As to age, the old charges prescribe the rule, that the candidate must be “of mature and discreet age.”  But what is the precise period when one is supposed to have arrived at this maturity and discretion, cannot be inferred from any uniform practice of the craft in different countries.  The provisions of the civil law, which make twenty-one the age of maturity, have, however, been generally followed.  In this country the regulation is general, that the candidate must be twenty-one years of age.  Such, too, was the regulation adopted by the General Assembly, which met on the 27th Dec., 1663, and which prescribed that “no person shall be accepted unless he be twenty-one years old or more."[55] In Prussia, the candidate is required to be twenty-five; in England, twenty-one,[56] “unless by dispensation from the Grand Master, or Provincial Grand Master;” in Ireland, twenty-one, except “by dispensation from the Grand Master, or the Grand Lodge;” in France, twenty-one, unless the candidate be the son of a Mason who has rendered important service to the craft, with the consent of his parent or guardian, or a young man who has served six months with his corps in the army—­such persons may be initiated at eighteen; in Switzerland, the age of qualification is fixed at twenty-one, and in Frankfort-on-Mayn, at twenty.  In this country, as I have already observed, the regulation of 1663 is rigidly enforced, and no candidate, who has not arrived at the age of twenty-one, can be initiated.

Our ritual excludes “an old man in his dotage” equally with a “young man under age.”  But as dotage signifies imbecility of mind, this subject will be more properly considered under the head of intellectual qualifications.

The physical qualifications, which refer to the condition of the candidate’s body and limbs, have given rise, within a few years past, to a great amount of discussion and much variety of opinion.  The regulation contained in the old charges of 1721, which requires the candidate to be “a perfect youth,” has in some jurisdictions been rigidly enforced to the very letter of the law, while in others it has been so completely explained away as to mean anything or nothing.  Thus, in South Carolina, where the rule is rigid, the candidate is required to be neither deformed nor dismembered, but of hale and entire limbs, as a man ought to be, while in Maine, a deformed person may be admitted, provided “the deformity is not such as to prevent him from being instructed in the arts and mysteries of Freemasonry.”

The first written law which we find on this subject is that which was enacted by the General Assembly held in 1663, under the Grand Mastership of the Earl of St. Albans, and which declares “that no person shall hereafter be accepted a Freemason but such as are of able body."[57]

Twenty years after, in the reign of James II., or about the year 1683, it seems to have been found necessary, more exactly to define the meaning of this expression, “of able body,” and accordingly we find, among the charges ordered to be read to a Master on his installation, the following regulation: