After this, what more need be said? Here we have Mr. Spencer himself, the moment he touches the practical side of life, contemptuously brushing aside the whole of his speculative theory and admitting, or rather insisting, with the most unhesitating and uncompromising vigour, that “_the phenomena of {88} social evolution_,” even if they do not result entirely, as Carlyle would have it, from the actions of great men, yet cannot, at all events, be possibly explained without them; and that great men, their natures, and the details of their active lives, are primary factors to be studied by every practical sociologist, and are not to be merged in “_society_,” in “_antecedents_,” and in “_aggregates of conditions_.” The practically independent character of the great man’s causality will be yet more apparent at another stage of our argument, and we shall see that the whole structure of all civilised societies depends on it. But we may, for the present, regard it as being sufficiently established, and the absurd and unreal character of the attempts to get rid of it demonstrated. So much, then, being assumed, we will, in the following chapter, consider two objections of a character very different from any of those of which we have now disposed. They are objections which will very possibly have suggested themselves to the reader’s mind, but which, instead of conflicting with the truth which has been just elucidated, will be found, when examined carefully, to emphasise and to enlarge its significance. {89} CHAPTER IV THE GREAT MAN AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY FITTEST SURVIVOR The two objections to which reference has just been made are connected with two doctrines, neither of which has thus far been submitted to any detailed examination, and one of which has indeed been hardly so much as alluded to, but which are both intimately associated, in the estimation of the world at large, with contemporary science, and more especially with contemporary sociology. One of these doctrines is that of the survival of the fittest. The other is that which, more or less distinctly, is suggested at the present time by the much-abused word “evolution.” When the reader thinks of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, when he reflects on the fact that Mr. Spencer is an avowed disciple of Darwin, and that Mr. Spencer’s own disciples are constantly making allusion to “_the rivalry of existence_” and the “_successfuls and the unsuccessfuls_,” he may be tempted to ask himself if it can be really true that Mr. Spencer has eliminated the great man from his system after all. On the other hand, when the reader thinks of _evolution_, {90} which, whatever it may mean, at all events means a progress essentially different from the achievements of particular individuals, he may wonder in what way the doctrine of evolution can be reconciled with any doctrine which has the achievements of individuals for its basis.