Abhandlung über die allgemeine Zusammenkunft der Freymaurer, bei den Gesundbrunnen in Wilhelmsbad

bonds tie us step by step to those who have given us life; then to those who have rested under the same heart as us; then to those who were the playmates of our childhood; finally to those who thank us for their existence, and ultimately to the common mother, to the fatherland. (f)

In the midst of these great societies, we see narrower alliances arise and increase. Alliances among people who pursue the same nourishment for their maintenance. Of this kind are the connections among artists and craftsmen. Alliances of a nobler sort, which watch over the welfare or the defense of the state, such as the corps of the courts of justice and the armies. Other more pious alliances, which make the religious service of the Supreme Being their special business. All these societies

(f) original Latin: "Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares..." Parents are dear, children are dear, relatives and friends; but the one fatherland has embraced all the loves of everyone. Cicero, On Duties, Book I. Chapter 17.

cannot exist without laws, and human weakness has willed it that these laws could not be limited merely to moral precepts. One has felt forced to write the penal law with an iron stylus alongside the moral precepts.

All the laws that have been invented are drawn from one primary source: from a feeling of justice which the Supreme Being has implanted in all humans, and this is called the Law of Nature. As long as man heard the divine voice that reminded him of this feeling, he needed no other law. But as soon as corruption seized his heart, as soon as envy, jealousy, hatred, greed, avarice, intemperance, and unchastity had plugged his ears with a hundred hellish hands, he ceased to obey this holy voice and abandoned himself to all the excesses of unrestrained desires. Then public safety and domestic peace disappeared. What the hand of the industrious had built, the hand of the lazy reaped as fruit. The stronger drove the weaker from his little hut; the devious robbed the careless of their herds. One saw humans strangled by humans to snatch a straw bed from a quiet couple, and streams of blood flowed to satisfy a bestial desire. These were the first crimes