THE MILITANT TYPE OF SOCIETY. 753 



occupied in providing for the combatant part, that the entire aggre- 

 gate shall be strongly bound together, and that the units composing it 

 must have their individualities in life, liberty, and property, thereby 

 subordinated, presupposes a coercive instrumentality. No such union 

 for corporate action can be achieved without a powerful controlling 

 agency. On remembering the fatal results caused by division of coun- 

 sels in war, or by separation into factions in face of an enemy, we see 

 that chronic militancy tends to develop a despotism ; since, other 

 things equal, those societies will habitually survive in which, by its 

 aid, the corporate action is made more complete. 



And this involves a system of centralization. The trait made 

 familiar to us by an army, in which, under a commander-in-chief, there 

 are secondary commanders over large masses, and under these tertiary 

 ones over smaller masses, and so on down to the ultimate divisions, 

 must characterize the social organization at large. A militant society 

 must have a regulative structure of this kind, since otherwise its cor- 

 porate action can not be made most effectual. Without such grades 

 of governing centers diffused throughout the non-combatant part as 

 well as the combatant part, the entire forces of the aggregate can not 

 be promptly put forth. Unless the workers are under a control akin 

 to that which the fighters are under, their indirect aid can not be in- 

 sured in full amount and with due quickness. 



And this is the form of a society characterized by status a society, 

 the members of which stand one toward another in successive grades 

 of subordination. From the despot down to the slave, all are masters 

 of those below and subjects of those above. The relation of the child 

 to the father, of the father to some superior, and so on up to the abso- 

 lute head, is one in which the individual of lower status is at the 

 mercy of one of higher status. 



Otherwise described, the process of militant organization is a 

 process of regimentation, which, primarily taking place in the army, 

 secondarily affects the whole community. 



The first indication of this we trace in the fact everywhere visible, 

 that the military head grows into a civil head mostly at once, and, in 

 exceptional cases, at last, if militancy continues. Beginning as leader 

 in war he becomes ruler in peace ; and such regulative policy as he 

 pursues in one sphere, he pursues, so far as conditions permit, in the 

 other. Being, as the non-combatant part is, a permanent commissariat, 

 the principle of graduated subordination is extended to it. Its mem- 

 bers come to be directed in a way like that in which the warriors are 

 directed not literally, since the dispersion of the one and the con- 

 centration of the other prevent exact parallelism ; but, nevertheless, 

 similarly in principle. Labor is carried on under coercive control ; and 

 supervision spreads everywhere. 



To suppose that a despotic military head, carrying out daily the 

 VOL. XIX. 48 



