Herbert Spencer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The social organism is not a law of progress toward peace taken by itself. The law is that the type of society follows the dominant activity. All societies, save a few sheltered ones like the Esquimaux, are at times in antagonism with others and develop structures for offence and defence; but they differ immensely in the ratio between those structures and the sustaining system.1
Where the outer system predominates, the sustaining system exists solely for its benefit, and the activities are militant; where the sustaining system predominates, the offensive and defensive appliances are kept only to protect it, and the activities are industrial.1 Peace is not decreed by the analogy. It is the condition under which the industrial type can reach its full development, and the whole structure of the militant type, in which the army is the nation mobilized and the nation the quiescent army, follows from chronic war.2
The analogy has a limit, and the limit is the point. In the individual organism the units, mostly devoid of feeling, work for the nervous centres which monopolize it; in society all the units feel, and the aggregate does not. So in the organism the units exist for the aggregate, and in society the aggregate exists for the units.3 Hence a social organization is to be called high in proportion as it subserves individual welfare.
Under the militant regime the welfare of the aggregate takes precedence, because the aggregate must be preserved from enemies; as that necessity declines, the subordination declines with it, and the decentralized industrial type, which serves the happiness of the units best, is the higher.3 This is why I rank types as I do, which M. Marion found anomalous.
As to the primitive man and the races, I would say what war has done, and no more. It peopled the Earth with the more powerful and intelligent races; it welded small groups into larger, and these into nations; and it gave the savage, who lacked it, the habit of restraint and graduated subordination under coercive discipline.4 That work is largely done.
The power of continuous application, lacking in the savage, has already been acquired in large measure by the civilized man, and what further degree is needed will come under the stress of industrial competition in free communities.4 What remains of barbarism is to be met by the quiet pressure of a spreading industrial civilization, and calls for no other agency.4
I would not have it thought that this is a licence for conquest: the benefits were incidental and are exhausted. Of empire I speak plainly. Empires formed of alien peoples habitually fall to pieces when the coercive power that holds them together fails, and even could they be held together they would not form harmoniously working wholes. Peaceful federation is the only further consolidation to be looked for.4
Nor can later wars yield any compensation, for the powerful types of men now possess the world, great aggregates are consolidated, and the conflicts of nations can only entail death, devastation and misery on a larger scale than ever.5 Persistent militancy, moreover, preserving institutions adapted to itself, must prevent or neutralize every change toward more equitable laws, while permanent peace will be followed by social amelioration of every kind.4
I have held that the advance to higher forms of man and society depends on the decline of militancy and the growth of industrialism, and I count this a political truth in comparison with which all others are insignificant.5
A society is an organism, but of a peculiar kind: its consciousness is not concentrated in a brain but diffused through its units, and the units do not exist for the whole. Societies evolve from the militant type, organised for war on status, compulsory cooperation and a regimented citizen, toward the industrial type, organised for sustenance on contract, voluntary cooperation and individual rights.6
War did the work of compounding small groups into large ones; it is now the chief cause of re-barbarization. The primitive man of the ethnographic record is impulsive, improvident and limited in abstraction because his nature is adapted to his conditions; races differ by inheritance, and progress is neither uniform nor assured. Empire is militancy, and it ends by enslaving the conquerors too.789
they vary immensely in the ratios they bear to one another. In some cases the structures carrying on external actions are largely developed; the sustaining system exists solely for their benefit; and the activities are militant. In other cases there is predominance of the structures carrying on sustentation; offensive and defensive structures are maintained only to protect them; and the activities are industrial.The Principles of Sociology Vol 1, 3rd ed
the militant type is one in which the army is the nation mobilized wh^e the nation is the quiescent army, and which, therefore, acquires a structure common to army and nation.The Principles of Sociology Vol 1, 3rd ed
Social organization is to be considered high in proportion as it subserves individual welfare, because in a society the units are sentient and the aggregate insentient; and the industrial type is the higher because, ill that state of permanent peace to which civilisation is tending, it subserves individual welfare better than the militant type.The Principles of Sociology Vol 1, 3rd ed
Empires formed of alien peoples habitually fall to pieces when the coercive power which holds them together fails; and even could they be held together, would not form harmoniously working wholes: peaceful federation is the only further consolidation to be looked for.The Principles of Sociology Vol 2
In sundry places, and in various ways, I have sought to show that advance to higher forms of m^n md society essentially depends on the decline of militancy and the growth of industrialism. This I hold to be a political truth in comparison with which all other political truths are insignificant.Various Fragments, enlarged ed
This connexion, is one aspect of the truth that militancy implies the principle of status, which involves ceremonial observances, while indus trialism, implying contract, does not involve ceremonial observances.The Filiation of Ideas
Evidently the like combination of several such communities, passing through stages of increasing cohesion, leaves it sometimes doubtful whether they are to be regarded as many or as one.The Principles of Sociology Vol 1, 3rd ed
After all that has been said it is needless to emphasize afresh the truth that persistent militancy, maintaining adapted institutions, must inevitably prevent, or else neutralize, changes in the direction of more equitable institutions and laws; while permanent peace will of necessity be followed by social ameliorations of every kind. From war has been gained all that it had to give.The Principles of Sociology Vol 2
And then the third or distributing system, which, though necessarily arising after the others, is indispensable to the considerable development of them, eventually gets a regulating apparatus peculiar to itself. CHAPTEK X. SOCIAL TYPES AITD CONSTITUTIOITS. 256.The Principles of Sociology Vol 1, 3rd ed
The sociology that gave Durkheim his foil and the liberal theory of peace a law; its ethnography of the primitive man is the part now most condemned, and its opposition to empire the part least remembered.