What is the Meaning of Freemasonry?

MANY have asked for a definition of Masonry, but few have received a satisfactory answer. The explanation most frequently given is that it is a science veiled in Allegory and explained by Symbols. Concealed in Symbols might better explain the real situation. This explanation really means little to most of us. Inasmuch as anyone may interpret our Symbols, and Masonry itself, according to his own light, here is my definition:

Masonry, in the final analysis, is a way of life, a theory of life, a philosophy of life. It manifests itself in our daily contacts with our fellows. It is not what the tongue proclaims, but what the heart contains. The true Mason, then, is the one who interprets the Symbols in which Masonry is concealed (or by which it is explained) through exemplification in his daily life of what was put into such Symbols long before Solomon started construction of the Great White Temple which crowned Moriah's Mount.

Masonry should be a brotherhood of man, and this need not be an idle dream, even though it may require long and patient effort to overcome error and prejudice. I believe the time yet will come, possibly within the lives of some here tonight, when battle flags will be forever furled, when battle tanks will become the tractors of the husbandman, and the Eternal Truths which are Freemasonry, will be universally recognized by a world forever at peace through practice of what our Symbols contain. That will be Masonry fully developed.