SOCIOLOGY AND HERO-WORSHIP 



need offer an objection. But according to Dr. 

 James the Spencerian school holds that " the 

 changes go on irrespective of persons, and are 

 independent of individual control. They are 

 due to the environment, to the circumstances, 

 the physical geography, the ancestral conditions, 

 the increasing experience of outer relations ; to 

 everything, in fact, except the Grants and the 

 Bismarcks, the Joneses and the Smiths." 



Now if " Mr. Herbert Spencer and his dis- 

 ciples " really maintain any such astonishing 

 proposition as this, it must be difficult to acquit 

 them of the charge of over-hasty theorizing, to 

 say the least; if they do not hold any such 

 view, it will be difficult to avoid the conclusion 

 that somebody has been guilty of over-hasty 

 assertion. To ascertain Mr. Spencer's own 

 opinion, one cannot do better than to read care- 

 fully the third chapter of the little book on the 

 " Study of Sociology." The subject of this 

 chapter is the " Nature of the Social Science," 

 and the first general conclusion arrived at is that 

 this science " has in every case for its subject- 

 matter the growth, development, structure, and 

 functions of the social aggregate, as brought about 

 by the mutual actions of individuals, whose natures 

 are partly like those of all men, partly like those of 

 kindred races, partly distinctive" After this lu- 

 cid statement, which in its triple specification 

 seems comprehensive enough to include the 



