In attempting any investigation into the symbolism of Freemasonry, the first thing that should engage our attention is the general purport of the institution, and the mode in which its symbolism is developed. Let us first examine it as a whole, before we investigate its parts, just as we would first view, as critics, the general effect of a building, before we began to inquire into its architectural details. Looking, then, in this way, at the institution--coming down to us, as it has, from a remote age--having passed unaltered and unscathed through a thousand revolutions of nations--and engaging, as disciples in its school of mental labor, the intellectual of all times--the first thing that must naturally arrest the attention is the singular combination that it presents of an operative with a speculative organization--an art with a science--the technical terms and language of a mechanical profession with the abstruse teachings of a profound philosophy. Here it is before us--a venerable school, discoursing of the deepest subjects of wisdom, in which sages might alone find themselves appropriately employed, and yet having its birth and deriving its first life from a society of artisans, whose only object was, apparently, the construction of material edifices of stone and mortar. The nature, then, of this operative and speculative combination, is the first problem to be solved, and the symbolism which depends upon it is the first feature of the institution which is to be developed. Freemasonry, in its character as an operative art, is familiar to every one. As such, it is engaged in the application of the rules and principles of architecture to the construction of edifices for private and public use--houses for the dwelling-place of man, and temples for the worship of Deity. It abounds, like every other art, in the use of technical terms, and employs, in practice, an abundance of implements and materials which are peculiar to itself. Now, if the ends of operative Masonry had here ceased,--if this technical dialect and these technical implements had never been used for any other purpose, nor appropriated to any other object, than that of enabling its disciples to pursue their artistic labors with greater convenience to themselves,--Freemasonry would never have existed. The same principles might, and in all probability would, have been developed in some other way; but the organization, the name, the mode of instruction, would all have most materially differed. But the operative Masons, who founded the order, were not content with the mere material and manual part of their profession: they adjoined to it, under the wise instructions of their leaders, a correlative branch of study.