98 



ARISTOCRACY AND EVOLUTION 



Book i 



Many of the 



sequence of the unintended. How this is can be 

 eas jiy m ade plain ; and when once the idea is 

 grasped, which the definition embodies, it will be 

 seen that social evolution, although it is no doubt 

 different from all or from any of those changes 

 deliberately produced by the agency of the great 

 man, instead of excluding these changes, or elimi- 

 nating the great man as the cause of them, is a 

 process which depends altogether upon him and 

 them, and that, instead of obscuring the great 

 man's importance, it only exhibits it in a stronger 

 and clearer light. 



Let us take then our definition of evolution as 

 tne reasonable sequence of the unintended, and 

 a PP^y t ^ ie ^ ea em kdied in it to that aggregate of 

 but were m- conditions, either in our own or any similar period, 



tended by . 7 r 



nobody in the amongst which the great man works. All these 

 conditions, such as the knowledge which he finds 

 accumulated, the inventions which he finds in use, 

 the political and the economic conditions of his 

 country, are, taken as a whole, the result of no one 

 man's genius. It is equally obvious that they do 

 not, in their incalculably complex entirety, represent 

 any one man's intention, or even the joint intention 

 of any number of men acting in concert. Printing, 

 for instance, for example, and railway travelling have produced a 

 ^iai effects of number of social results never dreamed of by the 

 . men wno perfected our locomotives and our steam 

 printing presses. Accordingly, when any great man 

 of to-day initiates some fresh social change, whether 

 as an inventor, a director of industry, a politician, or 



