For all of the believers in the Illuminati, here is part of an article I discovered on “Illuminatism.” It was printed in a newspaper from 1800. The full article is linked.
Illuminatism. – If there is any thing that surpasses the nonsense and impiety of the new Philosophy, it is the impudence and the daring of its proud disciples. It is sufficient for these conceited sophists, that as opinion has received the sanction of ages, to excite in their irreverent minds doubts of its credibility. For as truth is not the object of their researches, but something new and wonderful, something that will gratify a thirst for fame, they seldom give themselves much concern about evidence or argument; or when they do, they are always more ready to reject than adopt the truth, because she wears the matron like sober garb of antiquity.
So strong is the rage for novelty with all these philosophical gentry, that one of the most cautious of them, in a treatise he published some time ago on education, expressed a wish that it were possible to establish schools in the United States, “to teach the Art of Forgetting.” I suppose he meant only to teach others this singular art, while himself was suffered to remember all that he had ever learned; that he might appear the greater prodigy of wisdom to his ignorant neighbors.
It is a little singular, and deserves remarking, that whenever a spirit of anarchy and rebellion shakes the government of states and empires, something of this antipathy to the theorems of ancient wisdom prevails with equal fury in the literary world. Omar, the Arabian revolutionist, burnt the Alexandrian Library as useless lumber. We know what attempts the French Vandals have made since the beginning of their mad revolution, to destroy every vestige of science as well as of government. And when the Fanatics of last century had overturned both Church and State in Great Britain; had murdered their king and despoiled the hierarchy; they changed every things they could, and at length proposed to burn all the records in the Tower, in order, as they modestly alleged, that the nation might begin the world anew. The motion we are told was lost only by a few votes. (1800)
