if a crisis arises, they are ready to, carry out the most daring projects.
Another Association closely resembling the Illuminés, Berckheim reports, is known as the Idealists, whose system is founded on the doctrine of perfectibility; these kindred sects "agree in seeing in the words of Holy Scripture the pledge of universal regeneration, of an absolute levelling down, and it is in this spirit that the sectarians interpret the sacred books."
Berckheim further confirms the assertion I made in World Revolution--contested, as usual, by a reviewer without a shred of evidence to the contrary--that the Tugendbund derived from the Illuminati. "The League of Virtue," he writes, "was directed by the secondary chiefs of the Illuminés.... In 1810 the Friends of Virtue were so identified with the Illuminés in the North of Germany that no line of demarcation was seen between them."
But it is time to turn to the testimony of another witness on the activities of the secret societies which is likewise to be found at the Archives Nationales. This consists of a document transmitted by the Court of Vienna to the Government of France after the Restoration, and contains the interrogatory of a certain Witt Doehring, a nephew of the Baron d'Eckstein, who, after taking part in secret society intrigues, was summoned before the judge Abel at Bayreuth in February, 1824. Amongst secret associations recently existing in Germany, the witness asserted, were the "Independents" and the "Absolutes"; the latter "adored in Robespierre their most perfect ideal, so that the crimes committed during