MR. SPENCER ON THE CLEVER MINORITY 115 



The answer of course is No. Under such conditions Book n 

 progress would have been quite impossible. Our 

 simple argument will accordingly run thus. It is 

 evident that those triumphs of thought, enterprise, 

 and invention, to which social progress is due, could 

 never have been made had the whole of each 

 generation been as stupid and void of character as 

 its lowest and weakest members. Therefore pro- 

 gress must be due to men who are superior to the 

 "decidedly stupid." Here we have the great-man 

 theory in embryo. But it is equally evident that we 

 can go a step farther, and say that progress could 

 never have taken place had there been no in- 

 dividuals who in will, originality, and intellect were therefore pro- 



, . o . , , must be 



superior to ordinary men. Social progress, there- due to the 

 fore, must be due to this third class the class which arenas Mr 

 alone is capable of taking "a rational" view of Spen **??: 



a scattered few. 



things ; but this class, as Mr. Spencer tells us, con- 



sists of a " scattered few" and here we have, in 



Mr. Spencer's own language, neither more nor less 



than the great-man theory developed. We have 



it developed in the form of a distinct general propo- 



sition that progress is due not to mankind at large, 



but to a minority of exceptional individuals, and in 



this form, which Mr. Spencer has assisted us in This is the 



giving it, it is brought into actual accordance with Seory^eLon- 



the facts of social life, and, unlike the wild exaggera- ably statedp 



tions of Carlyle, it will be found to accord the more 



closely with them the more fully it is analysed. 



The error of writers like Carlyle was that they 

 took a part for the whole. They recognised no 



