Page - 323 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

323Disruption of Old Structures best ways of reconciling love for the fatherland with the love of mankind, serv- ing the public good, and discovering the morality conducive to the attainment of these ends. These endeavors were in harmony with individual initiatives aimed at improvement and taking momentum during the same period—in a predominantly agrarian country, almost necessarily in forms such as establish- ing model farms, or launching philanthropic and educational projects to better the lot of the peasantry. Many of these evolved from local antecedents, includ- ing the increasing emphasis on the values of social welfare and harmony in the reception of German Pietism early in the eighteenth century, which also in- spired an early beginning of Staatistik, “the science of the state”: the collection and systematization of data on geography, natural resources, history, and legal and political institutions as exemplified by the Notitia Hungariae (Description of Hungary [1735–42]) by Bél. The same development can also be traced back to the thrust of the early Enlightenment that would be the most influential in Hungary, along with the rest of Central Europe: the one hallmarked by the name of Christian Wolff, in which the emancipation of the individual was seen as part of a process whereby it was mainly order and efficiency that were to be increased in society, with a very serious role assigned to established authori- ties. All of these trends received a further strong impetus from Josephism, so it is small wonder that, by the early 1780s, Hungarian freemasons, Hungarian ad- herents of the Enlightenment, and Hungarian Josephists were broadly overlap- ping constituencies. They included noblemen and aristocrats trained at the Theresianum as well as bureaucrats and lawyers, clergymen, and members of an arising secular intelligentsia, many of whom had their education at leading German, Dutch, or Swiss Protestant universities. Men among them like Count Ferenc Széchényi (1754–1820), founder of the collection that became the Hun- garian National Museum and Library; his secretary, the splendid lawyer József Hajnóczy (1750–95), regarded as the first Hungarian liberal; the petty noble- man and outstanding economic writer Gergely Berzeviczy (1763–1822), and many others were prepared to go a long way in assisting the headstrong em- peror in the implementation of his ever more autocratic reform measures. The limits of such willingness can be deduced from another feature of the “Constitutional System” of Hungarian freemasonry: its strong indebtedness to Montesquieu (1689–1755). While Voltaire and Rousseau, as well as other major and minor figures of the French Enlightenment were widely read and appreci- ated in Hungary, despite censorship, none of the philosophes had an intellec- tual impact on the scale of Montesquieu.37 Besides many other aspects of 37 Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 134–37; cf. Péter Balázs and Olga Penke, “Montesquieu műveinek és gondolatainak fogadtatása a 18. század végétől napjainkig Magyarországon,” Irodalomtudományi Közlemények 116, no. 1 (2012): 3–21.