MR. SPENCER ON DEGREES OF CAPACITY 113 



rational view of "human affairs" are, he proceeds Book n 

 to say, merely " a scattered few." He elsewhere 

 divides society into "the capable and the incapable" 

 the " worthy and the unworthy " ; and in the 

 " Postscript " just alluded to he mentions as an 

 admitted fact that in every social aggregate"//^ 

 inferior form the majority." But a yet more caustic 

 passage remains to be mentioned. In this same 

 work, The Study of Sociology, he is ridiculing and He divides the 

 very justly the socialistic idea that the State can into thedever, 

 be endowed with any talent or wisdom beyond what a 

 happens to be possessed by the individual function- 

 aries who compose the State. These functionaries, 

 he says, are merely " a cluster of men" which, like 

 any other cluster taken at hap-hazard, will comprise 

 "a few clever individuals, many ordinary, some 

 decidedly stztpid" ; and he devotes pages to showing 

 by means of multiplied examples, how incapable the 

 ordinary statesman, to say nothing of the decidedly 

 stupid, has been of promoting progress in even the 

 simplest ways. 



Mankind at large, then, according to Mr. 

 Spencer, may, roughly speaking, be divided into 

 three classes the "clever" who are few, the 

 "ordinary" who are the bulk of the population, and 

 the "decidedly stupid" who form a considerable 

 residuum ; and it will appear from what he says of 

 that representative "cluster" the State, that whilst 

 all real progress is the work of the clever few, the 

 " ordinary men " do nothing to promote it, and " the 

 decidedly stupid men " impede it. 



