f a leader or a marriage without
issue, to take simple cases, has again and again led to permanent
political consequences. More emphasis is laid on the decisive actions
of individuals, which cannot be reduced under generalisations and which
deflect the course of events. If the significance of the individual will
had been exaggerated to the neglect of the collective activity of the
social aggregate before Condorcet, his doctrine tended to eliminate as
unimportant the roles of prominent men, and by means of this elimination
it was possible to found sociology. But it may be urged that it is
patent on the face of history that its course has constantly been
shaped and modified by the wills of individuals (We can ignore here the
metaphysical question of freewill and determinism. For the character of
the individual's brain depends in any case on ante-natal accidents
and coincidences, and so it may be said that the role of individuals
ultimately depends on chance,--the accidental coincidence of independent
sequences.), which are by no means always the expression of the
collective will; and that the appearance of such personalities at the
given moments is not a necessary outcome of the conditions and cannot be
deduced. Nor is there any proof that, if such and such an individual
had not been born, some one else would have arisen to do what he did. In
some cases there is no reason to think that what happened need ever have
come to pass. In other cases, it seems evident that the actual change
was inevitable, but in default of the man who initiated and guided it,
it might have been postponed, and, postponed or not, might have borne
a different cachet. I may illustrate by an instance which has just come
under my notice. Modern painting was founded by Giotto, and the Italian
expedition of Charles VIII, near the close of the sixteenth century,
introduced into France the fashion of imitating Italian painters.
But for Giotto and Charles VIII, French painting might have been very
different. It may be said that "if Giotto had not appeared, some other
great initiator would have played a role analogous to his, and that
without Charles VIII there would have been the commerce with Italy,
which in the long run would have sufficed to place France in relation
with Italian artists. But the equivalent of Giotto might have been
deferred for a century and probably would have been different; and
commercial relations would have required ages to produce t