Information and Authority: The Structure of Military Organization

from this development, although by different mechanisms: they fulfil few of the conditions supporting this evolution and often enjoy or create the factors which retard it. The Gnostic sect is in some ways less clearly protected, but its distinctive ideology performs in some measure the functions which social insulating mechanisms perform for other types. In a broad way, we can see why certain earlier studies of sects fell into errors of prediction, since the conclusions rested on the experience of certain types of sects, sects which existed in very particular social circumstances, and accommodated people whose social marginality and sense of anomie were often temporary and a consequence of inadequate readjustment to rapidly changing social conditions. Of course, to predict the development of any given sect requires examination in close detail of its circumstances. Once these are known, however, the foregoing analysis should provide a guide for the interpretation of these facts.