the name of a secret society, or order, in Germany and other countries of Europe, whose professed object, it is said, was to propagate the purest principles of virtue; but whose real views were to subvert every established government and religion, and delivering mankind from the necessary and salutary restraints of civil society, to bring them to an imaginary state of freedom and independence. Of this order much has been said, and much has been written; but that a society has existed, regularly organized in the way this has been represented, working in secret, and, at the same time, possessing such extensive power and influence, no proof whatever has been adduced. The thing indeed seems impossible. See MASONRY, Free.