Now to many people it will seem that even to ask this question is superfluous. They will regard {49} it as a matter patent to common sense that men’s congenital inequalities are to a large extent the cause, in every society, of such social inequalities as exist in it; and they will possibly say that it is a mere waste of time to discuss a truth which is so self-evident. It happens, however, that the more obvious it seems to be to common sense, the more necessary it is for us to begin our present inquiry with insisting on it; and the reason is that, in spite of its being so obvious, the whole school of contemporary sociologists, with Mr. Spencer as their head, base their whole method of sociological study on a denial of it. By their method of dealing with social aggregates only, they deny not only the influence, but even the existence of congenital inequalities, and endeavour to explain them away as an illusion of the unscientific mind. They admit, indeed, as our quotation from Mr. Spencer showed, that the primitive man was congenitally different from man in later ages. They admit that the individuals reared in a dry climate, who formed the conquering aggregates, were congenitally different from the individuals reared in a moist climate, who formed the enslaved aggregates; but they absolutely refuse to take any account whatever of the congenital inequalities by which individuals within the same aggregate are differentiated.
In order to show the reader that such is literally the case, we need not rely merely on such inferences as have just been drawn from the manner in which Mr. Spencer applies his method, and from the {50} general character of his conclusions. We have the direct evidence of his own categorical statements. Let us turn again to the criticism with which, as we have already seen, he prefaces his whole series of sociological writings, and which may be taken as his fundamental profession of faith—his criticism, namely, of what he calls “the great-man theory,” his rejection of it as being a theory which would render all social science impossible, and his enunciation of the theory which he contends must take its place. It may seem to some readers that his rejection of the great man as a vera causa which will explain social phenomena amounts to no more than a rejection of that exaggerated view of history which expresses itself in the works of writers such as Froude and Carlyle, and which vaguely attributes all the progressive changes of humanity to the personality of rulers, of political and military autocrats—such as Henry VIII., Cromwell, and Frederick the Great of Prussia. And indeed, to judge by Mr. Spencer’s language, it is this exaggerated view which has been most frequently present in his mind, as we may see by referring to the passage already quoted, which concludes his demonstration that the “great-man theory” is false. With the sole exception, he says, of the military struggles of primitive tribes, “new activities, new institutions, new ideas, unobtrusively make their appearance, without the aid of any king or legislator; and if you wish to understand the phenomena of social evolution, you will not do it should you read yourself {51} blind over the biographies of all the great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Napoleon the Treacherous.”
But Mr. Spencer, in rejecting the great “ruler and legislator” as a factor in social evolution unworthy of the attention of the sociologist, is really rejecting a great deal else besides. He is really rejecting every inequality in capacity by which a certain number of men are differentiated from, and raised above others. In order to show that such is the case, we will avail ourselves of his own words. We will, then, start with one casual remark out of many, in which Mr. Spencer, forgetting his own theories, slips into a method of observation truer than the one he advocates. “Men,” he writes in his Study of Sociology, “who have aptitudes for accumulating observations are rarely men given to generalising; whilst men given to generalising are commonly men who, mostly using the observation of others, observe for themselves less from love of particular facts than from the desire to put such facts to use.” Nothing can be clearer than the distinction here drawn. It is one of great importance in the elucidation of many social problems; and it deals not with the likeness, but with a congenital difference, which exists between men belonging to the same social aggregate. But now let us compare this with another passage, in which Mr. Spencer, returning again to his theory, explains how members of the same aggregate are to be treated by any sociologist who would claim to be a man of science. {52} “Amongst societies of all orders and sizes,” he writes, “sociology has to ascertain what traits there are in common, determined by the common traits of human beings; what less general traits, distinguishing certain groups of societies, result from traits distinguishing certain races of men; and what peculiarities in each society are traceable to the peculiarities of its members.” This is clumsily expressed; but its meaning, which is quite obvious, may be seen by taking, as a typical society, that of England. The sociologist, in explaining English society, will have to consider, according to Mr. Spencer, first, what traits Englishmen have in virtue of being human creatures; secondly, he will have to consider what traits they have in virtue of being Europeans, not Orientals; and, thirdly, he will have to consider what traits they have in virtue of being Englishmen, not Frenchmen or Germans.
The reader will at once perceive the contrast between the spirit of these two passages. In the former Mr. Spencer notes, with great penetration and accuracy, a most important point of difference between two sets of men belonging to the same society. In the latter he deals with societies as single bodies, the members of which possess no personal traits whatever, except such as they all possess alike; and all the traits in which they differ from one another, such as the one just alluded to, of necessity disappear from the field of vision altogether. Should any doubt as to the matter still remain in the reader’s mind, it will be dispelled by {53} the quotation of one further passage. “A true social aggregate,” he says [“as distinct from a mere large family], is a union of like individuals, independent of one another in parentage, and approximately equal in capacities.”
Here is the case stated with the most absolute clearness. All congenital inequalities, as was said just now, between the various individuals who make up the aggregate are ignored; and it is upon this hypothesis of approximately equal units, acted on by different external circumstances, that he attempts to build up his whole system of sociology. He is, indeed, little as he himself may suspect it, reproducing in another form the error of Karl Marx and the earlier of the so-called “scientific socialists,” who maintained that all wealth was the product of common or average labour, measured by time, and that hour for hour any one labourer necessarily produced as much wealth as another. The socialists of to-day are already beginning to see that this monstrous, though ingeniously advocated, doctrine is untenable as the foundation of economics; and yet, strange to say, a doctrine strictly equivalent to it forms the accepted foundation of contemporary social science. That science starts with the hypothesis of approximately equal units, and ignores the congenital differences between the individuals who compose the aggregate. We shall find it to be ultimately from differences of this kind that all the practical problems which beset civilisation spring, and that the inability of the modern {54} sociologists, complained of by Mr. Kidd and Professor Marshall, to throw on these problems any definite light is simply the natural and inevitable result of excluding the differences in question altogether from their scientific purview.
We will, in the next chapter, consider the whole range of arguments used by Mr. Spencer and others in justification of this error.
CHAPTER III GREAT MEN, AS THE TRUE CAUSE OF PROGRESS
It is evident that an error of the kind now in question does not represent the carelessness of the untrained thinker. It is nothing if not deliberate; and indeed Mr. Spencer admits that it is altogether in opposition to the opinions which men naturally hold. Accordingly, the arguments by which he and his followers justify it, and have actually imposed it on all the sociological thinkers of their generation, require, before we reject them, to be examined with the utmost care.
Let us then turn our attention once again to the grounds on which Mr. Spencer refuses to admit the great or exceptional man as a true factor in the production of social change. If the reader will reflect upon the account that has been already given of Mr. Spencer’s arguments in connection with this point, he will find that Mr. Spencer rejects the great man for two reasons, which are not only distinct, but are, when interpreted closely, not entirely consistent with each other. One of these reasons is that the great, or exceptional man does {56} not really produce those great changes of which he is nevertheless “the proximate initiator”; the other is that, outside the sphere of primitive warfare, he does not even proximately initiate any great changes at all. The first of these two contentions is expressed with sufficient clearness in his statement “if there is to be anything like a real explanation” of those changes of which the great man is the “proximate initiator”—changes, to quote an example which he himself gives, such as those produced by the conquests of Julius Cæsar—this explanation must be sought not in the great man himself, but “in the aggregate of social conditions out of which he and they (i.e. the changes commonly supposed to have been produced by him) have arisen.” Mr. Spencer’s second contention is expressed in the following passage, the concluding words of which have been quoted already, but on which it will be presently necessary for us to insist again. “Recognising,” he says, “what truth there is in the great-man theory, we may say that, if limited to the history of primitive societies, the histories of which are histories of little else than endeavours to destroy one another, it approximately expresses fact in representing the great leader as all-important. But its immense error lies in the assumption that what was once true was true for ever, and that a relation of ruler and ruled which was good at one time is good for all time. Just as fast as the predatory activity of early tribes diminishes, just as fast as large aggregates are formed, so fast do societies {57} begin to give origin to new activities, new ideas, all of which unobtrusively make their appearance without the aid of any king or legislator.”
It will be necessary to deal with these two contentions separately; and we will begin with the second, as set forth in the words just quoted. We shall find it valuable as an example of that singular confusion of thought by which all the reasoning of our sociologists with regard to this question is vitiated. Mr. Spencer speaks of an “immense error” which he is pointing out and correcting. The “immense error” in reality is to be found in his own conception. It is hard to imagine anything more arbitrary and more gratuitously false than the contrast which he here draws between the actions of men in primitive war, for the success of which he admits a great leader to have been essential, and their various actions and activities as manifested in peaceful progress, which, he contends, neither require leadership nor exhibit traces of its influence. We are at this moment altogether waiving the question of how far the great leader, when he is the proximate cause of the military successes of his tribe, is their cause in any deeper sense. It is enough for us now to take Mr. Spencer’s admission that the leader is really the cause, in some sense or other, of the social changes connected with early warfare; and, keeping to this sense, let us consider in what possible way less causality can be attributed to the actions of great men and leaders in the sphere of peaceful progress. {58}