I 9 2 



ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book II 

 Chapter 4 



and yet when 

 we think it 

 over we shall 

 see that it is 

 great in most 

 domains of 

 activity. 



probably force itself upon every reader that if the 

 many play a part in politics which is commensurate 

 with that of the few, they play a part in intellectual 

 and economic progress also. It would be useless for 

 the few to unfold their thoughts and their discoveries 

 to the many, if the many were not, in various 

 degrees, capable of assimilating and responding to 

 them. Still less could the great man of industry 

 realise his progressive inventions, or carry out his 

 extending schemes of business, if it were not that 

 an indefinite number of ordinary men those 

 "serviceable animals," as Mr. John Morley calls 

 them were endowed with capacities that enabled 

 them to carry out his bidding. What would 

 Mahomet have done if he had not had followers ? 

 What would Columbus have done if he had not had 

 seamen ? The reader, accordingly, will inevitably 

 be led to urge that in attributing to the great men 

 of the world the results which we have attributed to 

 them, our statements are unmeaning, unless they are 

 accepted as incomplete, and are understood to imply 

 more than they have actually expressed. If no 

 progress of any kind could have taken place without 

 the many, surely, it will be argued, the many must 

 have had some share in producing it ; and unless 

 we can assert and discriminate precisely what this 

 share is what are the phenomena of progress 

 which are due to the activity of ordinary men it 

 is meaningless to assert that most of them are due 

 to the activity of exceptional men. 



And the larger part of this argument is perfectly 



