EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



The problem of the social philosopher, undoubt- 

 edly, so far as he speculates about the influence 

 of great men, is to take them for granted, and 

 inquire how far they affect the environment, and 

 how far or in what ways the environment affects 

 them. Dr. James goes on to assert, with entire 

 justice, that the relation of the environment to 

 the genius in sociology is strictly analogous to 

 the relation of the environment to the variation 

 in biology : " it chiefly adopts or rejects, pre- 

 serves or destroys, in short selects him." If 

 environing circumstances are such as to render 

 an extra quarter of an inch of proboscis advan- 

 tageous to our species of moths, then the ten- 

 dency will be for the variations in excess of 

 length of proboscis to survive and leave off- 

 spring, while the variations in the opposite di- 

 rection are starved out ; so that by and by the 

 average in the length of proboscis will have 

 been shifted by a quarter of an inch. It may 

 be truly said, in a certain sense, that these moths 

 which have varied in the right direction have, 

 by being preserved, changed the character of the 

 moth society to which they belong. Similarly 

 with the preservation of the great man, save 

 that, in the immensely greater complexity of 

 the social problem, the effects are immeasur- 

 ably more multifarious. For the great man, says 

 Dr. James, acts as a powerful ferment, unlock- 

 ing vast reservoirs of force in various directions, 

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