h. Witt Doehring then shows how faithfully the system of
Weishaupt was carried out by the Alta Vendita. In the three first
degrees, he explains--

It is still a question of the morality of Christianity and even of
the Church, for which those who wish to be received must promise to
sacrifice themselves. The initiates imagine, according to this
formula, that the object of the association is something high and
noble, that it is the Order of those who desire a purer morality
and a stronger piety, the independence and the unity of their
country. One cannot therefore judge the Carbonari _en masse_; there
are excellent men amongst them.... But everything changes after one
has taken the three degrees. Already in the fourth, in that of the
_Apostoli_, one promises to overthrow all monarchies, and
especially the kings of the race of the Bourbons. But it is only in
the seventh and last degree, reached by few, that revelations go
further. At last the veil is torn completely for the Principi Summo
Patriarcho. Then one learns that the aim of the Carbonari is just
the same as that of the _Illumines_. This degree, in which a man is
at the same time prince and bishop, coincides with the Homo Rex of
the latter. The initiate vows the ruin of all religion and of all
positive government, whether despotic or democratic; murder,
poison, perjury, are all at their disposal. Who does not remember
that on the suppression of the _Illumines_ was found, amongst other
poisons, a _tinctura ad abortum faciendum_. The _summo maestro_
laughs at the zeal of the mass of Carbonari who have sacrificed
themselves for the liberty and independence of Italy, neither one
nor the other being for him a goal but a method.[653]

Witt Doehring, who had himself reached the degree of P.S.P., thereupon
declares that, having taken his vows under a misapprehension, he holds
himself to be released from his obligations and conceives it his duty to
warn society. "The fears that assail governments are only too well
founded. The soil of Europe is volcanic."[654]

It is unnecessary to go over the ground already traversed in _World
Revolution_ by relating the history of the successive eruptions which
proved the truth of Witt Doehring's warning. The point to emphasize
again is that every one of these eruptions can be traced to the work of
the secret societies,