ch Freemasonry under the high
inspiration of the Duc d'Antin.

2nd. _Occult revolution_ in the Lodges, due in great part to the
members of the Templar Rite and executed by a group of expelled
Freemasons afterwards amnestied.[420]

The masonic authorship of the _Encyclopedie_ and the consequent
dissemination of revolutionary doctrines has remained no matter of doubt
to the Freemasons of France; on the contrary, they glory in the fact. At
the congress of the Grand Orient in 1904 the Freemason Bonnet declared:

In the eighteenth century the glorious line of Encyclopaedists
formed in our temples a fervent audience which was then alone in
invoking the radiant device as yet unknown to the crowd: "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity." The revolutionary seed quickly germinated
amidst this _elite_. Our illustrious Freemasons d'Alembert,
Diderot, Helvetius, d'Holbach, Voltaire, Condorcet, completed the
evolution of minds and prepared the new era. And, when the Bastille
fell, Freemasonry had the supreme honour of giving to humanity the
charter (i.e. the Declaration of the Rights of Man) which it had
elaborated with devotion. (_Applause_.)

This charter, the orator went on to say, was the work of the Freemason
Lafayette, and was adopted by the Constituent Assembly, of which more
than 300 members were Freemasons.

But in using the lodges to sow the seeds of revolution, the
Encyclopaedists betrayed not only the cause of monarchy but of Masonry as
well. It will be noticed that, in conformity with true masonic
principles, Ramsay in his oration expressly stated that the encyclopaedia
was to concern itself with the liberal arts and sciences[421] and that
theology and politics were to be excluded from the contemplated scheme.
How, then, did it come to pass that these were eventually the two
subjects to which the Encyclopaedists devoted the greatest attention, so
that their work became principally an attack on Church and monarchy? If
Papus was right in attributing this revolutionary tendency to the
_Encyclopedie_ from the time of the famous oration, then Ramsay could
only be set down as the profoundest hypocrite or as the mouthpiece of
hypocrites professing intentions the very reverse of their real designs.
A far more probable explanation seems to be that during the interval
between Ramsay's speech and the date when the _Encyclopedie_ was begun
in earnest, the scheme unde