1 2 8 ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book ii say that a man is great we mean that he is 

 exceptionally efficient in producing some particular 

 result, which is either implied or specified that 

 he is great in commanding armies, or in manag- 

 ing hotels, or in conducting public affairs, or 

 in cheapening and improving the manufacture of 

 this or that commodity ; and when we say that such 

 and such a man possesses the quality of greatness to 

 such and such a degree we mean that he produces 

 results of a given kind, which are in such and 

 such a degree better or more copious than results 

 of the same kind which are produced by other 

 people. 



The great-man The inequality of men, then, in natural capacity 

 merely assem being an obvious fact, and the nature and the 

 t degrees of their inequalities having been now 



men 



more efficient generally explained, we may re-state, with a meaning 



men, no pro- more precise than was formerly possible, the 



gress would ._ , , . . ....... 



take place at fundamental proposition implied in the great-man 

 theory, when that theory is raised from a rhetorical 

 to a scientific formula. Progress of an appreciable 

 kind, in any department of social activity and 

 achievement, takes place only when, and in pro- 

 portion as, some of the men who are working to 

 produce such and such a result are more efficient in 

 relation to that class of result than the majority ; or 

 conversely, if a community contained no man with 

 capacities superior to those possessed by the greater 



But great men, number, progress in that community would be so 



in spite of . , n 



these slow as to be practically non-existent. 



We must now go on to inquire what is the 



