We shall find that the arguments brought forward by them in this connection divide themselves broadly into two classes, one of which deals with the problem of motive directly, while the other class aims at preparing the way to its solution by showing in advance that its difficulties are far less formidable than they appear to be.  Without insisting on the manner in which they are urged by individual writers, we will take these two classes of argument in the logical order which they assume when we consider their general character.

These preparatory arguments, with which we will accordingly begin, while admitting that some men are undoubtedly more able than others, aim at showing that the superiority of such men to their fellows is not so great as it seems to be, and that any claims made by them to exceptional reward on account of it consequently tend to reduce themselves to very modest proportions.

These arguments possess a peculiar interest owing to the fact that they have not originated with socialistic thinkers at all, but have been drawn by them from the evolutionary philosophy of the nineteenth century generally, in so far as it was applied to historical and sociological questions.  The dominant idea which distinguished this school of thought was the insignificance of the individual as compared with society past and present.  Thus Herbert Spencer, who was its most systematic exponent, opens his work on the Study of Sociology with an elaborate attack on what he calls “The Great Man Theory,” according to which the explanation of the main events of history is to be sought in the influence of exceptional or great men—­the men who, in vulgar language, are spoken of as “historical characters.”  Such an explanation, said Spencer, is no explanation at all.  Great men, however great, are not isolated phenomena.  Whatever they may do as the “proximate initiators” of change, they themselves “have their chief cause in the generations they have descended from,” and depend for the influence which is commonly attributed to their actions, on “the multitudinous conditions” of the generation to which they belong.  Thus Laplace, he says, could not have got far with his calculations if it had not been for the line of mathematicians who went before him.  Caesar could not have got very far with his conquests if a great military organisation had not been ready to his hand; nor could Shakespeare have written his dramas if he had not lived in a country already enriched with traditions and a highly developed language.

But though it was Herbert Spencer who invested these arguments with their most systematic form, and gave them their definite place in the theory of evolution as a whole, they were widely diffused already among his immediate predecessors, as we may see by the following passage taken from an unlikely quarter.  “It is,” says Macaulay, in his Essay on Dryden, anticipating the exact phraseology of Spencer, “the