The great-man theory is summed up by him in the following quotation from Carlyle: “_As I take it, universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here._” “_This_,” observes Mr. Spencer, “_not perhaps distinctly formulated, but everywhere implied, is the belief in which nearly all are brought up_”; and it is, he declares, as incompatible as the theocratic theory itself with any belief in the possibility of a social science, or any comprehension of what such a science is; for either the great man is regarded as the miraculous instrument of the Deity, a kind of “_deputy-God_,” in which case we have “_theocracy once removed_”; or else his greatness, though regarded as a natural phenomenon, is regarded as one whose occurrence is so far fortuitous, that a great man of any given kind of greatness might appear in one age or nation just as well as in another; and in this case, if social changes depend on the great man’s actions, these changes will be as fortuitous as the great man’s own appearance, and will as little admit of any scientific calculation. If, however, the great man is regarded as a {27} natural phenomenon at all, if he is not to be looked upon as a species of incalculable angel, this idea of his fortuitous appearance is, says Mr. Spencer, plainly quite untenable. The great man, unless he differs miraculously from other men, is produced as they are, in accordance with natural laws, and, like them, owes his greatness to his near and remote progenitors, just as a negro owes to his, his facial angle, his blackness, and his woolly hair. “_Who would expect_,” Mr. Spencer asks, “_that a Newton might be born of a Hottentot family, or that a Milton might spring up among the Andamanese_?” The theory, then, which explains social changes by referring them to the great men whose names are connected with their initiation, will, unless it is regarded as a theory of perpetual miracle, be recognised as inadequate, even by those who have hitherto held it, when once they have realised the absurd supposition which it implies. The great man, whatever his seeming influence, is merely the agent of other influences which are behind him. He merely transmits a shock, like a man pushed by a crowd. Even supposing what Mr. Spencer entirely denies to be the case, that he could really “_remake his society_,” his society none the less must have previously made him, and supplied him with those conditions which rendered his career possible; and therefore, of any changes which he may popularly be said to have caused, he is merely “_the proximate initiator_,” not the true cause at all; and “_if_,” says Mr. Spencer, “_there is to be anything {28} like a real explanation of such changes, it must be sought (not in the great man himself), but in the aggregate of social conditions, out of which he and they have arisen_.” Except, perhaps, in the