priests of social evolution. Controversial zest together with a lack of interest in specific problems of economic and historical causation led him to a disproportionate emphasis on the role of the individual. But he formulated his position in such a way that it was free from the Carlylean fantasy that the great man was responsible for the very conditions of his emergence and effectiveness. James’s thesis sounds extreme enough; yet in stressing “the receptivities of the moment” which must be met before greatness becomes actual—receptivities that leave a Leonard Nelson in obscurity but carry a Hitler to the summits of power—he goes far in mitigating its severity. His recognition of the relative autonomy of the realms of nature, society, and individual personality, combined with his belief in the plurality of historical causes, carries to the heart of the problem. And this despite the fact that these views were derived from a larger philosophical attitude about the place of man in the world and not from a study of specific historical issues.
Nonetheless, James’s thesis as he left it is oversimplified and invalid. “The mutations of societies from generation to generation,” he tells us, “are in the main due directly or indirectly to the acts or examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the moment, or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments, initiators of movement, setters of precedent or fashion, centres of corruption, or destroyers of other persons whose gifts, had they had free play, would have led society in another direction.”[1]
What William James is saying is that no significant social change has ever come about which is not the work of great men, and that the “receptivities” of to-day which make that work possible are the result of the acts or examples of the outstanding individuals of yesterday. This may seem to cover adequately the vast changes that have unrolled before our eyes as a result of Lenin’s effort to reorganize the world along new social lines. It may, perhaps, throw some light from a new direction on the efforts of Hitler and Mussolini to conquer and enslave Europe in order to prevent not only Lenin’s plan from being realized but any democratic transformation of European society. Yet the First World War, and the breakdown of Russian economy which gave Lenin his chance, were certainly not the result of the act or example of any great individual. Nor were
- ↑ “Great Men and Their Environment,” in Selected Papers on Philosophy, p. 174, Everyman Edition. See also “Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment.” (Wikisource contributor note)
