Masonic Education Series
The Search for Light
I have always been a curious person, but it was the Masonic Order and the “search for light” that brought me to the Phylaxis Society and led to accomplishments of which I am most proud. The Phylaxis Society has been criticized, and from time to time over the centuries, so has the Order of Freemasonry. Those of us who are in pursuit of truth and light ought not to be dissuaded by whatever criticisms we may have heard. This organization came about because of genuine needs of Prince Hall Freemasons, the need to pursue truth and light, to desire to explore the mysteries of the ancients, and the charge to improve ourselves in Masonry. These needs linger still, and if the Phylaxis Society can fill them, there will always be a place for the Society in our Order.
I will discuss today the quest for knowledge—a quest that is instilled in every Mason from the day of his initiation into the order where he is urged to improve himself in Masonry. There is something about the idea of “hidden mysteries” that strikes a cord in a curious mind. Call it what you will—the ancient mysteries, the higher truths, ancient wisdom, the wisdom of mankind, or the sum of all knowledge—but the search for light compels us onward toward a greater knowledge of this thing we call life.
We live in a time where light is far more abundant than it has ever been
If the search for light is on your agenda, we live in a wonderful time. We live in a time where light is far more abundant than it has ever been. To give you a historical perspective of where we are today, I want to talk about what I call Revolutionary Advances in Human Intellectual Inquiry, or periods of growth in the accumulation of human knowledge.
I know that there is controversy about Darwin’s theory of evolution, but even the Pope has stated that Evolution is more than a “theory.” I don’t think we even need to go too deeply into the matter, but if we trust the methods of archaeology, we can start at a somewhat recent period in human history. Archaeologists dig up bones, date them, and they have found human fossils, ancient evidence, that Homo sapiens, or modern man, has been on earth in close to his present form for more that half a million years. Man-like creatures, or Hominids, who were near in structure to modern humans existed several millions years ago. About 500,000 years ago, one hominoid line became sufficiently different from other animals that they are seen as being a new form of life. The most important feature in this change was that they had larger brains and a sophisticated nervous system. These advances allowed them to represent experiences symbolically. This hominid branch acquired the ability to think abstractly and to speak. These distinctions caused them to become known as human beings: Homo sapiens.
the ability to communicate was the first great revolution in human inquiry
The ability to speak is an important gift and an important difference between man and the animals, because it allows men to communicate ideas. This skill is of such significance to human evolution that I call it a revolution in intellectual inquiry. What do I mean by revolution? A revolution is an abrupt and dramatic advance in human conditions; an advance of such significance that the human condition is forever changed. And the ability to communicate was the first great revolution in human inquiry and in the accumulation of knowledge. We take speech for granted, but when mankind first learned to talk, it gave him a major advantage over other forms of life. By communicating ideas, man transfers knowledge from person to person with the outcome that other persons in the cultural chain can become intellectually as strong as the strongest link. I want you to think about that concept, because we often hear the analogy of the chain, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But when it comes to human inquiry, the chain analogy does not hold. Because of the spoken word and the exchange of ideas from person to person, sharing knowledge, every link in a social chain has the potential to become as strong intellectually as the strong link. Every new discovery can be communicated to everyone in the social group with the outcome that everyone in the social chain is strengthened by the discoveries shared by a single link.
sharing knowledge, every link in a social chain has the potential to become as strong intellectually as the strong link
The second revolution in intellectual inquiry occurred in fairly recent times compared to the first: we are talking about 5,000 years ago versus 500,000 years ago. Archaeologists found a blank roll of papyrus in an Egyptian tomb that dates to early in the first Egyptian dynasty: around 2950 BC to 2770 BC. Since papyrus was used for writing, this find suggests that writing was in widespread use along the Nile at that time and writing may have been in use along the Nile much earlier. Clay tablets showing cuneiform writing that date to 2500 BC have been found in a village east of Southern Babylon. I consider writing to be a revolution in human intellectual inquiry because it allowed knowledge to be stored, accumulated, and advanced beyond the capacity, or beyond the memory of one man or one generation. Without writing, knowledge is relayed generation to generation by way of the verbal, spoken tradition. When knowledge is recorded in written form, new generations of students can have access to all existing knowledge. Generations to be born can study everything known to man. From this generous beginning, they can go on to elaborate upon and extend the limits of knowledge. This is exactly what happened in Ancient Egypt when the priests of the temples recorded the wisdom of the Ancient World. Future generations of priests advanced the state of knowledge to such a high plane that we are still trying to unearth the ancient mysteries they knew and used. Without writing, the ancient mysteries might not ever have reached their highest form.
The third revolution in intellectual inquiry came shortly after the time of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s death, his general, Ptolemy, inherited Egypt and Palestine and assumed the power of king over those territories. In an enlightened move in the year 295 BC, King Ptolemy I ordered that all the books of the world and the writings of all nations be placed in one repository in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls were collected from temples along the Nile Valley and taken to Alexandria, where they were translated into Greek, cataloged, and stored. Ptolemy and his successors collected more than half a million writings over several decades and the number rose ultimately to more than 700,000. The Ptolemies also purchased books and scrolls from throughout the known world and acquired them by other devious means. Ships that docked in the busy seaport of Alexandria were sometimes searched by the military and their books confiscated. The establishment of the library at Alexandria brought on the third revolution in intellectual inquiry. Why is this revolutionary? Because it concentrated knowledge within a central repository making the accumulated knowledge of man available to anyone who could travel to this coastal city in the north of Africa, as many Greek scholars did. The idea is so commonplace today that it seems trivial; it is merely the invention of libraries. If you check the timeline of history you will see that this library (295 BC) predates the heyday of the Roman Empire and it coincides with the Golden Age of Greece.
The library at Alexandria was of such significance that it became the center of a university complex that caused the base of Greek intellectual inquiry and serious research to shift from Athens to Alexandria. During the Golden Age of Greece, the cosmopolitan City of Alexandria, situated on the Northern shores of Africa, was the international seat of learning and culture and it remained the light of Western Civilization and the light of the Roman Empire for more than six centuries. The Greek mathematician Euclid was active when the great library of Alexandria was built; he taught at the university. It is likely that the accumulated wisdom stored at Alexandria laid the foundation for the teaching of Erasthothenes, Galen, Euclid, Dionysius and hundreds of other Greek scholars.
To find the fourth revolution in human inquiry, we move ahead more than17 centuries. The invention of the printing press during the second half of the 15th century allowed translated copies of Arabic and Greek manuscripts to be made available on a scale that would bring forth another revolution in human inquiry. The mass production of books allowed the accumulated knowledge of man to be spread around the globe giving access to this knowledge not only to members of the wealthier classes but eventually to the common man.
The printing press and the proliferation of libraries brings the wisdom of the ages to a city near you, and if you are within range of Washington DC, you are near the Library of Congress—the greatest repository of knowledge known to mankind. It is the Mecca of human knowledge. If you are in search of the wisdom of the ages, that would be a good place to start your search. I would dare to say that every important discovery known to man has been put on paper. Although some ancient wisdom has been lost, virtually everything known by man in modern times has been put in books and pamphlets and magazines that can be found in this great library. And with the inter-library loan system, 99 percent of the holdings of this great library can be placed on loan to the library in your city or town.
But hold on! There has been another revolution. The human race has seen a dramatic rise in scientific and intellectual achievement as man enters the third millennium of the Christian era. The world is witnessing the fifth revolution in intellectual inquiry, the age of computerization, which has the capacity to put every human being into communication with every other and which offers the wisdom of all the ages right in one’s living room to anyone curious enough to inquire into it. There is so much information available over the Internet and the World Wide Web that it defies the imagination. And the World Wide Web is merely one of several layers of information available over the Internet. The accumulated knowledge of man is there for the taking.
A part of my purpose here to day is to inspire you to peel back some of those layers and to pursue the search of light that our Masonic teachings suggest we should do—not just on the Internet but in libraries and book stores. Some of you know people in our communities who are illiterate or who read so poorly that they are functionally illiterate. I feel strongly for these people, because they are denied a valuable tool for self-improvement. But there is another group that I feel for even more strongly. There are a large number of men in the Black community and in our Masonic Order who know how to read but do not. Mark Twain said, “A man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot read.” Those among us who do not pick up a book have no advantage over those who cannot read a book. There is little difference between an illiterate man and a non-literate man.
Consider that everything known to man, the wisdom of all the ages, is recorded somewhere, and it is closer at hand that ever before. The Ancient Egyptians hid the ancient mysteries on scrolls that remained secreted deep in the recesses of the temple. Today, we hide the knowledge of mankind in public libraries in books that are available to anyone at no cost. All you need is one skill…. That’s all you need to uncover the accumulated knowledge of man—the will to read!
Each time I enter a bookstore, I count the number of Black men I see inside. I shouldn’t say “count” because you don’t have to count when there is only zero or one. If you read the sports page, that’s good. If you read the front page, that’s good. But if you have a thirst for knowledge; if you want to see the ancient mysteries revealed, if you want to sample the wisdom of the ages, visit the library or go to a bookstore and start to do it, one book at a time. That is my message to you. If you do not read, you have no advantage on a man who cannot read.
Before I leave, I want to discuss a project I worked on several years ago. It is the book, Image Clarity: High-Resolution Photography. Although I have received a lot of positive feedback about this book, the book is not about things that I discovered. It is about things that I learned after extensive research at the Library of Congress. It is a research project and nothing else. I am convinced that a project like this lies inside each of us. We need only take advantage of the five revolutions in human inquiry—communication, writing, libraries, books, and the Internet—to search out and find that which was lost.
We all have questions about the vast Order of ours. Here’s what I ask you to do. Next time you have a Masonic question, dig out the answer on your own. If it has been a while since you’ve done this, ask for help to get started, but do the reading on your own. And when you finish, think about this: somebody else has probably asked the same question. So when you get the answer, write it down so you can share it later. Keep doing this and before you know it, you will be a Masonic researcher on your way to uncovering the wisdom of the ages.