Symbolism of the Degree.
The First, or Entered Apprentice, degree of Masonry is intended, symbolically, to represent the entrance of man into the world in which he is afterwards to become a living and thinking actor. Coming from the ignorance and darkness of the outer world, his first craving is for light—not that physical light which springs from the great orb of day as its fountain, but that moral and intellectual light which emanates from the primal Source of all things—from the Grand Architect of the Universe—the Creator of the sun and of all that it illuminates. Hence the great, the primary object of the first degree is to symbolize the birth of intellectual light in the mind; and the Entered Apprentice is the type of the unregenerate man, groping in moral and mental darkness, and seeking for the light which is to guide his steps and point him to the path which leads to duty and to Him who gives to duty its reward.