beautifully defined Freemasonry to be "a science of morality veiled in
allegory and illustrated by symbols." But allegory itself is nothing else
but verbal symbolism; it is the symbol of an idea, or of a series of
ideas, not presented to the mind in an objective and visible form, but
clothed in language, and exhibited in the form of a narrative. And
therefore the English definition amounts, in fact, to this: that
_Freemasonry is a science of morality, developed and inculcated by the
ancient method of symbolism_. It is this peculiar character as a symbolic
institution, this entire adoption of the method of instruction by
symbolism, which gives its whole identity to Freemasonry, and has caused
it to differ from every other association that the ingenuity of man has
devised. It is this that has bestowed upon it that attractive form which
has always secured the attachment of its disciples and its own perpetuity.

The Roman Catholic church[37] is, perhaps, the only contemporaneous
institution which continues to cultivate, in any degree, the beautiful
system of symbolism. But that which, in the Catholic church, is, in a
great measure, incidental, and the fruit of development, is, in
Freemasonry, the very life-blood and soul of the institution, born with it
at its birth, or, rather, the germ from which the tree has sprung, and
still giving it support, nourishment, and even existence. Withdraw from
Freemasonry its symbolism, and you take from the body its soul, leaving
behind nothing but a lifeless mass of effete matter, fitted only for a
rapid decay.

Since, then, the science of symbolism forms so important a part of the
system of Freemasonry, it will be well to commence any discussion of that
subject by an investigation of the nature of symbols in general.

There is no science so ancient as that of symbolism,[38] and no mode of