midnight
He now became troubled with the _ passion for reforming the world _ . -LSB- 2 -RSB- He built many castles in the air , and peopled them with secret tribunals , and bands of illuminati , who were always the imaginary instruments of his projected regeneration of the human species . As he intended to institute a perfect republic , he invested himself with absolute sovereignty over these mystical dispensers of liberty . He slept with Horrid Mysteries under his pillow , and dreamed of venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves . He passed whole mornings in his study , immersed in gloomy reverie , stalking about the room in his nightcap , which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl , and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the mantle of a conspirator . ` Action , ' thus he soliloquised , ` is the result of opinion , and to new-model opinion would be to new-model society . Knowledge is power ; it is in the hands of a few , who employ it to mislead the many , for their own selfish purposes of aggrandisement and appropriation .