Mason
by merely talking the first two or three Degrees, and that he may, having
leisurely stepped upon that small el

Is it true that nothing remains to be done in Masonry?

Does one Brother no longer proceed by law against another Brother of his
Lodge, in regard to matters that could be easily settled within the
Masonic family circle?

Has the duel, that hideous heritage of barbarism, interdicted among
Brethren by our fundamental laws, and denounced by the municipal code, yet
disappeared from the soil we inhabit? Do Masons of high rank religiously
refrain from it; or do they not, bowing

Do Masons no longer form uncharitable opinions of their Brethren, enter
harsh judgments against them, and judge themselves by one rule and their
Brethren by another?

Has Masonry any well-regulated system of charity? Has it done that which
it should have done for the cause of education? Where are its schools, its
academies, its colleges, its hospitals, and infirmaries ?

Are political controversies now conducted with no violence and bitterness
?

Do Masons refrain from defaming and denouncing their Brethren who differ
with them in religious or political opinions?

What grand social problems or useful projects engage our attention at our
communications? Where in our Lodges are lectures habitually delivered for
the real instruction of the Brethren? Do not our sessions pass in the
discussion of minor matters of busines

In what lodge are our ceremonies explained and elucidated; corrupted as
they are by time, until their true features can scarcely be distinguished;
and where are those great primitive truths of revelation taught, which
Masonry has preserved to the world ?

We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possessors qualify
themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the aims and objects of
Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates who governed empires, does your
influence enter into practical life and

Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need concord,
union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you men who excite
rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and violent controversy and
ambitious pretensions? How do your own words and a

Continually you praise each other, and utter elaborate and high wrought
eulogies upon the Order. Everywhere you assume that you are what you
should be, and nowhere do you look upon yourselves as you are. Is it true
that all our actions are so many acts of

Let us away with this odious self-flattery ! Let us be men, if we cannot
be sages! The laws of Masonry, above others excellent, cannot wholly
change men's natures. They enlighten them, they point out the true way;
but they can lead them in it, only by repr

After praising each other all our lives, there are always excellent
Brethren, who, over our coffins, shower unlimited eulogies. Every one of
us who dies, however useless his life, has been a model of all the
virtues, a very child of the celestial light. In

Is it true that Masonry is effete; that the acacia, withered, affords no
shade; that Masonry no longer marches in the advance guard of Truth? No.
Is freedom yet universal? Have ignorance and prejudice disappeared from
the earth? Are there no longer enmitie
