"Zanoni", Book 1, Chapter VIII, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Chapter VIII:

To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
doctrines he preaches when obscure. -S. Montague.

Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called. Man
naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
their existence. But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
dormant. Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.

-Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).

----

La lumière et la vertu: light and virtue

Helvetius: Claude Adrien Helvétius, 18th century French philosopher who believed in the notion of Tabula Rasa and that we owe everything to education and that education was the method by which to reform society.

Etre Suprême: Supreme being

Alcibiades: prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general who, during the Peloponnesian War, changed his allegiance several times.

The picture used is "Conversation Piece: Three Men in Eighteenth-Century Costume" (1890) by Carl Wilhelm Anton Seiler, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2664/2664-h/2664-h.htm#link2HCH0008