time: the refreshing river 



Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester in 1618, there are the 

 following words, where he prays in the manner of the Orthodox 

 litanies, for the people of England, that they may be "subject unto 

 rule, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake; to husbandmen 

 and graziers, good seasons; to the fleet and fishermen, fair weather; 

 to mechanics, to work lawfully at their occupations; to tradesmen, 

 not to over-reach one another'^ And in another place, where he is 

 rehearsing the attributes of God, he writes under the heading "Muni- 

 ficent"; "Opening the eyes of the blind, clothing the naked, upholding 

 such as fall, gathering together the outcasts, giving food to the hungry, 

 bringing down the haughty, delivering the captives, loosing the 

 prisoners, lifting up those that are down, healing the sick, sustaining 

 the living, quickening the dead, lifting up the lowly, helping in time 

 of trouble." Does not this catalogue of the Divine actions curiously 

 resemble the socialist programme ? In the person of Lancelot Andrewes 

 there is a link between the theocratic collectivism of the past and the 

 proletarian socialism of the future.^ 



Secondly, it is in the seventeenth century that we can study the 

 beginnings of the great scientific movement, destined so to transform 

 the nature of civilised life in subsequent years. It was in the nature of 

 the case that science was associated with, and patro»ised by, the rising 

 middle class. And from contemporary scientific theory, indispensable 

 for progress within science itself, bourgeois economics took its canons. 

 But inner contradictions, given time, always come to the surface. 

 The individualism of capitalist production was congruent enough 

 with science in its early days, but in our time scientific effort needs a 

 co-operative atmosphere which capitalism cannot provide. Conversely, 

 although the bourgeois class raised itself to power partly by means 

 of science, its need for science is now less, and its primary subcon- 

 scious wish is to stabilise the existing condition of affairs. Fascism 

 and militarism are the result. 



Thirdly, the Levellers, the extreme left wing of the revolutionary 

 forces, were really envisaging the classless State. They were far too 

 weak, however, to make the jump across three centuries of bourgeois 

 domination, for the economic conditions were not propitious. But is 

 it not of some value to English socialists, tired of hearing communism 



^ In this connection it is interesting to find the common features in the economic 

 systems of Aquinas and Marx emphasised by a German catholic writer, William Hohoff 

 {Die Bedeutung d. marxistischen Kapitalkritik, Paderborn, 1908; and Warenwert und. 

 Kapitalprofit, Paderborn, 1902). 



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