GREA TNESS AND STR UGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 1 3 1 



himself, or for those immediately dependent on him. Book n 

 He is the man who lives and thrives whilst others 

 die or languish, because whilst they can secure for by living 

 themselves but little of what is requisite for life and die, 3 

 health, he, by his superior gifts, is able to secure 

 much. "Families" says Mr. Spencer, "whom the 

 increasing difficulty of obtaining a living does not 

 stimulate to improvement in production are on the 

 high road to extinction, and must ultimately be 

 supplanted by those whom the difficulty does so 

 stimulate" That is to say, Mr. Spencer, and all 

 our modern sociologists with him, conceive of the 

 fittest as a man, or a man and his family, who 

 fight for their food in isolation, like a lion and 

 lioness with their cubs, and who affect their contem- 

 poraries only by being better fed than they, or as a 

 race-horse affects its competitors only by being first 

 at the winning post. 



But the great man, as an agent of progress, the great man 



11- . i . promotes pro- 



snows his greatness m a way precisely opposite to gress by help- 

 that in which the fittest man shows his fitness. J"^ 011 

 This it is that our contemporary sociologists all 

 fail to perceive, and endless error is the conse- 

 quence. The great man, unlike the strongest lion, 

 promotes progress by increasing the food - supply 

 not of himself, but of others ; or if he increase 

 his own, as he no doubt generally does, he does so 

 only by showing others how to increase theirs. He 

 is like a lion who should be better fed than the 

 rest of the lions in his region, not because he took 

 a carcase from them for which they all were fighting, 



