Ernst and Falk: Dialogues for Freemasons

A Freemason tells a curious friend that the real work of the brotherhood has nothing to do with its lodges.

by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing57 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Ernst und Falk. Gespräche für Freimäurer
First published: 1778(aged 49)
Original language: German

Overview

Lessing was received into a Hamburg Masonic lodge, Zu den drei Rosen, in October 1771, and seven years later he published three dialogues arguing that what Freemasons did in their lodges was not the heart of Freemasonry. Ernst, curious and not yet initiated, questions his friend Falk, a member, who says he counts himself a Mason less because older Masons received him than because he understands what Masonry is. Falk's first answer is a riddle: the true deeds of Freemasons aim to make most of what people call good deeds unnecessary. The solution comes in the second dialogue. Civil society cannot unite people without dividing them, into nations, religions and ranks, and these divisions, however unavoidable, are neither good nor holy. Freemasonry, rightly understood, is the work of people who stand above the divisions and draw others back together across them. The three dialogues appeared in 1778 without the author's name, dedicated to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in his capacity as a Freemason, and Lessing assured the duke that they were perhaps the truest thing ever written about the order; the duke replied with a mild rebuke. In two more dialogues Ernst has joined a lodge and found it a club of good society, and Falk turns to the history of the name, deriving Masoney from an old Germanic word for a closed society that met at table. According to the preface to these two, Lessing had them ready for print when a polite request from on high asked him to hold them back. They came out anyway in 1780, from a copy said to have passed among friends, with a preface by a third party who claims not to be a Mason; Adolph von Knigge, a fellow Freemason, probably gave them to the printer.

Key concepts

What does Falk mean by civil society?

The state and its institutions, which people create so that each can enjoy a share of happiness more securely. Falk insists that a state's happiness is nothing but the sum of its members' happiness. Yet such a society cannot exist without dividing people into separate states and nations, different religions, and higher and lower ranks. The divisions come from the very union meant to help.

What are the "true deeds" of Freemasons, according to Falk?

Work that reaches the causes of human misery rather than its symptoms. Ordinary good deeds answer needs that society's divisions keep producing. The true deeds of Freemasons aim to bring people back together across those divisions, so that many such good deeds would no longer be needed. That is why Falk can say their real work would make most good deeds unnecessary.

Why can the secret of Freemasonry not be told?

Because it is not a piece of information but an understanding. Even Masons who know the secret of their order, Falk says, cannot pass it on word for word. One grasps it by seeing what Masonry is for, and then recognises it in others. That is why Falk counts himself a Mason by understanding rather than by any ceremony of admission.

Who are the people who stand above society's divisions?

The people Falk wishes for in every state: free of the prejudices of their own nation, knowing exactly where patriotism stops being a virtue, not convinced that only their own religion is good, and not dazzled by rank. Falk suggests that Freemasons, rightly understood, are meant to be such people, and to draw others back together across the lines society draws.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A Society That Divides as It Unites

Can people be brought together without being split apart? Falk's answer is that civil society cannot manage it, and that someone has to repair the damage.

Lessing has Falk imagine the best constitution that can be thought of, adopted by everyone, and show that even it would divide people. Civil society unites human beings only by separating them into nations, religions and ranks, and these separations, however unavoidable, are neither good nor holy. Falk does not propose abolishing states, which exist only as means to human happiness. He wants, in every state, people who stand above the prejudices of their nation and know exactly where patriotism stops being a virtue.

political philosophy
social reform
social change
civil society
social order
nationalism
equality
prejudice
privilege
unintended consequences
religion

Enter a dialogue

The True Deeds of Freemasons

What do Freemasons do that is worth doing? Falk's riddle points away from lodges and charity toward a work that can hardly be named.

Falk counts himself a Mason less because older Masons received him than because he understands what Masonry is. Its true deeds, he says, aim to make most of what people call good deeds unnecessary, and those deeds are its secret, not because members hide them but because even they cannot put them into words. Freemasonry is nothing arbitrary but rooted in human nature and civil society. When Ernst joins a lodge and finds only good company, Falk turns to the history of the word Masoney.

freemasonry
secrecy
membership
initiation
symbolism
charity
moral action
motivation
expectation
etymology
historical interpretation
language
communication
knowledge
truth
virtue
forgery
evidence

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 57
distinct concepts: 135
by passages held, corpus-wide: #636

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “freemasonry” and “social reform”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 4 pairings. 34 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
freemasonry	social reform	5
freemasonry	secrecy	4
freemasonry	political philosophy	3
political philosophy	social reform	3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1755 Pope ein Metaphysiker!
Written jointly with Moses Mendelssohn early in their friendship, this pamphlet first drew the line between poet and philosopher that Laocoön would later redraw between poet and painter.
DE
1757 Briefwechsel über das Trauerspiel
The workshop of Lessing's dramatic theory: here, against Mendelssohn and Nicolai, he first tested the account of pity that he later rebuilt for the Hamburg Dramaturgy.
DE
1766 Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie)
Prepared in Breslau, where Lessing served a Prussian general from 1760 to 1765, this is the one part Lessing published of a larger planned study, and it carries over the poet–philosopher divide of his Pope essay into the arts.
DE
1767 Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie)
A periodical before it was a book, written week by week for a theatre that did not last, this became Lessing's principal work on the theory of drama.
DE
1777 Kleine Schriften zum Fragmentenstreit
Short pamphlets from 1777 and 1778, written as the fragments controversy moved from courteous replies to Schumann toward the open feud with Goeze.
DE
1778 A Rejoinder (Eine Duplik)
A reply to a single defender of the Easter accounts, written in the winter of 1777–78, just before the quarrel with Goeze crowded out every other exchange.
DE
1778 Anti-Goeze
The centre of the fragments controversy; after the duke's ban the same argument moved into Nathan the Wise.
DE
1778 Axioms (Axiomata, wenn es deren in dergleichen Dingen giebt)
Argued point by point rather than fought, this answer to Goeze sets out in compact form the distinction between the Bible and religion that the Anti-Goeze letters defend with ridicule.
DE
1778 Ernst and Falk: Dialogues for Freemasons (Ernst und Falk. Gespräche für Freimäurer) you are here DE
1780 The Education of the Human Race (Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts)
Its hundred numbered paragraphs, begun inside the fragments controversy and finished after it, turn the quarrel over scripture into a single picture of religious history.
DE
1784 Gotthold Ephraim Leßings theologischer Nachlaß (Theologischer Nachlass)
An editorial title for papers Lessing kept to himself: two of them come from his early twenties in Berlin, decades before the fragments controversy made his religious views public.
DE
1795 Philosophischer Nachlass
Working notes on metaphysics that Lessing kept to himself, from his Breslau years onward; at least one reached print only after Jacobi's report had made his Spinozism a public question.
DE

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