Chapter III: Great Men, as the True Cause of Progress

The ignoring of natural inequalities is a deliberate procedure. Let us see how it is defended • 55

Let us examine Mr. Spencer’s defence of it • 55

He defends it in two ways; • 55

(1) by saying that the great man does not really do what he seems to do; • 55

(2) by saying that what he seems to do is not really much • 56

He admits that the great man does do something exceptional in war; • 57

but denies that he does anything exceptional in the sphere of peaceful progress • 57

But how does the great man fulfil his function in war? By ordering others • 58

The great man, in peace, does precisely the same thing • 59

Mr. Spencer, for example, orders the compositors who put his books into type • 59

The inventor orders the men by whom his inventions are manufactured • 60

The great man of business orders his employees • 61

The hotel-keeper orders his staff • 62

All these men resemble the great military commander; and if the latter is a social cause, so are the former • 63

Next, as to the contention that the great man is the proximate cause only, and not the true cause— • 63

This, as Mr. Spencer and three popular writers of to-day show us, • 64

resolves itself into four arguments: • 65

(1) That every first discovery involves all that have gone before it; • 66

(2) that the discoverer’s ability itself is the product of past circumstances; • 66

(3) that often the same discovery is made by several men at once; • 66

(4) that the difference between the great and the ordinary man is slight • 66

Simultaneous discovery only shows that several great men, instead of one, are greater than others • 67

The extent of the great man’s superiority depends on how it is measured • 68

It may be slight to the speculative philosopher, but to the practical man it is all-important • 69

As for the two other arguments, which admit the great man’s greatness, but deny that it is his own, • 71

they are both true speculatively, but are practically untrue, or irrelevant; • 71

just as statements of averages and classification of goods may be true and relevant for one purpose, and false and irrelevant for another • 72

Thus the argument that the great man owes his faculties to his ancestors, and through his ancestors to the society which helped to develop his ancestors, though a speculative truism, • 73

leads to nothing but absurdities if we apply it to practical life • 74

For if the great workers owe their greatness to the whole of past society, the men who shirk work owe their idleness to it; and if the former deserve no reward, the latter deserve no punishment • 75

The same argument applies to morals; and if accepted, we should have to admit that nobody really did, or was really responsible for, anything • 76

Finally, let us take the argument that most of what the great man does depends on past discoveries and past achievements, to which he does but add a little • 77

If this argument means anything, it must mean that greatness is commoner than it is vulgarly thought • 78

But is this the case? Does Shakespeare’s debt to his antecedents make Shakespeares more numerous? • 79

Shakespeare’s contemporaries had the same national antecedents that he had; but they could not do what he did • 80

Men inherit the past only in so far as they can assimilate it • 80

Socialists say that inventions once made become common property • 81

This is absolutely untrue • 81

The discoveries and inventions of the past are the property of those only who can absorb and use them • 82

Thus the introduction of the past into the question leaves the differences between the great man and others undiminished • 82

If the ordinary man does anything, the great man does a great deal more • 83

and in practical reasoning he is a true cause for the sociologist • 83

And, curiously enough, Mr. Spencer unconsciously admits this • 84

He declares that the Napoleonic wars were entirely due to the maleficent greatness of Napoleon • 84

He defends patents because they represent the _very substance of the inventor’s own mind_; • 86

and he attributes the modern improvement in steel manufacture to Sir H. Bessemer • 87

So much, then, being established, we must consider two difficulties suggested by it • 88