The American Quarterly Review of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858. Excerpt: ... of instruction has ever been so universal as was the symbolic in former ages. "The first learning in the world," says the great antiquary, Dr. Stukely, "consisted chiefly of symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Jews; of Zoroaster, SanConiathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato--of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolic." And the learned Faber remarks, that "allegory and personification were peculiarly agreeable to the genius of antiquity, and the simplicity of truth was continually sacrificed at the shrine of poetical decoration." In fact, man's earliest instruction was by symbols. The objective character of a symbol is best calculated to be grasped by the infant mind, whether the infancy of that mind be considered nationally or individually. And hence, in the first ages of the world--in its infancy--all propositions, theological, political or scientific, were expressed in the form of symbols. Thus, the first religions were eminently symbolical, because, as that great philosophical historian, Grote, has remarked, "at a time when language was yet in its infancy, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers." Again: children receive their elementary teaching in symbols. "A was an Archer"--what is this but symbolism? The archer becomes to the infant mind the symbol of the letter A, just as, in after life, the letter becomes, to the more advanced mind, the symbol of a certain sound of the human voice.f The first lesson received by a child in acquiring his alphabet, is thus conveyed by symbolism. Even in the very formation of language, the medium of communication between man and man, and which must, hence, have been an elementary step in the progress of human impro...