Note 580 — Chapter III

The discussion of the character of the order fills the entire third volume of the Memoirs. It is not too much to say that Barruel’s analysis of the organization is characterized by no little soundness of judgment as well as by literary skill. The documents upon which he draws are not only those published by the Bavarian government, but also the apologetic writings of Weishaupt and Knigge, as well as a considerable part of the polemical literature which developed after the suppression of the order. Yet it need scarcely be said, the author’s bias is nowhere obscured. On page after page he conveys the impression that he is dealing with the sum of all villainies. His judgment of Weishaupt was, of course, severe: “An odious phenomenon in nature, an Atheist void of remorse, a profound hypocrite, destitute of those superior talents which lead to the vindication of truth, he is possessed of all that energy and ardor in vice which generates conspirators for impiety and anarchy. Shunning, like the ill-boding owl, the genial rays of the sun, he wraps around him the mantle of darkness; and history shall record of him, as of the evil spirit, only the black deeds which he planned or executed…. Scarcely have the magistrates cast their eyes upon him when they find him at the head of a conspiracy which, when compared with those of the clubs of Voltaire and D’Alembert, or with the secret committees of D’Orléans [sic], make these latter appear like the faint imitations of puerility, and show the Sophister and the Brigand as mere novices in the arts of revolution.” (Barruel, op. cit., pp. 2, 3, 7.)