and it has attracted a number of men of genius, who have applied to it methods learned in the school of physical science • 9 Yet despite their genius and their diligence, all parties complain that the results of their study are inconclusive • 10 Professor Marshall and Mr. Kidd, for instance, complain of the fact, but can suggest no explanation of it • 10 What can the explanation be? • 11 The answer will be found in the fact just referred to—that social science attempts to answer two distinct sets of questions; • 12 and one set—namely, the speculative—it has answered with great success; • 12 it has failed only in attempting to answer practical questions • 13 Now the phenomena with which it has dealt successfully are phenomena of social aggregates, considered as wholes; • 13 but the practical problems of to-day, with which it has dealt unsuccessfully, arise out of the conflict between different parts of aggregates • 15 Social science has failed as a _practical_ guide because it has not recognised this distinction; • 16 and hence arise most of the errors of the political philosophy of this century • 16 CHAPTER II THE ATTEMPT TO MERGE THE GREAT MAN IN THE AGGREGATE Whatever may be done by some men, or classes of men, sociologists are at present accustomed to attribute to _man_ • 17 Mr. Kidd’s _Social Evolution_, for instance, is based entirely on this procedure • 17 He quotes with approval two other writers who have been guilty of it; • 18 who both attribute to _man_ what is done by only a few men; • 19 and the consequences of their reasoning are ludicrous • 20 Mr. Kidd’s reasoning itself is not less ludicrous. The first half of his argument is that religion prompts the few to surrender advantages to the many, which, if they chose to do so, they could keep • 21 The second half is that the many could have taken these advantages from the few, and that religion alone prevented them from doing so • 21 This contradiction is entirely due to the fact that, having first divided the social aggregate into two classes, he then obliterates his division, and thinks of them both as “_man_” • 22 Mr. Kidd’s confusion is the result of no accidental error. It is the inevitable result of a radically fallacious method; • 24 and of this method the chief exponent is Mr. Herbert Spencer, • 24 as a short summary of his arguments will show • 25 Mr. Spencer starts with saying that the chief impediment to social science is the great-man theory; • 25 for, if the appearance of the great man is incalculable, progress, if it depends on him, must be incalculable also; • 26 but if the great man is not a miraculous apparition, he owes his greatness to causes outside himself; • 27 and it is these causes which really produce the effects of which he is the proximate initiator • 27 These effects, therefore, are to be explained by reference not to the great man, but to the causes that are behind the great man • 28