The Level: The Finite Life
Freemasonry introduces the Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge early in the Entered Apprentice Degree, and because it explicitly deals with the division of time, it is easy to regard it as Masonry’s principal lesson in time management. We are given twenty-four hours. We are taught that those hours have different purposes. The obvious lesson seems to be that a well-ordered man should budget his time accordingly.
But perhaps Masonry’s more important lesson about time comes later. The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge tells us how time might be divided; the Level eventually forces us to confront the fact that the amount of time available to us is finite. The Level teaches equality, and we normally understand that equality socially and morally. Yet there is another equality that no wealth, office, reputation, education, or accomplishment can overcome. We are all upon the level of time.
That realization becomes increasingly difficult to avoid as we progress through the degrees. The lessons move us from the possibilities of a life before us toward an increasing awareness of mortality. By the Third Degree, mortality is no longer an abstraction. The master craftsman himself is cut down before the Temple is completed. Yet the Temple is completed after his death.
There is something profound in that distinction. The craftsman is finite, but the work need not be. We naturally become attached to the things we build and sometimes imagine ourselves indispensable to them. We speak of our lodge, our career, our business, our organization, our charitable work, our family, our project. Yet eventually someone else will pick up the tools. The work may continue without the workman.
That is what gives the Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge its urgency. The Gauge will measure twenty-four inches today and twenty-four again tomorrow. What it cannot tell me is how many more times I will be handed the Gauge. The Level tells me the number is finite. The Gauge asks what I intend to do about it.
The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge: Categories, Not a Time Card
Once the Gauge is placed beside the Level, its lesson changes. It becomes less useful to think of its divisions as a Masonic time card. The three divisions do not require three mathematically equal portions of eight hours each, nor does life permit such an allocation every day. They are better understood as broad categories into which a finite life must somehow be ordered.
There are seasons for different allocations. During harvest, the farmer may rise before daylight and continue working until dark because there is a harvest to bring in. At another time, illness or exhaustion may require far more refreshment and repose than usual. There are moments when the need of a family member, a Brother, or another human being properly displaces almost everything else. Life cannot be lived successfully by insisting that every day must look exactly like the day before it.
The question presented by the Gauge, then, is not whether I divided today's twenty-four hours equally. It is whether, given the season of life in which I presently stand, I have measured my finite time wisely.
This is also where Masonic symbols can begin to interact with one another. I am not suggesting that the ritual formally assigns the meanings or relationships developed here. The ritual does not tell us that a particular pillar corresponds to a particular division of the Gauge or that one working tool must always be interpreted through another. Rather, this is one of the possibilities that emerges after learning Masonry across its degrees. We learn the symbols separately, but eventually we can place them beside one another and ask whether one illuminates another. We learn Masonry by degrees, but eventually we must begin to understand it as a whole.
Service: Making the Interior Life Visible
The first broad category is service: service to God, assistance to a distressed worthy Brother, and service to our fellow creatures. These need not always be understood as unrelated obligations competing for separate blocks of time. The Entered Apprentice is taught to look beyond distinctions between the high and low, rich and poor, and recognize a common relationship under one Almighty Parent. That common origin carries with it obligations toward one another—to aid, support, and protect.
Service to God, therefore, need not end when prayer ends. There is a sense in which service to God's creation becomes an expression of service to the Creator. Caring for a family member, helping a Brother, feeding someone who is hungry, teaching someone who needs knowledge, serving a community, or simply giving another human being the time he needs can all make an interior moral commitment outwardly visible.
This is where the pillar of Beauty becomes interesting. Again, the ritual does not specifically assign Beauty to this portion of the Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge. I am putting two Masonic teachings beside one another and asking what happens when they are allowed to speak to each other.
The Greek concept of kalon gives us a useful way to think about Beauty. Beauty need not be confined to physical attractiveness or ornamentation. It can reach toward what is fine, noble, admirable, and worthy. That suggests a formulation useful to our Masonic purposes: Beauty is goodness made visible.
Brotherly Love can remain an interior conviction. Relief can remain an abstract principle. Truth can remain something we profess. But service gives those principles form in the world. It allows another person to experience what otherwise exists only within us. If the principles of Masonry have actually shaped the man, then somewhere beyond the lodge room there ought to be visible evidence of that transformation.
Perhaps, then, one test of the service portion of the Gauge is a simple question: What beauty does my use of time make visible?
Refreshment and Repose: Maintaining Strength
Refreshment and repose are often reduced to sleep, but that seems unnecessarily narrow. Human beings require restoration in many forms. Sleep certainly matters, but so do food, exercise, recreation, companionship, contemplation, recovery, and occasionally simply doing nothing productive for a while. These activities are not necessarily interruptions of useful life. They maintain the instrument through which useful life is accomplished.
This allows another conversation between Masonic symbols. Strength can illuminate refreshment and repose. Again, this is an interpretive connection rather than a ritual assignment. Strength cannot simply be expended indefinitely. It must be restored. A man who continually consumes his physical, emotional, and intellectual resources without replenishing them eventually discovers that determination alone cannot overcome exhaustion.
Refreshment and repose therefore need not represent weakness or withdrawal from our obligations. Properly measured, they make the fulfillment of those obligations possible. Strength is not merely demonstrated by how long we can continue working. Wisdom may sometimes require us to recognize when continuing the work will diminish the quality of the workman.
Vocation: When Knowledge Becomes Wisdom
Vocation is similarly broader than employment. A job may provide income, but vocation can become the place where knowledge is repeatedly tested against reality. The inexperienced craftsman learns rules. The experienced craftsman learns why the rules exist. He begins recognizing problems before they fully develop. He learns which apparent shortcuts create greater problems later and which efficiencies are the legitimate products of experience. He acquires judgment.
Knowledge is essential, but knowledge alone is not wisdom. Experience places knowledge under pressure. Mistakes reveal deficiencies. Correction produces understanding. Repetition develops judgment. Over enough time, knowledge tested by experience may begin becoming wisdom.
That gives us another possible relationship between the Gauge and the pillars. Wisdom can illuminate vocation because vocation is one of the great laboratories of practical wisdom. The question is no longer merely what I know, but what experience has taught me to do with what I know.
A job begins becoming a vocation when knowledge, tested by experience, becomes wisdom.
This also reminds us why time cannot be removed from the process of becoming. There are things that can be explained in an hour but understood only through years. Information can be transmitted quickly. Judgment usually cannot.
Opportunity Cost: Every Yes Contains a No
Once we accept that time is finite, an unavoidable consequence follows: every choice has a cost. An hour given to one purpose cannot simultaneously be given to another. Every yes therefore contains a no.
Economics gives us a useful term for this: opportunity cost. The true cost of a choice includes what must be surrendered in order to make it. Applied to time, this becomes a remarkably powerful question. What does this hour cost me?
That question is more demanding than asking whether an activity is worthwhile. Many things are worthwhile. Work is worthwhile. Masonry is worthwhile. Family is worthwhile. Service is worthwhile. Exercise is worthwhile. Recreation is worthwhile. Study is worthwhile. The difficulty of a finite life is that worthwhile things compete with other worthwhile things.
The question therefore becomes not simply, “Is this good?” but, “Is this sufficiently good to justify what I cannot do because I have chosen to do this?”
That is where the remaining working tools become useful. The Gauge has established that the resource is limited. We now need instruments for deciding what deserves that resource.
The Square: Test the Decision by Virtue
The Square provides an intellectual test. Masonry teaches us to square our actions by the Square of Virtue, and the four cardinal virtues give us a useful framework through which to examine the choices competing for our time: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.
An action rarely exists in only one moral dimension. Something may appear courageous while being profoundly imprudent. Something may seem prudent while requiring injustice. Something may be pleasurable but lack temperance. Something may appear temperate only because we lack the fortitude to do what circumstances actually require.
The Square therefore invites us to test our proposed use of time from more than one direction. Does this action demonstrate prudence? Is it just? Is it temperate? Does it require or display appropriate fortitude? We need not claim that satisfying two virtues mathematically guarantees the other two. Rather, the more completely an action stands square against the virtues, the greater confidence we may have in the judgment that produced it.
The Square asks: Does this use of my time square with the kind of man I am attempting to become?
This is primarily an intellectual exercise. We examine the action, consider consequences, compare it with virtues, and determine whether the angles are true. But intellectual justification is not sufficient. A man can become remarkably skilled at constructing arguments for what he already wants to do. We therefore need another instrument.
The Plumb: Searching for a Standard Beyond Ourselves
The Plumb introduces something exterior to us. A builder does not determine vertical by preference. Gravity establishes the line. The craftsman brings his work to that standard and discovers whether it conforms.
Moral life is more complicated because the correct line is not always as immediately visible as a suspended weight. Nevertheless, the Plumb gives us a powerful way to think about alignment. It asks whether my life is aligned with something beyond my own desires, convenience, or rationalizations.
There are at least two ways we can fail the Plumb. The first is obvious: we recognize the proper line but deviate from it. We know what should be done and fail to do it. Correction means bringing ourselves back toward an established standard.
The second failure is more difficult. Sometimes experience, reflection, faith, or greater understanding reveals that what we thought was the proper plumb line was itself mistaken. Growth then requires more than correcting our conduct. We must correct our understanding of the standard against which the conduct is being measured.
That possibility requires humility. We are not only imperfect builders; we are imperfect interpreters of the plans. The search for the correct Plumb may itself be part of the work.
The Plumb therefore asks a different question from the Square. The Square asks whether I can intellectually justify my action according to virtue. The Plumb asks: Am I actually aligned with a standard greater than my own preference?
The Compasses: Boundaries That Concentrate Passion
The Compasses introduce another dimension. If the Square is largely intellectual and the Plumb concerns alignment, the Compasses deal with boundaries. They remind us to circumscribe our desires and keep our passions within due bounds.
It is easy to understand boundaries merely as restrictions. But boundaries can do something more interesting: they can concentrate energy. Water spread indiscriminately across the ground may become a swamp. Confined within banks, it becomes a river. A lens concentrates scattered light. Discipline can do something similar with human passion.
A man interested in everything may accomplish very little. Vocation often develops through progressive narrowing. We discover what deserves our attention, eliminate distractions, deepen our knowledge, accumulate experience, and focus our passions within increasingly meaningful boundaries. Proper circumscription does not necessarily weaken passion. It can intensify it.
The same principle applies to good things. Work requires boundaries. Recreation requires boundaries. Service requires boundaries. Masonry itself requires boundaries. Something can be intrinsically worthwhile and still occupy more of the Gauge than it properly deserves. A noble activity allowed to expand without limit can crowd out other legitimate obligations.
The Compasses therefore ask: Where does this good thing properly end?
That may be one of the hardest questions in a finite life. Our greatest problems do not always arise from choosing between good and evil. Sometimes they arise from choosing among several goods when there is not enough time to pursue all of them.
The Common Gavel: The Act of Deciding
Eventually contemplation must end.
The Gauge has measured. The Square has tested. The Plumb has sought alignment. The Compasses have established boundaries. At some point the craftsman must act.
Here the Common Gavel becomes particularly meaningful. The Gavel removes what is unnecessary from the stone, but the larger family of Masonic imagery surrounding the gavel also carries the unmistakable quality of decision. The Master's gavel calls attention, marks transitions, directs the lodge, and brings deliberation to an end. Its sound means something has happened. Thought has become action.
The Common Gavel can therefore be contemplated as the act of deciding what remains and what must be removed from a finite life.
This returns us directly to opportunity cost. Some things must be knocked away—not necessarily because they are evil, but because they are not sufficiently important. A finite life cannot contain every possible pursuit. Every additional commitment occupies part of the Gauge. At some point we must decide what belongs in the work and what does not.
There is also a less obvious danger. Indecision itself consumes time. We sometimes imagine that refusing to choose preserves our options. It does not. While we deliberate indefinitely, the Gauge continues measuring. Time spent avoiding a decision is itself an allocation of time.
The process can therefore be reduced to five movements: Gauge it. Square it. Plumb it. Circumscribe it. Gavel it.
Measure the demand upon the finite resource. Test the choice against virtue. Seek alignment with a standard beyond yourself. Establish proper boundaries. Then decide.
The Gauge establishes the limit. The Gavel enforces the choice.
Masonry Is Filled With Time
Once we begin looking for time within Masonry, it becomes difficult not to see it everywhere. The three steps can be contemplated as youth, manhood, and age—not three separate men, but one man progressing through time. The progression itself matters. The man standing upon the final step carries within him the man who once stood upon the first.
Masonry also teaches by degrees. That structure acknowledges something important about understanding: some knowledge requires progression. A man can hear ritual for the first time and understand its words, yet hear the same words decades later and discover something entirely different. The ritual may not have changed. The man has.
That is also why placing symbols in conversation with one another becomes increasingly fruitful. The Entered Apprentice initially encounters one collection of lessons. The Fellow Craft adds another. The Master Mason adds still more. Experience then begins building bridges between them. The Level starts speaking to the Gauge. Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty begin illuminating its divisions. The Square, Plumb, Compasses, and Gavel become ways of interrogating the choices made within the time the Gauge measures.
Even the intellectual journey of the Fellow Craft points repeatedly toward measurement, relationship, motion, proportion, space, and time. Arithmetic considers number. Geometry gives number spatial relationship. Music requires proportion unfolding through time. Astronomy brings measurement, motion, space, and time together on the grandest observable scale. The Mason is continually being asked to understand himself within larger orders and relationships.
We learn Masonry by degrees because we live life by degrees.
The Ashlars: Construction Requires Time
The Rough Ashlar provides another reminder that transformation requires time. No stone becomes finished because the craftsman intends to perfect it. Intention begins the work; repeated labor accomplishes it.
Character develops similarly. One decision rarely transforms a man. Habits emerge through repetition. Judgment develops through consequences. Virtue becomes reliable through practice. Mistakes must be recognized and corrected. Edges are removed gradually. Surfaces are tested repeatedly.
We sometimes become impatient with this process because we can imagine the finished product long before we can create it. We know the person we would like to become. We may even know what must change. Yet knowing the shape of the Perfect Ashlar does not eliminate the labor required to move the Rough Ashlar toward it.
That labor consumes the Gauge.
Character is constructed decision by decision, habit by habit, hour by hour. The uncomfortable reality is that the supply of hours is limited. We therefore cannot postpone the work indefinitely while assuming there will always be another day upon which to begin.
Someone Else Picks Up the Tools
That brings us back to where we began: the Level and the finite life.
The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge measures the hours available today. The Level reminds us that the number of days upon which we will receive those hours is limited. Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty help us contemplate what our vocation, restoration, and service might produce. The Square tests our choices against virtue. The Plumb searches for alignment with a standard beyond ourselves. The Compasses establish boundaries around our passions. The Gavel requires us eventually to decide.
And then the Third Degree reminds us that even the master craftsman eventually puts down his tools.
Yet the Temple is completed.
Perhaps that is not merely a reminder of mortality but a lesson about the proper relationship between mortality and meaningful work. The fact that I cannot finish everything does not mean there is no reason to begin something. The fact that I will not see every consequence of my service does not make the service meaningless. The fact that another man will eventually occupy my chair does not diminish the importance of how I occupy it today.
Indeed, good craftsmanship may partly consist of leaving work that another craftsman can continue.
A lodge survives its Master. A family survives its father. Students continue after the teacher is gone. Institutions outlive their founders. Acts of kindness produce consequences their authors never witness. Ideas pass from one generation to another. Someone else picks up the tools.
The great Masonic lesson of time, then, may not be time management at all. It may be the disciplined allocation of a finite life.
The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge measures twenty-four inches every day. What it cannot tell me is how many more times I will be handed the Gauge. The Level tells me that number is finite.
That leaves a more difficult question than how efficiently I manage my schedule.
Knowing that someday I must put down my tools, what deserves the time that remains?
