As an organization the German Union scarcely emerged from the stage of inception; but the absurd policy of publicity pursued by its founder gave to the project a wide airing and provoked hostile writings[459] that added immensely to the importance of the matter. The new system was boldly denounced as continuing the operations of the odious order dissolved in Bavaria, with a shrewd change of tactics which substituted “innocent” reading-rooms for the novitiate of Weishaupt’s organization, and thus, it was urged, the way was opened for the exertion of a really powerful influence upon the thought of the German people.[460]
By such means, and in such widely diverse and irrational ways, the popular belief in the survival of the defunct Order of the Illuminati was kept alive and supplied with definite points of attachment; but it remained for the French Revolution, in all the rapidity and vastness of its developments and in the terrifying effects which its more frightful aspects exercised upon its observers, to offer the most exciting suggestions and to stimulate to the freest play the imaginations of those who were already persuaded that the secret associations that plagued Bavaria still lived to trouble the earth.[461]
The supposed points of connection between the Order of the Illuminati and the French Revolution were partly tangible, though decidedly elusive,[462] but much more largely of the nature of theories framed to meet the necessities of a case which in the judgment of dilettante historians positively _required_ the hypothesis of a diabolical conspiracy against thrones and altars (_i. e._, the civil power and the church), though the labors of Hercules might have to be exceeded in putting the same to paper.
Of the exiguous resources of interpreters of the Revolution who made serious efforts to trace its impious and anarchical principles and its savage enormities to their lair in the lodges of the Illuminati, the following are perhaps the only ones worthy of note.
The public discussion of the affairs and principles of Weishaupt’s organization, to which attention has already been called in various connections, continued with unabated zeal even beyond the close of the eighteenth century. At the very hour when the Revolution was shocking the world by its lapse from its original self-control into its horrible massacres, execution of monarchs, guillotine-lust, and ferocious struggles between parties, new pamphlets and reviews bearing on the demolished order’s constitution and objects found their way into the channels of public communication. Conspicuous among these were the following: _Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten Orden, jetzt zum ersten Mal gedruckt und zur Beherzigung bei gegenwärtigen Zeitläuften herausgegeben_,[463] and _Illuminatus Dirigens oder Schottischer Ritter_,[464] announced as a continuation of the former. These works, published at the instigation of the authorities at Munich, attracted public attention anew to the most extreme religious and social doctrines[465] of the order. Thus the revolutionary character of Illuminism received heavy emphasis[466] synchronously with contemporary events of the utmost significance to the imperilled cause of political and religious conservatism.