result of his social
inheritance and environment"; and Mr. Kidd, a socialist in sentiment if
not in definite theory, urges that the comparative insignificance, the
comparative commonness, and dependence for their efficiency on
contemporary social circumstances, of the talents which we are
accustomed to associate with the greatest inventions and discoveries, is
proved by the fact that some of the most important of these have been
made by persons who, "working quite independently, have arrived at like
results almost simultaneously. Thus rival and independent claims," he
proceeds, "have been made for the discovery of the differential
calculus, the invention of the steam-engine, the methods of spectrum
analysis, the telephone, the telegraph, as well as many other
discoveries." Further, to these arguments a yet more definite point has
been added by the contention that, as socialist writers put it,
"inventions and discoveries, when once made, become common property,"
the mass of mankind being cut off from the use of them only by patents
or other artificial restrictions.

The aim of socialists in pursuing this line of reasoning is obvious. It
is to demonstrate, or rather to suggest, that "the monopolists of
business ability," in spite of their comparative rarity and the
importance of the services performed by them, are far from being so
rare or so superior to the mass of their contemporaries as they seem to
be, that their achievements owe far more than appears on the surface to
the co-operation of the average members of society, and that
consequently a socialistic society could justly demand and practically
secure their services on far easier terms than those which they command
at present.

And to such a conclusion the principles of modern evolutionary
sociology, as unanimously interpreted by the philosophers of the
nineteenth century, may be fairly said to lend the entire weight of
their prestige. Let us, then, consider more carefully what these
principles are, with a view to understanding the true scope of their
significance. We shall find that, although undoubtedly true in
themselves, the scope of their significance has been very imperfectly
understood by the great thinkers to whose talents their elucidation has
been due; that these thinkers, in their eagerness to establish a new
truth, have at the same time introduced a new confusion; and that it is
from the confusion of a truth with a falsehood, rather than from the
tr