INTRODUCTION 



Spencer calls " direct equilibration " does not, 

 of itself, suffice to explain the phenomena of 

 higher social progress, and that " indirect equili- 

 bration '* (i. e. progress through variation and 

 selection) must be needed to give the social 

 process its direction upwards beyond a certain 

 point. Meanwhile, the stress laid upon the 

 need of strong individualities for the attainment 

 of socially progressive conditions is again char- 

 acteristic of Fiske's personal interest in the prob- 

 lems of history. To the end of his career as a 

 historian, he remained strongly disposed to re- 

 cognize the significance of great men. In 1880, 

 in a paper entitled " Sociology and Hero- Wor- 

 ship," ^ Fiske, undertaking to answer Professor 

 James's article in the " Atlantic Monthly " for 

 October, 18 8o,on" Great Men, Great Thoughts, 

 and the Environment," insists that the true con- 

 sequence of the Spencerian sociological doctrines 

 does not, in his own opinion, demand either a 

 denial, or even neglect of the significance of 

 great men as factors in social evolution, and he 

 especially refers to the present chapter as repre- 

 senting how he himself, a Spencerian, reads the 

 implications of his master's doctrine. One may 

 be disposed to doubt how far Fiske, in the arti- 

 cle in question, succeeds in his apology for 

 Spencer as against James, but there can be no 

 ^.Exicursiom of an Evolutionist, chap. vi. 

 Ixxvi 



