if it were in the hands of a few who should employ it to lead the
many? What if it were universal, and the multitude were enlightened?
No. The many must be always in leading-strings; but let them have wise
and honest conductors. A few to think, and many to act; that is the
only basis of perfect society. So thought the ancient philosophers:
they had their esoterical and exoterical doctrines. So thinks the
sublime Kant, who delivers his oracles in language which none but
the initiated can comprehend. Such were the views of those secret
associations of illuminati, which were the terror of superstition and
tyranny, and which, carefully selecting wisdom and genius from the
great wilderness of society, as the bee selects honey from the flowers
of the thorn and the nettle, bound all human excellence in a chain,
which, if it had not been prematurely broken, would have commanded
opinion, and regenerated the world.'

Scythrop proceeded to meditate on the practicability of reviving a
confederation of regenerators. To get a clear view of his own ideas,
and to feel the pulse of the wisdom and genius of the age, he wrote
and published a treatise, in which his meanings were carefully wrapt
up in the monk's hood of transcendental technology, but filled with
hints of matter deep and dangerous, which he thought would set
the whole nation in a ferment; and he awaited the result in awful
expectation, as a miner who has fired a train awaits the explosion of
a rock. However, he listened and heard nothing; for the explosion, if
any ensued, was not sufficiently loud to shake a single leaf of the
ivy on the towers of Nightmare Abbey; and some months afterwards he
received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven
copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for the
balance.