THE MILITANT TYPE OF SOCIETY, 773 



held at the service of the society. This universal service, this combi- 

 nation, and this merging of individual claims, presuj^pose a despotic 

 controlling agency. That the will of the soldier-chief may be opera- 

 tive when the aggregate is large, there miist be sub-centers and sub- 

 sub-centers in descending grades, through whom orders may be con- 

 veyed and enforced, both throughout the combatant part and the non- 

 combatant part. As the commander tells the soldier both what he 

 shall not do and what he shall do, so, throughout the militant com- 

 munity at large, the rule is both negatively regulative and positively 

 regulative : it not only restrains, but it directs : the citizen as well as 

 the soldier lives under a system of compulsory cooperation. Devel- 

 opment of the militant type involves increasing rigidity, since the 

 cohesion, the combination, the subordination, and the regulation, to 

 which the units of a society are subjected by it, inevitably decrease 

 their ability to change their social positions, their occupations, their 

 localities. 



On inspecting sundry societies, past and present, large and small, 

 which are, or have been, characterized in high degrees by militancy, 

 we are shown, a posteriori, that amid the differences due to race, to 

 circumstances, and to degrees of development, there are fundamental 

 similarities of the kinds above inferred a priori. Modern Dahomey 

 and Russia, as well as ancient Peru, Egypt, and Sparta, exemplify 

 that owning of the individual by the state in life, liberty, and goods, 

 which is proper to a social system adapted for war. And, that, with 

 changes further fitting a society for warlike activities, there spread 

 throughout it an officialism, a dictation, and a superintendence, akin 

 to those under which the soldiery lives, we are shown by imperial 

 Rome, by imperial Germany, and by England since its late aggressive 

 activities. 



Lastly comes the evidence furnished by the adapted characters of 

 the men who compose militant societies. Making success in war the 

 highest glory, they are led to identify goodness with bravery and 

 strength. Revenge becomes a sacred duty with them ; and, acting at 

 home on the law of retaliation which they act on abroad, they similarly 

 at home as abroad are ready to sacrifice others to self : their sympa- 

 thies, continually deadened in war, can not be active during peace. 

 They must have a patriotism which regards the triumph of their so- 

 ciety as the supreme end of the action ; they must possess the loyalty 

 whence flows obedience to authority ; and that they may be obedient 

 they must have abundant faith. With faith in authority and conse- 

 quent readiness to be directed, naturally goes relatively little power 

 of initiation. The habit of seeing everything officially controlled 

 fosters the belief that official control is everywhere needful ; and a 

 course of life which makes personal causation familiar and negatives 

 experience of impersonal causation produces an inability to conceive 

 of any social processes as carried on under self-regulating arrange- 



