Freemasonry as the Nucleus of the Human League—Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s Interpretation of Regular Freemasonry as a Precursor of a Cosmopolitan Civil Society

Abstract

In the spirit of global governance, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause saw the Masonic Brotherhood as the first historical seed for the realization of a global, participatory, Human League; to establish and maintain a state of true humanity. And he saw the most excellent sign of this connection between Freemasonry and cosmopolitan civil society in the allegory of the “Great General Lodge”. However, in order to be able to do justice to its historical task of establishing the Human League, according to Krause, Freemasonry needs to reform itself according to its original ideal, overcome its pupal stage caused by the caterpillar status of medieval construction huts, and grow into a butterfly.

1. Introduction

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) left posterity an impressive and astonishingly contemporary work of philosophical creativity.1 It not only covers numerous themes in theoretical and practical philosophy,2 but may also be understood in terms of the history of philosophy as one of the first works from a European pen, which, in the sense of an intercultural philosophy, acknowledges the Indian roots of European thought in their systematic significance. It combines them with Platonic metaphysics, and Kant’s transcendental philosophy, to form a unified system of philosophy.3

Krause’s works published during his lifetime, and his unpublished writings and manuscript legacy, await a historical–critical complete edition and broad reception and appreciation in German philosophy. After a brief peak phase of German Krausism in the 19th century, which included Hermann von Leonhardi, Heinrich Simon Lindemann, Heinrich Ahrens, Carl Röder, August Wunsch, and Paul Hohlfeld, among others, attention turned away from Krause.4 This is astonishing, since Krausism was quite powerful, and operated at the forefront of modernity. The Krausists were not only closely linked to the General German Women’s Association (Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenverein) and the Froebelian General Educational Association (Allgemeinen Erziehungsverein), and there campaigned for equal rights for women and the rights of children, but they also organized international philosophers’ congresses: in Prague in 1868, and in Frankfurt am Main in 1869.5 The lack of engagement with Krause, in German philosophy, is all the more astonishing when one considers not only that Krause wrote groundbreaking works in the areas of logic, animal ethics, and legal philosophy, for example,6 but when one also considers his influence in Spain and Latin America.

In Spain and Latin America, Krause is considered one of the greatest German philosophers of all. The reason for the appreciation there is that Krause’s philosophy was an essential driving force of Spanish and Latin American modernity and enormously influenced, if not made possible, parts of Latin American liberation philosophy and theology, such as that elaborated in the work of Lucio Gero.7 Even the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known to the general public as Pope Francis, shows, subcutaneously, clear traces of Krause’s influence on his thinking. This is particularly clear in the encyclicals Laudato Si, and Fratello Tutti.8 As Wollgast (1990, p. 71) puts it succinctly: “No German philosopher has influenced the intellectual development of Spain, and large parts of Latin America, as strongly as Krause.”9 The enormous historical influence of Krause’s philosophy on Iberian and Latin American thought, right up to the pontificate of Francis, may be rightly interpreted as an indication of the ongoing purely philosophical appeal of Krause’s philosophy. But such an interpretation of the history of the impact of Krausismo would necessarily remain incomplete if it did not expressis verbis illuminate the influence of the Royal Art on the young Jena thinker, beyond the profane philosophical traditions to which Krause was committed. The Royal Art, nolens volens, has conveyed itself into modern philosophical thought through Krause’s philosophy, dressed in the garb of German idealism.

2. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause and Freemasonry

To be able to understand the role that Freemasonry played in Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s life, it is necessary to cast a brief historical glance at the developments in the Brotherhood of Freemasons in the German states that occurred shortly before and after the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

2.1. The Dispute over the Direction of the Freemasons’ Fraternity During Krause’s Time

Since the 1760s, Freemasonry had split into various currents, the largest parts of which, the Strict Observance, the Clerical System, and the Swedish System, were based on the High Degree System of French provenance. These treated Freemasonry, in one form or another, as a continuation of the Templar Order. This self-image of Freemasonry not only led to an almost complete separation of German and English Freemasonry, and thus to the general subjugation of the Degrees of St. John, but also to the idea of unknown superiors, and to a weakening of the boundaries between Masonic and pseudo-Masonic groups.10 As a result, the mood in parts of the Brotherhood was characterized by dissatisfaction and disorientation with regard to the origins and purpose of Freemasonry. This prompted Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick to convene the Wilhelmsbad Convention (Wilhelmsbader Konvent) in 1782. This aimed to clarify the question of the historical relationship between Freemasonry and the Templar Order, and further thought to provide a uniform framework for the different obediences of the Masonic craft.11 Although the Wilhelmsbad Convention agreed to no longer view Freemasonry as a historical continuation of the Templar Order, it was unable to provide a unified framework for the different currents of Freemasonry in Germany.12 However, through Franz Dietrich von Ditfurth, it led to the founding of the “Eclectic League” (Eklektischen Bundes) in 1783. The name was originally intended to be “The Restoration of the r.a. Lodges associated with the old Freemasonry” (Die zur Wiederherstellung der k.K. der alten Freimaurerei verbundenen Logen). (Fischer 1886, p. 14f) fixes the direction of the Eclectic League: its meaning and purpose are to return to the origins of Freemasonry and, following English Freemasonry, to promote the recognition of only the work in the three Degrees of St. John as binding for the whole of Freemasonry, and to leave the work in the Higher Degrees to the freedom of the individual lodges.13

The agenda for the restoration of original Freemasonry, pushed forward by the Eclectic League, led, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, to understanding Freemasonry as a historically evolved society, for consciousness of its own historicity resulted in being the sine qua non of the intended restoration of Freemasonry. The pioneers who were committed to historical–critical self-enlightenment in this sense included the Brothers Schröder, Schneider, Fessler, and Moßdorf, around the year 1800. All of these located the historical origins of Freemasonry not in the Templar Order, but in the building lodges (Bauhütten) of the Middle Ages.

As pioneers of the restoring reformation of the Masonic Brotherhood, Schröder, Schneider, Fessler, and Moßdorf not only held important positions within Freemasonry, but also worked on the reformation of the Masonic Brotherhood through numerous publications. Nevertheless, they underestimated the resistance of influential Freemason Brothers who wanted to maintain the still-popular status quo of the Higher Degree systems at all costs. They attacked and, wherever possible, torpedoed the effectiveness of the reforming Brothers.14 In the search for its identity, Freemasonry in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century was threatened with being torn between the French Templar traditions with their High Degrees, and the English tradition with its Degrees of St. John:

At that time, the lodge system was, if one may say so, at the end of its Middle Ages, even many things from that time still seem ‘medieval’ to us. But the move to enter a new era had already begun […]. The comfortable silence, the sweet, and all too often, thoughtless and purposeless, ongoing life in the lodges was threatened. The turmoil had begun, but with it the strife, often quite unbrotherly strife, which escalated into open hatred and excessive passion.

(Klötzer 1881, pp. 9–10)

2.2. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause as a Reformer of the Masonic Brotherhood

Although the dispute over the direction Freemasonry should take had not gone unnoticed by Krause, in June 1804, motivated by the above-mentioned Brother Schneider, he sent an application for initiation to the Altenburg-based lodge “At the Three Drawing Boards” (Zu den drei Reißbrettern), and was initiated into the apprenticeship level on 5 April 1805, when the “reform ferment [had] reached its climax” (Ureña 1991, p. 157). On 31 October 1805, Krause was affiliated to the Dresden Lodge “At the Three Swords and True Friends”, and in the summer of 1806 he was promoted to the rank of Fellow Craft. In 1807 he was promoted to the degree of a Master Mason, elected Speaker of his lodge in 1808, and accepted as a trusted Brother into the Dresden-based “Great Association of Scientific Masons” (Großen Bund der szientifischen Maurer).15

Krause’s enthusiasm for Freemasonry was based on the fact that he saw essential insights into the humanity of the human hinted at in its symbolic world, even if the current state of the lodges did not appeal to him much.16 Since his admission in 1805, he, who said of Herder and Lessing that they “are to be viewed as his predecessors in Freemasonry” (Krause 1891, p. 131), for that reason devoted a large part of his energy to the research of the history of Freemasonry and its ritual-condensed philosophy, and was highly motivated to participate in the reformation of Freemasonry: “I cannot think about the rebirth, or rather higher birth, of our Brotherhood without my heart beating faster.” (Hohlfeld and Wünsche 1907, p. 369). Specifically, Krause decided “in September 1808 to write a historical-liturgical work just for the Brotherhood” (Krause 1820a, li). This work, which Krause published in 1810 under the title “The Three Oldest Craft Documents of the Freemason Brotherhood” (Die drei ältesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurerbrüderschaft) (hereafter: “Craft Documents”), was intended to show that Freemasonry, by its very nature, is a seed for a cosmopolitan and universal Human League, and, in the spirit of the reformation Zeitgeist, was intended to help “return this society to its true purpose (diese Gesellschaft zu ihrem wahren Zwecke zurückzuführen)” (Krause 1890, p. 276).17 In the Introduction, it says the following:)

Through this writing about the three oldest craft documents of the Masonic Brotherhood, the author intends in the first place: to enlighten the Brotherhood about its true history, clearly and without reservation, and to justify this enlightenment in particular through communication (Mitteilung), as well as through philological-critical and philosophical going through and explanation (Erklärung) of the Three Oldest Craft Documents. However, the author wishes to achieve this so that a second, higher purpose of this writing can be achieved all the more easily. In accordance with this, he intends to call on the Brotherhood to recognize the original concept and original image of the Human League (Urbegriffes und Urbildes des Menschheitbundes) on which it is based, and to give it a free, well-founded, and effective reason to do so.

(Krause 1820b, p. 1)

In order to justify this thesis, Krause tried to prove:

that the essence (Wesenheit) of Masonry and the Masonic Association […] is really depicted in their Three Oldest Craft Documents, although only as an idea (Ahnung); and that the words of these documents, unconsciously, and as though in a dormant seed, are based on those fundamental concepts and archetypes (Urbegriffe und Urbilder) (ideas and ideals) of humanity, of human life and of the Human League, which can and should be realized more essentially and beautifully (wesengemäßer und schöner verwirklichen können und sollen).

(Krause 1820b, p. 1)18

This work, with which Krause placed himself “at the head of the historical-reformist Freemasons” (Ureña 1991, p. 157), and whose sociological context is the reformation dispute within German Freemasonry in the years 1780 to 1810, was not only one of the first historical–critical appraisals of the history of the Freemasonry, but probably the most comprehensive attempt, to date, to support the reformation of German Freemasonry. To advance the Masonic Fraternity on the basis of a detailed historical–critical source analysis, and through philosophical reflections based on this, in the Craft Documents, Krause attacked “without any embellishment […] what he found to be antithetical to the Masonic fraternity of his time” and “unreservedly advocated fundamental reforms in accordance with its principles” (Ureña 1991, p. 150).

2.3. The Exclusion of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause

However, the reforming orientation of the Craft Documents was also the reason why Krause was removed from the lodge, “At the Three Swords and True Friends”, “for an indefinite period”, together with his friend and Brother Freemason Friedrich Moßdorf, in a hastily called meeting on 17 December 1810, on the Craft Documents, and in the personal presence of Krause. This was after ongoing political power struggles in the Brotherhood, in which lodges and grand lodges from all over the German-speaking area took part. The political tension that had accumulated in an unfortunate web of political machinations, over the past decades, between reformatory and anti-reformatory currents in Freemasonry, erupted.

The gradual process that would ultimately lead to Krause’s exclusion began in the fall of 1809 with a declaration of the Craft Documents within German Freemasonry, promoted by Friedrich Moßdorf but largely written by Krause himself. This triggered a storm of indignation among numerous brothers, as it was feared that Krause would not only present the Masonic Fraternity in a bad light through the publication, but would also reveal the secrets of Masonic life to the public, and undermine the arcane discipline within Freemasonry.19 Krause’s lodge, which had previously unanimously approved the declaration of the work, suddenly and unexpectedly found itself exposed to vehement invectives from various lodges and grand lodges, and was called upon to block the publication of the work by all means:

After several weeks, letters were received from the two lodges in Bautzen and Görlitz, and from the large provincial lodge in Hamburg, in which they expressed their displeasure with Brother Krause’s announced undertaking. They declared themselves against the publication of such a work for the reason that ‘the deepest secrets of the Brotherhood, and the history of its origin, would not only become known to all Brothers without exception, but would also be revealed to the non-Masonic world. This is completely contrary to the principles and regulations of the League, as well as to the obligations that everyone assumed when joining the League.’ They therefore called on our lodge to, if not completely suppress the work itself, at least to prevent its distribution.

(Hohlfeld and Wünsche 1907, pp. 474–75)

[On 9 January 1810] a letter was received from the three Grand Lodges of Berlin, which read as follows: […] We know well that the Order has enough legal means at its disposal to save its honor and fame, even in such incidents. But these means are violent, and that is precisely why we, dear Bros., fraternally and urgently call on you, for your own sake, to enable Bros. Mossdorf and Krause to give up their plans, and thereby calm the outraged minds of the Brother Freemasons everywhere and appease the indignation aroused in all the loyal lodges in Germany.

(Klötzer 1881, pp. 21–22)

The lodge “At the Three Swords and True Friends” initially stood behind Krause and Moßdorf, despite the vehement reactions. However, the political pressure on the Master of the Chair increased when, in February 1810, seven Brothers (following the exclusion threatened by the lodges and grand lodges involved) now threatened to leave the lodge in protest, if the publication of the Craft Documents was not blocked.20

Krause was surprised by the reactions of the lodges and the grand lodges involved because, on the one hand, from his point of view he did not intend to publish any secrets worth protecting,21 but had written the Craft Documents with good intentions, “to promote the well-being of my particular lodge and that of the Brotherhood in general to the best of my ability” (Krause 1890, p. 212).22 On the other hand, the work was not intended for the secular public anyway, but only for Brother Freemasons. Therefore, to ensure that only Freemason Brothers could receive a copy of the work, Krause even wanted to “mark each copy with a sequential number, and the name of the recipient, in his own hand, before it was issued” (Klötzer 1881, p. 30). Finally, Krause was annoyed because he had written his Craft Documents in the firm belief in the historical and philosophical truth about the Masonic Fraternity that could be found in it which, per se, was neither worthy nor capable of being kept secret. As Krause puts it:

In general, it is an unlawful demand by whatever authority that any Brother should first present his ideas about Freemasonry, and the Masonic Fraternity, to them; as if truth had to obtain permission from some authority to be entitled to be true; and as if truth required some other consideration than the consideration of reasons (des Ansehens der Gründe). The truth reveals itself, and whether only one, or thousands accept it does not make it truer.

(Klötzer 1881, p. 32)

With a firm belief in the reformative potential that lay untapped in his work to restore original Freemasonry, and with a clear conscience that the publication of his work would in no way violate Masonry’s duty of secrecy, Krause went ahead with the publication. But, in doing so, nolens volens, he only further fueled the discontent of his Dresden Brother Freemasons. They increasingly felt that they had been taken into collective punishment through Krause’s plans, and they felt subjected to the relentless pressure of the lodges involved:

The Berlin and Hamburg Grand Lodges and their followers […] continued to badger, undeterred. The Hamburg lodge wrote as unbrotherly and insultingly as possible: They considered the undertaking a betrayal, and found the lack of concern of the Three Swords Lodge about the daring piece even more incomprehensible than the one-sidedness of an apparent friend of truth (die Einseitigkeit eines einzelnen Wahrheitsfreundes).

(Klötzer 1881, p. 37)

Since Krause and Moßdorf did not want to shield the lodge voluntarily, in order to take the political pressure off their Dresden Brother Freemasons, the Master of the Chair saw no other course than to remove Krause and Moßdorf from their ranks, through a balloting on 17 December 1810. The outcome of this was foreseeable. The Master aimed in this way to preserve the internal unity of the lodge, and to put a stop to the tumult that had meanwhile completely separated itself from the content of the Craft Documents.23 Krause and Moßdorf were, in other words, sacrificed to the supposed unity of the lodge, which thereby thought to be back in communication with the lodges and grand lodges involved.24

Although Krause himself did not see the verdict as a formal exclusion from the Brotherhood of Freemasons,25 he was deeply affected and felt throughout his life “persecuted by the powerful Freemasons’ Association” (Krause 1890, p. 5). He held the Brotherhood largely responsible for the fact that he never succeeded in becoming a full professor (Ordinarius) at a German university:

Above all, since 1810, Masonic brothers and Masonic lodges have denigrated my writings, and have prevented them from becoming known, in every way. This is because they feared that the realm of mystery crypsis, and lodge despotism would be even more disturbed by my writings. And [they feared that] that the loveless and lawless behavior of the grand lodges and individual lodges and Brothers towards me would appear in all its worthlessness (Nichtswürdigkeit), if I achieved external reputation and external honor and dignity in some state (in irgend einem Staate), and if my scientific system (Wissenschaftsystem) were to find more general recognition: But all the spirits of Hell will not prevent this. The influence of the Masonic brothers and lodges on the learned newspapers in Germany is greater than most scholars even suspect.

(Krause 1890, p. 16)

2.4. Krause’s Rehabilitation in the Masonic Fraternity

The rehabilitation of Krause and Moßdorf was 71 years in the coming, and took place in light of a changing mood in German Freemasonry, on the eve of the long turn of the 19th to the 20th century:

On 21 March 1881, on the occasion of Krause’s centenary, a symbolic review of the process that had ended 71 years earlier with the expulsion of Krause, and [his friend] Mossdorf, took place in the Dresden Lodge. The secretary Br. Klötzer closed the sitting with the words: “Krause and Mossdorf were then removed from the lodge for an indefinite period of time: Well, the time is up. Return to the midst of the Brothers!” Krause and Mossdorf were then entered into the lodge’s “Golden Memorial Book” (Goldene Gedenkbuch). […] Finally, in 1881, a monument to Krause was unveiled by the Freemasons in Eisenberg. Eight lodges were represented by deputations.

(Ureña 1991, pp. 190–91)

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s relationship with the Freemasonry Brotherhood must ultimately be designated as a tragic one. Not only was Krause’s enthusiasm for the Freemason Brotherhood, in which he saw the first historical seed for the realization of a cosmopolitan Human League, almost destroyed by the political circumstances of his time, but his reforming efforts to restore what he saw as the original nature and purpose of Freemasonry failed, due to the resistance of his Freemason Brothers during his lifetime. They were to free Freemasonry from the “harmful, immoral hypocrisy and secrecy” (schädliche[n], unsittliche[n] Hehlsucht und Geheimniskrämerei) from which, in Krause’s view, it was “sickly ailing” (krank darnieder[lag]) at the beginning of the 19th century (Wollgast 1990, p. 9).

Until his early death in 1832, Krause was firmly convinced that he had left a worthy legacy to German Freemasonry in his Craft Documents, one that had yet to develop its potential:

This Masonic writing recognizes the current Masonic Fraternity as a society dedicated to pure humanity. It is not intended to harm this covenant, but to benefit it as none before. […] No one has honored this Brotherhood as highly as I have, by recognizing it as one of the seeds of the Human League, and undertaking to work effectively on it from this assumption.

(Krause 1890, pp. 213–14)26

Today, Krause’s Masonic writings are considered the first historical–critical hermeneutics of German Freemasonry, and Krause “stands as perhaps the greatest gift of German Freemasonry to the Masonic world. His progressive mind was ahead of his time” (Denslow 1959, p. 40f). Together with Lessing, he is understood as “the actual founder of that humanitarian-minded Freemasonry, which is a specifically German product”. This will be examined in more detail below.27

3. Krause on the Essence of the Brotherhood of Freemasons

According to Krause, what is special about the Brotherhood of Freemasons, in contrast to all other social institutions that are based on the principle of free association, is that it is the human being in the entirety of his existence who is the focus, and not the human being in a specific aspect of his humanity.

3.1. The Human as Human at the Heart of Freemasonry

While a functionally differentiated society is largely supported by a symbolically and ritually differentiated society, the distinguishing feature of Freemasonry is that it provides a ritualistic system for humans as humans, that encompasses all individual aspects of human existence. It is therefore to be understood as an expression of the general human art of living (see, for example, Krause 1820a, p. cxxxxv). As Krause puts it:

We have educational and cultural institutions for almost every single science and art, from which skilled men and virtuosos emerge. […] And yet all of this very respectable effort is aimed only at the development of individual powers, and individual organs of human nature, only at the achievement of individual parts of human determination. How easily the whole human being is forgotten because of these one-sided efforts. […] And yet the whole human being is more than individual powers, the health and harmony of the entirety of human nature is a greater good than the highest development of any of its individual faculties.

(Krause 1820b, p. 18)28

This is what sets our Brotherhood apart from all other social clubs and institutes. For all of these form the human being only in a single respect. Only a single part of human destiny constitutes the essence and territory of each of them. But none takes hold of the whole, undivided, human being. None encompasses the whole of human nature, and the whole of humanity in its entire life.

(Krause 1820b, p. 26)

Because it is the human being as a whole who is at the center of Freemasonry, and not the human being in the individual spheres of their existence, Krause can, in a first step, logically define the essence and determination of Freemasonry as humaneness and humanity (Menschlichkeit und Menschheit) per se:

The essence and determination of Freemasonry is humaneness (Menschlichkeit) and humanity (Menschheit). Someone is human (Menschlich) who lives as a whole, undivided being (Wesen), who develops all their powers and abilities uniformly and harmoniously, who wants the good, in free, pure, will, because it is good, and who lives in justice and love sociably with all people. Humaneness (Menschlichkeit) is the whole, harmonious, and undivided life of the whole human (menschlichen) nature in the human (im Menschen). Anyone who is human (menschlich) in this sense recognizes that humaneness (Menschlichkeit) can only be achieved in society; that family, friendship, and free social interaction are what give the individual a sphere of influence, as well as an invitation and opportunity to become a true human being in themselves.

(Krause 1820b, pp. 25–26)

For Krause, being able to live morally, as a whole and harmonic human being, requires, in keeping with the Bildung tradition of German philosophy,29 an art of practicing self-perfection. In this, the human being learns to harmoniously actualize and shape the potential within them. This inherent human potential, which awaits its realization and harmonious expression through work on the rough stone, is for Krause the ideals of practical reason. He defines these as the triad of religiosity (divinity), virtue, and sociability (Religiosität (Gottinnigkeit), Tugendhaftigkeit und Geselligkeit), and identifies them as the deep current of all philosophies and religions in the world. In order to be able to live as a whole and harmonious human being, people must learn to further develop godliness, virtue, and sociability in combination. And, in this endeavor, they are already in the middle of the field of Freemasonry. Because:

Freemasonry [is] the art of living as a truer and more whole human being, religiously, virtuously, and sociably, in the spirit of humanity (im Geiste der Menschheit). Also, the Masonic fraternity [is] the essential and imperishable institute of all humanity, which unites all people, in brotherly love and in constant diligence, as human beings to humanity (als Menschen zur Menschheit); an institute which, if it succeeded in becoming universal and perfect in itself, would transform all human beings into one great family.

(Krause 1820b, p. 9)30

The more the Masonic art of living is practiced, the more the individual person realizes the goal of a godly, just, and virtuous life in his person, and develops the morality of his person, the closer the person comes to the goal of the Masonic work of becoming a harmonious, and multi-faceted, accomplished, person:

The inner essence of Freemasonry, and the peculiar life of every Freemason, was, as it still is today, set as this: to be and to become a good, multi-faceted, accomplished, person out of pure love for the good, in a pure, free, never bowed will, and to be so far above all sensual and external drives towards the good and the beautiful that they do not appear as the goal of moral striving, nor are they the supports and sources of the moral forces.

(Krause 1820b, p. 4)31

Freemasonry, interpreted against this background, is an ideal form of life and art of living that is imprinted ab ovo on the human being’s humanity, the mythological roots of which are to be found wherever people approach the ideal of humanity, because “Freemasonry,” according to Krause, “is, in terms of its essence and striving (Wesen und Streben), [...] as old as humanity on earth” (Krause 1820b, p. 27). As Krause puts it:

The teaching is simple, but weighty in content: It has often resounded within you, and today we Brothers call it out to you, strengthened through the power of social love (geselliger Liebe): ‘Be human,’ it cried in the sanctuary of your mind (im Heiligthume Ihres Gemüthes), ‘practice the art of being fully human,’ is our fraternal invitation today.

(Krause 1820b, p. 55)

It follows that, for Krause, being truly human means nothing other than being a Freemason: “[If] the knowledge [about the nature of Freemasonry, BPG] does not take root in the heart as wisdom and bear fruit, then the human being (Mensch) is not capable of being and becoming a truly human being (Mensch), that is, a Freemason” (Krause 1820b, p. 5).

3.2. Being Truly Human, in and Through the Symbols of Freemasonry

In order to realize its essence as the driving force of harmonious and holistic human education (Bildung)32, in order to actually enable each individual, in the sense of a one-off exercise in humanity, to be able to work on their individual perfection and, through this, to be able to become effective in the world, Freemasonry, according to Krause, emphasizes that work on the perfection of one’s own existence is, above all, one thing: a long path, at the beginning of which self-knowledge, and readiness for self-development, must stand as the conditio sine qua non:

All general human excellence starts from the self-knowledge and self-education of the individual. The Freemason must begin his work from himself, as the most narrowly human (kleinsten Menschen), if he then wishes to have an impact outside of himself and on humanity more widely (auf größere Menschen), that is, on his friends, on his family and on the other human societies and institutes.

(Krause 1820b, p. 15)33

In order to support people on this path of self-perfection, speculative Freemasonry provides a symbolic cosmos that is largely taken from the operational masonry of the building lodges. It is held together by the all-encompassing metaphor of building the Temple of Humanity, “for God […] built man as his temple, as the most perfect and beautiful work of his divine architecture, which sin and desire should not desecrate” (Krause 1820b, p. 57)34.

According to Krause, the first symbol for the construction of the Temple of Humanity is the geometric shape of the lodge itself, which is represented by an elongated, right-angled square, and refers to the ritual workplace of speculative Freemasonry. The symbol of the elongated, right-angled square allegorically denotes the potentially global sphere of activity of Freemasonry, and classifies it accordingly in universal terms, as follows: The lodge is “long […] from east to west, wide between south and north, high from the earth to the sky, deep from the surface of the earth to its center.” (Krause 1820b, pp. 13–14). The place where people can and should work to build the Temple of Humanity is therefore “[t]he whole earth, where only people can live” (Krause 1819, p. CLIV)35. The elongated, right-angled square, as a symbol of the lodge, indicates an, in principle, infinite sphere of activity for Freemasonry: a workplace for true humanity can be built wherever there are people. Therefore, talk of different lodges is, in a certain sense, contradictory. And the concept of the lodge, as a workplace of Freemasonry for the construction of the temple of general humanitarian love, is essentially a singular tantum. As Krause puts it:

This construction can only be started and promoted in social harmony; only if Masonic Brothers unite in a lodge in a righteous form, and work together. And only then can the work succeed to its full extent; if once there is only one lodge on earth. Therefore, in the oldest ritual only one, general, lodge is expressly spoken of.

(Krause 1820b, pp. 29–39)36

In order to work together on the Temple of Humanity in the general lodge, understood in this way, and to take care that “Freemasonry gradually spreads over the entire earth in the spirit (Geiste) of the history of humanity” (Krause 1820b, pp. 13–14), the Masonic Fraternity needs various spiritual tools that can be the way and waymarkers for the Brother Freemason in his work on his own perfection, and “they are recommended to him, for their diligent use” (Krause 1820b, p. 15).

Krause pays particular attention to the symbol of the Three Great Lights in Freemasonry, which must illuminate every closed lodge. According to Krause, they codify the insights into the art of living of the Masonic philosophy regarding the ideals of divinity, virtue, and sociability, symbolically condensed into the allegory of light. This is because:

Lights signify, in an edifying manner: essential knowledge, clearly recognized truths, namely […] those which, when we apply them to ourselves, are necessary to guide and govern our belief, to make our actions conform to the law, and to keep us bound together with all people, but especially to our Brothers, within the proper […] limits.

(Krause 1819, cxxxxiv)

The First Great Light of Freemasonry, symbolically corresponding to the ideal of virtue, is the Square (Winkelmaß). As a speculative tool for work on the self, it stands for one’s own moral perfection:

The Square, an old image of the law (Bild des Gesetzes), points to the pure lawfulness of the free, morally good, and beautiful will, which loves and does good for its own sake, without […] needing the impulses of fear and hope.

(Krause 1820b, p. 7)37

Just as in operational masonry one tool stands in a larger context with another, so in speculative Freemasonry the Square stands in a larger symbolic referential context, and determines, on the one hand, the symbol of the common gavel and, on the other hand, the symbol of the 24-inch gauge. While the 24-inch gauge enables people to “bring balance and harmony into their entire lives” (Krause 1820b, p. 22), they should use the symbolic common gavel in the course of work on their individual morality, to “cut off everything that is superfluous from their work, that is, from themselves; to fight and remove everything inhuman, weak, ignoble, and ugly (Unmenschliche, Schwächliche, Unedle und Häßliche) […] from yourself” (Krause 1820b, p. 15).

In their symbolic–ritual combination, the Square, the common gavel, and 24-inch gauge are, according to Krause, the spiritual tools par excellence for advancing work on the rough stone towards the ideal of one’s own morality, both in the sense of an ethic of practice suitable for everyday life and in the sense of everyday meditation:

Use the common gavel to cut away from yourself everything that is superfluous, that is, everything that is unholy, unsightly, vain and inhuman (Unheilige, Unschöne, Eitle und Unmenschliche), so that you can apply the exact Square to yourself and, according to the 24-Inch gauge, you can distribute your time and strength proportionately, symmetrically, and harmoniously, throughout your entire human calling (Bestimmung)! There is no human being who could not still win, through a daily Masonic exercise of this kind.

(Krause 1820b, p. 30)38

No human being can realize their being harmoniously and holistically on their own, because “it is not only better to live in society than alone, but necessary, even in order to exist alone as an individual” (Krause 1820b, p. 33). Because individual human existence is only possible as part of the whole of humanity, it is not enough to just look into the interior of one’s own existence, and only apply the Square to oneself.39 The look inwards, represented by the Square, must follow the look outwards, so that relations with fellow human beings may also be shaped in accordance with the ideal of human perfection. This is allegorically brought to expression by the Compass, as the Second Great Light of Freemasonry. Because:

[T]he Compass, which is intended to keep us united within appropriate limits with all people, especially with our Brothers, encourages us to open our eyes to the beneficial influence of this […] Great Light. With the help of the Compass, the sensitive architectural artist (sinnige Baukünstler) designs the right shape and the right size of every part and component for his entire work. In that way, everything fits together well, and firmly, [adding] to the strength and beauty of the building; the entire image of which stands before his soul. Without the view of the entire building, the effort to form and organize individual parts would be in vain. Without clearly seeing the Human Archetype (das Urbild der Menschheit) as a social whole, the construction of humanity, and the perfection of all its members and parts, cannot succeed.”

(Krause 1820b, p. 58)40

While the First Great Light, the Square Measure, is a symbolic tool for the individual for their self-education and self-knowledge, and therefore corresponds to the motto of the Apprentice Degree, “Look into yourself”, the Second Great Light, the Compass, expands the focus to all people. This is because the perfection of the individual is necessarily linked to the perfection of human society, with which it stands in reciprocal interaction. The Second Great Light therefore corresponds to the motto of the Fellow Craft-Degree: “Look around you!”

Against this background, the last Great Light of Freemasonry corresponds to the motto of the Master Degree, “Look beyond yourself!”, and establishes the connection to the great architect of the universe. This Third Great Light is symbolized by the open Bible:

The Bible [...] points to the Eternal Light in whose illumination those God-loving people, who originate from it, walked. The knowledge of God is this Great Light, the knowledge of God as he is: eternal, and revealed in everything that lives, arises, and forms. This knowledge is pure, original, and certain in itself. Its Light does not take its shine from another light. It bears witness to itself. Those who are pure in heart recognize and perceive Him, the One, Eternal; and the world and humanity as His great work, as the eternal Kingdom of God.

(Krause 1820b, p. 56)41

The Three Great Lights of Freemasonry, the Square, the Compass, and the Bible, symbolically reflect not only the path to the realization of true human potential, inherent in the human being, and humanity, but also, in unison, the path of human knowledge. This arises from the ego, raising itself over the environment and surrounding world, to the Highest Being, the great architect of all worlds, and thereby fulfills the proper original task of a philosophia perennis: to illuminate the true nature of reality, and to make clear the meaning and purpose of human life. The Square enables work on the self, the Compass enables society to be shaped according to practical reason, and the Bible establishes humanity as the center of the universe, in the Absolute.42 Now, the Square, Compass, and Bible are, in Krause’s words, therefore nothing other than allegorical symbols of the Ideas of Reason: God, the human being, and humanity:

What are the original concepts (ideas) (Urbegriffe (Ideen)) that are emblematically (sinnbildlich) called the Three Great Lights in Freemasonry[?] Answer: The original concepts; God, human being, and humanity, which co-found the fully essential (complete) development of humanity, on the part of the faculty of knowing. For knowledge of God is the inner condition of the unified life of God and humanity (of the unified life of God) (des Gottvereinlebens). Faith is, in turn, an inner essential part of this. But the knowledge of the original concept of the human is essential, in order to achieve knowledge of pure goodness (pure morality) and the purely ethical art of living. And the original concept, humanity, finally […] grounds within Spirit (begründet im Geiste) that attitude towards human inwardness and human collectivity (jene menschheitinnige und menschheitbundliche Gesinnung) according to which we connect with our fellow human beings, in justice, and in love, for the good […].

(Krause 1819, cxxxxv)43

The Three Great Lights of Freemasonry that illuminate the lodge, are, according to Krause, seconded in the symbolic cosmos of Freemasonry by the Three Lesser Lights, and the Three Columns that support the lodge. Both the Three Lesser Lights and the supporting Columns may be understood as specific further interpretations of the task of perfecting the human being and humanity, symbolically codified in the Three Great Lights. This is because, on the one hand, they link the task of becoming human to the contemporary historical here and now. And, on the other hand, they make concrete the way in which the human being should work on building the Temple of Humanity.

The Three Lesser Lights in Freemasonry are the Sun, the Moon, and the Master Mason. They are meant to remind the fellow Freemason “that Freemasonry is not mere knowledge, not a mere play of feelings, but it is action and life” (Krause 1820b, p. 63). While the Three Great Lights allude to the general essence of Freemasonry as the realization of the Ideas of Reason, of God, the human being, and humanity, the Three Lesser Lights flank the construction of the Temple of Humanity by linking Masonic work back to the here and now of global humanity.44 They indicate “that the work of the Masonic League extends over the entire globe” (Krause 1820b, p. 71), “wherever the sun and moon shine, [and] should be practiced in the social order, over which the Master watches” (Krause 1820b, pp. 7–8).45

The social order of Masonic work, under the supervision of the Master of the Chair, refers in turn to the Three Columns of Freemasonry. The Three Columns of Freemasonry, which symbolically support the lodge as a place of work, and thus make the construction of the Temple of Humanity possible, are Wisdom, Strength and Beauty.46 In order to clarify what it means for the modus operandi of Masonic work on the ego to be determined by Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, Krause first clarifies what Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty are:

Wisdom is the correct application of science (Wissenschaft) to all real things that occur to us in life. But science is a totality of knowledge that is appropriate to its object, and combines unity and diversity with internal consistency.

(Krause 1820b, p. 77)

But the strength of a being is the sum of the power that it expresses in order to achieve its purpose (Bestimmung). The strength of the Mason, and the entire Brotherhood, is therefore the sum of the strength with which they are active in achieving humanity’s purpose (Menschheitbestimmung) in its entirety.

(Krause 1820b, p. 77)

That which is beautiful is an organic unity and, as such, stimulates and moves people to organic activity: provided that they themselves are also an organic unity. Or in more detail: That which is beautiful has unity, independence, and wholeness, and in its unity; multiplicity, and union or harmony, that is: an intrinsic resemblance to God, or to the image of God (Gottähnlichkeit oder Gottebenbildlichkeit). And precisely because of this, it thereby excites and moves the human being, who has these same properties, to a similar activity.

(Krause 1837, pp. 24–25)47

If Wisdom is the ability, based on scientific knowledge, to shape reality correctly, i.e., according to the ideals of practical reason, Strength is the ability to put this into action and “neither despairing, nor exalting oneself, with level-headed courage, to remain true to the good” (Krause 1820b, p. 79), and Beauty gives Strength the direction to shape the reality of human life, in such a way that all individuals “look like different colors of the world”. Then, the Three Columns, according to Krause, actually symbolize the rational guiding maxim of speculative Freemasonry, and its work on rough stone:

The wisdom, beauty, and strength of the whole being (Wesens) should therefore characterize the person who is not only called a Freemason, but who really wants to be what the teaching of our Brotherhood means by this word. Their entire life, and their entire effectiveness, should attest to the fact that they are actively striving to make these essential qualities their own. In all their social relationships, they should help to destroy the kingdom of folly, weakness, and confusion (das Reich der Thorheit, der Schwäche und der Verwirrung), and to establish and expand the kingdom of wisdom, strength and beauty. And as far as we Freemasons are socially connected as Brothers, for the building (Bau) of everything human, we should continually strive to refine and develop our entire social activity, our constitution and our liturgy, in such a way that we can say with an ever-increasing feeling of truth that our Lodge is supported by the eternal Great Pillars of Wisdom, Strength and Beauty!

(Krause 1820b, p. 79)

The symbol of the Three Columns of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty thus is not only important for speculative Freemasonry. Rather, according to Krause, it is an allegory for every rational human action:

Wisdom, Strength and Beauty are essential (wesenlich) to the perfection of the life of every person, every society of people, and of all humanity, and should be displayed in all human activities, in their expressions and works.

(Krause 1819, clv)

3.3. The Essence of Freemasonry

Against the background of his interpretation of the nature of the Brotherhood of Freemasons, and its world of symbols, to illustrate the task given to every person training in the art of living, for the realization of the rational purposes inherent in people, Krause comes to the following conclusion regarding the nature of the Freemason Brotherhood:

The Three Great Lights teach us that the true field of Freemasonry is: the generally-human (das Allgemein-Menschliche) in each individual, as in all of humanity; and the uniform harmony of all human forces, social associations, and works. The field can therefore only be general: All people, all humanity, are its object, and all people are destined to one day join the loving, fraternal, Society of Freemasons. Therefore our ancestors chose, in addition to the Three Great and Three Lesser Lights, the Elongated Rectangular Square, so that it would depict the shape of the lodge; the lodge, which is long from east to west, wide between south and north, high from the earth to the sky, deep from the surface of the earth to its center. The express declaration was added that the lodge was general, and that therefore its length extended from east to west, because the gospel of Jesus of the Kingdom of God had spread from east to west; to indicate that Freemasonry should gradually spread throughout the world, in the spirit of human history (im Geiste der Geschichte der Menschheit).

(Krause 1820b, p. 13)

On the grounds of his determination of the essence of Freemasonry, Krause is able to formulate the basic imperatives of Masonic life as the ideals of universal human life succinctly, as follows: “Know and love God. Be virtuous in pure will, sociable with all people, in justice and love, and in closer union with the Brothers! These are the basic teachings (Grundlehren) of Freemasonry” (Krause 1820b, pp. 19–20).48

4. The Masonic Fraternity as the Nucleus of the Human League

Given his assessment of the nature of Freemasonry, Krause left no doubt about the world–historical potential he believed the Masonic Fraternity could have if it succeeded in expanding its rooted ideal of the person and humanity into a global, participatory, civil society.49 A Dresden sketch by Krause from 1807 says:

Freemasonry is so deeply rooted in human nature that the Institute of the Masonic Brotherhood is really essential to humanity. And our unshakable confidence rests on this: It will flourish and grow on earth. […] In you, O more than Royal Art, I see the healthy, hopeful seed of a better humanity. You will give humanity what the state, what the church, what families and friendship cannot give it: multifaceted, uniform, harmonious perfection of the whole of human nature in undisturbed peace, in loving, beautiful, sociability.

(Krause 1820b, p. 10)

The expression of the multifaceted, uniform, and harmonious perfection of the whole of human nature, in loving conviviality is Krause’s contemporary historical update of the topoi of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, known from Christian tradition. Krause continues accordingly:

Once Freemasonry is accomplished, it lives in all people. Its power permeates all human things. Then the kingdom of humanity will become real. Then heaven will be on earth.

(Krause 1820b, p. 24)

In order to realize its world–historical potential, according to Krause, Freemasonry, however, must reform.50

4.1. Krause and the Masonica Semper Reformanda

In the spirit of a masonica semper reformanda, Krause clearly formulated the maxim for the reformation of the Brotherhood in all the modernity that was desirable, and expressed it as the fundamental task of a reflexively enlightened Freemasonry, as follows:

The Master Mason appreciates the old in the customs and symbols, if they are good in themselves, and appropriate to the time in which they were created. He loves the new if he has recognized that it corresponds to the eternal idea of Freemasonry, and establishes a noticeable progress for the Brotherhood and humanity. But he neither values the old because it is old, nor the new because it is new. He does not seek to restore the old, as old, and in an unchanged form. For, to do so, would be to sow the seeds of sickness and ruin. But what is eternally good, beautiful, and for all centuries, in the old constitution and symbolic art, what owes its existence not only to the times, the state of humanity and the brotherhood at that time, is what true Master Masons seek to preserve: to produce, and to artfully process, into a beautiful and rich liturgical whole, appropriate to the current state of humanity.

(Krause 1820b, p. 48)

According to this maxim, the most important reform of the Masonic Fraternity, according to Krause, is that it no longer closes itself to the world as a secret society of men, but expands into a League open to all people regardless of age, gender, race, or religion.51 Because “Freemasonry is for all peoples, for both sexes, for all classes, for the entire human life” (Krause 1820b, p. 65):

The Masonic Brotherhood […] includes all people, regardless of all other differences of peoples, classes, states and religions, purely as people with equal respect and love. It is general in nature, since it has all humanity in mind. and is intended to make all people human.

(Krause 1820b, p. 69)52

If Freemasonry reforms in the way mentioned, if it realizes the inherent potential of a covenant encompassing all people, in order to work on a harmonious and all-embracing humanity with reference to the rational ideas of God, humanity, and man, then, according to Krause, it has restored its originally intended essence and contributes to a global, participatory civil society, to which Krause has given the name “Human League”.

The historically significant task that Krause assigns to the Masonic Brotherhood is that it can, and should, prepare the Human League, at the center of which, just as in Freemasonry, “[stands] the whole of human nature, not a single asset, nor a single work of it” (Krause 1820b, p. 34), because “in the Freemason Brotherhood [is] an unconscious premonition of the Human Archetype and the Human League” (Krause 1890, p. 215), which has already begun to be realized historically:

In this realm of humanity, which partly already exists and partly is yet to become, the Masonic Brotherhood is also a historically important and, in its essence, permanent part: For it is a single seed of the Human League, which itself is as essential to the life of humanity, as the heart is to the body.

(Krause 1820b, p. 34).

Further:

Insofar as the Masonic Fraternity is in accordance with its essential concepts, which are clearly expressed in its own history, based on its basic disposition (Grundanlage) and its pure spirit (reinen Geist), I recognize it as a sociable attempt (limited to times and places, and so far the only existing one) to bring the ideas of humanity, the life of humanity, and the Human League, to life: to prepare for living in a purely human spirit, and to support the open Human League in separate halls (abgesonderten Hallen), guided by the instinct of Reason.

(Krause 1819, p. xv)

From Krause’s point of view, Freemasonry can, and should, fulfill the historical task of realizing the Human League. This is because the historical tasks of realizing the Human League and realizing the Temple of Humanity are congruent in their inner essence. From Krause’s point of view, Freemasonry has achieved its historical goal precisely when it has restored its proper essence through its reformation, and has thus abolished itself in the general Human League:

Question: How can and should the Masonic fraternity rise to the original life of humanity, and become a reborn, original, beginning of the Human League? Answer: By taking the fundamental truths expressed in the previous answers [about the structure and goal of the Human League, BPG] to heart, and deciding to live according to them, and to transform oneself accordingly: It rises to the view of the Human Archetype, of human life, and of the Human League. It investigates its own development purely historically, and judges the state it finds, according to those original concepts and archetypes. It then designs a new model image of the League, creates itself in a completely new way, removes everything that is contrary to humanity in the constitution, legislation, doctrine, customs, and work activity. And, it only retains that which has been handed down, transfigured in the higher whole of its new life, which is archetypal, i.e., essential for all time, and at the same time personally appropriate to the current state of life of humanity.

(Krause 1819, pp. CXV-CXVI)53

Only if the inherent seed of Freemasonry has become the tree of the Human League will the Temple of Humanity be built on Earth.

4.2. The Human League as the Temple of Humanity

The Human League is the ideal of a cosmopolitan civil society, encompassing all people, and is based on the absolute equality of all people regardless of origin, gender, age, culture, religion, or physical constitution:54

All people, and only all people, are all humanity on earth. All people, without distinction of age, gender, status, character, nation, age, and all circumstances, at all possible levels of human education, are and remain members of the one humanity on Earth. They are all therefore capable of entering human society. For this very reason, the entirety of humanity of the Earth can and should become conscious of themselves in the human community. All its members can, and should, work together as a whole, to be and live as one humanity.

(Krause 2009, p. 168)55

Since the Human League includes all people, it has “all other human societies within it” (Krause 1890, p. 124) and is intended to enable all people to “determine change, liberate themselves from change, guide change, form change and reinforce change only for the good” (Krause 1873, p. 14)56. The Human League is therefore:

the essential, artistic society of all people on earth, in which they unite as human beings in order to be one, whole, and organic humanity, to live and grow within themselves, and in all their relationships to God, to Nature, and to Reason, and to humanity in the universe.

(Krause 1900, p. 1)57

As a harmonious and organic society of societies, the Human League does not bring about a leveling of cultural differences. It, rather, emphasizes the cultural diversity of human life as a fundamentally infinite expression of one humanity, because:

[t]he destruction of the diversity of nations is neither possible nor desirable. This would mean dissolving the life of humanity itself. The purely humanly educated person gratefully acknowledges this institution of divine providence. He deeply admires and loves the people into whom he was born, to whom he owes the greater part of his upbringing, and the development of his individuality. […] But he is far from arrogating to his people more than they deserve. He does not wish that all nations should be like his own. He rejects and despises nothing because it is not like his home.

(Krause 1811, p. 37)58

Because of its appreciation of the individuality of different forms of human coexistence, the Human League, according to Krause, is also able to harmoniously convey cosmopolitanism, patriotism, and self-love, since it sees them as complementary forms of love for humanity as such:

In the light and warmth of true cosmopolitanism, i.e., in the light of the idea of humanity, and in the warmth of the love of humanity based on the view of its original dignity in God, every people appears to the human being according to the level of its essentiality (nach der Stufe seiner Wesentlichkeit), essential in the construction (im Baue) of humanity itself, and [so] worthy of respect and love. But the genuine feeling for their father people, in personal loyalty and love, becomes sacred to them as the highest human relationship. This is precisely because their people appear to them as an intrinsic member and organ (eigenwesentliches Glied und Organ) of humanity; namely, as the very organ in which they themselves, as a subordinate member, live, and can, and should participate in the building of humanity. Cosmopolitanism awakens patriotism where it lies dormant, maintains it, keeps it free from degeneration and, gives it the right direction, worthy of humanity. The accusation that cosmopolitanism can neither love nor hate does not apply to genuine cosmopolitanism: For this [cosmopolitanism] can love, indeed [can] only love beautifully and all-harmoniously, because it embraces humanity, not as a general concept, but as an idea, as an individual, self-living whole, in all its inner members and persons.

(Krause 1889, p. 210)

According to Krause, the more people in the Human League grow together in a self-determined manner, in all forms of their being together, out of freedom, into a harmonious and organic humanity, the closer people come to realizing the ideal of humanity. And the more they learn to perceive the form of their co-existence as the result of conscious design, guided by the ideals of practical reason, the more successfully the global conditions of social injustice will be combated and the legal conditions for a humane life, in the sense of general human rights, will be established:

With the help of the Human League, all sinful atrocities that are contrary to humanity will for the first time disappear from the life of the people’s states. These are: death sentences, shameful punishments, corporal punishment, prisons that ruin health and life (of which the nobler states are already beginning to be ashamed); need, and abandonment of children, old people, widows and orphans, helpless and punished unemployed criminals, old helpless servants, industrious craftsmen and country people who work to the limit of their ability, who languish along with their loved ones shamefully, and in external disgrace, and slowly starve to death; the accumulation of property by useless, immoral, morally corrupting idlers and pleasure seekers, the lying, deception and deceit of political negotiations, the flattery and hypocrisy of pleasure-hungry servants against their masters and henchmen in thoughts, gestures, words and works, the serfdom and forced serfdom of individuals and peoples, slavery and the slave trade in individuals and peoples, whereby individuals and peoples are viewed as things without selfhood, as mindless possessions, at most as the most useful animals, or as the most precious jewels. The heads of state will then no longer regard the people and nations as their own property, over which they can rule and do rule as they please. But they will see themselves as public servants of the nations (Beamten der Völker), responsible to God, and bound by morality and law.

(Krause 1873, p. 13)

4.3. The Influence of Freemasonry on Krause’s Concept of the Human League

On the one hand, Krause states that he had already had the concept of the Human League, which he identifies as the deep current of Freemasonry, under his very nose before he joined the brotherhood in 1805: “I had already recognized the essence of the idea of the Human League, even before I was accepted into the Brotherhood of Freemasons” (Krause 1819, p. XLIII). On the other hand, he testifies that he first enunciated the idea of the Human League in 1807, in the Freemason Lodge in Dresden, and there recognized it as his life’s task:

What I am aware of having achieved, in this high profession, is: the open proclamation of the doctrine of humanity, human life, and the Human League since 1807, first in the Freemason Lodge in Dresden in 1807, then in the piece of writing: The Human Archetype, then in the Craft Documents.

(Krause 1890, p. 229)

However, Krause only grasped the full meaning of the idea of the Human League in 1808:

When, […] in the spring of 1808, I once again explored the idea of humanity as a social whole, in all its inner parts, philosophically, historically, and with internal consistency, the image of the one, all-encompassing Human League on Earth appeared in full clarity, before my inner eye, and filled my entire mind with love and hope.

(Krause 1819, p. XLVII)

According to Krause, he worked out this idea in the same year “in the outer garb of Freemasonry” (Krause 1890, 93 FN), “pursuing the dawning ideas (dämmernden Ahnungen) in the Masonic fraternity (and using them)” (Krause 1891, p. 24)59. Krause (1891, p. 225) counts as historical predecessors of the idea of the Human League, expressis verbis, the Freemasons James Anderson (1680–1739), John T. Desaguliers (1683–1744), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), and Ignaz Aurelius Feßler (1756–1839), among other greats of Western intellectual history:

The idea of the Human League has always been developed by scientists, and philosophers who are passionate about knowledge. For example: Pythagoras, Plato, Essenes, Jesus, Culdeer, Val. Andreä, Jordanus Bruno, Comenius, Leibniz (See his inedita), Desaguliers, Anderson, Herder (who knew both writings exactly), Fessler.60

Against this background, in the years after his exclusion from the Masonic Fraternity, in which he saw his academic career, and thus his secure existence as a father of 14 children, blocked by the Freemasons, Krause nevertheless claims originality for the concept of the Human League that he developed. He announced that he “borrowed the inkling and knowledge of this idea, neither from oral nor from written communication, neither from an open, nor from a secret society” (Krause 1843, p. 472)61. However, this should be viewed with caution, in terms of the genealogy of the Krause’s idea of the Human League: it is possible to read and understand Krause’s work without knowledge of Freemasonry and its symbolic cosmos. However, although Krause was a flawless philosopher of German idealism, the clear influence of Freemasonry on the genealogy of his philosophical thinking is evident. Regular Freemasonry and its symbolic cosmos may be seen as a catalyst for the idea of an all-encompassing, harmonious society of all people, realizing the rational destiny of humankind. Krause had already grasped this before he joined the brotherhood. The light that Freemasonry shone on Krause’s thinking nevertheless fell back on Krause himself, because through Krause’s interpretation of the symbolic cosmos of Freemasonry, the Freemason fraternity, in the sense of a masonica semper reformanda, was given the opportunity to mediate with itself and once again become aware of its mission for humanity as a whole. As O. Ph. Neumann puts it:

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause […] was undisputedly one of the most original minds in German Freemasonry. The fact that he must be counted among the classic authors of Masonry is not just evident from the large amount that has been written about him […] No, he founded his own idea of Freemasonry. […] His greatness lies in his idea. And this idea may be described in one phrase: the Human League. He was the classic author of masonry, who gave it the broadest, most comprehensive, expression.

(quoted in Ureña 1991, p. 193)

5. Summary

In the spirit of global governance, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause saw the Masonic Brotherhood as the first historical seed for the realization of a global, participatory, Human League: to establish and maintain a state of true humanity. He saw the most excellent sign of this connection between Freemasonry and cosmopolitan civil society in the allegory of the “Great General Lodge”.62 However, in order to be able to do justice to its historical task of establishing the Human League, according to Krause, Freemasonry needs to reform itself according to its original ideal, overcome its pupal stage caused by the caterpillar status of medieval construction huts, and grow into a butterfly.63