The excitement occasioned by the appearance of the German Union (_Die Deutsche Union_), on account of its definite connections with one of the former leaders[455] of Weishaupt’s system and the unsavory private character and avowed unscrupulous designs of its originator, gave still more specific force to the Illuminati legend. Charles Frederick Bahrdt,[456] a disreputable doctor of theology, in 1787, at Halle, proposed to reap advantage from the ruin of Weishaupt’s system and to recruit among its former members the supporters of a new league, organized to accomplish the enlightenment of the people principally by means of forming in every city secret associations of men[457] who were to keep in correspondence with similar groups of their brethren and who, by the employment of reading-rooms, were to familiarize the people with those writings which were specially calculated to remove popular prejudices and superstitions, and to break the force of appeals to tradition. Further, these associations were to supply financial assistance to writers who enlisted in the Union’s campaign, and to fill the palms of booksellers who for the sake of a bribe showed themselves willing to prevent the sale of the works of authors who withheld their coöperation.[458] As an organization the German Union scarcely emerged from the stage of inception; but the absurd policy of publicity pursued by its founder gave to the project a wide airing and provoked hostile writings[459] that added immensely to the importance of the matter. The new system was boldly denounced as continuing the operations of the odious order dissolved in Bavaria, with a shrewd change of tactics which substituted “innocent” reading-rooms for the novitiate of Weishaupt’s organization, and thus, it was urged, the way was opened for the exertion of a really powerful influence upon the thought of the German people.[460] By such means, and in such widely diverse and irrational ways, the popular belief in the survival of the defunct Order of the Illuminati was kept alive and supplied with definite points of attachment; but it remained for the French Revolution, in all the rapidity and vastness of its developments and in the terrifying effects which its more frightful aspects exercised upon its observers, to offer the most exciting suggestions and to stimulate to the freest play the imaginations of those who were already persuaded that the secret associations that plagued Bavaria still lived to trouble the earth.[461]