HERBERT SPENCER.* 



As THE world grows older it knoAvs more about its great- 

 est men and finds them out quicker ; but in order to be no- 

 ticed it is necessary for them to be greater than in former 

 times. The idea that men of long ago were of superior 

 mould and larger intellectual stature than those of to-day 

 is a false one, though useful, no doubt, to sustain the doc- 

 trine of a lapse from an originally perfect state. Those 

 sentiments which have given rise to and supported the 

 theory of monarchical sovereignty made demigods of mil- 

 itary chieftains, of kings and emperors, and endowed them, 

 in the minds of people generally, with all the virtues which 

 they did not possess but which seemed to be necessary to a 

 properly equipped great man. The same method has per- 

 vaded the world of study and of letters. Plato and Aris- 

 totle have been esteemed much greater men than any of our 

 degenerate times, and there has been, and still is, a mysti- 

 cal value attached to their least words. 



Without dis])araging these really worthy Greeks, who 

 would be considered good philosophers, as philosophers go 

 in our time, and Avho, it must be remembered, were far bet- 

 ter than they used to run in earlier days, I do not hesitate 

 to aver that the subject of this sketch, for instance, is much 

 greater than either of them. Nor would I say it of him 

 alone, but also of many others, who are not as prominent. 

 The general level of intellectual power is so far raised in 

 modern times that it is exceedingly difficult for any one 

 man to become pre-eminent among his fellows. His lim- 

 itations are more accurately measured, his weaknesses are 

 detected, and he has none of the divine halo about his head 

 that used to awe people into adoration and out of criticism. 

 Believe me, the modern way is the best. These are mora 

 fortunate times, when we see Carlyle's " Great Man " cer- 

 tainly disappearing from the earth and soon to share the 

 fate of tlK' mastodon and the mammoth. True greatness 

 • Copyright, by 1). G. Thoinpsoii, 1888. 



