Whatever its source and however efficient or inefficient its performance, the body of paid public servants increases with the expanding life of locality, region, province, state, nation and empire. With its growth goes corresponding accommodations in wages and salaries, office space and equipment and other routine outlays. Frequently the increase of the emoluments of bureaucrats, especially at the higher levels of authority and responsibility, creates sinecures which are filled by parasites or by individuals who are engaged in shoring up the bureaucracy rather than rendering a public service. The outlays necessary to finance such a top-heavy bureaucratic fabric grow in direct proportion to the age and rigidity of the bureaucracy, draining off public funds into private coffers and adding uncompensated elements to overhead costs. If inflation is a problem, at or beyond the apex of an imperial epoch or cycle of civilization, financial costs rise correspondingly. The chief overhead cost in every civilization is and has been war. Examine the budget of the United States or any other leading civilized power. From two-thirds to three-quarters of central government outlays are for war in the past and preparation for war in the future. The net result of rising overhead costs appears in the history of all previous civilizations. They are eating out the vitals of western civilization while we write and read these words. CHAPTER EIGHT THE SOCIOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION Sociology is the science and art of association. Human associations range from kinship groups like the family, tribe and clan to larger more complex groups like villages, towns, cities, nations, empires, to still more inclusive leagues, federations and civilizations. In a broad view, sociology includes politics, economics and ideology. For the purposes of our social analysis, we have divided the field into four separate categories, beginning with politics, continuing through economics and drawing our study together under the general headings of sociology and ideology. No civilization that we have studied can be regarded as an intentional or projected or planned enterprise. On the contrary, civilizations have developed and matured in true pragmatic fashion, taking one step after another because their predecessors had followed this course or because, given the human urges and the available natural and social opportunities, the next step seemed to be determined by previous steps plus the momentum of the enterprise. In the course of this development an ideology was built up and modified in such a way as to justify and strengthen the entire project.