erminate
service other than knight service.

SOCIAL WAR, name given to an Insurrection of the allied States in
Italy against the domination of Rome, and which lasted from 90 to 88 B.C.,
in consequence of their exclusion from the rights of citizenship and
the privileges attached; they formed a league to assert their rights,
which ended in defeat.

SOCIALISM, a social system which, in opposition to the competitive
system that prevails at present, seeks to reorganise society on the
basis, in the main, of a certain secularism in religion, of community of
interest, and co-operation in labour for the common good, agreeably to
the democratic spirit of the time and the changes required by the rise of
individualism and the decay of feudalism.

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, a society founded in 1698
which during the last 200 years has originated and supported a number of
agencies, both in this country and abroad, for propagating Christian
knowledge; distributed into a number of separate departments.

SOCIETY ISLANDS (24), an archipelago in the South Pacific,
consisting of 13 principal islands and numerous islets, the chief being
Tahiti; they are mountainous, and engirdled by belts of flat land as well
as coral reefs; have a fertile soil and luxuriant vegetation, while the
climate is healthy though enervating; the inhabitants are intelligent but
indolent, and the land is worked by immigrant races.

SOCIETY OF JESUS, the Jesuit order founded by IGNATIUS LOYOLA
(q. v.).

SOCINIANS, a sect of the Unitarian body who, in the 16th century,
take their name from FAUSTUS SOCINUS (q. v.), who, besides
denying the doctrine of the Trinity, deny the divinity of Christ and the
divine inspiration of Scripture; they arose into importance originally in
Poland, and in the 17th century spread by degrees in Prussia, the
Netherlands, and England.

SOCINUS, FAUSTUS, a theologian, born in Italy; had for his views to
exile himself for years, and was much persecuted for his opinions; in
Cracow, where he dwelt for a time, he was by a mob dragged from a
sick-bed half-naked along the street, had his house robbed and his papers
burned (1530-1601).

SOCIOLOGY, the science which treats of the nature and the
developments of society and of social institutions; a science to which
Herbert Spencer, in succession to Comte, has contributed more than any
other scientist, deducing, as he does, a series of generalisations by
compar