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_.”