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

scattered in the other animals. We wish to draw from this truth a useful precept for the social connections of men, which can be applied particularly to the society of Freymaurer Freemasons. However, we first wish to establish a second truth, which becomes very comforting through the consequences that can be derived from it, namely: That man, as a privilege over all animals, possesses the intellectual powers which give him the authority to tame his perverse passions, so that the most flawed man who makes use of this authority, which is called Reason, can through it become a venerable model of virtue. Socrates confessed that he had come into the world with the most unbridled desires, and Socrates was a wise man, perhaps the only wise man who has never been reproached for an error. That is a very striking example of that touching truth: that one can become master over one's passions. All those who read this will, if they go into themselves, if they run through the events of their lives in their memory, confess that more than once this rational reflection has prevented them from committing an act for which they would have had to blush. To blush? That is the most important proof of the truth of what I say. It is Reason which has mixed this red on the palette of virtue in order to color the brow of the man

who regrets not having heard its voice.

Let us come to the precept which I have announced.

Men are created to live in societies. Men are, according to their physical construction, subject to a destiny that leads them to vice or to virtue. Men have an active being within themselves that leads them away from vice toward virtue. One should therefore incessantly awaken this active being, in order to steer all the actions of men for the advantage and the best of society. If, however, in individual cases one cannot bring it to the point that this active being becomes effective enough against all human passions, then either these passions, which Reason could not dampen, threaten in a very dangerous way to tear the social bond, and then one must expel the incurably vicious person from society; or these passions are of the kind that they do no noticeable harm to society, and then one must understand the art of steering them themselves to the advantage of society, just as ambition makes the soldier overcome a hundred dangers.

If the utility of this precept in Freemasonry is clear to us, we will find

The author uses the example of Socrates to argue that Reason allows humans to overcome their biological impulses. He suggests that society should either reform individuals, expel the incorrigible, or channel selfish passions like ambition into productive social uses.