The millenarian promise of restoring mankind to its original God-like perfection-the underlying premise of the religion

The millenarian promise of restoring mankind to its original God-like perfection-the underlying premise of the religion of tech­ nology-was never meant to be universal. It was in essence an elitist expectation, reserved only for the elect-the "happy few," in Robert Sins heimer's felicitous (Shakespearean) phrase. Half the species, women, were expressly excluded (see appendix), and so too were the vast majority of the male population, who would likewise be left be­ hind by the saints. Thus the cloistered monks-the spiritual soldiers of salvation epitomized by Joachim of Fiore's millenarian vanguard of viri spirituales-pursued their own privileged perfection far in ad­ vance of the rest of humanity, as did the mendicant friars who fol­ lowed in their footsteps, as missionaries and schoolmen. The great explorers too believed that they alone had been chosen, and sent, to rediscover paradise, and the hermetic philosophers and learned magi they so inspired were similarly assured of their own special monopoly on divine wisdom. Stirred by the apocalyptic visions of just such an elite brotherhood of pious wise men, the scientific virtuosi of the sev­