ABSTRACT
The natural movement of the Revolution and the Circle is reinforced—if only poetically—by a great flight into imagery in the final metaphor of the Third Dialogue. All great historic movements have been capable of producing martyrs for the faith; but it was clearly difficult in the sixteenth century to conceive of fanatical stalwartness outside the orthodox frame of conventional religious conviction. The Natural and Human laws which emerge from this "politico-religious message announced in the heavens" will shape human society: protecting the poor and weak, controlling tyrants, encouraging the arts and learning and science for communal benefit. A new class of men will prove to be "necessary to the republic"—this would comprise scientific experts and scholarly moralists imbued with a new commitment to society. People do not have to wait for the Age of Reason with Voltaire and Diderot, or, indeed, for Shelley's romantic generation, to find the grand Promethean commitment to a godlike liberation of mankind.
