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efforts to introduce their principles into the lodges, and “to spread a doctrine subversive of all settled government … under the pretext of the regeneration of social morality and the amelioration of the lot and condition of men by means of laws founded on principles and sentiments unknown hitherto and contained only in the heads of the leaders.” “Illuminism,” he declares, “is becoming a great and formidable power, and I fear, in my conscience, that kings and peoples will have much to suffer from it unless foresight and prudence break its frightful mechanism [‘ses affreux restorts’].”
Two years later, on January 16, 1813, Berckheim writes again to the Minister of Police:
Monseigneur, they write to me from Heidelberg … that a great number of initiates into the mysteries of Illuminism are to be found there.
These gentlemen wear as a sign of recognition a gold ring on the third finger of the left hand; on the back of this ring there is a little rose, in the middle of this rose is an almost imperceptible dint; by pressing this with the point of a pin one touches a spring, by this means the two gold circles are detached. On the inside of the first of these circles is the device: “Be German as you ought to be”; on the inside of the second of these circles are engraved the words “Pro Patria”.
 
Subversive as the ideas of the Illuminati might be, they were therefore not subversive of German patriotism. We shall find this apparent paradox running all through the Illuminist movement to the present day.
In 1814 Berckheim drew up his great report on the secret societies of Germany, which is of so much importance in throwing a light on the workings of the modern revolutionary movement, that extracts must be given here at length. His testimony gains greater weight from the vagueness he displays on the origins of Illuminism and the role it had played before the French Revolution; it is evident, therefore, that he had not taken his ideas from Robison or Barruel – to whom he never once refers – but from information gleaned on the spot in Germany. The opening paragraphs finally refute the fallacy concerning the extinction of the sect in 1786.
The oldest and most dangerous association is that which is generally known under the denomination of the “Illuminés” and of which the foundation goes back towards the middle of the last century.
Bavaria was its cradle; it is said that it had for founders several chiefs of the Order of the Jesuits; but this opinion, advanced perhaps at random, is founded only on uncertain premises; in any case, in a short time it made rapid progress, and the Bavarian Government recognized the necessity of employing methods of repression against it and even of driving away several of the principal sectaries.
But it could not eradicate the germ of the evil. The “Illuminés” who remained in Bavaria, obliged to wrap themselves in darkness so as to escape the eye of authority, became only the more formidable: the rigorous measures of which they were the object, adorned by the title of persecution, gained them new proselytes, whilst the banished members went to carry the principles of the Association into other States.
Thus in a few years Illuminism multiplied its hotbeds all through the south of Germany, and as a consequence in Saxony, in Prussia, in Sweden, and even in Russia.
The reveries of the Pietists have long been confounded with those of the Illuminés. This error may arise from the denomination of the sect, which at first suggests the idea of a purely religious fanaticism and of mystic forms which it was obliged to take at its birth in order to conceal its principles and projects; but the Association always had a political tendency. If it still retains some mystic traits, it is in order to support itself at need by the power of religious fanaticism, and we shall see in what follows how well it knows to turn this to account.
The doctrine of Illuminism is subversive of every kind