Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
propitiated along with their predecessors: the most ancient of whom is
the supreme god, and the rest subordinate gods. For a long time these
connate forms of government--civil and religious--remain closely
associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief
priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. For many
ages religious law continues to include more or less of civil
regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of religious sanction;
and even among the most advanced nations these two controlling agencies
are by no means completely separated from each other. Having a common
root with these, and gradually diverging from them, we find yet another
controlling agency--that of Ceremonial usages. All titles of honour are
originally the names of the god-king; afterwards of the god and the
king; still later of persons of high rank; and finally come, some of
them, to be used between man and man. All forms of complimentary address
were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their
conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or
divine--expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate
authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes
of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in
worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended
race were similarly saluted; and by degrees some of the salutations
have become the due of all.[3] Thus, no sooner does the
originally-homogeneous social mass differentiate into the governed and
the governing parts, than this last exhibits an incipient
differentiation into religious and secular--Church and State; while at
the same time there begins to be differentiated from both, that less
definite species of government which rules our daily intercourse--a
species of government which, as we may see in heralds' colleges, in
books of the peerage, in masters of ceremonies, is not without a certain
embodiment of its own. Each of these is itself subject to successive
differentiations. In the course of ages, there arises, as among
ourselves, a highly complex political organization of monarch,
ministers, lords and commons, with their subordinate administrative
departments, courts of justice, revenue offices, &c., supplemented in
the provinces by municipal governments, county governments, parish or
union governments--all of them more or less elaborated. By its side
there grows up a highly complex religious organization, with its various
grades of officials, from archbishops down to sextons, its colleges,
convocations, ecclesiastical courts, &c.; to all which must be added the
ever-multiplying independent sects, each with its general and local
authorities. And at the same time there is developed a highly complex
aggregation of customs, manners, and temporary fashions, enforced by
society at large, and serving to control those minor transactions
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