right
elements in all existing associations as well as isolated individuals
and turn them to his purpose. So in the army of the Illuminati we find
men of every shade of thought, from the poet Goethe[602] to the meanest
intriguer--lofty idealists, social reformers, visionaries, and at the
same time the ambitious, the rancorous, and the disgruntled, men swayed
by lust or embittered by grievances, all these differing in their aims
yet by Weishaupt's admirable system of watertight compartments precluded
from a knowledge of these differences and all marching, unconsciously or
not, towards the same goal.

Although this was not the invention of Weishaupt but had been
foreshadowed many centuries earlier in the East, it was Weishaupt, so
far as we know, who reduced it to a working system for the West--a
system which has been adhered to by succeeding groups of
world-revolutionaries up to the present day. It is for this reason that
I have quoted at length the writings of the Illuminati--all the ruses,
all the hypocrisy, all the subtle methods of camouflage which
characterized the Order will be found again in the insidious propaganda
both of the modern secret societies and the open revolutionary
organizations whose object is to subvert all order, all morality, and
all religion.

I maintain, therefore, with greater conviction than ever the importance
of Illuminism in the history of world-revolution. But for this
co-ordination of methods the philosophers and Encyclopaedists might have
gone on for ever inveighing against thrones and altars, the Martinistes
evoking spirits, the magicians weaving spells, the Freemasons declaiming
on universal brotherhood--none of these would have "armed the hand" and
driven the infuriated mobs into the streets of Paris; it was not until
the emissaries of Weishaupt formed an alliance with the Orleaniste
leaders that vague subversive theory became active revolution.

10

THE CLIMAX

The first Masonic body with which the Illuminati formed an alliance was
the Stricte Observance, to which the Illuminati Knigge and Bode both
belonged. Cagliostro had also been initiated into the Stricte Observance
near Frankfurt and was now employed as agent of the combined order.
According to his own confession his mission "was to work so as to turn
Freemasonry in the direction of Weishaupt's projects"; and the funds he
drew upon were those of the Illuminati.[603] Cagliostro also formed a
link with the Marti