This temporary success cannot hide the fact that the Illuminati order mainly consisted of quite subordinate academics who maybe joined the order especially in the hope of more career opportunities. Indeed their hope correlated with Weishaupt’s concept of infiltration. Of course new members were ignorant about those intentions. The order hardly achieved its actual aim, namely to form the intellectual and political elite of society. Apart from the mentioned exceptions (Goethe, Herder, Knigge), all the really important representatives of the German "Spätaufklärung" either completely absented themselves from the order (as Schiller, Kant, Lessing, but also Lavater whom Knigge unsuccessfully tried to convince of joining for a long time) or shortly afterwards quit, just as Friedrich Nicolai did, out of disappointment about the rigid structures within the order. “Bookworm Weishaupt and his companions, utopists in a good way.