A few to think, and many to act; that is the
only basis of perfect society. So thought the ancient philosophers:
they had their esoterical and exoterical doctrines. So thinks the
sublime Kant, who delivers his oracles in language which none but
the initiated can comprehend. Such were the views of those secret
associations of illuminati, which were the terror of superstition and
tyranny, and which, carefully selecting wisdom and genius from the
great wilderness of society, as the bee selects honey from the flowers
of the thorn and the nettle, bound all human excellence in a chain,
which, if it had not been prematurely broken, would have commanded
opinion, and regenerated the world.'
Scythrop proceeded to meditate on the practicability of reviving a
confederation of regenerators. To get a clear view of his own ideas,
and to feel the pulse of the wisdom and genius of the age, he wrote
and published a treatise, in which his meanings were carefully wrapt
up in the monk's hood of transcendental technology, but filled with
hints of matter deep and dangerous, which he thought would set
the whole nation in a ferment; and he awaited the result in awful
expectation, as a miner who has fired a train awaits the explosion of
a rock.
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