MANY DEGREES OF GREA TNESS 1 1 7 



theory, when properly analysed and explained, will Book n 

 be found to comprise no such absurdities as the 

 foregoing. When we speak of " greatness " we Greatness is 

 mean a great variety of efficiencies, which, though ^ kind and 

 grouped together because they are all exceptional in de sr ee> 

 degree, are nevertheless indefinitely various in kind ; 

 and, moreover, the degrees to which they are ex- 

 ceptional are indefinitely various also, the degree 

 being in many cases so low that it is difficult to say 

 whether it should be classed as exceptional at all. 

 In short, there are as many degrees of greatness as 

 there are of temperature ; and it is as difficult to 

 draw a line between ordinary men and men whose 

 greatness is of a very low degree, as it is to draw a 

 line between coldness, coolness, and low degrees 

 of heat. But though it may be questionable 

 whether we should call a day cool when the 

 thermometer is at fifty - nine, and whether we 

 should call it hot when the thermometer is at sixty- 

 one, everybody admits that it is hot when the but, at ail 



thermometer is at eighty-five, and cold when the e ' 



thermometer registers twenty degrees of frost. I n nwhore- 

 the same way, though there will be a certain number*?* 1 ?'?^ 



* other in being 



of people who may be classed as great by one judge more efficient 



11 i- i thanthe 



and classed as ordinary by another, there is a majority. 



certain number whose capacities, however unequal 

 amongst themselves, set their possessors apart as 

 indubitably greater than the majority ; and we are 

 speaking with sufficient, though we cannot speak 

 with absolute precision, when we say that progress 

 depends on the action of this minority. 



