Aristocracy & Evolution A Study of the Rights, the Origin, and the Social Functions of the Wealthier Classes

In spite of their frequent forgetfulness of the fact just insisted on, that the development and exercise of exceptional faculties can be secured only through the influence of so...

The great-man theory as held by the conventional historian, and expressed by Carlyle and others in those vehement formulas which have so justly excited the ridicule of Mr. Herbe...

It is evident that an error of the kind now in question does not represent the carelessness of the untrained thinker. It is nothing if not deliberate; and indeed Mr. Spencer adm...

Man does not live by wealth alone, and progress is not concerned solely with the production and the distribution of it. But the processes involved in the production and distribu...

The two great facts, then, that have been elucidated by our inquiry thus far, are these: in the first place, all progress and civilisation, and more especially all production of...

Let us take any book we please, by any modern writer, who is attempting to deal with any social subject scientifically, and whenever he is calling attention to the great intelle...

The whole secret of social progress, other than the most rudimentary, is summed up in the formula with which the preceding chapter has concluded. Progress is the result of the d...

It has already been explained that the _great man_, as here understood, does not in any way correspond with the _fittest man_ in the Darwinian struggle for existence. The fittes...

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 w...

In the first chapter of his _Principles of Political Economy_ Mill alludes to the question raised by certain thinkers, of “_whether nature gives more assistance to labour in one...

The objections which will be taken to the conclusion arrived at in the preceding chapter resolve themselves into two groups, one of which rests on general and more or less senti...

That great men are true causes of progress is admitted by Mr. Spencer himself to be the natural opinion of mankind. What has been done, then, in the preceding book is not much m...

In discussing, with reference to political government, the means by which the great man controls the actions of others, it will be found that the point on which we shall have to...

The interest with which the world in general, throughout the middle portion of this century, has watched the progress of the various positive sciences, would, when we consider h...

In entering on the inquiry which now lies before us it is necessary to recall to the reader, and to insist with renewed emphasis on a fact which has been explained with the utmo...

be its speculative importance, fails to have any bearing on any practical problem, because it is not a truth about which there has ever been any practical disagreement. Aristocr...

It is argued, however, by semi-socialists that the actual producer may be allowed the income he produces, but that this must end with his life, and not be passed on to his famil...

Mr. Kidd’s reasoning itself is not less ludicrous. The first half of his argument is that religion prompts the few to surrender advantages to the many, which, if they chose to d...

Carlyle was wrong in his claim for the great man because he failed to note that his powers were conditioned by the capacities of the ordinary men influenced by him • 215

Thus the argument that the great man owes his faculties to his ancestors, and through his ancestors to the society which helped to develop his ancestors, though a speculative tr...

The radical theorist will put the same objections more logically. If the desire of exceptional wealth is really the strongest motive, he will say that it follows that most men,...

Under capitalism they do so, owing to the fact that the man who cannot direct industry so as to please the public loses his capital, and with it the means of direction • 167

Democrats are peculiar only in their theory that the sole greatness required in their governors is a perceptive and executive greatness, which will enable them to carry out the...

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 f...

The case of labour directed by different great men is the same as the case of labour applied to different qualities of land. The great men produce the increment • 202