And now, having dealt with this point, let us turn to Mr. Spencer’s other contention—his contention namely that, whatever the part may be, and however seemingly important, which the great man plays in producing social changes, he is, in any case, nothing but their “_proximate initiator_”;—that “_they have their chief cause in the generations he descended from_”;—and that if there is to be anything like a real and scientific explanation of them, it must be sought in the aggregate of conditions out of which both he and they have arisen, and not in the great man’s personality as revealed to us by any {64} records of his life, or by any analysis of his peculiar faculties. We have already seen in a general way how this feat of merging the great man in “_the aggregate of conditions out of which he has arisen_” is performed by Mr. Spencer himself. Let us now turn for a moment to three other writers who, though differing from him as to certain of his conclusions, have with regard to this particular point done little else than popularise and apply his teaching. “_It needs only a little reflection_,” writes Mr. Kidd, “_to enable us to perceive that the marvellous accomplishments of modern civilisation are primarily the measure of the social stability and social efficiency, and not of the intellectual pre-eminence of the peoples who have produced them. . . . For it must be remembered that even the ablest men amongst us, whose names go down to history connected with great discoveries and inventions, have each in reality advanced the sum of knowledge by only a small addition. In the fulness of time, and when the ground has been slowly and laboriously prepared for it, the great idea fructifies and the discovery is made. It is, in fact, the work not of one, but of a great number of persons. How true it is that all the great ideas have been the products of the time rather than of individuals may be the more readily realised when it is remembered that, as regards a large number of them, there have been rival claims put forward for the honour of authorship by persons who, working quite independently, have arrived at like results almost {65} simultaneously. Thus rival and independent claims have been made for the discovery of the differential calculus . . . the invention of the steam engine, . . . the methods of spectrum analysis, the telegraph, the telephone, as well as many other discoveries._” And then Mr. Kidd proceeds to quote with approval the following sentence from an essay which was written by an American socialist, Mr. Bellamy; and the sentence has been repeated with solemn and triumphant unction in half the socialistic books which have been given to the world since. “_Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts out of the thousand of every man’s produce are the result of his social inheritance and environment.” “This is so,_” remarks Mr. Kidd, “_and it is, if possible, even more true of the work of our brain than of the work of our hands._” To these passages