1 5 2 A R IS TO CRA CY AND E VOL UTION 



Book ii authority, and who share the merited fate of their 

 own errors or deficiencies. 



The progress and the maintenance, then, of 

 civilisation in any community depends on its possess- 

 ing a number of great men, of which number the 

 greatest shall, by competition with the others, 

 succeed in gaining a control over the beliefs and 

 actions of the majority, 

 we must con- Here, however, we are introduced to two new 



sidcr however 



that the great ' sets of facts, which have not thus far come under 



men who . i n 



struggle for our consideration at all. 



SSd^rtdo In tne fi rst place, great men do not come into 



so without the WO rld ready-made. Their greatness is potential 



some strong J 



motive; only, or in other words it is practically non-existent, 

 until it has been developed ; and the process of 

 developing it is in most cases extremely arduous. 

 The philosopher, the soldier, the inventor, the states- 

 man, the great merchant or manufacturer, achieve 

 success only by prolonged and intense effort, by 

 study, by concentrated thought, by action, by 

 rude experience. Genius, indeed, has been defined 

 as an infinite capacity for taking trouble ; and the 

 definition, though very incomplete, is, so far as it 

 goes, true. No one, however, takes trouble with- 

 out a motive ; and a motive being some object of 

 ofdesire, such as money, rank, or pleasure, which a 

 man hopes to attain by a certain line of action, it 

 follows that if a community is to possess great men 

 as actual agents of progress, and not merely as wasted 

 potentialities, its social constitution must be such as 

 to offer and make attainable positions, possessions, 



