Note 180 — Chapter II · ToC

Read the great argument of Plato in The Republic (book vi). The present writer does not wish to impose upon Masonry any dogma of technical Idealism, subjective, objective, or otherwise. No more than others does he hold to a static universe which unrolls in time a plan made out before, but to a world of wonders where life has the risk and zest of adventure. He rejoices in the New Idealism of Rudolf Eucken, with its gospel of "an independent spiritual life"—independent, that is, of vicissitude—and its insistence upon the fact that the meaning of life depends upon our "building up within ourselves a life that is not of time" (Life's Basis and Life's Ideal). But the intent of these pages is, rather, to emphasize the spiritual view of life and the world as the philosophy underlying Masonry, and upon which it builds—the reality of the ideal, its sovereignty over our fragile human life, and the immutable necessity of loyalty to it, if we are to build for eternity. After all, as Plotinus said, philosophy "serves to point the way and guide the traveller; the vision is for him who will see it." But the direction means much to those who are seeking the truth to know it.