THE FACT OF INHERITANCE IRRELEVANT 79 



inventor. Let us suppose, then, that it is desired to Book i 

 decorate some public hall with pictures worthy of 

 Titian or Michael Angelo, or to open some national But is this the 

 theatre with a new play worthy of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's 

 The great question will be where to find the artist amecSe^ts 

 or poet whose works shall even approximate to make Shake - 



speares more 



these ideals of excellence; and any one who numerous? 

 knows anything about either pictures or poetry 

 will know that to find him is a well-nigh hopeless 

 task. Now what conceivable help, what con- 

 ceivable meaning, would there be in Mr. Spencer's 

 coming forward and telling the public that the 

 greatest poet or artist is the product of the same 

 conditions that have produced any one of them- 

 selves ? Mr. Spencer has actually made this precise 

 statement. Let us therefore refer to the terms in 

 which he has done so. " Given a 'Shakespeare" 

 he says, ''and what dramas could he have written, 

 without the multitudinous conditions of civilised life 

 without the various traditions which, descending to 

 him from the past, gave wealth to his thought, and 

 without the language which a hundred generations 

 had developed and enriched by use ? " 



Mr. Spencer could not have put his own case 

 more clearly ; and the more clearly it is put, the 

 more easy it is to answer it, and to show that for 

 practical men it has no meaning whatsoever. The 

 answer to the question he asks is not only obvious, 

 but contains at the same time the solution of the 

 whole problem we are discussing. It will inevi- 

 tably take the form of another question. Given the 



