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tised 18 chiefly due to Webb (1771-1819), and to Cross (178^1861).

In France and Germany, at the beginning Masonry was practised according to the English ritual (Pridi- ard, ^' Masonry Dissected '.', 1730) ; but so-called "Scot- tish " Masonry soon arose. Only nobles being then reputed admissible in good society as fully qualified members, the Masonic gentlemen's society was inter- preted as a society of GeniUahommea, i. e.. of noblemen or at legist of men ennobled or knighted by their very admission into the order, which according to the old English ritual still in use, is "more honourable than the Golden Fleece, or the Star or Garter or any other Order under the Sun ". The pretended association of Masonry with the orders of the warlike knights and of the religious was far more acceptable than the idea of development out of stone-cutters' guilds. Hence an oration delivered by the Scottish Chevalier Ramsay before the Grand Lodge of France in 1737 and in- serted by Tierce into his first French edition of the "Book of Constitutions" (1743) as an "oration of the Grand Master", was epoch-making (Gould, "Concise History", 274 sq., 357 sq.; Boos, 174 sa.). In this oration Masonnr was dated from " the close associa- tion of the order with the Knights of St. John in Jerusalem" during the Crusades; and the "old lod^ of Scotland " were said to have preserved this genume Masonry, lost by the English. Soon after 17^, how- ever, as occult sciences were ascribed to the Templars, their system was readily adaptable to all kinds of Rosicrucian purposes and to sucn practices as alchemy, magic, cabbala, spiritism, and necromancy. The sup- pression of the order together with the story of the urand Master James Molay and its pretended revival in Masonry, reproduced in the Hiram legend, repre- senting the fall and the resurrection of the just or the suppression and the restoration of the natural rights of man 2 fitted in admirably with both Christian and revolutionary high grade systems. The principal Templar systems of the eighteenth centuiy were the system of the "Strict Observance", organized by the swindler Rosa and propagated by the enthusiast von Hundt; and the Swedish system, made up of French and Scottish degrees in Sweden.

In both systems obedience to unknown superiors was promis^. The supreme head of these Templar systems, which were rivals to each other, was falsely supposed to be the Jacobite Pretender, Charles Ed- ward, who himself declared in 1777, that he had never been a Mason (Handbuch, 2nd ed., II, 100). Almost all the lodges of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia were, in the second half of the eighteenth century, involved in the struggle between these two systems. In the lodees of France and other countries (Abafi, 1, 132) the aomission of women to lodge meet- ings occasioned a scandalous immorality (Boos, 170. 183 sqq., 191). The revolutionary spint manifested itself early in French Masonry. Already in 1746 m the book " LaFranc-Magonnerie dcras4e ", an experienced ex -Mason, who, when a Mason, had visited many lodges in France and England, and consulted high Masons in official position, described as the true Masonic pro^mme a programme which, according to Boos, the historian of Freemasonry (p. 192), in an astonishing degree coincides with the programme of the great French Revolution of 1789. In 1776 this revolu- tionary spirit was brought into Germany by Weisshaupt through a conspiratory system, which soon spread throughout the coimt^ (see Illuminati, and Boos, 303). Charles Augustus of Saxe-Weimar, Duke Ernest of Gotha, Ihike Ferdinand of Brunswick, Goethe, Herder. Pestalozzi, etc., are mentioned as members of this order of the Illuminati. Very few of the members, however, were initiated into the higher de^ees. The French Illuminati included Condorcet, the Duke of Orleans, Mirabeau, and Siey&s (Robertson, "Chr.", 1907, II, 95; see also Engel, ''^Gesch. des Illuminaten-

ordens", 1906). After the Conmes of Wilhelmsbade (1782) reforms were made both in Germany and in France. The principal German reformers, L. Schroder (Hambun) and I. A. Fessler, tried to restore the ord- inal simpficity and purity. The system of Schroder m actually practised by the Grand Lodge of Hambuig, and a modified system (Schroder-Fessler) by the Grand Lodge Royal York (Berlin) and most lodges of the Grand Lodge of Bayreuth and Dresden. Tl^ Grand Lod^ of Frankfort-on-the-Main and Darm- stadt practise an eclectic system on the basis of the English ritual (BauhUtte. 1908, 337 sqo.). Except the Grand Lodge Koyal York, which has Scottish "Inner Orients" and an Innermost Orient 'J, the others re- pudiate high degrees. The largest Grand Lodge of Germany, the National (Berlin), practises a rectified Scottish (Strict Observance) system of seven degrees and the "Landes Grossloge and Swedish system of nine degrees. The same system is practised by the Grand Lodge of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. These two systems stUl declare Masonry a Christian institution and with the Grand Lodge Royal York refuse to initiate Jews. Findel states that the princi- pal reason is to prevent Masonry from being domi- nated by a people whose strong racial attachnients are incompatible with the imsecterian character of the institution (Sign., 1898, 100; 1901, 63 sqq.; 1902, 39; 1905, 6).

The principal system in the United States (Charles- ton, South Carolina) is the so-called Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, organised in 1801 on the basis of the French Scottish Rite of perfection, which was established by the Council of the Emperors of the East and West (Paris, 1 758). This system. which was prop- agated tiiroughout the world, may oe considered as the revolutionary type of the French Templar Ma-. sonry, fighting for the natural rights of man against religious and political despotisms, symbolized by the pa{Md tiara and a royal crown. It strives to exert a preponderant influence on the other Masonic bodies, wherever it is established. This influence is insured to it in the Grand Orient systems of Latin coimtries; it is felt even in Britain and Canada, where the supreme chiefs of craft Masonry are also, as a rule, prominent members of the Supreme Councils of the Scottish Rite. There are at the present time (1908) twenty-six uni- versally recognized Supreme Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite: U.S. of America: South- em Jurisdiction (Washington), established in 1801; Northern Jurisdiction (Bc^n), 1813; Argentine Re- public (Buenos Aires), 1858; Belgium (Brussels), 1817; Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), 1829; Chile (Santiago), 1870; Colon, for West India Islands (Havana), 1879; Columbia (Cartagena): Dominican Republic (S. Do- mingo) ; England (London), 1845; Egypt (Cairo), 1878; France (Paris), 1804; Greece (Athens), 1872; Guate- mala (for Central American), 1870; Ireland (Dublin), 1826; Italy (Florence), 1858; Mexico (1868); Para- guay (Asuncion); Peru (Lima), 1830; Portugal (Lis- bon). 1869; Scotland (Edinburgh), 1846; Spain (Madrid), 1811; Switzerland (Lausanne), 1873; ITru- ffuay (Montevideo); Venezuela (Caracas). Supreme Councils not universally recognized exist in Hungary, Luxemburg, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turkey. The founders of the rite, to give it a great splendour, invented the fable that Frederick II, King of Prussia, was its true founder, and this fable upon the authority of Pike and Mackey is still maintained as probable in the last edition of Mackey's "Encyclopedia" (1008), 392 sq.

V. Organization and Statistics. — ^The character- istic feature of the organization of speculative Masonry is the Grand Lodse system founded in 1717. Every regular Grand Lodge or Supreme Council in the Scot- tisn, or Grand Orient in the mixed system, constitutes a supreme independent body with legislative, judicial, and executive powers. It is composed of the lodges or