Secret societies and subversive movementsWebster, Nesta Helen
History
Secret societies and subversive movements
Webster, Nesta Helen
Secret societies
Moreover, Grand Orient masonry is not only political but subversive in
its political aims. Instead of the peaceful trilogy of British masonry,
"Brotherly love, relief, and truth," it has throughout adhered to the
formula which originated in the Masonic lodges of France and became the
war-cry of the Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." "It is the
law of equality," says Ragon, "that has always endeared Masonry to the
French," and "as long as equality really exists only in the lodges,
Masonry will be preserved in France."[665] The aim of Grand Orient
Masonry is thus to bring about universal equality as formulated by
Robespierre and Babeuf. In the matter of liberty we read further that as
men are all by nature free--the old fallacy of Rousseau and of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man--therefore "no one is necessarily
subjected to another nor has the right to rule him."[666] The
revolutionary expresses the same idea in the phrase that "no man should
have a master." Finally, by fraternity Grand Orient Masonry denotes the
abolition of all national feeling.
It is to Masonry [Ragon says again] that we owe the affiliation of
all classes of society, it alone could bring about this fusion
which from its midst has passed into the life of the peoples. It
alone could promulgate that humanitarian law of which the rising
activity, tending to a great social uniformity, leads to the fusion
of races, of different classes, of morals, codes, customs,
languages, fashions, money, and measures. Its virtuous propaganda
will become the humanitarian law of all consciences.[667]
The policy of the Grand Orient is thus avowedly International Socialism.
Indeed in a further passage Ragon plainly indicates this fact:
Every generous reform, every social benefit derives from it, and if
these survive it is because Masonry lends them its support. This
phenomenon is due only to the power of its organization. The past
belongs to it and the future cannot escape from it. By its immense
lever of association it alone is able to realize by a productive
communion (_communion génératrice_) that great and beautiful social
unity conceived by Jaurez, Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier. If Masons
wish it, the generous conceptions of these philanthropic thinkers
will cease to be vain Utopias.[668]
Who are the philanthropic thinkers enumerated here but the men
derisively described by Karl Marx as the "Utopian Socialists" of the
nineteenth century? Utopian Socialism is thus simply the open and
visible expression of Grand Orient Freemasonry. Moreover, these Utopian
Socialists were almost without exception Freemasons or members of other
secret societies.
The Freemason Clavel confirms the foregoing account by Ragon. Thus, like
Ragon, he quotes, the principle expressed in a ritual for the initiation
of a Master Mason:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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