[177] "History of the Lost Word," by J.F. Garrison, appendix to _Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry_, by G.F. Fort--one of the most brilliant Masonic books, both in scholarship and literary style. [178] _Symbolism of Masonry_, by Dr. Mackey (chap. i) and other books too many to name. It need hardly be said that the truth of the trinity, whereof the triangle is an emblem--though with Pythagoras it was a symbol of holiness, of health--was never meant to contradict the unity of God, but to make it more vivid. As too often interpreted, it is little more than a crude tri-theism, but at its best it is not so. "God thrice, not three Gods," was the word of St. Augustine (_Essay on the Trinity_), meaning three aspects of God--not the mathematics of His nature, but its manifoldness, its variety in unity. The late W.N. Clarke--who put more common sense into theology than any other man of his day--pointed out that, in our time, the old debate about the trinity is as dead as Caesar; the truth of God as a Father having taken up into itself the warmth, color, and tenderness of the truth of the trinity--which, as said on an earlier page, was a vision of God through the family (_Christian Doctrine of God_). [179] _The Bible, the Great Source of Masonic Secrets and Observances_, by Dr. Oliver. No Mason need be told what a large place the Bible has in the symbolism, ritual, and teaching of the Order, and it has an equally large place in its literature. [180] 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. THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY