TIIE MILITANT TYPE OF SOCIETY. 601 



a society fitted for preserving itself in presence of anta 

 gonist societies. To be in the highest degree efficient, the 

 corporate action needed for preserving the corporate life must 

 be joined in by every one. Other things equal, the fighting 

 power will be greatest where those who cannot fight, labour 

 exclusively to support and help those who can : an evident 

 implication being that the working part shall be no larger 

 than is required for these ends. The efforts of all being 

 utilized directly or indirectly for war, will be most effectual 

 when they are most combined ; and, besides union among the 

 combatants, there must be such union of the non-combatants 

 with them as renders the aid of these fully and promptly 

 available. To satisfy these requirements, the life, the actions, 

 and the possessions, of each individual must be held at the 

 service of the society. This universal service, this combina 

 tion, and this merging of individual claims, pre-suppose a 

 despotic controlling agency. That the will of the soldier- 

 chief may be operative when the aggregate is large, there 

 must be sub-centres and sub-sub-centres in descending grades, 

 through whom orders may be conveyed 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 community 

 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. Development 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 locali 

 ties. 



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 dif 

 ferences due to race, to circumstances, and to degrees of 



