Whilst the conquests of religion in Asia were thus disputed, a great spirit of unrest was agitating Europe; the Christian faith seemed on the point of being extinguished, though on every side there was a rumour of new revelations and miracles. A man who had a definite position in science and in the world otherwise, namely, Emmanuel Swedenborg, was astonishing Sweden by his visions, and Germany was swarming with new _illuminati_. Dissident mysticism conspired to replace the mysteries of hierarchic religion by mysteries of anarchy; a catastrophe was in preparation and was imminent. Swedenborg, the most sincere and the mildest among the prophets of false illuminism, was not for this less dangerous than the others. As a fact, the pretence that all men are called to communicate immediately with heaven[303] replaces regular religious instruction and progressive initiation by every divagation of enthusiasm, by all excesses of imagination and of dream. The intelligent _illuminati_ felt that religion was a great need of humanity and hence must never be destroyed; not only religion itself but the fanaticism which it carries along with it as a fatal consequence of enthusiasm inspired by ignorance, were, however, to be used as arms for the overthrow of hierarchic church authority, they recognising that from the war of fanaticism there would issue a new hierarchy, of which they hoped to be founders and chiefs. “You shall be as gods, knowing all without having the trouble of learning anything; you shall be as kings, possessing everything without the trouble of acquiring anything.” Such, in a summary form, are the promises of the revolutionary spirit to envious multitudes. The revolutionary spirit is the spirit of death; it is the old serpent of Genesis, which notwithstanding it is the father of movement and of progress, seeing that generations are renewed only by death. It is for this reason that the Indians worship Siva, the pitiless destroyer, whose symbolical form was that of physical love and material generation. The system of Swedenborg is no other than the Kabalah, _minus_ the principle of hierarchy;[304] it is the temple without key-stone and without base; it is a vast edifice, fortunately all airy and phantastic, for had anyone attempted to realise it on this earth it would collapse upon the head of the first child who sought, not indeed to overthrow it, but merely to lean against one of its chief pillars. To organise anarchy is the problem which the revolutionaries have undertaken to solve, and it is with them for ever; it is the rock of Sisyphus which will invariably fall back upon them. To exist for a single moment they are and will ever be compelled fatally to improvise a despotism having no other justification than necessity, and it is one which is blind and violent like anarchy. Emancipation from the harmonious monarchy of reason is attained only by passing under the disorderly dictatorship of folly.