precisely because it repudiated the crude materialism of mostrnwell-known Enlightenment thinkers. In his treatise “Pythagorasrnor the consideration of a secret art of ruling both world andrngovernment,” Weishaupt proposed his system as the only possiblernway to implement the imperatives of the Enlightenment.rn”Is there any greater art,” he wrote,rnthan uniting independently thinking men from the fourrncorners of the earth, from various classes, and religionsrnwith no impediment to their freedom of thought, and inrnspite of their various opinions and passions into one permanentlyrnimited band of men, to infuse them with ardorrnand to make them so receptive that the greatest distancesrnmean nothing so that they are equal in their subordination,rnso that the many will act as one and from their ownrninitiative, from their own conviction, something that nornexternal compulsion could force them to do?rnWeishaupt’s system was based on the organization that wasrnconsidered the antithesis of the Enlightenment: The Jesuits.rnAs Abbe Augusin Barruel would put it in his monumentalrnantirevolutionary Memoirs Illustrating the History of jacobinism,rnthe Illuminati were a cross between the Jesuits and thernFreemasons, in which all of the controls placed on spiritual directionrnby the Church were lifted and whose goal was not to getrnsouls into heaven but to create a paradise on earth. Illuminismrnwas a machine that stripped the esprit de corps of the Jesuit orderrnof all its superstitious accretiorrs and allowed that mechanismrnto be used to achie’e Enlightenment ends. This is preciselyrnwhat the conservative reaction saw in the Illuminati, andrnit scared them.rn”Anyone who remembers the artificial machine of the formerrnJesuits,” wrote an indignant writer in the conservative-reactionaryrnjournal Eudaemonia in 1796, “will not find it difficult tornrediscover this same machine under another name and with anotherrnmotive in the Illuminati. The former Jesuits were drivenrnby superstition, and the Illuminati of the present are driven byrntheir unbelief, but the goal of both is the same, the order’s universalrndomination of all of mankind.”rnIt was not the goal of world domination that the public foundrnso upsetting; it was the means whereby the Illuminati was attemptingrnto achieve that goal. Weishaupt took the ideas of examinationrnof conscience and sacramental confession from thernJesuits and, after purging them of their religious elements,rnturned them into a system of intelligence gathering in whichrnmembers were trained to spy on each other and inform their superiors.rnWeishaupt introduced what he called the Quihus Licetrnnotebooks, through which the adept bared his soul for the inspectionrnof his superiors. The Quihus Licet books, Weishauptrnsaid, were “identical to what the Jesuits call confession,” and herntold Zwack that he “borrowed the idea from the Jesuit sodalities,rnwhere each month you went over your bona opera in private.”rnThe adept sent these monthly reports to the provincial underrnthe title oi Quibus Licet, to the provincial under the title Soli,rnand to the general of the entire order under the title Primo. Onlyrnthe superiors and the general knew the details discussedrntherein, because these letters were transmitted to and fro amongrnthe minor superiors.rnWe can see in the Quibus Licet the vague outiine of the s}stemrnof spying which would become part of the communist systemrnof control, both of the underground cells before they tookrnover a country and as part of the police state erected after theyrnhad seized power. But the Illuminist system went deeper thanrnthat. Weishaupt created a technique that came to be calledrn”Seelenspionage,” or “spying on the soul,” whereby the superiorsrnin the Illuminati could gain an understanding of the adept’srnsoul through close analysis of seemingly random gestures, expressions,rnor words that betrayed the adept’s true feelings.rn”From the comparisons of all these characteristics,” Kniggernwrote, “even those which seem the smallest and least significant,rnone can draw conclusions which have enormous significancernfor knowledge of human beings, and gradually draw outrnof that a reliable semiotics of the soul.”rnAs part of the systemization of this semiotics, Weishaupt—rnnot unlike Alfred Kinsey 150 years later—developed a chart andrna code to document the psychic histories of the various membersrnof the Illuminist cells. In his book on the Illuminati, vanrnDuelmen reprints the case history of Franz Xaver Zwack. In it,rnwe see a combination of Kinsey-style sexual history, a Stasi file,rnand a modern credit rating. The superiors in the Illuminatirncould learn from its neat columns where the adept was born, hisrnphysical characteristics, his aptitudes, his friends, and his readingrnmaterial, as well as his code name and when he was inductedrninto the order. Under the heading “Morals, character, religion,rnconscientiousness,” we learn that Zwack had a “soft heart”rnand that he was “difficult to deal with on days when he wasrnmelancholv.” Under “Principal Passions,” we read that Zwackrnsuffered from “pride, and a craving for honors,” but that he wasrnalso “honest but choleric with a tendency to be secretive as wellrnas speaking of his own perfection.” For those who want to knowrnhow to control Zwack, Massenhausen (code name: Ajax) saysrnthat he got the best results by couching all of his communicationsrnwith Zwack in a mysterious tone.rnWhen the Illuminist manuscripts were published, the educatedrnpublic was appalled by these sinister delvings into thernmost intimate recesses of the soul, but they were also fascinatedrnby the opportunities for control that these discoveries opened.rnWieland saw in the Illuminati the basis for pedagogical and politicalrnreform—which was, of course, the way Weishaupt sawrnthings, too. His goal was the creation of a social order consistentrnwith both Enlightenment science and the notion of emancipationrnfrom princes. “The truly enlightened man,” Weishauptrnwrote, “has no need of a master.” Man will be well governedrnonly when “he is no longer in need of government.”rnThe Enlightenment appeal to libert}’ invariably led to thernsuppression of religion, which led to the suppression of morals,rnwhich led to social chaos. Thus, those who espoused Enlightenmentrnideals also had to be interested in mechanisms of socialrncontrol. Freedom followed by draconian control became therndialectic of all revolutions; in this regard, the sexual revolutionrnwas no exception. In fact, “revolution” and “sexual revolution”rnwere, if not synonymous, certainly contemporaneous. Oncernthe passions were liberated from obedience to traditional moralrnlaw as explicated by Christianity, they would have to be subjectedrnto a more stringent form of control in order to keep societyrnfrom falling apart—something the French Revolutionrnwould make obvious. The chaos stemming from the FrenchrnRevolution, in fact, inspired Auguste Comte to create the “science”rnof sociology, which was both an ersatz religion and a wayrnof bringing order out of chaos in a world where men no longerrnfound the religious foundation of morals plausible.rnWeishaupf s system of control proved effective in the absencernof religious sanction, and it became the model of every secularrncontrol mechanism of both the left and the right for the nextrn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn