Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

by Albert Pike

Then the shadows of a horrible doubt fall upon the soul that would fain love, trust and believe; a darkness, of which this that surrounded you was a symbol. It doubts the truth of Revelation, its own spirituality, the very existence of a beneficent God. It asks itself if it is not idle to hope for any great progress of Humanity toward perfection, and whether, when it advances in one respect, it does not retrogress in some other, by way of compensation: whether advance in civilization is not increase of selfishness: whether freedom does not necessarily lead to license and anarchy: whether the destitution and debasement of the masses does not inevitably follow increase of population and commercial and manufacturing prosperity. It asks itself whether man is not the sport of a blind, merciless Fate: whether all philosophies are not delusions, and all religions the fantastic creations of human vanity and self-conceit; and, above all, whether, when Reason is abandoned as a guide, the faith of Buddhist and Brahmin has not the same claims to sovereignty and implicit, unreasoning credence, as any other.

He asks himself whether it is not, after all, the evident and palpable injustices of this life, the success and prosperity of the Bad, the calamities, oppressions, and miseries of the Good, that are the bases of all beliefs in a future state of existence? Doubting man's capacity for indefinite progress here, he doubts the possibility of it anywhere; and if he does not doubt whether God exists, and is just and beneficent, he at least cannot silence the constantly recurring whisper, that the miseries and calamities of men, their lives and deaths, their pains and sorrows, their extermination by war and epidemics, are phenomena of no higher dignity, significance, and importance, in the eye of God, than what things of the same nature occur to other organisms of matter; and that the fish of the ancient seas, destroyed by myriads to make room for other species, the contorted shapes in which they are found as fossils testifying to their agonies; the coral insects, the animals and birds and vermin slain by man, have as much right as he to clamor at the injustice of the dispensations of God, and to demand an immortality of life in a new universe, as compensation for their pains and sufferings and untimely death in this world.

This is not a picture painted by the imagination. Many a thoughtful mind has so doubted and despaired. How many of us can say that our own faith is so well grounded and complete that we never hear those painful whisperings within the soul? Thrice blessed are they who never doubt, who ruminate in patient contenment like the kine, or doze under the opiate of a blind faith; on whose souls never rests that Awful Shadow which is the absence of the Divine Light.

To explain to themselves the existence of Evil and Suffering, the Ancient Persians imagined that there were two Principles or Deities in the Universe, the one of Good and the other of Evil, constantly in conflict with each other in struggle for the mastery, and alternately overcoming and overcome. Over both, for the SAGES, was the One Supreme; and for them Light was in the end to prevail over Darkness, the Good over the Evil, and even Ahriman and his Demons to part with their wicked and vicious natures and share the universal Salvation. It did not occur to them that the existence of the Evil Principle, by the consent of the Omnipotent Supreme, presented the same difficulty, and left the existence of Evil as unexplained as before. The human mind is always content, if it can remove a difficulty a step further off. It cannot believe that the world rests on nothing, but is devoutly content when taught that it is borne on the back of an immense elephant, who himself stands on the back of a tortoise. Given the tortoise, Faith is always satisfied; and it has been a great source of happiness to multitudes that they could believe in a Devil who could relieve God of the odium of being the Author of Sin.

But not to all is Faith sufficient to overcome this great difficulty. They say, with the Suppliant,"Lord! I believe!"—but like him they are constrained to add,"Help Thou my unbelief!"—Reason must, for these, co-operate and coincide with Faith, or they remain still in the darkness of doubt,—most miserable of all conditions of the human mind.

Those, only, who care for nothing beyond the interests and pursuits of this life, are uninterested in these great Problems. The animals, also, do not consider them. It is the characteristic of an immortal Soul, that it should seek to satisfy itself of its immortality, and to understand this great enigma, the Universe, If the Hottentot and the Papuan are not troubled and tortured by these doubts and speculations, they are not, for that, to be regarded as either wise or fortunate. The swine, also, are indifferent to the great riddles of the Universe, and are happy in being wholly unaware that it is the vast Revelation and Manifestation, in Time and Space, of a Single Thought of the Infinite God.

Exalt and magnify Faith as we will, and say that it begins where Reason ends, it must, after all, have a foundation, either in Reason, Analogy, the Consciousness, or human testimony. The worshipper of Brahma also has implicit Faith in what seems to us palpably false and absurd. His faith rests neither in Reason, Analogy, or the Consciousness, but on the testimony of his Spiritual teachers, and of the Holy Books. The Moslem also believes, on the positive testimony of the Prophet; and the Mormon also can say, "I believe this, because it is impossible." No faith, however absurd or degrading, has ever wanted these foundations, testimony, and the books. Miracles, proven by unimpeachable testimony have been used as a foundation for Faith, in every age; and the modern miracles are better authenticated, a hundred times, than the ancient ones.

So that, after all, Faith must flow out from some source within us, when the evidence of that which we are to believe is not presented to our senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the truth of what is believed.

The Consciousness, or inhering and innate conviction, or the instinct divinely implanted, of the verity of things, is the highest Possible evidence, if not the only real proof, of the verity of certain things, but only of truths of a limited class.

What we call the Reason, that is, our imperfect human reason, not only may, but assuredly will, lead us away from the Truth in regard to things invisible and especially those of the Infinite, if we determine to believe nothing but that which it can demonstrate, or not to believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove to be contradictory, unreasonable, or absurd. Its tape-line cannot measure the arcs of Infinity. For example, to the Human reason, an Infinite Justice and an Infinite Mercy or Love, in the same Being, are inconsistent and impossible. One, it can demonstrate necessarily excludes the other. So it can demonstrate that as the Creation had a beginning, it necessarily follows that an Eternity had elapsed before the Deity began to create, during which He was inactive.