THE DESCENT OF BOLSHEVISM
sured by a strict system of secret confessions and monthly reports checked by mutual espionage. And like the Jesuit Order, they made special efforts to enlist young men of wealth and rank and social importance, so that gradually, through them, they would control the mainsprings of all authority and power. Furthermore, like the secret societies of the East, its membership was divided into classes and degrees. But the free masons alone—a proof that it had abjured Christianity—were eligible to the degrees of regent and magnus, or masters of the higher mysteries.
All the members, however, were to be the beneficiaries of a system designed to free them from all religious prejudices, to cultivate among them the social virtues and to animate them by a great, a feasible and speedy prospect of universal happiness. (A sort of Get-Happy-Quick Scheme, indeed.) And this can only be realized in a state of liberty and moral and social equality, free from all the obstacles which subor-
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