Visitors to Lodges and Chapters and other Bodies within the great family of Freemasonry often overhear things that may not have been intended to be overheard. On the other hand, some of them were so intended. One of my favourites in this last group is "Verrry poor memory work, there, he'll not make a good Master (or High Priest or Preceptor or Sovereign), in MY Day, he wouldn't have moved beyond Inner Guard!" Most of us have heard such things. Some of us may even have said them, once or twice.
Let's examine Masonic Memory and its value as a qualifier for Office.
The early records of the Craft speak frequently of a man being Entered an Apprentice in January, Passed two weeks later, and Raised at Grand Lodge in March. (Did you know that? That, in our earliest days, Lodges were only able to bring new members from Entered Apprentice to Fellow of the Craft? Only Grand Lodge was able to "Make" a Master Mason.) That same fellow was often to be found seated in the Master's Chair by the following January. Now, that's not quite as bad as you might think, because the term of Office in Lodges often ran from St. John's Day to St. John's Day, from June 24 through December 27, and from December 27 through June 24. So our fast-rising Brother had served at least one full term in the Lodge as a Master Mason.
Without exception, the Minute Books of Lodges where such advancements happened record the excellent harmony that existed in the Lodge and the pleasure the Brethren had while under this Brother's rule. They testify to his excellent management skills and to his complete mastery of the ritual.
How could any ordinary man, with all the normal, everyday stresses of life, of business, church, and community participation and membership, find the time to memorize the entire ritual of the Craft in one year, well enough to have his Lodge Secretary comment on it in the Minutes, making him thus near immortal? Well, for one thing, such "ordinary men", "ordinary" in the sense of "usual" or "common", were actually quite ordinary, in those days, for a number of reasons that we no longer have.
Until the advent of personal computers, teaching television, Montessori schools, teacher conferences and all the time and energy saving trappings of the late Twentieth Century, education was quite different. Memorization, and the ability to memorize large amounts of information, information which could be recalled with near instant response, was essential for a successful student. Men were able to spout Latin tags ("Excreta taurii cerebra confundit" is not genuine Latin, but "Veni, Vidi, Vici" is) and regaled friends and acquaintances alike with long chunks of some pretty awful poetry, or interminable but erudite, and always boring, discourses on a myriad of subjects, in the original Greek. (Relax, Companions; my Greek is far worse than my Latin, so no quotes, tonight.)
Radio and television did not exist. Neither did movies. Or paperback books. Or comics, or the Funnies in the weekend paper. There were few outside draws or influences to disrupt the attention of an educated man from the book he was reading, and his teachers in school had all forced him to memorize huge amounts of information , using the excuse that some day he MIGHT need it, for something. His mind was trained. It was familiar with the practice of memorization. It was accustomed to stuffing huge amounts of information into a tiny space. It had no need to remember what happened on "General Hospital" so he could help his wife catch up after having been shopping at the Mall for the day. Memorizing was easy. Everybody did it.
Today, well, things are different. Students carry portable computers to school instead of book bags. Infra-red connectivity, all over the world, is a coming possibility and is already a reality in dozens of Communities across North America. Why would a businessman bother to memorize his financial details when he can pull his PDA out of his pocket, attach a memory stick, and have every single boring detail right there? The answer is, of course, that he wouldn't. But WE should. As Masons, we are taught to use symbols to encourage and to teach. The tools of architects, builders, working men of the Ages are our usual speech.
One of the earliest of the "Legendary Figures" of Freemasonry (Oh yeah, we have a whole BUNCH of "Legendary Figures", but most of them are mythical; this one is not!) was an architect, a builder, a philosopher, a soldier, a Roman general and thinker whose memory was revered in the Roman Collegia, which we believe preceded the "Commacine Builders", who we claim as predecessors to Freemasonry. He not only created buildings and roads and aqueducts, he wrote down how he did it, and what he did to help him remember the thousands of details he needed to remember each day. His name was Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, and he was a near contemporary of Julius Caesar, born about 90 BCE and died about 20 BCE.
Why is this solitary Roman of so much interest to us that, two thousand years later, we remember him, and still use things he taught, today? Well, he was author of the world's first engineering handbook. He was a landscape gardener. He was an architect who wrote so well that he has been copied for 2000 years. One review of a recent re-publication of one of his works, by Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania said of him "His De architectura libri decem (Ten books on architecture) carefully described existing practices, not only in the design and construction of buildings, but also in what are today thought of as engineering disciplines. His books include such varied topics as the manufacture of building materials and dyes (material science), machines for heating water for public baths (chemical engineering), amplification in amphitheatres (acoustics), and the design of roads and bridges (civil engineering)."
The famous design of an upright man with arms extended touching a circle and also touching the sides of rectangle, drawn by Leonardo DaVinci (no, not the one who wrote "The DaVinci Code" is named "Homo Vitruvianus, or "Vitruvian Man", and was used to represent the archetype of what real men should be. He was so little touched by vanity that he never bothered titling any of his books.
Vitruvius was famous for one more thing. He wrote a discourse on the art of memory.
Yes, the "art" of memory.
Vitruvius believed that every man, with training and practice, could be taught to remember everything he ever saw, file it away in his mind somewhere, and call it up again at need, as easily as we remember how to pick up and use a fork.
Modern science and modern psychologists have, to an extent, proved that Marcus Vitruvius was correct. They have tested, examined, studied and proven that each man has that most wondrous of human abilities - the photographic memory! The problem, these same scientists have determined, is that our memory capacity is too small to actually retain those perfect images, and part of the reason, they have written in professional journals of international renown, is that schools no longer teach memorizing as a skill. Our children and grandchildren are not required to memorize endless streams of poetry, or Latin texts, or even that old bugaboo, the "Times' Tables".
The invention, and proliferation, or labour-saving devices, from the printing press on to the modern world's creation of the memory chip have combined to rob us of an ability that has been part of the educational process for thousands of years.
Why am I talking about this man, and this topic, here? Well, there are few people in today's world who take memorization as seriously as Masons. We study, "memorize" page after page of ritual until we can deliver it properly, with all that "EMpha-sis on the right SYL-lable". Our Candidates get handed long lists of questions to be studied and answers to be memorized and delivered in open Lodge or Chapter, before we will let them move closer to being just like the rest of us. We look for ways to gather our Candidates together so that a "qualified Degree Team" will give them the best work, rather than what WE can deliver ourselves.
And we complain "It sure wasn't like that in MY day, we STUDIED our Work".
The truth is that it has been a long time since "WE studied our Work" the way it should be studied. We don't even pay attention in Lodge the way we should, any more. If we did, no one would ever hear the complaint "Did you see how sloppy those Signs were" being whispered around the room.
Should we worry about memorizing? Is it really necessary, today, when we have all sorts of modern conveniences and tools to let us access that "stuff" we used to have to know by heart?
I know there are jurisdictions around the world that do not require their Entrants to memorize the same kinds of lengthy Lists of Questions and Answers that we do. I know there are jurisdictions where Ritual is ALWAYS read, and well read by Brethren with all of an Orator's skills.
Heaven knows, there are so many books on Freemasonry in print today that not even Marcus Vitruvius could memorize them all. But, I think we need to do a couple of things "For the Good of the Craft". I think we seriously need to start demanding more of ourselves, in terms of memory work and general Masonic knowledge. I think we need to pay more attention when attending Lodge and Chapter and so on. I think we need to spend more time with our Candidates, and make sure that they spend more time with the Lectures.
I think we need to spend less time with "labour-saving devices", and more time training. For those of us who are approaching the ends of our Masonic careers, one of the most serious hazards we face is a thing called "dementia". It's not a single disease of the mind, it's a loose grouping of several kinds of mental changes, that can take us away from all of those things we love to share with each other. And there is one free treatment that can help prevent those mental changes from taking us away from each other "too soon". It's called "studying". So, make the effort to keep learning, to keep your mind open to new things, and to keep the older things new. Teach our younger Brethren and Companions not only that they need to study, but that they need to study always. Maybe we can learn, together, to be the kind of men, like Marcus Vitruvius and DaVinci and Julius Caesar, who will be worth remembering, in two thousand years.
Copyright 2004 J. Douglas Welsh
Delivered to: George S. Wright Chapter # 27
December 7, 2004
Note: Anyone wishing to use this lecture has the permission of R.Ex.Comp. J. Douglas Welsh to use it but credit must be given to The Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of Nova Scotia for it's use.