we must add one from Mr. Sidney Webb, who is, intellectually, a favourable example of a modern English socialist. Referring to the socialistic proposal that all kinds of workers, no matter what their work, should be paid an equal wage, “_this equality_,” he says, “_has an abstract justification, as the special ability or energy with which some persons are born is an unearned increment due to the effect of the struggle for existence upon their ancestors, and consequently, having been produced by society, is as much due to society as the unearned increment of rent._” Here we have then, in the words of these four writers, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Kidd, Mr. Bellamy, and {66} Mr. Sidney Webb, the case against the great man set fully before us; and we may accordingly proceed to analyse it. We shall find that it divides itself into four separate arguments, which are constantly recurring in some form or other in all the works of our modern sociological writers, and especially in the works of those who are democratic or socialistic in their sympathies. Firstly, there is the argument that in any advanced civilisation not one of the improvements made during any given epoch would have been possible if a variety of other improvements and the accumulation of various knowledge had not gone before it; and that thus the man who is called the inventor or author of the improvement is merely the vehicle or delegate of forces outside himself. Secondly, there is the argument that the inventor or author of the improvement, even if we attribute to him some special ability of his own, is in respect of his own congenital energies merely the product and expression of preceding generations and circumstances. Of the four arguments in question, these are the most important; but they are constantly reinforced by two others. One is drawn from the fact that several independent workers often arrive simultaneously at the same discovery. The other is drawn from the fact—or what is alleged to be the fact—that the interval which divides even the greatest man from his fellows, alike in respect of what he is and of what he accomplishes, is really extremely slight, and not worth considering. {67}