lds the
convergence of sociological pressures to have so impinged on
Stratford-upon-Avon about the 26th of April, 1564, that a W.
Shakespeare, with all his mental peculiarities, had to be born
there,--as the pressure of water outside a certain boat will cause a
stream of a certain form to ooze into a particular leak? And does he
mean to say that if the aforesaid W. Shakespeare had died of cholera
infantum, another mother at Stratford-upon-Avon would needs have
engendered a duplicate copy of him, to restore the sociologic
equilibrium,--just as the same stream of water will reappear, no matter
how often you pass a sponge over the leak, so long as the outside level
remains unchanged? Or might the substitute arise at
'Stratford-atte-Bowe'? Here, as elsewhere, it is very hard, in the
midst of Mr. Spencer's vagueness, to tell what he does mean at all.

We have, however, in his disciple, Mr. Grant Allen, one who leaves us
in no doubt whatever of his precise meaning. This widely informed,
suggestive, and brilliant writer published last year a couple of
articles in the Gentleman's Magazine, in which he maintained that
individuals have no initiative in determining social change.

"The differences between one nation and another, whether in intellect,
commerce, art, morals, or general temperament, ultimately depend, not
upon any mysterious properties of race, nationality, or any other
unknown and unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the
{236} physical circumstances to which they are exposed. If it be a
fact, as we know it to be, that the French nation differs recognizably
from the Chinese, and the people of Hamburg differ recognizably from
the people of Timbuctoo, then the notorious and conspicuous differences
between them are wholly due to the geographical position of the various
races. If the people who went to Hamburg had gone to Timbuctoo, they
would now be indistinguishable from the semi-barbarian negroes who
inhabit that central African metropolis;[8] and if the people who went
to Timbuctoo had gone to Hamburg, they would now have been
white-skinned merchants driving a roaring trade in imitation sherry and
indigestible port.... The differentiating agency must be sought in the
great permanent geographical features of land and sea; ... these have
necessarily and inevitably moulded the characters and histories of
every nation upon the earth.... We cannot regard any nation as an
active agent in differ