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.