Even if we accept his evaluations of monarchs and conditions and the coefficient of correlation between them would not be sufficient of itself to establish the view that “the work of the world has been initiated and directed by a few very great men.” The correlation suggests as much the causative influence of environment on great men as vice versa—a possibility that Wood dismisses by invalid and question-begging arguments. More important still, the relative value of the correlation cannot be ascertained until we know what correlation exists between national conditions and other variables like technological inventions, climatic changes, discoveries of new lands and resources, and additional factors not immediately dependent upon the decision of monarchs. Theoretically, the coefficients of correlation between these series may be higher than .60. We might be able to make more accurate predictions about the character of a culture on the basis of these series than on the basis of the hereditary constitution of rulers.
If we turn to Wood’s specific correlations, our first criticism is that they are between terms too broad to be very illuminating in evaluating heroic action in history. “The state of a country” at any time, or even over a period of time, is too inclusive and indeterminate to assign it to the consequences of individual action. Our own experience of the effects of human actions shows that we regard specific acts of omission or commission as historical causal agencies only when we can link them though a sequence of events to some particular happenings and their ensuing consequences. This failure to consider events in sequences vitiates Wood’s entire approach, for he has no way of handling eventful action and eventful men in history. For example, if a monarch is a strong character (+) but his reign is chaotic (−), Wood counts this as evidence that he played no decisive role in history. But obviously, the chaotic conditions of his reign may be the result of that monarch’s act, some victory or disaster or fateful policy whose consequences we can trace through a sequence of events to the given conditions. Similarly, if a monarch is strong and his country is prosperous, Wood assumes that this is evidence for the heroic interpretation. But such an assumption is gratuitous unless it can be shown that the prosperity of the country (however that be defined or measured) is the result of some historical event of which the monarch, or some other great individual, was the moving soul.
As great a deficiency in Wood’s approach is the assumption
