Thus the argument that the great man owes his faculties to his ancestors, and through his ancestors to the society which helped to develop his ancestors, though a speculative truism, • 73 leads to nothing but absurdities if we apply it to practical life • 74 For if the great workers owe their greatness to the whole of past society, the men who shirk work owe their idleness to it; and if the former deserve no reward, the latter deserve no punishment • 75 The same argument applies to morals; and if accepted, we should have to admit that nobody really did, or was really responsible for, anything • 76 Finally, let us take the argument that most of what the great man does depends on past discoveries and past achievements, to which he does but add a little • 77 If this argument means anything, it must mean that greatness is commoner than it is vulgarly thought • 78 But is this the case? Does Shakespeare’s debt to his antecedents make Shakespeares more numerous? • 79 Shakespeare’s contemporaries had the same national antecedents that he had; but they could not do what he did • 80 Men inherit the past only in so far as they can assimilate it • 80 Socialists say that inventions once made become common property • 81 This is absolutely untrue • 81 The discoveries and inventions of the past are the property of those only who can absorb and use them • 82 Thus the introduction of the past into the question leaves the differences between the great man and others undiminished • 82 If the ordinary man does anything, the great man does a great deal more • 83 and in practical reasoning he is a true cause for the sociologist • 83 And, curiously enough, Mr. Spencer unconsciously admits this • 84 He declares that the Napoleonic wars were entirely due to the maleficent greatness of Napoleon • 84 He defends patents because they represent the _very substance of the inventor’s own mind_; • 86 and he attributes the modern improvement in steel manufacture to Sir H. Bessemer • 87 So much, then, being established, we must consider two difficulties suggested by it • 88 CHAPTER IV THE GREAT MAN AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY FITTEST SURVIVOR It may be objected that modern sociology does not, as here asserted, neglect the great man, for it adopts the doctrine of the survival of the fittest • 89 It may be asked, on the other hand, what place the great man has in an exclusively evolutionary theory of progress • 90 The fittest survivor is not the same as the great man • 90 He plays a part in progress, but not the same part • 90 The fittest men, by surviving, raise the general level of the race, and promote progress only in this way • 91 The great man promotes progress by being superior to his contemporaries • 92 The movement of progress is double; • 93 one movement being very slow, the other rapid • 93 The survival of the fittest causes the slow movement • 93 The rapid movement is caused by the great man • 95