the
Great-Man-Theory. This theory was that once in a while through infinite
mercy a great man was sent to the earth who yanked humanity up a notch
or two higher, and then we went along in a humdrum way on that level, or
even sank back till another great man was vouchsafed to us. Possibly the
finest flower of this school of thought is Carlyle's Heroes and Hero
Worship. Unscientific as this theory was, it had its beneficent effects,
for those heroes or great men served as ideals, and the human mind
requires an unattainable ideal. No man can be or do the best he is
capable of unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies
beyond his grasp. Tennyson put this truth in the mouth of the ancient
sage who tells the youthful and ambitious Gareth who is eager to enter
into the service of King Arthur of the Table Round:

"-----------the King
Will bind thee by such vows as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep."

This function of furnishing an ideal was performed in former times by
these great men and more especially by those great men whom legend, myth
and superstition converted into gods. But with the decay of the old
faiths the only possible fruitful ideal left is the ideal upheld by
Socialism, the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth in which the
economic conditions will give birth to the highest, purest, most
altruistic ethics the world has yet seen. It is true the co-operative
commonwealth is far more than a Utopian ideal, it is a scientific
prediction, but at this point I wish to emphasize its function as an
ideal.

But it is obvious that this Great Man theory gave no scientific clue to
history. If the Great Man was a supernatural phenomenon, a gift from
Olympus, then of course History had no scientific basis, but was
dependent upon the arbitrary caprices of the Gods, and Homer's Iliad was
a specimen of accurate descriptive sociology. If on the other hand the
great man was a natural phenomenon, the theory stopped short half way
toward its goal, for it gave us no explanation of the genesis of the
Great Man nor of the reasons for the superhuman influence that it
attributed to him.

Mallock, one of the most servile literary apologists of capitalism, has
recently in a book called "Aristocracy and Evolution" attempted to
revive and revise this theory and give it a scientific form. He still
attributes all progress to Great Men, but with the bru