THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES.
23
only about a couple of hundred years after the deatli of King Suloniou himself. But inasmuch
as there are no grounds whatever for impugning the authentic character of that work as
connected with periods much more remote, this would give to sjieculative Masonry a far
In a famous canonical work, called the
higher antiquity than has ever yet been claimed."
"
Great Leakning," which Dr Legge says may be safely referred to the fifth century before
we read that a man should abstain from doing unto
"
should do unto him " and this," adds the writer, is called
our
era,^
;
Mr
others what he would not they
the principle of acting on the
square."quotes from Confucius, B.C. 481, and from his great follower,
who flourished nearly two hundred years later. In the writings of the last-named
Mencius,
philosopher, it is taught that men should apply the square and compasses figuratively to their
lives,
and the
Giles
level
also
and the marking-line besides,
if
of his
they would walk in the straight and even
virtue.
In Book VI.
and keep themselves within the bounds of honour and
philosophy we find these words
paths of wisdom,
:
"A master mason, in teaching hi.s apprentices, makes use of the compasses and tlie square.
^
engaged in the pursuit of wisdom must also make use of the compasses and the square."
Ye who
are
and meaning, are extremely obscure.
The
authorities differ as to the exact period of its introduction into Kome, Von Hammer placing it
at B.C. 68,* whilst by other historians a later date has been assigned.
It speedily, however,
The worship of Mithras,
became
its
origin,
rites,
so popular as, with the earlier-imported
Serapis worship, to have entirely usurped
the place of the ancient Hellenic and Italian deities.
In fact, during the second and third
centuries of the Empire, Serapis and Mithras
may
be said to have become the sole objects of
"
There is very good reason to
worship, even in the remotest corners of the Pioman world.^
"
that as in the East the worship of Serapis was at first combined
believe," says Mr King,
with Christianity, and gradually merged into it with an entire change of name, not substance,
carrying with it many of its ancient notions and rites so in the West a similar influence was
;
There
exerted by the Mithraic religion.^
is
no record of their
final
overthrow, and
many have
"
"
supposed that the faith in Median Mithras survived into comparatively modern times in
heretical and semi-pagan forms of Gnosticism
although, as Mr Elton points out, we must
;
authority was destroyed or confined to the country districts when the pagan
worships were finally forbidden by law.'^
The cult of Mithras, says Von Hammer, ought to be considered at two different epochs
assume that
its
—
1st, at its origin in the time of the ancient Persian
tions that
it
assumed in the
first
monarchy
;
and next, with the modifica-
four centuries of the Christian era.^
The Mithraism
of the Zend-Avesta, or of the sacred writings of the Persians, attributed to
the great reformer of the Persian religion, and that of the period to which the
Zoroaster,
Eoman Mithraic monuments belong, seems to have had more of a mythological than of an
'
'
'
The Chinese
Classics,
voh
i.,
Proleg., p. 27.
Giles,
Freemasonry in China,
p. 8.
Legge, Chinese Classics, vol.
Giles,
Freemasonry in China,
p. 6.
Dr Legge
says
:
i.
(The Great Learning, pp. 219-245).
" The
year of Mencius's birth was probably the fourth of
He lived to the age of eighty-four, dying in the year B.C. 288. The first twenty-three
thus synchronised with the last twenty-three of Plato. Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Demosthenes, and
"
of t