overthrow of the Altar, of the Throne, and of all Society, is a conception of my own; to me and to me alone is due the whole glory.”
I have revealed the disastrous secrets of Illuminism; I have laid open the gradation and progressive degrees, the long chain of artifice, by which the Sect prepares its adepts for the last mysteries, to behold them stript of their veil without shuddering, and to embrace them with enthusiastic ardour.—We must either commit the Code of the Sect to the flames, and deny the truth of its annals; even refuse the evidence of the familiar correspondence of Spartacus Weishaupt the founder, and of Philo-Knigge the principal compiler; we must dispute all the agreements of its most arduous co-operators, or else must we wait, as the only possible demonstration, the entire and fatal execution of these disastrous plots, before we positively pronounce, that the sole object of their infernal plans and of their frantic wishes is no other than the total overthrow of every Altar, of every Throne or Magistracy; the annihilation of all authority and of all civil or religious society; the destruction of property whether in the hands of the rich or of the poor; and the very arts and sciences which can only be cultivated in civil society are to be banished from the face of the earth. Equality and Liberty, together with the most absolute independence, are to be the substitutes for all rights and all property: Our morals and social intercourse are to make place for the savage, vagabond, roaming life, which the Sect alternately decorates with the name of Nomade and of Patriarchal. The means to be employed in operating this change will be found in the artifice, deceit, illusion and wickedness which the Sophisters are masters of, until the force of numbers shall have declared for the Sect; but when at length, powerful in numbers, the Sect shall have acquired strength, it shall not only bind hands, subjugate, murder, ravage, and renew all the horrors and atrocities of the barbarians of the North, but also surpass those Vandals in the arts of destruction, and without pity or distinction butcher all that part of mankind that shall dare to oppose the progress of the Sect, presume to heave a sigh over the ruins of religion, society, or property, or attempt to raise them from their ashes.—If I have not proved that such are the wishes, the secret machinations of the Sect and of its flagitious principles, let me be informed what is to be understood by proof, or what is to be the operation of evidence on the human mind.—Were it possible that any of my readers still consoled themselves with the idea that the frantic extravagance of these plots surpassed their wickedness, let them remember that I have still something more to say.—I have still to investigate the laws and interior government of the Sect, laws adopted for the destruction of every other law or government, and that it might hereafter prove, that however monstrous the object of the plots of the Sect may be, it was far from being chimerical.
p. 523p. 524
Footnotes
524:1 Orig. Writ. Vol. II. Let. 15, 16, 24, to Cato-Zwack.
524:2 Ibid. Vol. I. Let. 4, to Cato.
524:3 Ibid. Vol. II. Let 1, to Philo, and Second Part of Agreement of the Areopagites.
524:4 Original Writings, Vol. II. Let. 15, to Cato.
524:5 See the Discourse on the Degree of Epopt.
524:6 Original Writings, Vol. I. Let 4, to Cato.
524:7 Ibid. Let 3, to Cato.
524:8 See the Helvian Letters on these Works.
524:9 Ibid. Vol. II. Let. 15, to Cato.
524:10 So hoffe ich doch sollen alle darin übereinkommen, dass die in diesen graden aufgestellten grund-säze fähig seyen, grosse und erhabene menschen zu bilden—Introduction to his corrected System.
524:11 See in the corrected System the Discourse on the third class.
524:12 Unterricht für alle mitglieder, welche zu Theosophischen schwärmereyen geneight sind.
524:13 See the last Discourse of Illuminism corrected.
524:14 See this agreement in the Original Writings, Vol. II. Part II. signed the 20 Adarmeth 1551, or Anno Domini 20 December, 1781.
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