THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 165 



conceptions are, the solutions it yields appear quite satisfactory. 

 Just as that theory of the Solar System, which supposes the planets 

 to have been launched into their orbits by the hand of the Almighty, 

 looks quite feasible so long as you do not insist on knowing exactly 

 what is meant by the hand of the Almighty ; and just as the special 

 creation of plants and animals seems a satisfactory hypothesis until 

 you try and picture to yourself definitely the process by which one of 

 them is brought into existence ; so the genesis of social phenomena 

 through the agency of great men may be very comfortably believed 

 so long as, resting in general notions, you do not ask for particulars. 



But now, if, dissatisfied with vagueness, we demand that our ideas 

 should be brought into focus and exactly defined, we discover the 

 hypothesis to be utterly incoherent. If, not stopping at the explana- 

 tion of social progress as due to the great man, we go back a step 

 and ask whence comes the great man, we find that the theory breaks 

 down completely. The question has two conceivable answers: his 

 origin is supernatural, or it is natural. Is his origin supernatural ? 

 Then he is a deputy-god, and we have Theocracy once removed or, 

 rather, not removed at all; for we must then agree with Mr. Schom- 

 berg, quoted above, that "the determination of Ccesar to invade 

 Britain " was divinely inspired, and that from him, down to " George 

 III., the Great and the Good," the successive rulers were appointed 

 to carry out successive designs. Is this an unacceptable solution ? 

 Then the origin of the great man is natural ; and immediately he is 

 thus recognized he must be classed with all other phenomena in the 

 society that gave him birth, as a product of its antecedents. Along 

 with the whole generation of which he forms a minute part along 

 with its institutions, language, knowledge, manners, and its multitudi- 

 nous arts and appliances, he is a resultant of an enormous aggregate 

 of causes that have been cooperating for ages. True, if you please to 

 ignore all that common observation, verified by physiology, teaches 

 if you assume that two European parents may produce a Negro child, 

 or that from woolly-haired prognathous Papuans may come a fair, 

 straight-haired infant of Caucasian type you may assume that the 

 advent of the great man can occur anywhere and under any condi- 

 tions. If, disregarding those accumulated results of experience which 

 current proverbs and the generalizations of psychologists alike express, 

 you suppose that a Newton might be born in a Hottentot family, that 

 a Milton might spring up among the Andamanese, that a Howard or a 

 Clarkson might have Fiji parents, then you may proceed with facility 

 to explain social progress as caused by the actions of the great man. 

 But if all biological science, enforcing all popular belief, convinces you 

 that by no possibility will an Aristotle come from a father and mother 

 with facial angles of fifty degrees, and that out of a tribe of cannibals, 

 whose chorus in preparation for a feast of human flesh is a kind of 

 rhythmical roaring, there is not the remotest chance of a Beethoven 



