CHAP, ix MR. SPENCER'S THREE DOCTRINES 99 



little taste for detailed historical parallels as a means 

 of appeal to history; both prefer to look to the 

 mighty onward current, while unfortunately their 

 witnesses, reporting what they see there, agree not 

 together. Comte regards individual freedom as a 

 sign of the weakness inherent in " critical periods," 

 which can be nothing better than narrow bridges 

 leading from one organic period to another ; Spencer 

 regards individual freedom as the highest stage in 

 evolution the great good towards which past condi- 

 tions have steadily moved on. Comte, in the name 

 of fact and science, preaches a new synthesis; Spen- 

 cer, speaking in the name of the same great authori- 

 ties, pronounces a curse upon it. Every attempt at 

 closer social organisation seems to him a relapse into 

 outgrown military forms of society, and an act of 

 treason towards industrialism. He does not discuss 

 this, but takes the assumption for granted, with an 

 a priori vehemence that we should find it hard to 

 match, outside the ranks of scientific empiricists. Of 

 course he has informed himself, as few men have 

 done, of the vast prevalence of militarism during 

 former ages. Where society has been highly central- 

 ised or organised, it has been in the past, one might 

 almost say, uniformly, a society of a military type. 

 And a very little study of sociology will make it plain 

 that, if a society is drilled and regimented and over- 

 governed, it will lend itself much more readily to 

 manipulation for military ends than a freer or more 

 individualist society would do. ' Still, all this hardly 

 constitutes a proof. It may be unfair to style it a 

 prejudice : let us call it a presumption, and a grave 

 presumption ; but is it a proof ? The Hindu who 



