If the social instinct has been responsible for the evolution of Freemasonry, then architecture has furnished the plan along which it has been developed and is directly responsible for its fruition. Man in all ages has been a builder. The ruins of ancient structures in every part of the world, clearly prove that in each period there have been those of sufficient skill to meet with the exactions of the times in which they lived.

In his primitive savage state, man commenced to imitate the nests of birds and the lairs of wild beasts. His first attempt at protecting himself from the weather was to weave the twigs of trees into an arbor and then plaster them with mud. Later on he built huts out of the branches of trees, and covered them with sod, or the skins of animals. Other writers ascribe the beginnings of architecture to caves for the hunter and fisher, huts for the agriculturist, and tents for those leading a pastoral or nomadic life.

Architecture was at first a physical necessity, but as the human mind became released from the bonds of ignorance, building commenced to assume the outward expression of the higher attributes.

The early man with sensuous organism, weak mentality, and abnormal soul, with his faculties of intuition only partly developed, his buildings were much like the lines of his own countenance, the expression of a nature, unprogressive, and unimaginative. As he commenced to emerge from the savage state, he naturally began to construct more commodious habitations for himself, and to build some form of temple in which to enshrine the gods of his crude and superstitious mind.

Architecture may be said to include every building or structure raised by human hands, and is generally understood to mean construction with an artistic motive. The more highly developed the latter becomes, the greater is that of the architecture involved.

Some one has defined architecture as frozen music, because it illustrates the mental, moral, and religious nature of man. What a wonderful story is told by architecture, as it reveals the character, strength, passions, sufferings, agonies, beliefs, and defeats of the generations of men! It is the reality, the romance, the philosophy, the poetry of man's moral and spiritual development: It is the human mind revealing itself in visible form: It is sentiment, eloquence, emotion, harmonizing themselves in stone: It is the embodiment of principles which disclose the history of nations : It is the visible expression of the fellowship of man. It is not the product of the savage or half-breed. It flourishes only under law and order and reaches its perfection when the human soul lifts itself in worship of a higher power.

The man who would appreciate and understand Freemasonry must be able to read in a Grecian Temple, a Roman Amphitheater, or a Gothic Cathedral, the story of the age which produced them and something of the character of the men who labored upon them. For in the great buildings of the wbrld are bound up the history of the human race.

Masonry, in a technical sense, is the preparation and combination of stones to indent and lie on each other and become masses of walling and arching, for the purposes of building. No one knows just when wrought stone was originally used for the purposes of architectural construction. Nor is it known when cement was first employed as a means of uniting stones into one common mass. Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, India, and China are the first countries to record masonry worthy of the name.

Egypt, regarded as the Cradle of Civilization, gives proof that the art of building was understood and in a very advanced state, three thousand seven hundred years before Christ, as is evidenced by the Pyramid of Cheops, constructed in the fourth dynasty.

In Egypt, there prevailed a system of architecture which consisted of massive construction of walls and columns, in which the latter closely spaced, carried lintels which, in their turn, supported the flat beamed roof. In Babylonia, brick construction was employed, due probably to the absence of the more permanent building materials, with the result that there came into use the arch and the vault.

The architecture of the Egyptian was colossal in symbolism and like its withered mummies, is but the dead record of a dead past. The prevailing thought of the Egyptian was death. Life to him was but a passing shadow, thus his faith, his thought, his science ended in the death of the body, and he expressed his gloomy visions in colossal types of architecture, his temples and tombs.

The Egyptians were strong believers in a future state, hence their great precautions in the preservation of their dead, and the erection of such everlasting monuments as the pyramids. Herodotus is authority for the statement that the dwelling house of the Egyptian was looked upon as a mere temporary lodging, the tomb being the permanent abode.

Passing from Egypt to Phoenicia, we have mention made by Moses in the Hebrew Bible of the cities being strongholds and walled in. It is agreed by scholars that Solomon, King of Israel, applied to the King of Tyre for assistance in the construction of his temple. The archaeologist, Warren, who trade a survey of Palestine, found on the foundation stones at the site of the temple certain mason's marks, which were believed to he letters of the Phoenician alphabet, thereby estallishing the Biblical statement concerning the Phoenician origin of the edifice.

The ritual of Freemasonry makes such frequent reference to Solomon and his temple that many Masons readily accept the Solomonic origin of the fraternity and credit that distinguished Jew with having organized the workers on his building into. Apprentices, Fellow Crafts, and Master Masons, but the references to Solomon's temple are purely symbolical and not historical. The Israelites, who promoted the erection of this structure, were a pastoral people living in tents. They had no architecture and there are today no ruins of buildings distinctly Jewish. Therefore, when Solomon decided to follow the command of his father David, he found it necessary to call upon Hiram, the king of Tyre, for assistance, for that monarch governed a constructive people who had among them many skilled artisans. It is untenable that any definite organization of builders existed during the construction of Soloman's temple, such as is recognized by Freemasonry.

Grecian architecture was, no doubt, influenced by that of Egypt and Assyria. The architecture of the Greek is considered by many to have had its origin in the wooden hut or cabin formed of posts set in the earth and covered with transverse beams and rafters. This timber architecture was later copied in marble or stone, and at first was naturally simple and crude. With the advancement of civilization and the development of technical skill, the element of refine ment and proportion became apparent in the rise of the different orders of architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

The Greek had a cultivated mind, a poetic genius, and cultured reason. As a result, his structures are refined, majestic, beautiful. He gave to architecture, order, proportion, and beauty. His buildings are the incarnation of richness, grace, delicacy, and grandeur. He immortalized art and set a new standard of perfection for all ages. His was the architecture of the outside.

The Greek religion was in the main a worship of natural phenomena of which the gods were personifications, for all the gods of the Greek were in forest and hill, in valley and star, in sunset, in flower, and sea. His most splendid temples were roofed with the heat of the day or the faraway star of the night.

The Romans are credited with having derived their early instruction in architecture from the Etruscans, a swarm of Orientals who, in prehistoric times, are supposed to have swept over Europe bringing with them a curious mythology, some of which is still found among the folk lore of the peasants of Europe. It is said that it is to the Etruscans that we owe the custom of raising huge stones in circles, the exact purpose of which has never been fully determined by archeologists.

When Greece succumbed to the Romans, Grecian architects and artists were employed by the conquerors who appropriated the trabeated architecture of the Greek, and added the arch, which construction the Romans are credited with having learned from the Etruscans. The combination of column and arch was used by the Romans for some time, the best examples being the Colosseum of Rome and the various triumphal arches.

The Baths, Temples, amphitheaters, aqueducts, bridges, and tombs are all monuments of Roman greatness showing tremendous constructive and engineering ability combined with the power to use materials at hand with the best possible results.

It cannot he doubted that the Roman profited from the architecture of Greece, because Rome always appropriated to herself the arts and treasures of the nations that she conquered. But the Romans were a practical people, and believed in upbuilding their dependencies. They saw to it that every portion of the wide domain of Rome should feel her power as if it were its own. For this reason, Roman art and architecture are found in every city and province which came under the domain of the imperial city. The idea of the Roman was not alone to conquer, but to civilize as well.

As the Romans conquered all of the then known world, the type of architecture which they devised was very naturally carried to the remote countries which they subdued and even as late as the Tenth Century, their architecture was universally accepted as the type for all structural buildings.

While the Roman followed the idea of the Greek in the construction of his temples yet he had an architecture distinctly his own as is revealed in the amphitheater, the aqueducts, the bridges. Thus architecture spread from nation to nation each copying from its neighbors, and adding thereto that which best expressed its dominant thought and conformed to its ideals of utility and government.

The man of the far East, the man of- China and Japan, gained no suggestion for building from the world about him. While his mental culture was larger and his faculties of mind partially developed, yet his architecture suggests the insincere and indicates a vascilating temperament. The pagodas and temples, the structures which disclose the characteristics of his race, have their stone and wooden covering turned upwards, the likeness of an intellect destitute of the richness of spirit and sadly in contrast with that of the dominant man with cultivated reason, quickened taste, and highly developed imagination, whose architecture reflects the needs of the nation.

In the earliest-forms of architecture, the spirit of true art was not embodied. Such buildings as were constructed were for the most part the manifestation of animal necessity, the revelation of idol worship, of gloomy faith, and secret knowledge. They express none of the glories or beauty of that intellect which marks the real development of man. Chinese architec ture like Chinese development advanced to a certain point and then like its civilization be came suddenly transfixed and has so remained. It maybe said to be art in undeveloped form, and exhibits a hostility to cultore and purity of design as well as grace of proportion. China being destitute of genuine architecture is likewise destitute of Freemasonry.

The architecture of the Hindu is grotesque and fanciful. It seeks to blend the strange form of man with the delicacy of woman. And in its details is weird and gloomy. It is harmonized by no refined and cultured tastes. It is not the outgrowth of revealed ideas and is inspired b no hope.

But a new faith came to enthrone itself in the empire of the world, and to place its sceptre in the moral and spiritual nature of man. Its symbol was the cross. It came with a power, destined to work among men and nations, until they commenced to march with the achievement of a higher civilization. Christianity, catching a gleam of beauty and majesty from the classic grandeur of Greece and Rome, gave birth to a new architecture fraught with religion and consecrated by spiritual and moral elements. Christianity was a regenerating and quickening power. It gave a new meaning to all it touched. The new faith brought order and greatness into architecture. The rounded arch, the symbol of serenity, gave way to the pointed arch, the symbol of uplifting effort, and this marked the commencement of what is known as the Gothic or pointed style which prevailed throughout Europe during the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries, during which period there were erected those magnificent churches and cathedrals which so distinctly reflect the religious character and thought of the middle ages. The Gothic typified the higher development of architecture which today manifests itself in the temples of that faith which rules the earth. In Italy and Spain, the Gothic received eastern influence and developed into the Moorish and Arabic types. In France, England, and Germany, it took a truer form and became the home of genuine religion.

The Gothic with its sky piercing spires, pointed arches, vaulted roofs, lifts the soul of man to higher conceptions and aspirations. One may stand in the Prophyliaea of Greece with its chiseled stone, in the Parthenon with its frieze of Centaurs, and Laphithae, in the pillared halls of the academies of philosophy, but there is awakened no such lofty thought or grandeur of faith as comes from the contemplation of the Gothic ever pointing upward, drawing the vision onward as if for far-reaching revelation and a glimpse of that faith which is lost in sight.

As to the origin of Gothic architecture, there is an old theory that it was derived from the interlacing of twigs and branches of trees which formed the holy groves of the early Celts, but Sir Gilbert Scott, an eminent authority on the subject, says that the Gothic or pointed architecture was merely the higher development of the building art in the middle ages.

Concerning Gothic architecture, Hallam remarks, "Some have ascribed the principle Ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity of Freemasons, the depository of a sealed and traditionary science. There is probably some ground for this opinion, and the archives of that early existence, if they existed, might illustrate the progress of Gothic architecture and perhaps reveal its origin." But in connection with all these various building operations and in tracing the evolution of architecture there is absolutely no proof, whatsoever, of the existence of any organized societies in any way similar to Freemasonry of the present.

The first architecture grew out of the necessities of existence. The early man lived in a cave or tree or rough nest, but as his crude mind commenced to develop, he sought to escape the inclemencies of the seasons by placing trees on end and then laying others across the top to form a roof or covering and from this crude beginning commenced an art which through a long process of evolution has produced a St. Peters and St. Paul, a Pantheon, a Colosseum, the piercing sky line of New York Harbor, and in its final evolution, as we shall see gave to the world Freemasonry.

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