if democracy is not to become, as often in the past, a school for tyrants.
4. The role of the great man in history is not only a practical problem but one of the most fascinating theoretical questions of historical analysis. Ever since Carlyle, a century ago, proclaimed in his Heroes, and Hero-Worship that, “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here,” the problem has intrigued historians, social theorists, and philosophers. Unfortunately, Carlyle’s book was not taken for what it is—a tract for the times, full of damply explosive moral fervour, lit up here and there with a flash of insight, but contradictory, exaggerated, and impressionistic. Instead it was taken as a seriously reasoned defence of the thesis that all factors in history, save great men, were inconsequential. Literally construed, Carlyle’s notions of historical causation are clearly false, and where not false, opaque and mystical. Some of his apostrophes to the great man and what is permitted him apologists could use for any totalitarian leader to throw a mantle of divine sanction around his despotic acts—if only they are sufficiently ruthless and successful. On the other hand, Carlyle’s pæans to revolution could be cited in justification by any man who fires at a king or dictator—and doesn’t miss.
The Spencerians, the Hegelians, and the Marxists of every political persuasion—to mention only the most important schools of thought that have considered the problem—had a field day with Carlylean formulations. But in repudiating his extravagance, these critics substituted another doctrine which was just as extravagant although stated in language more prosaic and dull. Great men were interpreted as colourful nodes and points on the curve of social evolution to which no tangents could be drawn. What is more significant, they overlooked a possible position which was not merely an intermediate one between two oversimplified contraries, but which sought to apply one of Darwin’s key concepts to the problem; namely, variation. According to this view, the great men were thrown up by “chance” in the processes of natural variation while the social environment served as a selective agency in providing them with the opportunities to get their work done.
It was William James, the American pragmatist, who took up the cudgels for a position which had been rendered unpopular among historians and the reading public by the scientific high
