erited false ideas are unquestioningly
accepted and hold undisputed dominion over the human mind. Winstanley
seems to us to have realised that it was the ignorance of the many that,
in truth, maintained the privileges of the few; that the masses
themselves forge the fetters for their own enslavement, which, though
apparently as strong as iron bands, are, in truth, but things of
gossamer, easily to be broken by those who themselves have forged and
who themselves still maintain them.

In the next chapter (chap. v.) Winstanley briefly summarises his views
on education, and outlines the means by which he deemed both the
production and the distribution of wealth could be carried on without
having recourse to "the thieving art of buying and selling." It
commences as follows:

OF EDUCATION.

"Mankind in the days of his youth is like a young colt, wanton and
foolish, till he be broken in by education and correction; the
neglect of this care, or the want of wisdom in the performance of
it, hath been and is the cause of much division and trouble in the
world. Therefore the Law of a Common-wealth doth require that not
only a Father, but that all Overseers and Officers should make it
their work to educate children in good manners, and to see them
brought up in some trade or other, and to suffer no children in any
Parish to live in idleness and youthful pleasures all their days,
as many have been; but that they may be brought up like men and not
like beasts. That so the Commonwealth may be planted with laborious
and wise experienced men, and not with idle fools."

He continues his reflections as follows:

"Mankind may be considered in a four-fold degree, his childhood,
youth, manhood, and old age. His childhood and his youth may be
considered from his birth till forty years of age. Within this
compass of time, after he is weaned from his mother, his parents
shall teach him a civil and humble behaviour towards all men. Then
send him to school, to learn to read the Laws of the Common-wealth,
to ripen his wits from his childhood, and so to proceed with his
learning till he be acquainted with all Arts and Languages.... But
one sort of children shall not be trained up only to book-learning,
and to no other employment, called Scholars, as they are in the
Government of Monarchy. For then through idleness they spend thei