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