He now became troubled with the _passion for reforming the world_.[2]
He built many castles in the air, and peopled them with secret
tribunals, and bands of illuminati, who were always the imaginary
instruments of his projected regeneration of the human species. As he
intended to institute a perfect republic, he invested himself with
absolute sovereignty over these mystical dispensers of liberty. He
slept with Horrid Mysteries under his pillow, and dreamed of venerable
eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in
subterranean caves. He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed
in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, which
he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico
dressing-gown about him like the mantle of a conspirator.
'Action,' thus he soliloquised, 'is the result of opinion, and to
new-model opinion would be to new-model society. Knowledge is power;
it is in the hands of a few, who employ it to mislead the many, for
their own selfish purposes of aggrandisement and appropriation. What
if it were in the hands of a few who should employ it to lead the
many? What if it were universal, and the multitude were enlightened?
No. The many must be always in leading-strings; but let them have wise
and honest conductors.
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