[100] There is a beautiful lecture on the moral meaning of Geometry by Dr. Hutchinson, in _The Spirit of Masonry_--one of the oldest, as it is one of the noblest, books in our Masonic literature. Plutarch reports Plato as saying, "God is always geometrizing" (_Diog. Laert._, iv, 2). Elsewhere Plato remarks that "Geometry rightly treated is the knowledge of the Eternal" (_Republic_, 527b), and over the porch of his Academy at Athens he wrote the words, "Let no one who is ignorant of Geometry enter my doors." So Aristotle and all the ancient thinkers, whether in Egypt or India. Pythagoras, Proclus tells us, was concerned only with number and magnitude: number absolute, in arithmetic; number applied, in music; and so forth--whereof we read in the _Old Charges_ (see "The Great Symbol," by Klein, _A. Q. C._, x, 82). [101] Faerie Queene, bk. ii, canto ix, 22. [102] _Lost Language of Symbolism_, by Bayley, also _A New Light on the Renaissance_, by the same author; _Architecture of the Renaissance in England_, by J.A. Gotch; and "Notes on Some Masonic Symbols," by W.H. Rylands, _A. Q. C._, viii, 84. Indeed, the literature is as prolific as the facts. [103] J.V. Andreae, _Ehreneich Hohenfelder von Aister Haimb_. A verbatim translation of the second line quoted would read, "Unless in God he has his building." [104] When, for example, Albert Pike, in his letter, "Touching Masonic Symbolism," speaks of the "poor, rude, unlettered, uncultivated working Stone-masons," who attended the Assemblies, he is obviously confounding Free-masons with the rough Stone-masons of the Guilds. Over against these words, read a brilliant article in the _Contemporary Review_, October, 1913, by L.M. Phillips, entitled, "The Two Ways of Building," showing how the Free-masons, instead of working under architects outside the order, chose the finer minds among them as leaders and created the different styles of architecture in Europe. "Such," he adds, "was the high limit of talent and intelligence which the creative spirit fostered among workmen.... The entire body being trained and educated in the same principles and ideas, the most backward and inefficient, as they worked at the vaults which their own skillful brethren had planned, might feel the glow of satisfaction arising from the conscious realization of their own aspirations. Thus the whole body of constructive knowledge maintained its unity.... Thus it was by free associations of workmen training their own leaders that the great Gothic edifices of the medieval ages were constructed.... A style so imaginative and so spiritual might almost be the dream of a poet or the vision of a saint. Really it is the creation of the sweat and labor of workingmen, and every iota of the boldness, dexterity and knowledge which it embodies was drawn out of the practical experience and experiments of manual labor." This describes the Comacine Masters, but not the poor, rude, unlettered Stone-masons whom Pike had in mind.