need little is the first step to freedom; therefore savages
and the most highly enlightened are perhaps the only free men. The
art of more and more limiting one's needs is at the same time the
art of attaining freedom....[535]

Weishaupt then goes on to show how the further evil of Patriotism arose:

With the origin of nations and peoples the world ceased to be a
great family, a single kingdom: the great tie of nature was
torn.... Nationalism took the place of human love.... Now it became
a virtue to magnify one's fatherland at the expense of whoever was
not enclosed within its limits, now as a means to this narrow end
it was allowed to despise and outwit foreigners or indeed even to
insult them. This virtue was called Patriotism....[536]

And so by narrowing down affection to one's fellow-citizens, the members
of one's family, and even to oneself:

There arose out of Patriotism, Localism, the family spirit, and
finally Egoism.... Diminish Patriotism, then men will learn to know
each other again as such, their dependence on each other will be
lost, the bond of union will widen out....[537]

It will be seen that the whole of Weishaupt's theory was in reality a
new rendering of the ancient secret tradition relating to the fall of
man and the loss of his primitive felicity; but whilst the ancient
religions taught the hope of a Redeemer who should restore man to his
former state, Weishaupt looks to man alone for his restoration. "Men,"
he observes, "no longer loved men but only such and such men. The word
was quite lost...."[538] Thus in Weishaupt's masonic system the "lost
word" is "Man," and its recovery is interpreted by the idea that Man
should find himself again. Further on Weishaupt goes on to show how "the
redemption of the human race is to be brought about".

These means are secret schools of wisdom, these were from all time
the archives of Nature and of human rights, through them will Man
be saved from his Fall, princes and nations will disappear without
violence from the earth, the human race will become one family and
the world the abode of reasonable men. Morality alone will bring
about this change imperceptibly. Every father of a family will be,
as formerly Abraham and the patriarchs, the priest and unfettered
lord of his family, and Reason will be the only code of Man. This
is one of our grea