Perceiving the immense success that Gassner was having at this time by his cures, and fully alive to the powerful hold the passion for the supernatural had obtained on the popular imagination, he decided to give his society a mystic character as a means of recruiting followers. As Weishaupt’s object was to convert them into blind instruments of his supreme will, he modelled his organization after that of the Jesuits, adopting in particular their system of espionage, their practice of passive obedience, and their maxim that the end justifies the means. From mysticism he borrowed the name of the society: Illuminés. From freemasonry, the classes and grades into which they were subdivided, the purpose of which was to measure the progress of the adept in assimilating the doctrine of the absolute equality of man and to excite his imagination by making him hope for the communication of some wonderful mystic secret when he reached the highest grade. Those who enjoyed the confidence of Weishaupt were known as areopagites. To them alone was he visible, and as he deemed that too many precautions could not be observed in concealing the existence of a society sworn to the abolition of the Christian religion and the overthrow of the established social system, he and his accomplices adopted names by which alone they were known to the others.
Comprised at first of a few students at the University of Ingolstadt, the Illuminés gradually increased their numbers and sought recruits in other places, special attention being given to the enlistment of young men of wealth and position. In this way, the real objects of Illuminism being artfully concealed, the society extended within the course of four or five years all over Germany. Its adepts even had a hand in affairs of State and gained the ear of many of those petty and picturesque sovereigns of the Empire who, catching the fever of philosophy from Frederick the Great and Joseph II, amused themselves in trying to blend despotism, philanthropy, and the occult. As the Illuminés were utterly unscrupulous, they did not hesitate to seek recruits in the Church of Rome itself, of which they were the secret and deadly enemy, in order by taking sides in the theological quarrels of the day to increase dissensions and weaken the power of the Pope.
G. V. Mansinger pinx. C. W. Bockfe.
ADAM WEISHAVPT.
(After Mansinger)
However, cleverly organized though they were, the Illuminés, composed of very young and passionate men carefully chosen—Weishaupt himself was scarcely twenty-eight when he founded the sect in 1776—did not make much progress, till Baron von Knigge joined them in 1780. He possessed the one faculty that Weishaupt lacked—imagination. Young, monstrously licentious, irreligious and intelligent, he was consumed with an insatiable curiosity for fresh experiences. He had written a number of novels which had attracted some attention and certain pamphlets on morals that had been put on the Index. He had been admitted to most of the secret societies of the day, particularly that of the Freemasons. He had experimented in alchemy and studied every phase of occultism from the philosophy of the Gnostics to that of Swedenborg. Everything that savoured of the supernatural had a profound attraction for him; even sleight of hand tricks, it is said, had engaged his attention. At thirty he had seen, studied and analyzed everything, and still his imagination remained as untired and inquisitive as ever. An ally at once more invaluable and more dangerous it would have been impossible for Weishaupt to have procured.
Admitted to the confidence of Weishaupt this young Hanoverian nobleman rapidly gained an ascendency over him. It was owing to the advice of Knigge that Weishaupt divided the Illuminés into grades after the manner of the Freemasons, and adopted the method of initiation of which the mysterious and terrifying rites were well calculated to impress the proselyte. With a Knigge to invent and a Weishaupt to organize, the Illuminés rapidly increased their numbers and activities. Overrunning Germany they crossed the frontiers preaching, proselytizing, and spreading the gospel of the Revolution everywhere. But this rapid development was not without its dangers. Conscious that the existence of such a society if it became known would inevitably lead to its suppression, Knigge, who was nothing if not resourceful, conceived the idea of grafting it on to Freemasonry, which by reason of its powerful connections and vast proportions would, he trusted, give to Illuminism both protection and the means of spreading more widely and rapidly.
The origin of this association, the oldest known to the world, composed of men of all countries, ranks, and creeds sworn to secrecy, bound together by strange symbols and signs, whose real mystic meaning has long been forgotten, and to-day devoted to the practice of philanthropy on an extensive scale—has been the subject of much speculation. The theory, most generally accepted, is that which supposes it to have been founded at the time and for the purpose of building the Temple of Solomon. But whatever its early history, Freemasonry in its present form first came into prominence in the seventeenth century in England, whence it spread to France and Germany. It was introduced into the former country by the Jacobites early in the eighteenth century with the object of furthering the cause of the Stuarts. On the extinction of their hopes, however, it reverted to its original ideals of equality and fraternity, and in spite of these democratic principles obtained a strong hold upon the aristocracy. Indeed, in France it was from the first a decidedly royalist institution and this character it preserved, outwardly at least, down to the Revolution, numbering nobles and clergy alike among its members, and always having a prince of the blood as Grand Master.
In Germany, on the contrary, where since the Thirty Years’ War popular aspirations and discontent had expressed themselves inarticulately in a multitude of secret societies, the principles of Freemasonry had a political rather than a social significance.