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.[649] 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 _Illumines_ 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 _Illumines_
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