No, I do not belong to a Church nor to any Secret Society. I do not belong to anything, except the East Aurora Hook and Ladder Company.
Why should any one who is free, belong? Of course I am a member of the Society of Philistines, but as I can resign at any time if there appears an item in the Magazine [The Philistine, which he edited] I do not like, it cannot be said that I really belong. To belong employs that some one has a rope fastened to your foot. And furthermore, I do not want any one to "belong" to me. I would hold my friend only by the virtue that is in me--by the attraction of the worth that is in my soul.
Still, I might belong to a Secret Society if there was wisdom to be gained thereby that could not be gotten in any other way. But mark you this, Dearie, there is no Secret Society that has corralled truth. Truth is in the air, and when your head gets into the right stratum you know it. No one can impart it to you until the time is ripe, and when the time is ripe for you to know, you do not have to ride a Goat in order to understand. God's Eternal Truth is not to be secured that way.
Darwin says the herding instinct in animals has its base in fear.
Sheep and cattle go in droves, while a lion simply flocks with his mate- -and lets it go at that. Frederick Nietzsche writes in his Third Essay on the "Genealogy of Morals" "Prompted by a desire to cast off depression and impotence, the sickly and weak instinctively strive for gregarious organization. Those who wish to lead have always fostered fear, encouraging this tendency to herd, promising protection and offering to impart valuable knowledge in return for a luxurious livelihood."
The Jiner instinct in man is a manifestation of weakness, not strength. It is a clutch to get something for nothing, a grab at good which you have not earned.
By going with a gang you hope to grow wise. But while wisdom has sometimes come to men in solitude, it is not to be found in the crowd. I am opposed on principle to secrets. Is truth a thing to hide in a ginger jar on a high shelf? You are welcome to all the good I can impart, if you are in possession of truth that the world needs and you keep it back, you are not my kind.
But the fact is, you can't. In years agone, when every man's hand was against his neighbor, it was proper and right for men to unite with other men in order to stand against a common foe. Clan fought clan with tooth and nail, and to despoil and rob and kill was the right of him who could-- and to further this sort of thing, Secret Societies and their shibboleths and passwords and signs and grips came into being. Secret Societies are a product of savagery, and the fact that they exist is proof of our origin. All men are my brothers, not just those who belong.
Of course I do not claim that Secret Societies are savage institutions now. On the contrary they are quite toothless, innocent affairs where men meet for frolic and good fellowship. As social institutions they are all right; but bless your soul! they have no "secrets."
The answer to that last remark, I know full well, is,"How do you know, since you do not belong?"
And so I will say, well, I know the men who do. They are pretty good fellows, too. One of them who has attained the 48th Degree in something owns the farm next to mine, and in summer we often go swimming together in the creek. When we stand upon the bank, stripped, ready to dive off into th' ole swimmin' hole, I'll defy Herr Tuefelsdroch, or any of his Disciples, to tell which biped holds in his epidermis the Great Secret Doctrine.
Does my neighbor possess Spiritual Truth that I do not?
No, Dearie. He is a nice man, but he is not in possession of any great South African Spiritual gems. If he were it would make him round- shouldered to carry them. lAnd the virtue of my neighbor lies in the fact that when we are alone together, he confesses that all his jining has given him no insight into the Mystery of Things. He jines out of pure sociability.
Then there are various other worthy men in town who belong to Lodges. I know two dozen of them or more. I have known some of them for twenty years, and have been with them under every vicissitude of life. I buy oats and hay of them; and when they bring me potatoes the scrubby ones are often in the bottom of the bag. I meet these Jiners at the Grocery, or the Station when we go down to see the four-o'clock train come in; I often pitch horse shoes with them, and surely I would be base to insinuate that anything was wrong in their Secret Society doin's.
All the point I wish to make is that they are not much beyond me in esoteric truth, for I usually turn the bag of tubers out on the barn floor before I make a price on them. One reason why I criticise Secret Societies is that they, for the most part, exclude women. If a thing is good, the man who would hide it away from the woman he loves is only a 2 x 4; and if a thing is no good and he pretends to Her it is, and keeps it on a high shelf, he is still a 2 x 4--and both are aware of it.
Very much has been said by the Funny Press about attending Lodge and the consequent marital infelicity that sometimes follows; but the joke is founded on a very grim and lamentable fact. Secret Societies tend to separate sexes in their mental occupations, and this is the most grievous count that can be brought against them. Men and women should commune intellectually: to lovey-dovey is not enough. Only to lovey-dovey is to hate afterwards. Where men and women meet only to lovey-dovey, society is essentially barbaric; and where the mails monopolize, or think, or pretend to think, that they monopolize wisdom, there is small hope for progress. Man cannot advance and leave woman behind. And the one point of congratulation in this whole Secret Society business is that Secret Societies have no secrets that are worth a tuppenny dam. The wisdom that is among them is free to any man or woman who can absorb it.
I have met a few men and women in my lifetime who were in
possession of valuable Spiritual Truth. And I knew it, not from what they
said, but because there shone from their faces a light, and from their
persons there went a radiance, and in all their actions was a dignity that
gave their words weight. But these rare beings did not "belong"--they were
themselves, and they were great because they were. Into their souls there
had been absorbed a goodly meed of the Divine Spirit. Let's keep the
windows open to the East, be worthy, and sometime we shall know.