ABSTRACT
The most viable basis for ideological emotion is usually an unflagging sense of outrage at the evil, taken to be total and irreparable, of the existing order of things. The forces are being marshalled for the final conflict, like the angry hosts at Armageddon, "the battle of that great day of God Almighty". One airy model remained—Milton's "readie and easie way" to solve all the urgent political problems of a nation sick unto desperation with conflict and chaos. But the dualism which obtained in Miltonic politics was of quite another character and exhibited other properties. It was the special European compound which people have examined in its various admixtures since Dante and Joachim, Bruno and Philip Sidney, Comenius and Thomas More. In the perspective of the centuries, what was happening was that an old authoritarian monarchy was being subverted and a new, more mixed state of duties and liberties was being established on a small, European offshore island.
