methods of organization, the source of
inspiration from which Weishaupt subsequently drew his anarchic
philosophy still remains obscure. It has frequently been suggested that
his real inspirers were Jews, and the Jewish writer Bernard Lazare
definitely states that "there were Jews, Cabalistic Jews, around
Weishaupt."[593] A writer in _La Vieille France_ went so far as to
designate these Jews as Moses Mendelssohn, Wessely, and the bankers
Itzig, Friedlander, and Meyer. But no documentary evidence has ever been
produced in support of these statements. It is therefore necessary to
examine them in the light of probability.

Now, as I have already shown, the theosophical ideas of the Cabala play
no part in the system of Illuminism; the only trace of Cabalism to be
found amongst the papers of the Order is a list of recipes for procuring
abortion, for making aphrodisiacs, Aqua Toffana, pestilential vapours,
etc., headed "Cabala Major."[594] It is possible, then, that the
Illuminati may have learnt something of "venefic magic" and the use of
certain natural substances from Jewish Cabalists; at the same time Jews
appear to have been only in rare cases admitted to the Order. Everything
indeed tends to prove that Weishaupt and his first coadjutors, Zwack and
Massenhausen, were pure Germans. Nevertheless there is between the
ideas of Weishaupt and of Lessing's "Falk" a distinct resemblance; both
in the writings of the Illuminati and in Lessing's _Dialogues_ we find
the same vein of irony with regard to Freemasonry, the same design that
it should be replaced by a more effectual system,[595]the same
denunciations of the existing social order and of bourgeois society, the
same theory that "men should be self-governing," the same plan of
obliterating all distinctions between nations, even the same simile of
the bee-hive as applied to human life[596] which, as I have shown
elsewhere, was later on adopted by the anarchist Proudhon. It may,
however, legitimately be urged that these ideas were those of the inner
masonic circle to which both Lessing and Weishaupt belonged, and that,
though placed in the mouth of Falk, they were in no sense Judaic.

But Lessing was also the friend and admirer of Moses Mendelssohn, who
has been suggested as one of Weishaupt's inspirers. Now, at first sight
nothing seems more improbable than that an orthodox Jew such as
Mendelssohn should have accorded any sympathy to the anarchic scheme of
Weishaupt. Neverth