of words, themselves the representatives of ideas.

These masonic symbols rather may be compared to the elementary characters
of the Chinese language, each of which denotes an idea; or, still better,
to the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians, in which one object was
represented in full by another which bore some subjective relation to it,
as the wind was represented by the wings of a bird, or courage by the head
and shoulders of a lion.

It is in the same way that in Masonry the plumb represents rectitude, the
level, human equality, and the trowel, concord or harmony. Each is, in
itself, independent, each expresses a single elementary idea.

But we now arrive at a higher division of masonic symbolism, which,
passing beyond these tangible symbols, brings us to those which are of a
more abstruse nature, and which, as being developed in a ceremonial form,
controlled and directed by the ritual of the order, may be designated as
the _ritualistic symbolism_ of Freemasonry.

It is to this higher division that I now invite attention; and for the
purpose of exemplifying the definition that I have given, I shall select a
few of the most prominent and interesting ceremonies of the ritual.

Our first researches were into the symbolism of objects; our next will be
into the symbolism of ceremonies.

In the explanations which I shall venture to give of this ritualistic
symbolism, or the symbolism of ceremonies, a reference will constantly be
made to what has so often already been alluded to, namely, to the analogy
existing between the system of Freemasonry and the ancient rites and