Note 492 — Chapter III

Ibid., p. 51. Robison’s account of this phase of the situation has little to commend it. Upon his own unsupported assertions many of the Revolutionary leaders, as, for example, Mirabeau, Sieyès, Despremenil, Bailly, Fauchet, Maury, Mounier, and Talleyrand, are brought into direct connection with one or another of the French Masonic systems. Cf. Robison, pp. 49 et seq. Similarly, it is maintained, it was among Masonic lodges that the ideas contained in such books as Robinet’s La Nature, ou l’Homme moral et physique, Condorcet’s Le Progrès de l’Esprit humain, Lequinio’s Les préjugés vaincus par la raison, and the book Des Erreurs et de la Vérité, were first disseminated. Indeed, some of these books are said to have sprung out of the very bosom of the lodges. Cf. ibid., pp. 43 et seq.