Page 24 - WM Manual Guide and Monitor 2024 - 2025

because they love order and security. Men and women who must be forced to keep
order are a source of social unhappiness; it is impossible to have a policeman at
every man's elbow. A wise and good citizen is one who inwardly understands why
law is necessary and what law is, and gives it a voluntary obedience, so that
nobody needs to stand by to force compulsion. Moreover, such a man has learned
that freedom is nothing other than the inward and voluntary obedience, glad
obedience, to wise and just laws. People of a low order must be held fast by
external force; in proportion as men and women become advanced, external force
becomes increasingly unnecessary, so that in a truly civilized state, order rests on

the inward character of men. The savage has the rope about his neck; the civilized
man has it in his heart. It is not a question of tie or no tie; but of what kind of a tie
it is that holds a man to his fellows, to the state, and to his duty.
V
As to the meaning of the expression "length of my cable tow" it is somewhat
difficult to speak, owing to the great variety of interpretations that have been
offered, a few of the more typical examples of which may be here given. Pike sees
in it "the scope and intent and spirit of one's pledge." Brother Rev. F. de P.
Castello, writing on "The Geometry of Freemasonry" ("Author's Lodge
Transactions," Vol. i, page 286), says, "The cable's length has always been
understood to be one of 720 feet, which is twice 360, the measure of the circle";
making one circle to stand for the spiritual in man, and the other for the material,
he believes the "length of my cable tow" to mean that, "I will go as far in assisting
my brethren as my moral principles and my material condition will permit." In
Mackey's Encyclopedia we may read: "The old writers define the length of a cable
tow, which they sometimes called a 'cable's length,' to be three miles for an Entered
Apprentice. But the expression is really symbolic, and, as defined by the Baltimore
Convention in 1842 [a notable Masonic gathering], means the scope of a man's
reasonable ability." With the Baltimore Convention one may very well agree.

THE CABLE TOW
Questions
I.
Why was the noose whereby early man learned to control wild animals of such
great importance to him?

What part did animals play in the life of primitive man? (See "The Dawn of
History," by J. L. Myres.)

What led primitive peoples to make symbolical use of tools and implements?