The sect would be much less formidable if this were its doctrine, on the one hand because it would inspire in most of the _Illuminés_ a feeling of horror which would triumph even over the fear of vengeance, on the other hand because plots and conspiracies always leave some traces which guide the authorities to the footsteps of the prime instigators; and besides, it is the nature of things that out of twenty plots directed against sovereigns, nineteen come to light before they have reached the point of maturity necessary to their execution. The _Illuminés'_ line of march is more prudent, more skilful, and consequently more dangerous; instead of revolting the imagination by ideas of regicide, they affect the most generous sentiments: declamations on the unhappy state of the people, on the selfishness of courtiers, on measures of administration, on all acts of authority that may offer a pretext to declamations as a contrast to the seductive pictures of the felicity that awaits the nations under the systems they wish to establish, such is their manner of procedure, particularly in private. More circumspect in their writings, they usually disguise the poison they dare not proffer openly under obscure metaphysics or more or less ingenious allegories. Often indeed texts from Holy Writ serve as an envelope and vehicle for these baneful insinuations.... By this continuous and insidious form of propaganda the imagination of the adepts is so worked on that if a crisis arises, they are ready to, carry out the most daring projects. Another Association closely resembling the _Illuminés_, Berckheim reports, is known as the _Idealists_, whose system is founded on the doctrine of perfectibility; these kindred sects "agree in seeing in the words of Holy Scripture the pledge of universal regeneration, of an absolute levelling down, and it is in this spirit that the sectarians interpret the sacred books." Berckheim further confirms the assertion I made in _World Revolution_--contested, as usual, by a reviewer without a shred of evidence to the contrary--that the Tugendbund derived from the Illuminati. "The League of Virtue," he writes, "was directed by the secondary chiefs of the _Illuminés_.... In 1810 the Friends of Virtue were so identified with the _Illuminés_ in the North of Germany that no line of demarcation was seen between them."