PURE SCIENCE AND THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 



Science and Society in the English Revolution. 



But to return to the Royal Society. That the first meetings of it 

 took place about 1649 is a remarkable historical coincidence. For that 

 was the year which, after the execution of the King in January, saw 

 during the summer the lightning campaign in which Cromwell and 

 Ireton, with their praetorian guard of dependable troops, put down, 

 at the battle of Burford, the armed attempt of the Parliamentary 

 Army's left wing, the Levellers, to attain power in order to implement 

 the Agreement of the People. Here we cannot tell the story of those 

 remarkable days.^ The Agreement, though hot what we should regard 

 to-day as a socialist document, was a great deal beyond anything that 

 the eighteenth or even the nineteenth centuries achieved. 



The Levellers comprised, besides their military wing, at one time 

 dominant over all other feeling in the army, a civilian, pacifist, wing, 

 known as the Diggers. Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of this group, 

 which mainly devoted its efforts to the initiation of co-operative 

 farming, a venture which did not succeed owing to opposition both 

 local and central, was clearly aware of the importance of science, the 

 "new or experimental philosophy," for social welfare. This is shown 

 by his books A New Year's Gift to the Parliament and the Army; 

 The Law of Freedom in a Platform, and The True Leveller's Standard 

 Advanced, all published about the year 1650.^ 



Winstanley discusses science in relation to religious services, 

 which in those days were a medium for the dissemination of news 

 and popular education as well as for public worship. 



"If the earth were set free," he said, "from kingly bondage, 

 so that every one might be sure of a free livelihood, and if this 

 liberty were granted, then many secrets of God and his works 

 in Nature would be made public, which men do nowadays keep 

 secret to get a living by; so that this kingly bondage is the cause 

 of the spreading of ignorance in the earth. But when the Com- 

 monwealth's freedom is established, then will knowledge cover 

 the earth as the waters cover the seas, and not until then. He 

 who is chosen minister for the year shall not be the only man 

 to make sermons or speeches (on the day of rest from labour); 



^ See The Levellers and the English Revolution by Henry Holorenshaw (London, 



1939)- 



- The collected writings of this great Englishman have just been published by Prof. 



G. Sabine in the U.S.A., and a selected edition will, it is hoped, appear in this country 



under the editorship of Mr. L. Hamilton. 



101 



