ies has the faculty of producing, from time to time,
individuals immeasurably superior to the average in some point or other,
whom we call men of genius. Like Mr. Babbage's calculating machine,
human nature gives millions of orderly respectable common-place results,
which any statistician can classify, and enables hasty philosophers to
say--It always has gone on thus; it must go on thus always; when behold,
after many millions of orderly results, there turns up a seemingly
disorderly, a certainly unexpected, result, and the law seems broken
(being really superseded by some deeper law) for that once, and perhaps
never again for centuries. Even so it is with man, and the physiological
laws which determine the earthly appearance of men. Laws there are,
doubt it not; but they are beyond us: and let our induction be as wide as
it may, they will baffle it; and great nature, just as we fancy we have
found out her secret, will smile in our faces as she brings into the
world a man, the like of whom we have never seen, and cannot explain,
define, classify--in one word, a genius. Such do, as a fact, become
leaders of men into quite new and unexpected paths, and, for good or
evil, leave their stamp upon whole generations and races. Notorious as
this may be, it is just, I think, what most modern theories of human
progress ignore. They take the actions and the tendencies of the average
many, and from them construct their scheme: a method not perhaps quite
safe were they dealing with plants or animals; but what if it be the very
peculiarity of this fantastic and altogether unique creature called man,
not only that he develops, from time to time, these exceptional
individuals, but that they are the most important individuals of all?
that his course is decided for him not by the average many, but by the
extraordinary few; that one Mahommed, one Luther, one Bacon, one
Napoleon, shall change the thoughts and habits of millions?--So that
instead of saying that the history of mankind is the history of the
masses, it would be much more true to say, that the history of mankind is
the history of its great men; and that a true philosophy of history ought
to declare the laws--call them physical, spiritual, biological, or what
we choose--by which great minds have been produced into the world, as
necessary results, each in his place and time.

That would be a science indeed; how far we are as yet from any such, you
know as well as I. As yet,