Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On The Word "Ehre" (Honour), And Its Derivatives,
worshipful master , we are running the risk of unwarrantably influencing the minds of our readers . * But the German craftsman often applies the word to others besides his master ; to his fellows , to himself , to his name , even to his apprentice . It must be evident that
worshipful , in these cases , is altogether inapplicable ; yet if we employ the word in one case we should in strict consistency use it in all . We cannot imagine a master hailing his own " worshipful apprentice , " or a fellow talking of his " worshipful name , " but we may substitute the word worthy : everyone can be worthy in his own station of life ,
and every name is worthy of honour till it is disgraced . " My worthy fellow " is an appropriate and dignified term from one workman to another ; but my " worshipful fellow" is simply ludicrous ,
and such it has always appeared to me , even when in conformity with custom and precedent I have unwillingly made use of it . Modern German Freemasons have naturally had to find an equivalent for our " Worshipful Master . " They have chosen the words fflirwurdiger or ffliremvihrdiger Meister but here again we note
the palpable incapacity of their language to convey the full sense . fflinoiirdig simply means " worthy of honour , " differing very slightly from fflirbar . fflirlich , which is occasionally used , is usually and correctly translated " honest . " fflirlichheit , or honesty , is , however , seldom or never used ; in its place we find the term fflirbarlieit , always
rendered in English by "honesty , " but meaning something very different . Honour , or honesty in the abstract , would appear to have been uniformly ignored by the German Gilds ; the conduct of their members was honourable or honest merely in relation to their Craft laws .
A few instances will illustrate this very clearly . Before apprenticing a lad to a trade , it was requisite for him to prove his legitimate and honest , or honourable ( fflirlich ) , birth . The legitimacy of his birth was dependant , of course , on the previous marriage of his parents ; but the honesty , which to-day would be equivalent to
legitimacy , was then a very different quality , and not even the same in all parts of Germany . As a general rule , unless the youth could prove that both his parents , and his grand-parents , and sometimes even his great grand-parents , had been free men and women , that is , not serfs or villeins , he was accounted of dishonest birth , although they had been legally married . It was simply the rule of the trade that he
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On The Word "Ehre" (Honour), And Its Derivatives,
worshipful master , we are running the risk of unwarrantably influencing the minds of our readers . * But the German craftsman often applies the word to others besides his master ; to his fellows , to himself , to his name , even to his apprentice . It must be evident that
worshipful , in these cases , is altogether inapplicable ; yet if we employ the word in one case we should in strict consistency use it in all . We cannot imagine a master hailing his own " worshipful apprentice , " or a fellow talking of his " worshipful name , " but we may substitute the word worthy : everyone can be worthy in his own station of life ,
and every name is worthy of honour till it is disgraced . " My worthy fellow " is an appropriate and dignified term from one workman to another ; but my " worshipful fellow" is simply ludicrous ,
and such it has always appeared to me , even when in conformity with custom and precedent I have unwillingly made use of it . Modern German Freemasons have naturally had to find an equivalent for our " Worshipful Master . " They have chosen the words fflirwurdiger or ffliremvihrdiger Meister but here again we note
the palpable incapacity of their language to convey the full sense . fflinoiirdig simply means " worthy of honour , " differing very slightly from fflirbar . fflirlich , which is occasionally used , is usually and correctly translated " honest . " fflirlichheit , or honesty , is , however , seldom or never used ; in its place we find the term fflirbarlieit , always
rendered in English by "honesty , " but meaning something very different . Honour , or honesty in the abstract , would appear to have been uniformly ignored by the German Gilds ; the conduct of their members was honourable or honest merely in relation to their Craft laws .
A few instances will illustrate this very clearly . Before apprenticing a lad to a trade , it was requisite for him to prove his legitimate and honest , or honourable ( fflirlich ) , birth . The legitimacy of his birth was dependant , of course , on the previous marriage of his parents ; but the honesty , which to-day would be equivalent to
legitimacy , was then a very different quality , and not even the same in all parts of Germany . As a general rule , unless the youth could prove that both his parents , and his grand-parents , and sometimes even his great grand-parents , had been free men and women , that is , not serfs or villeins , he was accounted of dishonest birth , although they had been legally married . It was simply the rule of the trade that he