Ramsay links the narration about the Temple of Solomon from the Book of Kings in the Old Testament with the Chivalric Orders of the Crusades. Scotland was the cradle of modern freemasonry, Ramsay claimed, and its true secrets were kept there. Nonetheless, it seems rather paradox that cosmopolitan ideas were formulated in the context of a society that is regarded as one of the most secretive, mysterious and even esoteric during the Enlightenment. Where is the connection between cosmopolitanism and secrecy? Did secrecy pave the way for the later popularity of cosmopolitanism among European elites? First of all, Ramsay rejects the capability of political rulers to establish enduring institutions for the benefit of mankind as awhole:


“It may be observed that Solon, Lycurgus, Numa and all the


other political legislators, have not been able to render their establishment durable; and that however sagacious might have been their laws, they had at no time the power to expand themselves over all countries, and to all ages. Having little more in view than victories and conquests, military violence, and the elevation of one set of people over another, they were never universal, nor consonant to the taste, or genius, or interest of all nations. Philanthropy was not their basis. The love of country, badly understood, and pushed into limits on which they should


Andrew Michael Ramsay


not verge, destroys often, in warlike republics, the love of genral humanity.”6 This paragraph is quoted from one of the first English translations of Ramsay’s


Discours, published in the Scientific Magazine, and Freemason’s repository in 1797 under the heading “The Influence of Freemasonry on Society. Philosophically inquired to”. The Freemason’s Magazine was published 1793-1796 in London and was the first entirely masonic periodical in the United Kingdom. A continuation with an altered title as above appeared during 1797/98. As early as in volume III 1794 (p. 385-87) we find an article with the heading “Social Influence of Freemasonry” containing translated paragraphs from Ramsay’s Discours. In 2001, George Lamoines published a translation from the French original of Ramsay’s oration in AQC, but I am not sure if the selected parts of an English version in the Freemason’s Magazine were known to him or anyone else7. Perhaps even


6 The Scientific magazine, and Freemason’s repository 1797, p. 35. 7 André Michel de Ramsay, ms 1213 Bibliotheque Municipale de Toulouse, in Georges Lamoine (ed.), Discours


prononcéàla réceptiondesFrancs-Maçons(Toulouse:Éd SNES, 1999), pp. 38–45. Georges Lamoine, “TheChevalier de Ramsay’s Oration 1736–37”, ArsQuatuorCoronatum, Vol. 114 (2001), pp. 230–233.Gould writes in the above- quoted account (History, 1951, p.182) that Ramsay’s speech “in its entirety is unknown in an English garb”, but doesn’t mention the partial translations in the Freemason’s Magazine. For a free French version of the text, see also:misraim.free.fr/textes/discours_Ramsay.pdf#search=%22%22André%20Michel%2 0de%20Ramsay%22%22 and freemasons-freemasonry.com/bernheimfr.html for a selection of brilliant texts on Ramsay and his oration.


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