7 - The Brotherhood at work

Summary

If the government sought to create a civil service that was loyal to the Republic, there was no shortage of outside bodies ready to advise it. Prominent among these were the Freemasons, particularly the Grand Orient.

Freemasonry in France is often portrayed as a surrogate secular church of the French Radical tradition – an image that was strengthened by its vocabulary. It described non-Masons as ‘les profanes’; and it explained the decline of Masonic influence on government during the Esprit Nouveau as symptomatic of ‘the spread of scepticism’ – a curious semantic reversal of roles, turning the Enlightenment on its head. Masonry in fact was a form of solidarity for men who shared a number of broad democratic and secular assumptions. Its ideology was accepted, because its basic content corresponded with what most Radical freethinkers already believed. And not only Radicals, for by 1905 a third of the Grand Orient's ateliers were Socialist. Its ritual and language were not taken very seriously. In practice Masons were active members of their lodges for only about five years on average – generally at the point of their career when they were most in need of professional or political advancement. Masonry in France was nevertheless on the increase. Its total membership grew from some 24,000 in 1903 to 32,000 five years later. It was believed, moreover, that well over a third of the new Chamber of Deputies of 1902 were Masons – as were a third to a half of the Senate.