68 ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book i their generation, than the fact that the three most 

 intrepid cragsmen in Europe meet at last on the 

 same virgin summit, which other adventurers had 

 sought to scale in vain, would prove the feat to have 

 been really accomplished by the mass of tourists at 

 Interlaken, who had never climbed anywhere except 

 by the Rigi railway, and whose stomachs would be 

 turned by a precipice of twenty feet. 

 The extent of Let us now turn to the argument that the in- 



the great man's .... ,,.,.. 11 i t 



superiority equalities between men s abilities are small, that the 

 howTt f s n work accomplished by even the ablest is small also, 

 and that the exceptional man as a separate subject 

 of study may, in the words of a writer who will 

 be quoted presently, be in consequence " safely 

 neglected" The answer to this is that whether an 

 inequality be great or small depends altogether on 

 the point from which the total altitude is measured. 

 If a child who is three feet high, and a giant who is 

 nine feet high, are both of them standing on the 

 summit of Mont Blanc, the difference between the 

 elevation of their respective heads above the sea- 

 level will be infinitesimal ; but no one who was 

 discussing the question of human stature would say 

 that little children and giants were of approximately 

 the same height. Similarly, if our object is to 

 compare men in general with all other living 

 creatures, no doubt the difference between the 

 ordinary man and a microbe is incomparably greater 

 than the difference between an ordinary man and 

 Newton ; but if our object is to compare men with 

 men, in relation to this or that mental capacity let 



