Besides these there may also be mysteries in a religion which consist in the knowledge that the religion, as understood by enlightened people, has no mysteries at all. This knowledge may be connected either with an endeavour to destroy gradually among the people the belief in mysteries, and to banish the so-called lesser mysteries by publishing the greater, or, on the contrary, with an endeavour to preserve among the people the belief in mysteries, and to make the preservation of the lesser mysteries part of the subject of the greater. The Jewish religion, according to the spirit of its founder, is of the first kind. Moses, as well as the prophets who followed him, sought constantly to inculcate that the end of religion is not _external ceremonies_, but the knowledge of the true God as the sole incomprehensible cause of all things, and the practice of virtue in accordance with the prescriptions of reason. The heathen religions, on the other hand, show evident traces of the second kind. Still I am not, like some, inclined to believe that everything in these was planned for _intentional deception_, but I believe that the founders of these religions were for the most part deceived deceivers; and this mode of representing the matter is far more in accordance with human nature. I am also unable to imagine that such secret designs could be propagated, by means of a formal tradition, from generation to generation. And, moreover, what would have been the use of this? Have not later generations the same faculty as the earlier of contriving schemes to reach their ends? There are princes who have never read Macchiavelli, and yet have admirably carried his principles into practice. With regard to the society of pietists described above I am persuaded that it had as little connection with the free-masons as with any other secret society. But conjectures are allowed, and here we have to do merely with the _degree of probability_. In my opinion there are in every state societies which are essentially secret, but which externally have no appearance of being such. Every body of men with a common interest is to me a secret society. Its aim and principal operations may be ever so well known, still the _most important_ of these remain concealed to the uninitiated. Of such a secret society, as of others, much good as well as evil may therefore be said; and so long as they do not carry their mischief too far, they are always tolerated.