More History Lessons: Proofs of a Conspiracy...pp. 37-46

 There's a certain disconnect between the language of today and that of two centuries ago--even though we are both writing in English Robison and I have been educated in different styles. These styles of writing are products of the culture we were brought up in. That's the only salient difference, we are both men, both literate, educated, and both have the same job--we're both Philosophers. While he would be considered a "Natural Philosopher" and I would be an "Epistemic (?) Philosopher" it's the same tradition. Robison writes more like Aristotle though, and that means when possible he's going to write about the long-dead history of a thing in order to get us to the present. The first two pages of this section are a detailed commentary on the religion of the German people...and I just can't care about this. It's religious infighting between the Lutherans, the Catholics, and the Calvinists.

I should be clear that this is interesting stuff, it's just not interesting for our purpose. Robison is supposed to be laying out the case that there is a conspiracy against the monarchies and religions of the European continent, and we're almost a fifth of the way through the book where he's only said that new people are making Masonry into something that he doesn't like. 

Robison goes on with more complaining about the "kids these days." The first thing he does, is of course, blame the fact that these young punks in Germany aren't as religious as their elders, "the prodigious change from the former satisfaction of the Germans on those subjects to their present discontent and attacks from every quarter, is neither a fair picture of the prevailing sentiments, nor has been the simple operation of things, but the result of a combination of trading Infidels."

The most striking feature of that long quote is that the author Robison is discussing, Heinzmann, actually rules out the numerous other factors that would lead to the present discontent. It's not a natural progression and it's not about prevailing ideas. It's simply the conflict between the dominant religious groups in Germany (that's what the phrase "trading infidels" refers to). I can list a whole bunch of numerous other factors that would lead to it. The biggest factor is going to be increasing literacy rates and mass communication. Remember this is a book that was written in the 18th century. The default position that people can read is a new phenomenon. At this point, literacy is spreading because it's much easier to get the reading materials. I don't just mean books, I mean the equipment to produce books, newspapers, pamphlets, etc. The reason that people might have more discontent than in the past is not that some conspiracy of individuals is subverting their faith in god and country; but because the population can now read the laws. They may be seeing that there exists a set of laws for the common people and a set of laws for the aristocracy and clergy. 

Robison ignores this possibility of infighting between religions. I want to be fair to him because he lays out an interesting chain of events. A German named Basedow (Robison never provides a first name), laid out a plan for public education of morality. To do this he had to shuffle the doctrines of the three aforementioned religions of Germany (Lutheran, Catholic, Calvinist) to find some moral instruction that would not offend the others. You might be thinking, wait that's stupid they are all Christian. Well, you would be wrong, because Catholics have a deed, not words theology, Lutherans have a words not deeds, and Calvinists have a pre-ordained salvation thing. What counts as a moral choice varies wildly between the three. This Basedow had to water the moral instruction down until it essentially became Deism. This is telling but I think not for reasons that Robison intends. If you take out all of the moral instructions in a religion that contradict the other religions, you end up with an actual moral instruction that doesn't need an involved god? That seems like something I agree with but I cannot imagine that Robison would agree to it. 

The process of universal instruction gave Germany the same progress from religiosity to atheism that occurred in France. This again, I need to mention, occurred because education in Germany decided that it would be preferable to not favor one religion over another. Tolerance of other people's belief systems led to atheism. This is bad somehow. 

The rest of the chapter is filled with more German history concerning the development of Masonry, but again, it's not interesting for our focus. We return to Baron Knigge and his attempt at universalizing the doctrines of his brand of Masonry. However, he became involved with the Marquis of Constanza and the two drew up a doctrine to codify the rituals and catechisms of the Freemasons. The history of the schisms in Masonry is thus described, and the chapter ends. The next chapter is titled "The Illuminati" and perhaps we will get to something resembling a conspiracy theory that we have been promised.