MR. SPENCER ON GREAT MEN 27 



natural phenomenon at all, if he is not to be looked Book i 

 upon as a species of incalculable angel, this idea 

 of his fortuitous appearance is, says Mr. Spencer, but if the great 

 plainly quite untenable. The great man, unless he mf r acuious a 

 differs miraculously from other men, is produced as o^ 1 ^"'^ 

 they are, in accordance with natural laws, and, like ness to causes 



J outside him- 



them, owes his greatness to his near and remote self; 

 progenitors, just as a negro owes to his, his facial 

 angle, his blackness, and his woolly hair. " Who 

 would expect" Mr. Spencer asks, "that a Newton 

 might be born of a Hottentot family, or that a 

 Milton might spring up among the Andamanese?" 

 The theory, then, which explains social changes by 

 referring them to the great men whose names are 

 connected with their initiation, will, unless it is 

 regarded as a theory of perpetual miracle, be 

 recognised as inadequate, even by those who have 

 hitherto held it, when once they have realised the 

 absurd supposition which it implies. The great 

 man, whatever his seeming influence, is merely the 

 agent of other influences which are behind him. 

 He merely transmits a shock, like a man pushed 

 by a crowd. Even supposing what Mr. Spencer 

 entirely denies to be the case, that he could really and it is these 

 " remake his society" his society none the less must 

 have previously made him, and supplied him with 

 those conditions which rendered his career possible ; proximate 

 and therefore, of any changes which he may popu- 

 larly be said to have caused, he is merely " the 

 proximate initiator" not the true cause at all ; and 

 "if" says Mr. Spencer, "there is to be anything 



