Reflections: Proofs of a Conspiracy...pp. 194-196

The final chapter begins, and it's going to be full of some navel gazing nonsense. The ultimate problem with this final chapter is that it is going to be conclusion and the conclusion should do a few things. In this book what it should do summarize the story that Robison thinks he's been telling. Before I dive into his conclusion let me summarize the story that he thinks he's communicated thus far: 

Robison is claiming that in Europe there has been a group which has infiltrated all of Masonry. Their existence is so subtle that when you ask any Mason, they have no idea what you are talking about, but this group is twisting Masonry to its own end. That end is the destruction of Christian Europe. To accomplish this: they had to infiltrate Masonry in order to find a lodge that was amenable to this kind of plot. Once that was established this particular lodge gave birth to the Illuminati. Which was the same kind of thing only now it wasn't as secret. Once the Illuminati were driven out of Bavaria, they went back underground and began promoting literacy and reading to the German states under the guise of the German Union. The German Union promotes their work throughout the German states. This, in turn, has an influence on the utopian kingdom of France. In France the people, happy and content with their affairs, all of the sudden begin a revolution. The Revolution has destroyed the peaceful state of Christian France and replaced it with an abomination. 

That's the story that Robison wanted to tell. It is not the story he told, because when he begins to fill in the gaps, he offers contradictions and paradoxes that make that story unclear. He also lacks a supported coherent thread throughout the work, i.e., what ties the German Union to the Illuminati other than they both took place in a German speaking state? While Robison has explained that the Illuminati grew out of the stranger lodges of Masonry, he intimates that there was a higher power at work there. There's very little he offers in the way of a connective tissue. He has sought out to demonize Weishaupt, but if what Robison is saying is true, Robison had very little choice in the matter. This is especially true considering that Robison never provides an origin story for Weishaupt except to say that he was once a Doctor of Theology. The question we must have going forward is whether Robison is going to be offering his reflections on the story he told, or the story he thinks he told? 

The conclusion begins, "I may observe in the first place, and I beg it may be particularly attended to, that in all those villainous machinations against the peace of the world, the attack has been first made on the principles of Morality and Religion." 

This, I have remarked from the beginning, is the point of the book. Robison does not like the idea that the morals of society have been relaxing. After all, he did complain that French women were attending the opera bare-armed. He links religion and morality here--as most do, but this is especially consistent in right wing conspiracy theories that seem to bemoan the loss of an idyllic time of religious fascism. Robison has taken shots as cosmopolitanism. The lament of new ideas corrupting the old ideas is a lament a old as time. Aristophanes lampoons this in "The Clouds" if you want an idea of how old we can find the complaint in writing. Robison wants us to believe that these ideas are not natural but are being orchestrated, "We are made to believe that they have been altogether the contrivance of Priests and Despots, in order to get the command of us. They take care to support these assertions by facts, which, to our great shame, and greater misfortune are but too numerous."

This is an interesting admission. He's claiming that the attacks on religion and morality are artificial, that they do not come from the people who have signed them, but they are supported by facts. In fact, too many facts that they cannot be argued against. Ok, what is happening here? Robison goes on to explain that the common people will be swayed by these arguments, and that those who make them do not seek to expand on them further. 

The book then tries to convince us that these passionate arguments which are supported by facts miss the point that the only tyranny exerted on man (his language) is the one that true religion provides and is necessary for excellent character. This is question begging: 

1) Religion and morality are necessary

2) They attack our religion and morality

3) They do it with facts and passionate arguments

4) because it proves that our religion and morality are necessary

Robison is admitting that the arguments against his worldview are valid, but he still wants to believe that his worldview is necessary for society. I don't know if he hears it, but he's admitting defeat. He just doesn't want to be the one who has lost. 

It is pointed out that the direction of arguments is always at the center of oppression--the despot. The ones that have used religion and morality to as a method of tyranny. He writes, "Religion is held out as a combination of terrors--the invention of the state-tools, the priests." 

Well, yeah. Unless Robison has some argument in opposition of this, we are going to hold it as true. We have the evidence that we are correct by Robison's own admission. The very next sentence then begins a rather clever monologue on how those looking for the source of human knowledge, the first principles--have to endure mistakes and errors in their inquiries but still press on. It's a nice sentiment but it is a non-sequitur. 

His point is supposed to be that the Illuminated are vain. They celebrate every discovery which confirms their position. Everything that reinforces the idea that we are merely matter and space and will perish like everything else is taken as a victory. Ok, if we assume that the 18th century Deists were 21st century strict materialists in that all that exists is this crude matter we call "us," then I still don't know what Robison's suggestion is. He wants us to deny this even though the facts point at it? I thought this man was a scientist. 

I guess he waited until the end, but the real point of his attacks on the enlightenment are that the conclusion of the science of his day is that we die like everything else scares him. It frightens him so much that he wants to cling on to superstition, religious morality, and tradition, because it is preferable than facing the unknown.  Let's be clear: the science of the day was not promoting ash to ash; it was driving toward the admission that there were unknown things that we could no longer pretend to explain by superstitious religious nonsense. Nearly 200 pages of this book and now we realize that Robison has made up the entire thing in order to shield himself from the fear of the undiscovered country.