234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



traction in plants may be said to be less than in animals. It must 

 be'borne in mind that the mechanism of each has developed the 

 rate of movement best adapted to its needs, and that this rapidity 

 of movement is, furthermore, conditioned by the metabolic activity 

 of the organism which supplies the necessary energy. 



In recapitulation it may be said that the primal irritability of 

 protoplasm has been developed in the motile, destructively meta- 

 bolic animals through the phases of reflex into sensorial action, 

 while in the fixed, constructively metabolic plants the main line 

 of advance has been, not toward sensorial action, nor along a line 

 parallel to it, but at a wide angle from it, into a series of highly 

 specialized forms, whose delicacy of mechanism and efficiency is 

 as commensurate with the complex necessities of the plant as 

 those of the sensorial apparatus to the animal. 



4 



THE SPIRIT OF MILITARISM. 



By A. B. RONNE. 



IN the Principles of Sociology (Volume I) Herbert Spencer 

 draws a sharp and clear distinction between two types of 

 society the militant and the industrial. Leaving out of consid- 

 eration the analogy between the animal and the social organism 

 in the development of the various systems the regulating, the 

 sustaining, and the distributing it will be readily conceded that 

 from the view of sociology the last of these two types the indus- 

 trial stands highest in the scale of development as implying vol- 

 untary co-operation among the members of the organization with 

 more of individual liberty ; while the first, the militant type, im- 

 plying compulsory co-operation under a more or less despotic 

 military government with less of individual liberty, is decidedly 

 nearer to the early predatory state. Mr. Spencer also shows how 

 social metamorphoses take place. Especially interesting to note 

 is the transformation or retrogression of the industrial type, par- 

 tially developed during years of peace, into the militant type 

 when war once more occurs. 



Of all the illustrations which might be gathered from history, 

 ancient and modern, as exhibiting this social transformation, Mr. 

 Spencer considers that furnished by England in more recent years 

 the most striking, because the industrial type here was further 

 developed than anywhere else, owing in a great measure to the 

 long era of peace which commenced in 1815. But the usurpation 

 of power by Louis Napoleon in France caused a great change. 

 England soon found herself involved in actual wars, one after the 

 other. The threatening attitudes of neighboring nations alone 



