The above contention contains several different propositions, which we will presently examine one by one. We will, however, take its general meaning first. One of the chief exponents of this, strange as the fact may seem, is that vehement anti-Socialist, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer disposes of the claims of the man of ability as a force distinct from the generation at large to which he belongs, by saying that ◆¹ “Before the great man can remake his society, his society must make him.” Thus, to take an example from art, the genius of a man like Shakespeare is explained by reference to the condition of the civilised world, and of England more especially, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The temper of the human mind caused by centuries of Catholicism, the stir of the human mind shown in the Reformation or the Renaissance, and the sense of the new world then being conquered in America, are all dwelt on as general or social causes which produced in an individual poet a greatness which has been since unequalled. ◆² Now this reasoning, if used to combat a certain psychological error, no doubt expresses a very important truth; but if it is transferred to the sphere of economics its whole meaning vanishes. It was originally used in opposition to the now obsolete theory according to which a genius was a kind of spiritual aerolite, fallen from heaven, and related in no calculable way to its environment. It was used, for instance, to prove with regard to Shakespeare that had he lived in another age he would have thought and written differently, and that he might have been a worse poet under circumstances less exciting to the imagination. But when we leave the psychological side of the case, and look at its practical side, a set of facts is forced on us which are of quite a different order. We are forced to reflect that though Shakespeare’s mind may have been what it was because the age acted on it, the age was acting on all Shakespeare’s contemporaries, and yet it produced one Shakespeare only. If Queen Elizabeth had been told that it was the age which produced Shakespeare, and in consequence had ordered that three or four more Shakespeares should be brought to her, her courtiers, do what they would, would have been unable to find them; and the reason is plain. The age acts on, or sets its stamp on, the character of every single mind that belongs to it; but the effect in each case depends on the mind acted on; and it is only one mind amongst ordinary minds innumerable, that this universal action can fashion into a great poet. And what is true of poetic genius is true of industrial Ability. The great director of Labour is as rare as a great poet is; and though Ability of lower degrees is far commoner than Ability of the highest, yet the fact that it is the age which elicits and conditions its activities does nothing to make it commoner than it would be otherwise, nor affects the fact that its possessors are relatively a small minority.