262 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book in to encounter. Objections will be raised against 

 them which are economic rather than sentimental, 

 and which, moreover, this is a still more important 

 fact rest solely upon a practical, and have no 

 theoretical basis. 



socialists can In order to see what these objections are it will be 

 we ^ to consider them in their extremest and most 



establishes the uncompromising form. We will accordingly consider 

 claim of excep- them as put forward by the socialists. That the 



tionalmento ... ... ... 11- i /- 



exceptional objections of the socialists to the claims made for 

 the great man are not grounded in any theory that 

 consistently disallows them, is sufficiently shown 

 by the fact that even the most extreme socialists, 

 no less than the members of every other militant 

 party, are always extolling the exceptional qualities 

 of their own leaders. Agitators, thinkers, and writers 

 like Karl Marx, Lassalle, and Engels have been 

 extolled by their followers as though in their own 

 way equal to Caesar and Napoleon, to Aristotle, 

 Galileo, and Bacon; and their works are continually 

 called ''marvels of reasoning," and described as 

 evincing "such powers of thought as are given to 

 only a few men in the course of five hundred 

 years." The arguments, therefore, which are 

 employed by socialistic thinkers to convince them 

 that the great man is not essential to social progress, 

 and plays no real part' in it those arguments to 

 the examination of which the first chapters of this 

 work were devoted, do not really convince even those 

 who lay most stress on them, so far as they are 

 applicable to social progress generally. For the 



