But in using the lodges to sow the seeds of revolution, the Encyclopædists betrayed not only the cause of monarchy but of Masonry as well. It will be noticed that, in conformity with true masonic principles, Ramsay in his oration expressly stated that the encyclopædia was to concern itself with the liberal arts and sciences[421] and that theology and politics were to be excluded from the contemplated scheme. How, then, did it come to pass that these were eventually the two subjects to which the Encyclopædists devoted the greatest attention, so that their work became principally an attack on Church and monarchy? If Papus was right in attributing this revolutionary tendency to the _Encyclopédie_ from the time of the famous oration, then Ramsay could only be set down as the profoundest hypocrite or as the mouthpiece of hypocrites professing intentions the very reverse of their real designs. A far more probable explanation seems to be that during the interval between Ramsay's speech and the date when the _Encyclopédie_ was begun in earnest, the scheme underwent a change. It will be noticed that the year of 1746, when Diderot and d'Alembert are said to have embarked on their task, coincided with the decadence of French Freemasonry under the Comte de Clermont and the invasion of the lodges by the subversive elements; thus the project propounded with the best intentions by the Freemasons of 1737 was filched by their revolutionary successors and turned to a diametrically opposite purpose. But it is not to the dancing-master Lacorne and his middle-class following that we can attribute the efficiency with which not only the _Encyclopédie_ but a host of minor revolutionary publications were circulated all over France. Frederick the Great had seen his opportunity. If I am right in my surmise that Ramsay's speech had reached the ears of Frederick, the prospect of the _Encyclopédie_ contained therein may well have appeared to him a magnificent method for obtaining a footing in the intellectual circles of France; hence then, doubtless, an additional reason for his hasty initiation into Masonry, his summons to Voltaire, and his subsequent overtures to Diderot and d'Alembert, who, by the time the first volume of the _Encyclopédie_ appeared in 1751, had both been made members of the Royal Academy of Prussia. In the following year Frederick offered d'Alembert the presidency of the Academy in place of Maupertuis, an offer which was refused; but in 1755 and again in 1763 d'Alembert visited Frederick in Germany and received his pension regularly from Berlin. It is therefore not surprising that when the _Encyclopédie_ had reached the letter P, it included, in an unsigned article on Prussia, a panegyric on the virtues and the talents of the illustrious monarch who presided over the destinies of that favoured country.