no doubt that the
requisition of Masonry is and always has been, that admission could only
be granted to him who was neither deformed nor dismembered, but of hale
and entire limbs as a man should be.

But another, and, as Blackstone terms it, "the most universal and
effectual way of discovering the true meaning of a law" is, to consider
"the reason and spirit of it, or the cause which moved the legislator to
enact it." Now, we must look for the origin of the law requiring physical
perfection, not to the formerly operative character of the institution,
(for there never was a time when it was not speculative as well as
operative,) but to its symbolic nature. In the ancient temple, every stone
was required to be _perfect_, for a perfect stone was the symbol of truth.
In our mystic association, every Mason represents a stone in that
spiritual temple, "that house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens," of which the temple of Solomon was the type. Hence it is
required that he should present himself, like the perfect stone in the
material temple, a perfect man in the spiritual building. "The symbolic
relation of each member of the Order to its mystic temple, forbids the
idea," says Bro. W.S. Rockwell, of Georgia,[60] "that its constituent
portions, its living stones, should be less perfect or less a type of
their great original, than the immaculate material which formed the
earthly dwelling place of the God of their adoration." If, then, as I
presume it will be readily conceded, by all except those who erroneously
suppose the institution to have been once wholly operative and afterwards
wholly speculative, perfection is required in a candidate, not for the
physical reason that he may be enabled to give the necessary signs of
recognition, but because the defect would destroy the symbolism of that
perfect stone which every Mason is supposed to represent in the spiritual
temple, we thus arrive at a knowledge of the causes which moved the
legislators of Masonry to enact the law, and we see at once, and without
doubt, that the words _perfect youth_ are to be taken in an unqualified
sense, as signifying one who has "his right limbs as a man ought to
have."[61]

It is, however, but fair to state that the remaining clause of the old
charge, which asserts that the candidate must have no maim or defect that
may render him incapable of learning the art, has been supposed to intend
a modification of the word "perfect," and to perm