The same phenomena, only on a reduced scale, were observable in the revolutions of 1848. Everywhere there seemed to be an invisible power at work. Good, honest Father Bresciani, would explain all this by the Secret Societies. It is in vain. They did much, those secret societies; but how explain the existence of those societies themselves, their horrible principles, and the fidelity of their members in submitting to what they must know is a thousand times more oppressive than the institutions they are opposing? Tell me not that all these revolutionists were incarnate devils; that they cooly, and deliberately, from ordinary human motives and influences, planned and carried out their revolutionary enterprise. There were in their ranks men of the highest intelligence, the purest virtue, and the humanest feelings; men, all of whose antecedents, whose tendencies, whose studies, professions, interests, and, I may say, convictions, placed them in the ranks of the conservatives, were carried away by an invisible force, and shouted out, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and hurled the brand of the incendiary at temple, palace, and castle, which sheltered them, as if it was not they who did it, but a spirit that possessed them. Men caught the infection, they knew not how, they knew not when, they knew not where. The revolutionary spirit seemed to float in the air, as it undoubtedly did. Without Weishaupt, Mesmer, Saint-Martin, Cagliostro, you can never explain the revolution of 1789, and without me and my accomplices you can just as little explain those of 1848. There was at work in the former a power that the wits ridiculed, that science denied, philosophy disproved, and the clergy hardly dared assert. There was there the mighty power, whatever it be, which it is said once dared dispute the empire of heaven with the Omnipotent, and which all ages have called Satan, whether it is to be called evil with the Christian, or good with the philanthropist, a person with the believer, or a primitive and elemental force with the mesmerist. France, Europe was mesmerized. So was it again in 1848, though with less terrible external convulsions.