Let us now turn to the argument that the inequalities between men’s abilities are small, that the work accomplished by even the ablest is small also, and that the exceptional man as a separate subject of study may, in the words of a writer who will be quoted presently, be in consequence “_safely neglected_.” The answer to this is that whether an inequality be great or small depends altogether on the point from which the total altitude is measured. If a child who is three feet high, and a giant who is nine feet high, are both of them standing on the summit of Mont Blanc, the difference between the elevation of their respective heads above the sea-level will be infinitesimal; but no one who was discussing the question of human stature would say that little children and giants were of approximately the same height. Similarly, if our object is to compare men in general with all other living creatures, no doubt the difference between the ordinary man and a microbe is incomparably greater than the difference between an ordinary man and Newton; but if our object is to compare men with men, in relation to this or that mental capacity—let {69} us say the capacity for scientific and mathematical discovery—the difference which separates one ordinary man from another is insignificant when compared with the difference by which Newton is separated from both of them. And it is this latter sort of difference which alone concerns the sociologist. The difference which separates men from microbes is nothing to him. And what is true of what men are, is equally true of what they do. The addition made by any one great man to knowledge may be small when compared with the knowledge, regarded in its totality, which has been gathered together by all other great men preceding him; but it may at the same time be incalculably great when compared with the additions made by the ordinary men, his contemporaries.