THE QUESTION OF LANDMARKS

In ancient times, it was the custom to mark the boundaries of lands by means of stone pillars. This same practice is followed to a large extent by modern surveyors, the position of stones at the intersection of highway roads showing that the habit is by no means obsolete. According to the old Jewish law, the removal of one of these landmarks was considered a serious crime punishable with the severest penalties. The word "landmark" has been adopted in Freemasonry to designate those peculiar marks of distinction by which it is separated from all other institutions.

For a long time the idea was held that there were certain universal, unalterable, and unrepealable fundamentals which have existed from time immemorial, and which have so thoroughly become the basic principles of the fraternity that they cannot be set aside or deviated from in the slightest degree, and that these so-called fundamentals are known as landmarks. Even at the present time, this idea has become so fixed in the minds of many charged with the government of the Craft that the term is frequently used without consideration as to its real meaning or of its value as a basis of determining Masonic government.

According to the modern accepted theory, landmarks embrace the universal language and laws of the fraternity, as they have come down from the Seventeenth Century with such modifications as from time to time the evolution of the society has brought forth.

In the Masonic world, there has always been much argument over the question of what constitutes the landmarks of the fraternity. Some have contended that the obligations, signs, tokens, and words, as well as the various ceremonies through which the candidate passes, must be considered as landmarks. In other words, supporters of this theory are satisfied to include as the landmarks of the society all its alleged secrets.

The generally accepted idea, according to the most competent authorities, is that they are those customs and observations of the fraternity which gradually grew into operation as
it slowly evolved. They may be said to include such enactments as were put into practice by governing authority at a specific time, which being so far removed cannot be considered in the light of the present. In other words, one of the requisites of a landmark by its supporters is that it must possess antiquity. Any new rule of action which the Grand Lodges of the world might adopt at the present time, however general its application, could hardly be called a landmark because it would lack that antiquity or association, with an early and formulative period of the Craft, which all landmarks must possess to be regarded as such. According to the advocates of the theory of ancient landmarks, they cannot be repealed, neither can they be changed nor set aside temporarily except by dispensation of the Grand master or action of the Grand Lodge.

The first use of the term appears in Payne's General Regulations, which were published in connection with Anderson's constitutions in the year 1723. Whatever the direct assertions of Payne may have been, there is a grave suspicion that Anderson took certain liberties with them, as he was much disposed to allow his imagination to guide him in his various attempts to enlarge upon the fundamental regulations of the Craft. The general opinion prevails that the term, as used by Payne, simply referred to the old regulations of the Craft which formed the basis of modern Freemasonry as projected by Anderson, Desaguliers, and others who used their inventive genius in fabricating the new system.

In the year 1775, Preston, in his "Illustrations of Masonry," made use of the word "landmarks" in a manner which makes the term synonomous with the established usages and customs of the Craft.

The Duke of Suffolk, Grand Master of England, issued a circular in 1819 in which he said, "that so long as the master of the lodge observed exactly the landmarks of the craft, he was at liberty to give the lectures in the language best suited to the character of the lodge over which he presided," by which was meant that the Master was to conform to the authorized ritual, and at no time has the ritual ever been regarded as a landmark.

Dr. George Oliver, one of the most voluminous of the early writers on Freemasonry, made frequent use of the term "landmarks," but as Dr. Oliver was a visionary writer, little dependence can be placed upon any construction of the term which,he may have adopted.

From the very best evidence that can be adduced, it is apparent that the early writers on Freemasonry simply used the term in whatever way and manner best expressed the particular idea they sought ro convey, and that for the most part, they made use of the word "landmarks" to designate the early customs and practices of the Craft as well as employing it as a general term to express the laws, rules, and regulations of the Society which were constantly undergoing various changes as the evolution of the fraternity progressed.

Until the year 1858, no attempt had been made by any Masonic writer to distinctly enumerate the landmarks of Freemasonry or to present them in concrete form. Soon after Dr. Albert Mackey, a Masonic historian of remarkable ability, issued a text book of Masonic jurisprudence in which he enumerated twenty-five alleged landmarks claiming that his deductions had been arrived at after much exhaustive and tedious research. They are as follows:

1. The modes of recognition.
2. The division of Symbolic Masonry into degrees.
3. The legend of the Third Degree.
4. The government of the Fraternity by a presiding officer called a Grand Master, who is elected from the body of the Craft.
5. The prerogative of the Grand Master to preside over every assembly of the Craft, wheresoever and whensoever held.
6. The prerogative of the Grand Master to grant dispensations for conferring degrees at irregular times.
7. The prerogative of the Grand Master to grant dispensations for opening and holding lodges.
8. The prerogative of the Grand Master to make Masons at sight.
9. The necessity for Masons to congregate in lodges.
10. The government of every lodge by a Master and Wardens.
11. The necessity that every lodge, when congregated, should be duly tiled.
12. The right of every Master to he represented in all general meetings of the Craft, and to instruct his representatives.
13. The right of every Mason to appeal from the decision of his brethren in lodge convened to the Grand Lodge or to a general assembly of Masons.
14. The right of every Mason to visit and sit in every regular lodge.
15. That no visitor not known to some brother present as a Mason can enter a lodge without undergoing examination.
16. That no lodge can interfere in the business or labor of an other lodge.
17. That every Freemason is amenable to the laws and regulations of the Masonic jurisdiction in which he resides.
18. That every candidate for initiation must be a man, freeborn and of lawful age.
19. That every Mason must believe in the existence of God as the Grand Architect of the Universe.
20. That every Mason must believe in a resurrection to a future life.
21. That a book of the law of God must constitute an indispensable part of the furniture of every lodge.
22. That all men in the sight of God are equal, and meet in the lodge on one common level.
23. That Freemasonry is a secret society, in possession of secrets that can not be divulged.
24. That Freemasonry consists of a speculative science, founded on speculative art.
25. That the landmarks of Masonry can never be changed.

It has been charged that the compilation of landmarks as presented by Dr. Mackey, is not based upon anything authentic, but that they were largely the creatures of his prolific brain, and that many of them were manufactured to enable him to extend the list to such proportions that they might be made the object of sufficient argumentation as to form the basis of his book which he desired to sell upon the market.

It is pointed out that Dr. C. Lenning of Leipzig, Germany, prepared a work of three volumes entitled, " Encyclopaedie die Freimaurerei," which was published in 1824. This author makes no mention whatsoever of the term "ancient landmark," showing that he was wholly unacquainted with the subject and considering that his work was issued twenty years before that of Dr. Mackey some color is given to the statement that the question of landmarks was one which did not disturb the Masonic world until the appearance of Mackey's book in 1845. In 1879, Albert Pike of Washington D. C., one of the most profound Masonic scholars that America has ever produced, made an analysis of the question of landmarks, in which he reached the following conclusions:

"The fundamental principles of the Ancient Operative Masonry were few and simple, and they were not called landmarks. Each lodge was independent of every other, and there was no superior authority over all. Each was composed of Apprentices and Fellow Crafts. Each had its Masters and Wardens, and these were elected by vote of all the members. The ancient charges show by what principles the relations of those of the fellowship to each other were regulated; and these may not improperly be said to have been the `landmarks' of the Craft."

Robert F. Gould says: "We shall vainly search in the records of the Ancient Scottish lodges in the early times for a full specification of the twenty-five `landmarks' which modern research pronounces to be both ancient and unalterable. Of the ancient landmarks, it has been observed with more or less foundation of truth: 'Nobody knows what they comprise or omit; they are of no earthly authority because everything is a landmark when an opponent desires to silence you; but nothing is a landmark that stands in his own way.'

"Perhaps no more can be said with certainty in regard to them than that they were those essential principles on which the old simple Freemasonry was builded, and without which there would not have been Freemasonry; the organization of the Craft into lodges, the requisites for admission into the fellowship, and the methods of government established at the beginning."

One of the alleged landmarks for which there is no apparent authority, is that relating to physical qualifications. So much has been said within the past fifty years concerning this subject, and such stringent laws have been enacted by Grand Lodges, that the whole question came to be regarded as one of the landmarks of the fraternity. There is, however, no evidence to sustain the claim that physical perfection is a Masonic fundamental any more than any particular group of Masons may adopt the same as one of its fixed rules and regulations and immediately set up the fact of its being a landmark. Masonic agitation concerning physical qualifications is traced to a section in the ancient charges which reads as follows: "No Master should take an Apprentice unless he has sufficient employment for him, and unless he be a perfect youth, having no maim or defect in his body that may render him incapable of learning the art of serving his Master's Lord, and of being made a Brother, and then a Fellow Craft in due time." In the edition of the constitutions published in 1738, the same charge was made to read as follows: "No Master should take a Prentice that is not the son of honest parents, a perfect youth without maim or defect in his body, and capable of learning the mysteries of the art that so the Lord (or Founders), may be well served and the Craft not despised." From the above, it will be seen that the original charges of a Mason published in 1723 make no mention whatsoever of physical perfection, and that the interpretation read into this charge by the subsequent edition of 1738 shows that there was a disposition to modify the then existing law and to place upon it a construction not warranted in the premises.

William J. Hughan of England, who gave this subject the most careful investigation, reached the conclusion that the question of physical perfection is not a landmark and that its acceptance as such, is due to the fact that supporters of the theory have modified the ancient charges to suit their ideas of the perfect limb theory.

The impartial Masonic investigator who refuses to allow his reason to be swayed by mere statement or declarative assertion, is forced to seriously doubt whether such a thing as an irremovable landmark exists in the jurisprudence of Freemasonry.

Roscoe Pound, the distinguished jurist, who gave the subject much unbiased study, suggests the following which may be safely recognized as landmarks of the fraternity: (1) belief in God; (2) belief in the persistence of personality; (3) a "Book of the Law" as an indispensable part of the furniture of every Lodge; (4) the legend of the third degree; (5) secrecy; (6) the symbolism of the operative art; and (7) that a Mason must be a man, free horn, and of age. He further states it is possible to add to or subtract from the above as each individual construes the fundamental regulations of the Craft.

In the absence of any central or governing body and the fact that much of the evolution of Freemasonry has been the outgrowth of individual effort and interpretation, the results of which have many times been accepted as literal fact, without the question of authentication entering into the transaction, it can be readily understood why that which is a landmark to one group of Masons is not such to another, and that the subject will ever continue to he one of confusion and doubt until the Masonic world shall, through a united effort, settle this much mooted question once and for all.

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