SOCIALISTS, SACRED. Sacred Socialists was the name of a small hand of men who formed a kind of branch of Robert Owen's followers under the leadership of James Pierrepont Greaves (1777-1842). Greaves was of a mystic turn of mind, and was influenced by the writings of Jacob Wehme (1575-1624). Greave's Socialism, in contrast to the rather materialistic system of Robert Owen, was of a spiritual character. He had in view " the soul's spiritual ends and the interior world." He would seek to discover scientific arrangements to make human beings everywhere and at all times dwell without the wants or wishes of wealth, without desire for indi vidual accumulation, or any inequality of condition." The great need is for the soul to be " possessed and exercised by the Love Spirit." This should make the " science of the influence of circumstances and the indi vidual man both correspond with the universal man, and by this universal man hold through all ages the individual man and his sciences under control, and secure him from misery and inferiority, which could only be done by enlarging the antecedent parental relationship so as to secure to the new beings a superior organ." Greaves'
system is somewhat ascetic in character, as E. Vansittart Neale points out. "The use of cold water abundantly, abstinence from all but vegetable diet, and all drinks but water; and, for the attainment of the highest state, the union of what he calls the life, light, and love natures, the use only of undyed and flowing robes of linen, above all, marriages between ' unions of Spirit, selected pairs in sympathetic harmony with Love '; these are some of the conditions which be proposes." Greaves was Secre tary of the London Infant School Society. See Edward Yansittart Neale, The Characteristic Features of some of the Principal Systems of Socialism, 1S51; and the D.N.B.