PROGRESS NOT THE WHOLE OF LIFE 261 



with the conditions of their own progressive develop- Book in 

 ment ; or, to put the matter in a still more compre- 

 hensive way, we are merely asserting that that 

 particular form of greatness which improves those 

 conditions or sustains them, by influencing, or com- 

 pelling, or enabling masses of men to act or think 

 as they would not act or think otherwise, consti- 

 tutes a very small portion of human activity, and a 

 still smaller portion of human life. 



This truth has been lost sight of because modern 

 social philosophers, led astray by political and other 

 passions, have confused two distinct things man as 

 a moral being, moving in a circle of prescribed 

 duties, and man as a being capable of public or social 

 initiative ; and the more we study the ordinary 

 man, and the more fully we appreciate the varied 

 possibilities of his nature, the more clearly shall 

 we see, and the more ungrudgingly shall we re- 

 cognise, how absolutely he is, so far as civilisation 

 is concerned, dependent on the exceptional man 

 for even those very powers in virtue of which 

 the action of the exceptional man is controlled by 

 him. 



The general or the sentimental objections, then, 

 which might not unnaturally arise in the minds of 

 many when the claims of the great man to be the 

 sole agent of progress are first broadly asserted, are 

 found to disappear altogether when the meaning of 

 these claims is more fully considered. But senti- 

 mental objections, as has been said already, are by 

 no means the only objections which these claims have 



