stage of this development. Ceremonial observance is the most
primitive kind of government, and the kind from which the political and
religious governments have differentiated. Political organization is
necessary in order to co-operation for ends which benefit the society
directly, and the individual only indirectly. The ultimate political force
is the feeling of the community, including as its largest part ancestral
feeling. Many facts combine to obscure this truth, but however much it may
be obscured, public feeling remains the primal source of authority. The
various forms and instruments of government have grown up through processes
in harmony with the general law. The two antithetical types of society are
the militant and the industrial--the former implies compulsory co-operation
under more or less despotic rule, with governmental assumption of functions
belonging to the individual and a minimizing of individual initiative;
in the latter, government is reduced to a minimum and best conducted by
representative agencies, public organizations are largely replaced by
private organizations, the individual is freer and looks less to the state
for protection and for aid. The fundamental conditions of the highest
social development is the cessation of war. The ideas and sentiments at the
basis of Ecclesiastical Institutions have been naturally derived from the
ghost-theory already described. The goal of religious development is the
final rejection of all anthropomorphic conceptions of the First Cause,
until the harmony of religion and science shall be reached in the
veneration of the Unknowable. The remaining parts of Mr. Spencer's
Sociology will treat of Professional Institutions, Industrial Institutions,
Linguistic Progress, Intellectual, Moral, and Aesthetic Progress.

The subject matter of _ethics_ is the conduct termed good or bad. Conduct
is the adjustment of acts to ends. The evolution of conduct is marked by
increasing perfection in the adjustment of acts to the furtherance of
individual life, the life of offspring, and social life. The ascription of
ethical character to the highly evolved conduct of man in relation to
these ends implies the fundamental assumption, that "life is good or bad
according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling."
The ideal of moral science is rational deduction: a rational utilitarianism
can be attained only by the recognition of the necessary laws--physical,
biologica