s are solid geometry.
Music, of all arts the most divine and exalting, moves with measured
step, using geometrical figures, and cannot free itself from numbers
without dying away into discord. Surely it is not strange that a
science whereby men obtained such glimpses of the unity and order of
the world should be hallowed among them, imparting its form to their
faith.[100] Having revealed so much, mathematics came to wear mystical
meanings in a way quite alien to our prosaic habit of thinking--faith
in our day having betaken itself to other symbols.

Equally so was it with the art of building--a living allegory in which
man imitated in miniature the world-temple, and sought by every
device to discover the secret of its stability. Already we have shown
how, from earliest times, the simple symbols of the builder became a
part of the very life of humanity, giving shape to its thought, its
faith, its dream. Hardly a language but bears their impress, as when
we speak of a Rude or Polished mind, of an Upright man who is a Pillar
of society, of the Level of equality, or the Golden Rule by which we
would Square our actions. They are so natural, so inevitable, and so
eloquent withal, that we use them without knowing it. Sages have
always been called Builders, and it was no idle fancy when Plato and
Pythagoras used imagery drawn from the art of building to utter their
highest thought. Everywhere in literature, philosophy, and life it is
so, and naturally so. Shakespeare speaks of "square-men," and when
Spenser would build in stately lines the Castle of Temperance, he
makes use of the Square, Circle, and Triangle:[101]

/P
The frame thereof seem'd partly circulaire
And part triangular: O work divine!
Those two the first and last proportions are;
The one imperfect, mortal, feminine.

The other immortal, perfect, masculine,
And twixt them both a quadrate was the base,
Proportion'd equally by seven and nine;
Nine was the circle set in heaven's place
All which compacted made a goodly diapase.
P/

During the Middle Ages, as we know, men revelled in symbolism, often
of the most recondite kind, and the emblems of Masonry are to be found
all through the literature, art, and thought of that time. Not only on
cathedrals, tombs, and monuments, where we should expect to come upon
them, but in the designs and decorations of dwellings, on vases,
pottery, and trinkets, in the water-marks used by paper-makers an