icant is merely a lucid interval, which
physicians know to be sometimes vouched to lunatics, with the absolute
certainty, or at best, the strong probability, of an eventual return to a
state of mental derangement, he is not, of course, qualified for
initiation. But if there has been a real and durable recovery (of which a
physician will be a competent judge), then there can be no possible
objection to his admission, if otherwise eligible. We are not to look to
what the candidate once was, but to what he now is.

Dotage, or the mental imbecility produced by excessive old age, is also a
disqualification for admission. Distinguished as it is by puerile desires
and pursuits, by a failure of the memory, a deficiency of the judgment,
and a general obliteration of the mental powers, its external signs are
easily appreciated, and furnish at once abundant reason why, like idiots
and madmen, the superannuated dotard is unfit to be the recipient of our
mystic instructions.

Section IV.

_Of the Political Qualifications of Candidates._

The Constitutions of Masonry require, as the only qualification referring
to the political condition of the candidate, or his position in society,
that he shall be _free-born_. The slave, or even the man born in
servitude--though he may, subsequently, have obtained his liberty--is
excluded by the ancient regulations from initiation. The non-admission of
a slave seems to have been founded upon the best of reasons; because, as
Freemasonry involves a solemn contract, no one can legally bind himself to
its performance who is not a free agent and the master of his own actions.
That the restriction is extended to those who were originally in a servile
condition, but who may have since acquired their liberty, seems to depend
on the principle that birth, in a servile condition, is accompanied by a
degradation of mind and abasement of spirit, which no subsequent
disenthralment can so completely efface as to render the party qualified
to perform his duties, as a Mason, with that "freedom, fervency, and
zeal," which are said to have distinguished our ancient Brethren.
"Children," says Oliver, "cannot inherit a free and noble spirit except
they be born of a free woman."

The same usage existed in the spurious Freemasonry or the Mysteries of the
ancient world. There, no slave, or men born in slavery, could be
initiated; because, the prerequisites imperatively demanded that the
candidate should not onl