SOCIOLOGY AND HERO-WORSHIP 



Timbuctoo negroes and the merchants of Ham- 

 burg. 



Dr. James, however, does quote from Mr. 

 Spencer one passage which seems to him to ig- 

 nore or to underrate the importance of indi- 

 vidual initiative as an agent in the production 

 of social changes. But when carefully considered 

 in connection with its context, this passage does 

 not appear to be responsible for the direful corol- 

 laries which Dr. James has deduced from it. 

 Commenting on the "great-man theory" of 

 history, especially as held by Carlyle, Mr. Spen- 

 cer reiterates in his peculiar language the famil- 

 iar criticism that after all the great man is a 

 " product of the age." " The genesis of the 

 great man," says he, " depends on the long 

 series of complex influences which has produced 

 the race in which he appears, and the social 

 state into which that race has slowly grown. . . . 

 All those changes of which he is the proximate 

 initiator have their chief causes in the genera- 

 tions he descended from." In saying this, Mr. 

 Spencer does not imply that the individual ini- 

 tiative of the great man is of no account ; nor 

 does he imply that in order to interpret the so- 

 cial phenomena of a given epoch it is needful 

 to seek for the causes of the production of its 

 great men in that physiological sphere " which 

 is wholly inaccessible to the social philosopher ; " 

 nor does he imply that it was owing to any " con- 

 173 



