SOCIAL CONTROL 241
blood. Warriors of fine qualities and brilliant exploit get together the biggest bands for foray, and so are able to amass wealth, keep retainers, and get looked upon as "noble." In the days of permanent conquest these men of social power become the captains of the host, the heads of the state, and the sole possessors of political power.
It is clear, then, that the Military Caste does not get social weight just because it is able to bully the rest of the people. Terrify men, and they cling to the skirts of those powerful to save. When violence is loose, the hind creeps under the castle wall, the trembling burgher pours out his florins for protection, and the soldier strikes the dominant note in social opinion. When peace makes broad her wings, the fighting man, becoming less necessary, becomes less influential.
In proportion as men do not understand the play of natural forces they are likely to connect their fate with the good-will or the ill-will of unseen beings. If now in an ignorant age, among imaginative men who see pain, disease, and death lurking on every hand, there arises a class of men who claim to have an exclusive "pull" with these unseen beings, that class will acquire enor- mous social power. Whether or not they finger the machinery of the state, their curse will be dreaded, their commands obeyed, and their intercessions sought by all men. It is no wonder, then, that the Priesthood, which in the civilized Roman empire was the minister of society, became its master when this organiza- tion of intelligent men had only benighted, fanciful barbarians to deal with. The fact that between the sixth and the thirteenth centuries about one-third of the soil of Europe passed by free offering into the hands of religious corporations, while the best talent of the age turned to the monastic life, tells what con- fidence men had in the supernatural powers of the sacred caste.
The layman is far less supple to the will of the priest if there lie to hand written directions and formulas for controlling or pleasing the Unseen. An open sacred book, therefore, has saved both the Jew and the Mohammedan from the excesses of priestly domination. And when Luther and the Reformers sought to
