The moment the door had opened and the unknown person had come in, Pierre had experienced a sensation of awe and reverence the like of which he used to feel at confession in childhood; here he was face to face with a man who, according to the circumstances of everyday life, was a complete stranger, yet he was also a close neighbour through the brotherhood of men. Pierre’s heart was beating so fast that he could hardly breathe as he turned to the ‘tyler’ (a masonic term for a brother who prepares a ‘seeker’ for entry into the fraternity). As he got nearer to the tyler, Pierre realized that he knew him – his name was Smolyaninov – and he felt mortified to discover that the newcomer was someone he knew; when he had entered he had been nothing but a brother and mentor along the path of virtue. For a long while Pierre could not get any words out, so the tyler had to repeat his question.
‘Yes. I . . . I . . . seek regeneration.’ Pierre was forcing the words out.
‘Very good,’ said Smolyaninov, and went on at once.
‘Do you have any concept of the means by which our sacred order will assist you in achieving your goal? . . .’ asked the tyler calmly but rapidly.
‘I, er . . . hope for . . . guidance . . . er, help . . . in regeneration,’ Pierre stammered, his voice quavering partly from emotion but also from not being accustomed to using Russian for abstract subjects.
‘What concept do you have of freemasonry?’
‘I presume that freemasonry means fraternity and the equality of men with virtuous aims,’ said Pierre, embarrassed even as he spoke by the discrepancy between what he was saying and the solemnity of the occasion. ‘I presume . . .’
‘Very good,’ said the tyler hastily, evidently happy with this response. ‘Have you sought the means of achieving your goal in religion?’
‘No. I regarded that as untrue and I have not followed it,’ said Pierre, so quietly that the tyler could not hear, and asked what he was saying. ‘I have been an atheist,’ answered Pierre.
‘You seek the truth in order to follow its laws in life, and therefore you seek wisdom and virtue, do you not?’ asked the tyler after a moment’s pause.
‘Yes, yes,’ Pierre agreed.
The tyler cleared his throat, folded his gloved hands across his chest and launched forth.
‘I am about to reveal to you the main aim of our order,’ he said, ‘and if that aim coincides with yours, you shall enter our brotherhood with advantage. The first and principal aim and also the very basis of our order, on which it is established and which no human force can overturn, is the preservation and handing down to posterity of a certain solemn mystery . . . that has come down to us from the most ancient times, even from the first man, a mystery upon which depends, perhaps, the destiny of the human race. But since this mystery is such that no one can know it and profit from it without being prepared by prolonged and assiduous self-purification, not everyone can hope to acquire it rapidly. Thus we have a secondary aim, which consists in preparing our members as far as possible to reform their hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds by those means which have been revealed to us through tradition by men who have laboured to attain this mystery, and thereby to make them proper for reception of the same. Through the purification and regeneration of our members we endeavour, in the third place, to reform the whole human race by offering to it in our members models of piety and virtue, and thereby we commit all our strength to combat the evil that reigns throughout the world. Think on these things, and I shall come to you again.’ This said, he left the room.
‘To combat the evil that reigns throughout the world,’ Pierre repeated, and he could see before him his future activity in that domain. He could see men such as he had been only two weeks before, and he began to address them in his mind as teacher and mentor. He imagined people who were sinful and unhappy but who could be helped in word and in deed, and also oppressors whose victims could be rescued. Of the three aims set out by the tyler it was the last one – the reformation of the human race – that particularly appealed to Pierre. The solemn mystery which the tyler had spoken of may have excited his curiosity, but it didn’t strike him as really substantial, while the second aim, self-purification and personal regeneration, held little interest because at that moment he was relishing a sense of having completely renounced all his former vices and standing ready for nothing but goodness.
Half an hour later the tyler returned to instruct the seeker in the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of the temple of Solomon, which every freemason must cultivate in himself. These were: 1
