A selfish doctor, if successful, is greater than a devoted doctor, if unsuccessful • 122 The fact that many men who produce no social results seem better and more brilliant than many men who do produce them, makes some argue that these results require no greatness for their production • 122 But the most efficient forms of greatness have often nothing brilliant about them • 123 A lofty imagination is often the enemy to practical efficiency; • 124 and great efficiency is often independent of exceptional intellect • 125 Intellect _is_ required for progress, _e.g._ in invention; • 125 but the inventor by himself is often helpless, • 125 and has to ally himself with men whose exceptional gifts are unimpressive and even vulgar • 126 Greatness is not one quality, but various combinations of many • 127 Greatness, then, is merely those qualities which, in any domain of progress, make the few more efficient than the many • 127 The great-man theory, then, merely asserts that if some men were not more efficient than most men, no progress would take place at all • 128 But great men, in spite of these differences, all promote progress in the same way • 128 CHAPTER II PROGRESS THE RESULT OF A STRUGGLE NOT FOR SURVIVAL, BUT FOR DOMINATION In order to see how the great man promotes progress, we must consider that whilst the fittest survivor only promotes it • 130 by living, whilst others die, • 130 the great man promotes progress by helping others to live • 131 He promotes progress not by what he does himself, but by what he helps others to do • 132 We can see this by considering the progress of knowledge which, as J. S. Mill says, is the foundation of all progress • 132 But all progress in knowledge is the work of “_decidedly exceptional individuals_,” • 134 as Mill admits, though in curiously confused language • 135 Now how do the exceptional individuals, when they acquire knowledge, promote progress by doing so? • 136 They promote progress by conveying their knowledge to, and imposing their conclusions on, others • 137 A similar thing is true of invention, which is knowledge applied • 138 Invention promotes progress only because the inventor influences the actions of the workmen who make and use his machines • 139 The man of business ability promotes progress also only by so ordering others that the precise wants of the public are supplied • 140 And the same principle is obviously true in the domain of war, politics, and religion • 141 Greatness, however, is not in all cases equally beneficial • 142 The influence of some great men is more advantageous than that of others • 143 Progress, then, involves a struggle through which the fittest great men shall secure influence over others, and destroy the influence of the less fit • 143 We now come to another point of difference between the fittest great man and the fittest survivor • 143