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Code of the Illuminati

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« Reply #390 on: November 30, 2009, 01:51:08 am »

But let us abridge these blasphemies. The Hierophant, under pretence of his universal love, may vent his spleen against the distinctions of Greeks or Romans, of French or English, of Italian or Spanish, of Pagan or Jew, of Christians or Mahometans, which denote nations and their religions: he may repeat, if he pleases, that amidst these different denominations that of man is

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« Reply #391 on: November 30, 2009, 01:51:20 am »

overlooked; what will be the result of such declamation?—With our illuminizing doctor, in common with every class of the disorganizing Sophisters, is not this pretended universal love to be a cloak for the most odious hypocrisy? He only pretends to universal philanthropy, that he may dispense with loving his neighbour. He detests the love of one's country, only because he detests the laws of nations; he cannot even brook the love of one's family (he has given us a fine specimen in the person of his sister), and he will substitute that universal love because he is no more attached to them than he is to the Chinese, the Tartar, or the Hottentot, which he neither has seen nor ever will see, and that all human nature may be equally indifferent to him. He extends the bond that it may lose its elasticity and discontinue its action.—He calls himself citizen of the universe, that he may cease to be a citizen in his own country, a friend in society, or a fond father and dutiful child in his own family. His love, he tells us, extends from pole to pole, that he may love nothing that is near him. Such is the philanthropy of our Cosmopolites!
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« Reply #392 on: November 30, 2009, 01:52:01 am »

The proselyte stands astonished in stupid admiration at these expressions of universal love.—The Hierophant proceeds to the Codes of Nations. Still in extasy at these doctrines, he learns that they are in direct opposition to the laws of nature; nor will he even perceive that his new code is in direct opposition to the very first laws of nature, as it eradicates the love of one's own family and that of one's country. Nor will he ask, why the fulfilling of his duty toward his fellow-countrymen should hinder him from treating the barbarian or the savage with proper affection? Then follow new sophisms, to persuade the adept that the original fault of man was, the dereliction of the Equality and Liberty of the savage state by the institution of civil laws.
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« Reply #393 on: November 30, 2009, 01:52:32 am »

Here, more than ever, are calumny and hatred blended with enthusiasm by the Hierophant, who, reviewing the different ages of the world since the existence of civil institutions, pictures nations as groaning under oppression, despotism, and slavery, or glutted with the blood of wars and revolutions, which always terminate in tyranny. At one time it is the representation of Kings surrounding themselves with herds or legions called soldiers, in order to gratify their ambition by conquests on strangers, or to reign by terror over their enslaved subjects; at other times, it is the people themselves brandishing their arms, not to attack tyranny in its source, but merely to change their tyrants. If they think of giving themselves representatives, it is these very representatives, who, forgetting that they only hold their missions and powers from the people, form Aristocracies and Oligarchies, which all end by flowing into the general reservoir of Monarchy and Despotism. He never loses sight of his sophism of human nature degraded and vilified under the yoke of tyranny. These declamations, enthusiastically pronounced, at length make the proselyte exclaim, in unison with his master, "Are such then the consequences of the institution of states and of civil society? O folly! oh people! that you did not foresee the fate that awaited you; that you should yourselves have seconded your despots in degrading human nature to servitude, and even to the condition of the brute!"

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« Reply #394 on: November 30, 2009, 01:52:50 am »

Could a true Philosopher have been present, his heart must have burst with generous indignation; he would have abruptly challenged the Hierophant to declare whence he had learned to metamorphose the annals of society into those of brigands and monsters? Is the history of man then reduced to the records of plagues, famines, storms, tempests, or of convulsed elements? Have no serene days shone on man? Shall the sun be represented as a malevolent object, because it is sometimes obscured by fogs or clouds? Are we to fly from our habitations because many have been destroyed by fire? Shall we curse life and health because we are subject to pains and infirmities? Why else this fable painting of the disasters which have in the course of ages befallen civil society? Why are we to be silent on the misfortunes from which it has preserved us, or on the advantages which it has heaped on man, in reclaiming him from the forests?
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« Reply #395 on: November 30, 2009, 01:53:22 am »

But the voice of reason cannot penetrate into the den of conspiracy. The oracles of Weishaupt shall there be confidently repeated by the Hierophant. He draws nigher and nigher to the grand object, to the means of making those misfortunes disappear, which originate, as he pretends, in the institution of laws and governments. "Oh nature!" he continues, "how great and incontestible are thy rights? It is from the womb of disaster and mutual destruction that the means of safety spring! Oppression disappears because it meets with abettors, and reason regains its rights because people wish to stifle it. He, at least, who wishes to mislead others, should seek to govern them by the advantages of instruction and science. Kings themselves at length perceive, that there is little glory in reigning over ignorant herds—Legislators begin to acquire wisdom, and they favour property and industry:—perverse motives propagate the sciences, and Kings protect them as agents of oppression. Other men profit of them to investigate the origin of their rights. They at length seize on that unknown mean of forwarding a revolution in the human mind, and of thus triumphing for ever over oppression. But the triumph would be of short duration, and man would fall back into his degraded state, had not Providence in those distant ages husbanded the means which it has transmitted down to us, of secretly meditating and at length operating the salvation of human kind.
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« Reply #396 on: November 30, 2009, 01:53:51 am »

"Those means are, the secret schools of Philosophy. Those schools have been in all ages the archives of nature and of the rights of man. These schools shall one day retrieve the fall of human nature, and Princes and Nations shall disappear from the face of the earth, and that without any violence. Human nature shall form one great family, and the earth shall become the habitation of the man of reason.—Morality shall alone produce this great Revolution. The day shall come when each father shall, like Abraham and the Patriarchs, become the Priest and absolute Sovereign of his family. Reason shall be the only book of laws, the sole Code of man. This is one of our grand mysteries. Attend to the demonstration of it, and learn how it has been transmitted down to us."
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« Reply #397 on: November 30, 2009, 01:54:13 am »

I have already said, that had my object been only to prove the reality of a Conspiracy formed by Illuminism against the existence of every society,

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every civil Code, and every nation; these lessons of the Hierophant would render every other proof superfluous. But that the reader may know the full extent of the dangers which threaten us, it is necesssary that he should be shown how those plots of frenzy become really transformed into plots of profound wickedness; that he should be acquainted with the means employed enthusiastically to inflame the minds of whole legions of adepts. Let us then attend to the Hierophant. If patience be necessary to follow him, greater still has it been necessary to enable me to transcribe such doctrines.
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« Reply #398 on: November 30, 2009, 01:54:25 am »

I have already said, that had my object been only to prove the reality of a Conspiracy formed by Illuminism against the existence of every society,

p. 481

every civil Code, and every nation; these lessons of the Hierophant would render every other proof superfluous. But that the reader may know the full extent of the dangers which threaten us, it is necesssary that he should be shown how those plots of frenzy become really transformed into plots of profound wickedness; that he should be acquainted with the means employed enthusiastically to inflame the minds of whole legions of adepts. Let us then attend to the Hierophant. If patience be necessary to follow him, greater still has it been necessary to enable me to transcribe such doctrines.
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« Reply #399 on: November 30, 2009, 01:54:42 am »

"What strange blindness can have induced men to imagine that human nature was always to be governed as it has hitherto been.

"Where shall we find a man acquainted with all the resources of nature? Who dare prescribe limits, and say thus far shalt thou proceed, and no farther, to that nature, whose law is unity in the variegated infinite? Whence shall issue the command, that it shall always run the same course, and for ever renew it again—Where is the being who has condemned men, the best, the wisest, and the most enlightened of men, to perpetual slavery? Why should human nature be bereft of its most perfect attribute, that of governing itself? Why are those persons to be always led who are capable of conducting themselves? Is it then impossible for mankind or at least the greater part, to come to their majority? If one be enabled to do it why should not another; show to one person what
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« Reply #400 on: November 30, 2009, 01:54:56 am »

you have taught another; teach him the grand art of mastering his passions and regulating his desires; teach him, that from his earliest youth he stands in need of others; that he must abstain from giving offence if he wishes not to be offended; that he must be beneficent if he wishes to receive favours. Let him be patient, indulgent, wise, and benevolent. Let these virtues be made easy to him by principles, experience, and examples; and you will soon see whether he needs another to conduct him? If it be true, that the greater part of mankind are too weak or too ignorant to conceive these simple truths, and to be convinced by them; Oh then our happiness will be at an end, and let us cease to labour at rendering mankind better, or at seeking to enlighten them."
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« Reply #401 on: November 30, 2009, 01:55:07 am »

"Oh prejudice! oh contradiction of the human mind! shall the empire of reason, the capacity of governing ourselves, be but a chimerical dream for the greater number of men, while on the other hand prejudice leads us to believe that such is the inherent right of the children of Kings, of reigning families, and of every man whom wisdom or particular circumstances render independent!"

What horrid artifice is contained in these sentences! The poor proselyte really imagines that he sees the most striking contradictions in the very foundations of our civil societies. He really thinks that we believe them to rest on the hereditary privilege of Kings and of their children, to be born with all the necessary wisdom to conduct themselves, while nature has refused such gifts to other mortals; though Weishaupt, who scoffs in private at the credulity and folly of his adepts, knows as well as we do, that such has never been the idea even of the most ignorant populace. He knows that we believe Kings to be born children like other men, with the same weaknesses, the same passions,

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« Reply #402 on: November 30, 2009, 01:55:21 am »

and like incapacity; he knows as well as we do, that the gift of conducting ourselves and others is to be acquired by education, and by the helps and lights with which a man may be encompassed; and we know as well as he does, that the child of the most obscure parentage would often make a better king than many Sovereigns; as he might also be an excellent magistrate, or a great general, had he received a proportionate education. But does there hence follow any contradiction in civil society, because, uncertain as to the persons who would be the most proper for governing, but certain of the intrigues and broils which would accompany the election of Kings, it has obviated those inconveniencies by hereditary crowns and empires? And after all, what is the meaning of that sophisticated pretence founded on the power of being able to conduct oneself? Question the most prudent and the wisest of men, and he will readily say, though I do not stand in need of laws, magistrates, or Kings, to restrain me from being unjust toward others, or from oppressing and plundering, I yet want their assistance to secure me from being
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« Reply #403 on: November 30, 2009, 01:55:34 am »

oppressed or plundered. The less I am inclined to injure others, the more I need the protection of the law from all injury. You are pleased to call my submission to the laws slavery; I, on the contrary, look to it as my safety, and as the guarantee of that liberty which enables me to do good and to live happy and at peace in society. I have never heard of laws which forbad me to live like an honest man. It is the wicked man only who recognises liberty but in the impunity of his crimes; I scorn such liberty, and bless the hand that deprives me of it. You call him a tyrant and a despot, I call him my King and my benefactor. The better I know how to conduct myself with respect to others, the more thankful I am to him who hinders others from behaving ill to me.
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« Reply #404 on: November 30, 2009, 01:55:44 am »

The reader must pardon me these reflexions; I know they are superfluous to those who think; but may not this work fall into the hands of persons as credulous as the unhappy proselyte. In exposing the envenomed weapons of the Sect, let it not be said that I withhold the antidote. Should any be still blind enough not to perceive the tendency of all these sophisms of Illuminism, let them hearken to the Sect ardently declaring their hopes; the Hierophant continues:
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