220 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
bonds withered away while individualism experienced a rebirth. The
master became more egotistical and distant. Secure in his position, he
monopolized all the posts of the mastery association; at the top of the
corporation and with his peers, he tended to form a band apart. Soon
artists and artisans, masters and journeymen, had more and more diffi-
culty understanding each other; a moat was slowly being dug between
them. The disappointed, discouraged, and sometimes rebellious jour-
neymen grouped together separately. This was the time when the mod-
ern form of the compagnonnage was born, retaining the signals of
recognition, the rites, and the symbols passed down by tradition. Their
secrecy allowed the journeymen to protect the quality of their work and
the identity of the worker. This was also the era when, finally, the
brotherhoods, which had lost sight of their pious and charitable goals,
degenerated into excess, causing alarm for both religious and civil
authorities, who banned them in both France and Germany.
All of these factors brought about a rupture of the bond that united
the freemasons not only from one country to another, but also within
each kingdom. This period marked the decline of operative masonry.
The universalism, prestige, and power of the builders died with the frac-
turing of the Christian world and with the slackening of faith. They
would be reborn, however, with speculative Freemasonry. In the transi-
tion from one form to the other, continuity was compensated by a sub-
rogation: The connection between operative freemasonry and
speculative Freemasonry was the language of symbol and the thought
beneath it. Symbol, which had served to maintain professional and reli-
gious unity, changed design and now served to create a scientific, philo-
sophical, and spiritual unity. This universalism was no longer, alas, a
widespread transcendent and social fact. Henceforth, for only an initi-
ated elite, it would be the key to an ideal.