And now, finally, let us turn to that other argument which seeks to eliminate the causality of the great man, not by proving that he owes his superior brain-power to society, but by proving that superior brain-power has little to do with his achievements, their principal cause being the appliances, the opportunities, and the accumulated knowledge at his command; and that these, at all events, are due not to himself, but others—to the efforts of past generations, and the legacy they have left to the present. This is the argument which is mainly relied upon by Mr. Spencer. He insists on the fact that none of the great inventors or discoverers could have made their discoveries or {78} inventions if centuries of past progress had not prepared the way for them. “_A Laplace, for instance_,” he says, “_could not have got very far with the_ Mécanique Céleste _unless he had been aided by the slowly developed system of mathematics, which we trace back to its beginnings amongst the ancient Egyptians_”; and his many other illustrations are all of the same kind. If we consider the meaning of this argument carefully we shall see that its logical outcome is not to deny to the great man all superiority whatsoever, but to exhibit his superiority as being less than it is usually supposed to be. Laplace, Mr. Spencer would say, may have been personally a little above the level of his contemporaries, but he owed most of his elevation to sitting on the shoulders of his predecessors. Now if this reduction of the great man’s reputed greatness to such very small proportions has any practical meaning, it must mean that greatness is not only less than it is supposed to be, but is also a great deal commoner, and more easily procurable. Whatever any particular great man has done, could have been done, if he had not done it, by an indefinite number of others. Let us then take as an illustration some definite task, and see how far such reasoning has any practical application. Our illustration shall be taken from the domain of art; for the great artist, according to Mr. Spencer’s special statement, owes his greatness to the achievements of past generations, just as the great mathematician does, or the great thinker, or the great {79} inventor. Let us suppose, then, that it is desired to decorate some public hall with pictures worthy of Titian or Michael Angelo, or to open some national theatre with a new play worthy of Shakespeare. The great question will be where to find the artist or poet whose works shall even approximate to these ideals of excellence; and any one who knows anything about either pictures or poetry will know that to find him is a well-nigh hopeless task. Now what conceivable help, what conceivable meaning, would there be in Mr. Spencer’s coming forward and telling the public that the greatest poet or artist is the product of the same conditions that have produced any one of themselves? Mr. Spencer has actually made this precise statement.