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VOLUME XXV

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ODAY Masonry in America is well entered upon an era of temple building that promises to continue until every city of importance within our broad domain shall have raised a monument in the name and to the honor of the grand institution of which we are all so proud to be recorded as votaries, that shall make visible to the sensual eyes of the unitiated multitude and the eyes of soul and sentiment of us to whom the inner lights have been unveiled the symbol of the exalted craft of which we are fellowsthat of building temples of life; rearing from the materials God has placed within our command noble structures of thought, word and deed for this mortal stage and more glorious ones for our abode in that as yet unknown sphere in which duration will be but sensed and not measured.

In the building of these temples for time, our brothers everywhere strive to incorporate into their forms beauty and substantiality. With a pride born of love the Mason watches the progress of the construction of his new home from the first draft of design submitted by the architect until the last arch has been completed by the placing of the keystone. And in its dedication his heart beats high under the stimulus of hope ended in fruition, faith visibly revealed. It is but natural that man should feel a sense of mastership, a consciousness of conquest, in the accom

plishment of any great work, more especially a work of love and unselfishness. In looking upon the temple to whose construction he may have contributed materially or not, but to whose being he has surely contributed his measure of fraternal pride and fervent devotion, he sees in it symbolized not the Masonic home of a body of craftsmen, but of Masonry. To his spiritual eye its walls touch the East and the West, the North and the South; its roof lifts to the zenith and its floor covers the earth.

But the visible temple must be the abiding place of the immortal spirit of Masonry, else it has been reared in vain. It must be recognized as being a sanctuary of the Most High, whose Word, in whatever form the believer may have accepted it, cannot be banished from its altar. Man cannot pretend to reverence the word while he does not at all times, and more particularly in its indispensable presence, pay humble reverence to its author. With mind expanded in charity, with tongue clean and bridled, with heart beating in unison with the Heart of the Universe; with hand open to the needy, extended for the uplifting of all mankind and especially those of the fraternity who, though they have been outwardly instructed in the things of light, still grope in primitive darkness, should the devout Mason seek the inner chambers of this house made with hands

indeed, but planned of the spirit. In the temple the world should be forgot except in so far as it must be remembered in the doing of works aimed at the high mark of its betterment. Here the mind should take rest from the sordid cares of vocational life and serenely recreate in the contemplation of things pure, beautiful and true-things that are of the essence of good.

But what does the temple stand for in the eyes of the profane of the community? Has it any inspiration for them of the non-Masonic world?

Too generally it is looked upon as merely a monument to the pride and wealth of a body of men who hold themselves aloof from and superior to the rest of mankind; men bound each to other by certain, to the uninitiated, mysterious bonds of secret obligations and ceremonies. Often the suspicions and jealousies bred in the minds of these people by the exclusiveness of the members of the mystic fraternity cause them to look without pride or favor upon the most beautiful architectural ornament that may grace their city. What goes on within those, to them, sealed portals awakens a train of speculation that may lead them far afield from the truth in regard to its purposes.

The influences of Masonry within the pale of its own membership are good; it teaches nothing the essentials of which are not equally well calculated to elevate the standards of thought and action of all the world. Might not these temples, then, be profitably made centers of light for all in their communities? Might not men of the fraternity, known to all as Masons, mingle more with the world in that character and take more active and conspicuous parts in the dissemination of the lights of Masonry among the people? Lead them into the paths of wisdom, strength and virtue in matters civic, social, economical? The country needs more of the spirit of intelligent conservatism in civil government; the principles on which sound and enduring government are founded are more and more being trampled under foot and political empiricism being substituted. The result

is a constant round of change and experiment, with all too evident deterioration of the whole system. Masonry is conservative, its conservatism, as exemplified by its studious element, intelligent. intelligent. Social life is largely in a state of disruption, almost of chaos, we may say. The sacredness and supremacy of the homelife of the nation is decadent, and the degree of its degeneration is reflected in the columns of the daily press with evidences of its widely. prevalent reality that should give us pause and lead to efforts for restoring the fireside to its rightful place and influence as the point of departure on the pathway of an upright, useful and happy life. Our economic system has fallen from one of benevolent cooperation, as practiced by the pioneers of our earlier and developing stages, to one of malevolent rivalry among several classes, all equally selfish in aim, however much they may differ in ability to make each its own selfishness superior in efficiency to that of the others. A certain degree of selfishness is essential to the best interests of any individual or class, it is true, but this trait or passion exhibits itself in two forms: the one elevating in its practice, the other debasing. A feeling of jealousy of another who is succeeding better than I in a material way, in the estimation of his fellow-men or in the enjoyment of rational happiness in life, is benevolent if it spur me to greater efforts to rise to his level; it is malevolent if it prompt me to undertake to pull him down to my own level. The attempt of any class to rise on the ruins of another is malevolent selfishness, and in the end defeats its own purpose. Reason should be cultivated in and misguided passion be eliminated from the minds of all classes a Herculean task it may be, but one that should be undertaken. Masonry, as a disinterested body, might do much to promote the success of such an effort. The strong-pulsing red blood of self-sacrificing patriotism of the times that gave America a separate existence and again preserved to it a united existence now flows but feebly in our youth, who are being

taught that individual life is the most sacred of possessions, and that no one is morally justified in laying it down for others, even for the sake of his own descendants. And yet we of today are enjoying the grand results of this sacrifice on the part of our ancestors, and even of those of other blood whose homes among us were but adopted. Masonry teaches us to love life only as a means to an end-not as an end in itself. That man must die in any event is certain; to have died for others is a glory that illumes his memory for years after-mayhap for ages. No man, Mason or not, is justified in throwing away his life recklessly or without hope or prospect of his act being for the good of humanity or for the saving of that of another unable to save himself; but that is beside the question of patriotic duty.

What I should like to see in America is a great Masonic weekly journal devoted to the full, dispassionate, independent and learned discussion of all matters that enter into the life and structure of the American State. Such a journal would necessarily be nonpartisan, but should be deeply political

devoted to politics in its primitive meaning: the science of human government. It should delve into and expound understandably the history of

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governments and governmental systems, a lore in which the people who assume the responsibility of directing our government, now becoming rapidly a democratic form-controlled directly by the demos, the people, without the intervention of representatives, the republican form, in which the demos is the ultimate repository of political power and not its direct agent-are almost universally woefully ignorant.

In all that I have said concerning the work of Masons in the interest of the general masses privately or through the suggested publication it is not meant that Masonry should exploit itself as a leader or teacher. The name should not be prominently obtruded upon public notice. But the fact that it was the work of the Fraternity being known, the work itself would prove influential through its excellence and its avoidance of partisanship, and the people would in time come to look to Masonry for guidance in good counsel and the promotion of high purposes and it would become one of the great bulwarks of this fair and should-be-happy empire. Distrust and prejudice against it would disappear before the light of the truth as to what it is and stands for, and it would rise to the exalted station it should occupy as a power for good in the world. So mote it be.

He most lives

-Bailey

Some people can not think. not think. Indifference may be (or believe), so shall it be to you.

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E gaze through the telescope and contemplate with awe the immensity of the cosmos. We look through the microscope and meditate on the wonders of the immeasurably little of the universe. In both cases we are dealing with infinite worlds; one is as interesting as the other to the lover of science. In this brief paper, I propose to introduce to the reader a Master of the Infinitely Little, leaving to better-equipped pens the laudation of the Masters of the Infinitely Great. This master is none other than the late Elie Metchnikoff, one of the world's greatest bacteriologists, a Russian by birth, but a Frenchman by adoption.

Prof. Metchnikoff was born in 1845 at Ivanavka, Russia. His father was of Moldavian ancestry and an officer of the Imperial Guard, from which he retired with the rank of major-general. Elie's mother was of Jewish descent, her name being Nevakovitch. From boyhood Elie manifested a great love for the study of nature. From the high school of Kharkoff he entered the university at the age of seventeen. After graduating he went to Germany for further biological training. After working in various laboratories, he was appointed professor of zoology in the University of Odessa in 1870. In the year 1882, he resigned his post to devote himself to private researches into the anatomy of invertebrates. In 1888 he became associated with Pasteur, founder of the celebrated Pasteur Institute of Paris; and in 1895, on the death of Pasteur, he succeeded as the director of the institute, a post which he held to the day of his death, which took place on July 15, 1916.

Such in brief is the life history of a great savant, whose labors have bene

fited mankind. Space forbids the enumeration of his many remarkable discoveries in the science of bacteriology. But his doctrine of "phagocytosis" deserves a passing notice. To quote Prof. E. Ray Lancaster on the subject: "Metchnikoff formulated the proposition that in all multicellular animals the main function of the cells derived from the deep or mid-embryonic layer between the dermal and intestinal lining layers is nutritional, and that they possess the power of ingesting, and digesting as does an amoeba-solid particles, whether such particles are introduced from the outside or are parts of the organism which, owing to one reason or another, must be broken up and removed. The amoeboid cells in connected tissues and in the blood and lymph are such eater-cells or phagocytes, as he termed them. He at once proceeded to explain the significance of these phagocytes and their utility to the organism, not only by pointing to their work as scavengers removing injured and dead tissue, to which they are brought in hundreds of thousands. by the process known as inflammation, but he also immediately gave first-class importance to their recognition by connecting them with Pasteur's great discoveries as to the cause of infective diseases by poisonous 'microbes' which intrude into previously healthy organisms, and he further connected his generalization with Darwin's theory of the origin of species by the natural selection of favored races in the struggle for existence. He published, in 1884, an essay entitled "The Struggle of the Organism Against Microbes,' in which he maintained the thesis that the phagocytes, universally present in multicellular animals, have been developed and established by natural selec