correspondence of the Illuminati provides their best exoneration. The
Marquis de Luchet, who was no friend of the Jesuits, shows the absurdity
of confounding their aims with those of either the Freemasons or the
Illuminati, and describes all three as animated by wholly different
purposes.[499]

In all these questions it is necessary to seek a motive. I have no
personal interest in defending the Jesuits, but I ask: what motive could
the Jesuits have in forming or supporting a conspiracy directed against
all thrones and altars? It has been answered me that the Jesuits at this
period cared nothing for thrones and altars, but only for temporal
power; yet--even accepting this unwarrantable hypothesis--how was this
power to be exercised except through thrones and altars? Was it not
through princes and the Church that the Jesuits had been able to bring
their influence to bear on affairs of state? In an irreligious Republic,
as events afterwards proved, the power of the whole clergy was bound to
be destroyed. The truth is then, that, far from abetting the Illuminati,
the Jesuits were their most formidable opponents, the only body of men
sufficiently learned, astute, and well organized to outwit the schemes
of Weishaupt. In suppressing the Jesuits it is possible that the Old
Regime removed the only barrier capable of resisting the tide of
revolution.

Weishaupt indeed, as we know, detested the Jesuits,[500] and took from
them only certain methods of discipline, of ensuring obedience or of
acquiring influence over the minds of his disciples; his aims were
entirely different.

Where, then, did Weishaupt find his immediate inspiration? It is here
that Barruel and Lecouteulx de Canteleu provide a clue not to be
discovered in other sources. In 1771, they relate, a certain Jutland
merchant named Kolmer, who had spent many years in Egypt, returned to
Europe in search of converts to a secret doctrine founded on Manichaeism
that he had learnt in the East. On his way to France he stopped at
Malta, where he met Cagliostro and nearly brought about an insurrection
amongst the people. Kolmer was therefore driven out of the island by the
Knights of Malta and betook himself to Avignon and Lyons. Here he made a
few disciples amongst the Illumines and in the same year went on to
Germany, where he encountered Weishaupt and initiated him into all the
mysteries of his secret doctrine. According to Barruel, Weishaupt then
spent five years thinking