Albert Pike - Morality

"Albert Pike saw Masonry as a lifelong course in education. Jim Tresner

Reception of a Louveteau

A Louveteau (or Lewis) has a special relationship to Masons. He is the son of a Mason and in some places was allowed to petition the Lodge at an early age. Pike wrote a ritual for his reception into the Lodge which Tresner quotes. I recommend that you read it.

Pike is explaining the concept of morality to the young man who was probably about 12 years of age.

You are fond of enjoying yourselves. You like to play and you do not like to study. This is very natural. It is not wrong, but right. Why should you not like pleasure better than work? But when there is anything you ought to do, anything that your parents wish you to do, anything that you can do to help a friend or even an enemy, you know that you ought to do it, although it will interfere with your amusements, and cause you labor and trouble. It is reflection and reason that tell you this, and when these and your sense of what is right get the better of your fondness for amusement and inclination to be idle, you are satisfied with yourself, because you know you have done your duty.

That is what we are all out here to do -- our Duty. If we do it, we are good and brave. But if we let indolence and selfishness become our masters and keep us from doing our duty, then we are very weak and contemptible persons, and shall never do anything worth anybody's recollecting when we are dead.

Now this is what is meant when you are told that you ought to love others as you love yourselves, You do not think that you can do that. You do not feel that you can love a schoolfellow and much less one who has wronged you, as you do yourself. You think that it does not stand to reason that you should. You cannot help thinking so, and therefore it is not wrong to think so.

You know what is meant by loving your father, mother, sisters, and those who are always kind to you; and you know that you do not have the same feelings towards those who hate and wrong you. You know that you cannot. No one does or can.But you can forgive an enemy and be kind to him, as you can to all your companions. You can feel disposed to do them favors. You can get the better of any desire to harm them. That is what is meant by loving them.

But what perplexes you is that you are to love them as you love yourself. It is of no use, you think to try to do that. for you cannot do it. Let us see. You can forgive them instead of taking revenge, as you are prompted to do by passion. Is that not loving them better than you love revenge? You can give up some pleasure to benefit or gratify them. That is to love them better than you love pleasure. You can do a great many things for them because you ought, though it cost you trouble and labor, and deprives you of pleasures and indulgence; and when you do so you love them better than you love yourself.

This is what all good Masons try to do, and we hope you will try to do it. You will not always do it, because no one always does what he ought. Sometime we must punish those who do us injury that they may not be encouraged to continue doing so, and go from bad to worse, and that others seeing they escape to to do the same. But we must not punish because we hate them or for revenge, or for satisfaction

If you see a boy who is crippled or deformed, you to not hate him for it, and it is very wrong and cruel to make fun of him for it. It is a misfortune to be crippled and deformed It makes him unhappy and you ought to be kind to him. For you would think that it very hard if we should despise you for something you could not help. If you think it hard and cruel and wrong for us to do that, you must not yourself do it. This is the meaning of the saying "Do unto others that only, and all that, which you would have them do unto you."

Now a bad, cruel, malicious, revengeful disposition, and evil heart, a lying tongue, a depraved mind, are greater deformities than a crooked body or a hump on the back. They are much sorer misfortunes, and make those afflicted with them more miserable; and we out the more to pity them.

I think you understand all this. If you do, you understand what your duties to yourself and others are.

Albert Pike is much maligned by the religious anti-masons. When I read what he actually wrote and think of his great intellect I am in awe of him. This piece of writing is simple enough for me to understand and it helps to explain some concepts that I have struggled with in the past. I hope you find it of interest. Thanks for stopping by. Hugs. j