(eBook PDF) Principles of Highway Engineering

Traffic Analysis 6th download

https://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-principles-of-highway-
engineering-traffic-analysis-6th/

Download full version ebook from https://ebooksecure.com

We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit ebooksecure.com
to discover even more!

(eBook PDF) Traffic and Highway Engineering, Enhanced

Edition 5th Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-traffic-and-highway-
engineering-enhanced-edition-5th-edition/

(eBook PDF) Traffic and Highway Engineering, Enhanced

SI Edition 5th Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-traffic-and-highway-
engineering-enhanced-si-edition-5th-edition/

Traffic and Highway Engineering, 5th Edition Garber

Nicholas J. - eBook PDF

https://ebooksecure.com/download/traffic-and-highway-
engineering-5th-edition-ebook-pdf/

Transportation Engineering: A Practical Approach to

Highway Design, Traffic Analysis, and Systems Operation
1st Edition - eBook PDF

https://ebooksecure.com/download/transportation-engineering-a-
practical-approach-to-highway-design-traffic-analysis-and-
systems-operation-ebook-pdf/
Data-Driven Traffic Engineering: Understanding of
Traffic and Applications Based on Three-Phase Traffic
Theory 1st Edition - eBook PDF

https://ebooksecure.com/download/data-driven-traffic-engineering-
understanding-of-traffic-and-applications-based-on-three-phase-
traffic-theory-ebook-pdf/

(eBook PDF) Principles and Applications of Electrical

Engineering 6th Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-principles-and-
applications-of-electrical-engineering-6th-edition/

(eBook PDF) Traffic Engineering 5th Edition by Roger P.

Roess

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-traffic-engineering-5th-
edition-by-roger-p-roess/

Electrical Engineering Principles & Applications 6th

edition (eBook PDF)

http://ebooksecure.com/product/electrical-engineering-principles-
applications-6th-edition-ebook-pdf/

(eBook PDF) Genetics: Analysis and Principles 6th

Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-genetics-analysis-and-
principles-6th-edition/
vi Preface

mathematically challenging or rigorous as other entry-level civil engineering

courses, and that this may affect student interest relative to other civil
engineering fields of study. This concern is not easily addressed because there is a
dichotomy with regard to mathematical rigor in highway transportation, with
relatively simple mathematics used in practice-oriented material and complex
mathematics used in research. Thus it is common for instructors to either insult
students’ mathematical knowledge or vastly exceed it. This book strives for that
elusive middle ground of mathematical rigor that matches junior and senior
engineering students’ mathematical abilities.

CHAPTER TOPICS AND ORGANIZATION

The sixth edition of Principles of Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis has
evolved from nearly three decades of teaching introductory transportation
engineering classes at the University of Washington, University of Florida,
Purdue University, University of South Florida, and the Pennsylvania State
University, feedback from users of the first five editions, and experiences in
teaching civil engineering licensure exam review courses. The book’s material
and presentation style (which is characterized by the liberal use of example
problems, and now practice problems) are largely responsible for transforming
much-maligned introductory transportation engineering courses into courses
that students consistently rate among the best civil engineering courses.
The book begins with a short introductory chapter that stresses the
significance of highway transportation to the social and economic underpinnings
of society. Also discussed are environmental impacts including climate change
and emerging technologies including connected and automated vehicles. This
chapter provides students a basic overview of the problems facing the field of
highway engineering and traffic analysis. The chapters that follow are arranged
in sequences that focus on highway engineering (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) and traffic
analysis (Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8).
Chapter 2 introduces the basic elements of road vehicle performance. This
chapter represents a major departure from the vehicle performance material
presented in all other transportation and highway engineering books, in that it is
far more involved and detailed. The additional level of detail is justified on two
grounds. First, because students own and drive automobiles, they have a basic
interest that can be linked to their freshman and sophomore coursework in
physics, statics, and dynamics. Traditionally, the absence of such a link has been
a common criticism of introductory transportation and highway engineering
courses. Second, it is important that engineering students understand the
principals involved in vehicle technologies and the effect that continuing
advances in vehicle technologies will have on engineering practice.
Chapter 3 presents current design practices for the geometric alignment of
highways. This chapter provides details on vertical curve design and the basic
elements of horizontal curve design. This edition of the book includes the latest
design guidelines (Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets,
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials,
Washington, DC, 2011).
 Preface vii

Chapter 4 provides a detailed overview of traditional pavement design,

covering both flexible and rigid pavements in a thorough and consistent manner.
A brief overview of the topics of pavement distresses and mechanistic-empirical
approaches to pavement design are also provided. The material in this chapter
also links well with the geotechnical and materials courses that are likely to be
part of the student’s curriculum.
Chapter 5 presents the fundamentals of traffic flow and queuing theory,
which provide the basic tools of traffic analysis. Relationships and models of
basic traffic stream parameters are introduced, as well as queuing analysis
models for deterministic and stochastic processes. Considerable effort was
expended to make the material in this chapter accessible to junior and senior
engineering students.
Chapter 6 presents some of the current methods used to assess highway
levels of performance. Fundamentals and concepts are discussed along with the
complexities involved in measuring and/or calculating highway level of service.
This edition of the book has been updated to the latest analysis standards
(Highway Capacity Manual, Transportation Research Board, National Academy
of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 2016).
Chapter 7 introduces the basic elements of traffic control at a signalized
intersection and applies the traffic analysis tools introduced in Chapter 5 to
signalized intersections. The chapter focuses on pretimed, isolated signals, but
also introduces the reader to the fundamentals of actuated and coordinated
signal systems. Both theoretical and practical elements associated with traffic
signal timing are presented. This edition of the book has been updated to the
latest analysis standards (Highway Capacity Manual, Transportation Research
Board, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 2016).
Chapter 8, the final chapter, provides an overview of travel demand
and traffic forecasting. This chapter concentrates on a theoretically and
mathematically consistent approach to travel demand and traffic forecasting
that closely follows the approach most commonly used in practice, and contains
a section on the traditional four-step travel demand forecasting process. This
chapter provides the student with an important understanding of the current
state of travel demand and traffic forecasting, and some critical insight into the
deficiencies of forecasting methods currently used.

NEW AND REVISED PROBLEMS

This edition includes practice problems as a new pedagogical tool. At the end of
chapters that require mathematical solutions to problems (Chapters 2 through 8
inclusive), several partially solved problems are provided for students to practice
their problem-solving techniques and more fully understand the material
presented in the text. This enables students to follow the thought process
involved in solving problems in the chapter, while also engaging them in the
solution (as opposed to the traditional example problems, also provided, which
present the complete solution). There are also many new and revised end-of-
chapter problems relative to the fifth edition, as well as several new
traditional example problems. Users of the book will find the new practice and
viii Preface

end-of-chapter problems to be extremely useful in supporting the material

presented in the book. These problems are precise and challenging, a
combination rarely found in transportation/highway engineering books.

NEW TO THIS EDITION

In this edition we have once again made several enhancements to the content
and visual presentation, based on suggestions from instructors. Some new
features in this edition of the book include:

New pedagogical approach: practice problems. This new pedagogical feature

significantly improves the effectiveness of the text. The practice problems
provided are new and challenging, and designed to improve student
comprehension and confidence. This is a major addition that distinguishes the
latest edition of the text from all previous editions.
New example and end-of-chapter problems. Many new example and end-of-
chapter problems have been added to further improve the pedagogical
effectiveness of the book.
New autonomous vehicle problems. To introduce students to the topic of
autonomous vehicles and the potential benefits of this emerging technology,
several examples on this topic have been added.
Revised Chapter 5. Chapter 5 has been revised to include a new section on
autonomous vehicles and a corresponding new example problem that illustrates
some of the considerations that will ultimately affect the level of influence
autonomous vehicles will have on traffic operations efficiency.
Revised Chapter 6. Chapter 6 has been revised to include the latest information
from the recently published Highway Capacity Manual, Transportation
Research Board, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 2016. This
is a major and important distinction between the fifth and sixth editions of the
text.
Revised Chapter 7. Chapter 7 has been revised to include the latest information
from the recently published Highway Capacity Manual, Transportation
Research Board, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 2016.
Revised Chapter 8. Chapter 8 has been revised to include a new section on
autonomous vehicles and new example and practice problems have been added
to show how the effect of autonomous vehicles can affect travel demand and
traffic forecasting.

WEBSITE

The website for this book is www.wiley.com/college/mannering and contains the

following resources for instructors:

Solutions Manual. An example solutions manual (several problems for each

chapter). Instructions for obtaining the complete solutions manual—that is, all
the problems in the book.
 Preface ix

Lecture Slides. Lecture slides developed by the authors, which also include all of
the figures and tables from the text.
In-Class Design Problems. Design problems developed by the authors for in-class
use by students in a cooperative learning context. The problems support the
material presented in the chapters and the end-of-chapter problems.
Sample Exams. Sample midterm and final exams are provided to give instructors
class-proven ideas relating to successful exam format and problems.

Visit the Instruction Companion Site section of the book website to register for a
password to download these resources.

Fred L. Mannering
Scott S. Washburn
Contents
Preface v

Chapter 1 Introduction to Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis 1

1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Highways and the Economy 2
1.2.1 The Highway Economy 2
1.2.2 Supply Chains 2
1.2.3 Economic Development 3
1.3 Highways, Energy, the Environment, and Climate Change 3
1.4 Highways as Part of the Transportation System 3
1.5 Highway Transportation and the Human Element 4
1.5.1 Passenger Transportation Modes and Traffic Congestion 4
1.5.2 Highway Safety 5
1.5.3 Demographic Trends 6
1.6 Highways and Evolving Technologies 6
1.6.1 Infrastructure Technologies 6
1.6.2 Traffic Control Technologies 7
1.6.3 Vehicle and Autonomous Vehicle Technologies 8
1.7 Scope of Study 9

Chapter 2 Road Vehicle Performance 11

2.1 Introduction 11
2.2 Tractive Effort and Resistance 11
2.3 Aerodynamic Resistance 12
2.4 Rolling Resistance 15
2.5 Grade Resistance 17
2.6 Available Tractive Effort 18
2.6.1 Maximum Tractive Effort 18
2.6.2 Engine-Generated Tractive Effort 21
2.7 Vehicle Acceleration 25
2.8 Fuel Efficiency 29
2.9 Principles of Braking 30
2.9.1 Braking Forces 30
2.9.2 Braking Force Ratio and Efficiency 32
2.9.3 Antilock Braking Systems 35
2.9.4 Theoretical Stopping Distance 35
2.9.5 Practical Stopping Distance 39
2.9.6 Distance Traveled During Driver Perception/Reaction 42
2.10 Practice Problems 45
xii Contents

Chapter 3 Geometric Design of Highways 57

3.1 Introduction 57
3.2 Principles of Highway Alignment 58
3.3 Vertical Alignment 59
3.3.1 Vertical Curve Fundamentals 61
3.3.2 Stopping Sight Distance 69
3.3.3 Stopping Sight Distance and Crest Vertical Curve Design 70
3.3.4 Stopping Sight Distance and Sag Vertical Curve Design 74
3.3.5 Passing Sight Distance and Crest Vertical Curve Design 82
3.3.6 Underpass Sight Distance and Sag Vertical Curve Design 85
3.4 Horizontal Alignment 88
3.4.1 Vehicle Cornering 88
3.4.2 Horizontal Curve Fundamentals 90
3.4.3 Stopping Sight Distance and Horizontal Curve Design 94
3.5 Combined Vertical and Horizontal Alignment 96
3.6 Practice Problems 102

Chapter 4 Pavement Design 117

4.1 Introduction 117
4.2 Pavement Types 117
4.2.1 Flexible Pavements 118
4.2.2 Rigid Pavements 119
4.3 Pavement System Design: Principles for Flexible Pavements 119
4.4 Traditional AASHTO Flexible-Pavement Design Procedure 120
4.4.1 Serviceability Concept 121
4.4.2 Flexible-Pavement Design Equation 121
4.4.3 Structural Number 128
4.5 Pavement System Design: Principles for Rigid Pavements 132
4.6 Traditional AASHTO Rigid-Pavement Design Procedure 133
4.7 Design-Lane Loads 142
4.8 Measuring Pavement Quality and Performance 147
4.8.1 International Roughness Index 147
4.8.2 Friction Measurements 148
4.8.3 Rut Depth 149
4.8.4 Cracking 149
4.8.5 Faulting 150
4.8.6 Punchouts 150
4.9 Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design 150
4.10 Practice Problems 152

Chapter 5 Fundamentals of Traffic Flow and Queuing Theory 165

5.1 Introduction 165
5.2 Traffic Stream Parameters 165
5.2.1 Traffic Flow, Speed, and Density 166
 Contents xiii

5.3 Basic Traffic Stream Models 171

5.3.1 Speed-Density Model 171
5.3.2 Flow-Density Model 173
5.3.3 Speed-Flow Model 174
5.4 Models of Traffic Flow 176
5.4.1 Poisson Model 176
5.4.2 Limitations of the Poisson Model 180
5.5 Queuing Theory and Traffic Flow Analysis 181
5.5.1 Dimensions of Queuing Models 181
5.5.2 D/D/1 Queuing 182
5.5.3 M/D/1 Queuing 189
5.5.4 M/M/1 Queuing 191
5.5.5 M/M/N Queuing 192
5.6 Traffic Analysis at Highway Bottlenecks 195
5.7 Impact of Autonomous Vehicles 198
5.8 Practice Problems 200

Chapter 6 Highway Capacity and Level-of-Service Analysis 211

6.1 Introduction 211
6.2 Level-of-Service Concept 212
6.3 Level-of-Service Determination 215
6.3.1 Base Conditions and Capacity 215
6.3.2 Determine Free-Flow Speed 215
6.3.3 Determine Analysis Flow Rate 216
6.3.4 Calculate Service Measure(s) and Determine LOS 216
6.4 Basic Freeway Segments 216
6.4.1 Speed versus Flow Rate Relationship 216
6.4.2 Base Conditions and Capacity 218
6.4.3 Service Measure 218
6.4.4 Determine Free-Flow Speed 221
6.4.5 Determine Analysis Flow Rate 222
6.4.6 Calculate Density and Determine LOS 228
6.5 Multilane Highway Segments 231
6.5.1 Speed versus Flow Rate Relationship 232
6.5.2 Base Conditions and Capacity 235
6.5.3 Service Measure 235
6.5.4 Determining Free-Flow Speed 235
6.5.5 Determining Analysis Flow Rate 237
6.5.6 Calculate Density and Determine LOS 237
6.6 Two-Lane Highways 241
6.6.1 Base Conditions and Capacity 241
6.6.2 Service Measures 242
6.6.3 Determine Free-Flow Speed 243
6.6.4 Determine Analysis Flow Rate 244
6.6.5 Calculate Service Measures 246
6.6.6 Determine LOS 250
xiv Contents

6.7 Design Traffic Volumes 253

6.8 Practice Problems 258

Chapter 7 Traffic Control and Analysis at Signalized Intersections 269

7.1 Introduction 269
7.2 Intersection and Signal Control Characteristics 270
7.2.1 Actuated Control 273
7.2.2 Signal Controller Operation 276
7.3 Traffic Flow Fundamentals for Signalized Intersections 279
7.4 Development of a Traffic Signal Phasing and Timing Plan 282
7.4.1 Select Signal Phasing 283
7.4.2 Establish Analysis Lane Groups 287
7.4.3 Calculate Analysis Flow Rates and Adjusted Saturation Flow Rates 289
7.4.4 Determine Critical Lane Groups and Total Cycle Lost Time 289
7.4.5 Calculate Cycle Length 292
7.4.6 Allocate Green Time 294
7.4.7 Calculate Change and Clearance Intervals 296
7.4.8 Check Pedestrian Crossing Time 298
7.5 Analysis of Traffic at Signalized Intersections 299
7.5.1 Signalized Intersection Analysis with D/D/1 Queuing 300
7.5.2 Signal Coordination 307
7.5.3 Control Delay Calculation for Level of Service Analysis 315
7.5.4 Level-of-Service Determination 320
7.6 Practice Problems 325

Chapter 8 Travel Demand and Traffic Forecasting 341

8.1 Introduction 341
8.2 Traveler Decisions 343
8.3 Scope of the Travel Demand and Traffic Forecasting Problem 343
8.4 Trip Generation 346
8.4.1 Typical Trip Generation Models 347
8.4.2 Trip Generation with Count Data Models 350
8.5 Mode and Destination Choice 352
8.5.1 Methodological Approach 352
8.5.2 Logit Model Applications 354
8.6 Highway Route Choice 359
8.6.1 Highway Performance Functions 360
8.6.2 User Equilibrium 361
8.6.3 Mathematical Programming Approach to User Equilibrium 366
8.6.4 System Optimization 367
8.7 Autonomous Vehicles, Highway Performance Functions, and System Optimization 371
8.8 Traffic Forecasting in Practice 372
8.9 The Traditional Four-Step Process 376
8.10 The Current State of Travel Demand and Traffic Forecasting 377
 Contents xv

8.11 Practice Problems 378

Appendix 8A Least Squares Estimation 382
Appendix 8B Maximum-Likelihood Estimation 384

Index 393
Chapter 1

Introduction to Highway Engineering

and Traffic Analysis
1.1 INTRODUCTION
In many industrialized nations today, highways present engineers and
governments with formidable challenges relating to safety, sustainability,
environmental impacts, congestion mitigation, and deteriorating infrastructure.
As a result, highways are often viewed from the perspective of the many
challenges they present as opposed to the benefits they provide. Historically,
highways have always played a key role in the development and sustainability of
human civilization. Today, in the U.S. and throughout the world, highways
continue to dominate the transportation system, by providing critical access for
the acquisition of natural resources, industrial production, retail marketing and
population mobility. The influence of highway transportation on the economic,
social and political fabric of nations is far-reaching and, as a consequence,
highways have been studied for decades as a cultural, political, and economic
phenomenon. While industrial needs and economic forces have clearly played an
important part in shaping highway networks, societies’ fundamental desire for
access to activities and affordable land has generated significant highway
demand, which has helped define and shape highway networks.
Without doubt, highways have had a dramatic impact on the environment in
terms of the consumption of non-renewable resources, air pollution, and the
generation of greenhouse gases. In addition, vehicle crashes result in well over a
million deaths worldwide every year, and are the leading cause of death among
people 15 to 29 years old [World Health Organization 2015]. As with other
critical infrastructures (such as electrical power generation and distributions
systems, water distribution systems, storm-water and sewage systems, etc.),
highway systems are costly to build, manage and maintain, and inadequate
management and maintenance can result in additional costs with regard to
congestion, safety, and a variety of adverse economic impacts.
Given the above, the focus of highway engineering has gone from one of
network expansion to one that addresses issues relating to infrastructure
maintenance and rehabilitation, improvements in operational efficiency, various
traffic-congestion relief measures, energy conservation, improved safety and
environmental mitigation. This shift has forced a new emphasis in highway
engineering and traffic analysis, and is one that requires a new skill set and a

1
2 Chapter 1 Introduction to Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis

deeper understanding of the impact of highway decisions than has historically

been the case.

1.2 HIGHWAYS AND THE ECONOMY

It is difficult to overstate the influence that highway transportation has on the
world economy. Highway systems have a direct effect on industries that supply
vehicles and equipment to support highway transportation and the industries
that are involved in highway construction and maintenance. Highway systems
are also vital to manufacturing and retail supply chains and distribution systems,
and serve as regional, national and international economic engines.

1.2.1 The Highway Economy

In the U.S., more than 15% of average household income is spent on highway
vehicle purchases, maintenance and other vehicle expenditures. As a consequence,
the industries providing vehicles and vehicle services for highway transportation
have an enormous economic influence. In the U.S. alone, in the light-vehicle
market (cars, vans, pickup trucks, and so on), as many as 17 million or more new
vehicles can be sold annually (depending on economic conditions), which
translates to roughly a half a trillion dollars in sales and more than a million jobs
in manufacturing and manufacturing-supplier industries. Add to this the
additional employment associated with vehicle maintenance and servicing, and
more than seven million U.S. jobs can be tied directly to highway vehicles. The
influence of the highway economy extends further to the heavy-vehicle sector as
well, with more than 1.3 million jobs and trucking industry revenue of roughly
three-quarters of a trillion dollars annually in the U.S.
The direct influence that highways have also includes the construction and
maintenance of highways, with over 100 billion dollars in annual expenditures in
the U.S. alone. This too has an enormous impact on employment and other
aspects of the economy.

1.2.2 Supply Chains

The survival of modern economies is predicated on efficient, reliable, and
resilient supply chains. Industries have become increasingly dependent on their
supply chains to reduce costs and remain competitive. As an example, most
manufacturing industries today rely on just-in-time delivery to reduce inventory-
related costs, which can be a substantial percentage of total costs in many
industries. The idea of just-in-time delivery is that the materials required for
production are supplied just before they are needed. While such a strategy
significantly reduces inventory costs, it requires a very high degree of certainty
that the required materials will be delivered on time. If not, the entire production
process could be adversely affected and costs could rise dramatically.
In retail applications, effective supply chains can significantly reduce consumer
costs and ensure that a sufficient quantity of goods is available to satisfy consumer
demand. The ability of highways to provide reliable service for just-in-time
inventory control and other supply chain–related industrial and retail applications
has made highways critical to the function of modern economies.
 1.4 Highways as Part of the Transportation System 3

1.2.3 Economic Development

It has long been recognized that highway construction and improvements to the
highway network can positively influence economic development. Such improve-
ments can increase accessibility and thus attract new industries and spur local
economies. To be sure, measuring the economic development impacts of specific
highway projects is not an easy task because such measurements must be made
in the context of regional and national economic trends. Still, the effect that
highways can have on economic development is yet another example of the far-
reaching economic influences of highway transportation.

1.3 HIGHWAYS, ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND CLIMATE CHANGE

As energy demands fluctuate and supplies vary, and nations become increasingly
concerned about environmental impacts, the role that highway transportation
plays has come under close scrutiny. As a primary consumer of fossil fuels and a
major contributor to air-borne pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions,
highway transportation is an obvious target for energy conservation and
environmental impact mitigation efforts.
In the U.S., highway transportation is responsible for roughly 60% of all
petroleum consumption. This translates into about 12 million barrels of oil a day.
In light of the limitations of oil reserves, this is an astonishing rate of
consumption. Highway transportation’s contribution to other pollutants is also
substantial. Highway travel is responsible for about 35% of all nitrous oxide
emissions and 25% of volatile organic compound emissions, both major
contributors to the formation of ozone. Highway travel also contributes more
than 50% of all carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. and is a major source of
fine particulate matter (2.5 microns or smaller), which is a known carcinogen.
The effect of highways on climate change is also formidable. Highway
transportation is responsible for roughly 25% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions
(including over 30% of carbon dioxide emissions). While highways affect climate
change, the effect that climate change will ultimately have on highways is an issue
that has just begun to be addressed [National Cooperative Research Program
2014]. The effect of climate change on extreme weather events, geographic shifts in
temperature and moisture, and rising sea levels present highway engineers with
extraordinary challenges with regard to highway design, infrastructure
maintenance, highway operations, and highway safety.

1.4 HIGHWAYS AS PART OF THE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

It is important to keep in mind that highway transportation is part of a larger
transportation system that includes air, rail, water and pipeline transportation.
In this system, highways are the dominant mode of most passenger and freight
movements. For passenger travel, highways account for about 90% of all
passenger-miles. On the freight side, commercial trucks account for about
37% of the freight ton-miles and, because commercial trucks transport higher-
valued goods than other modes of transportation (with the exception of
4 Chapter 1 Introduction to Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis

air transportation), nearly 80% of the dollar value of all goods is transported by
commercial trucks.
While highways play a dominant role in both passenger and freight
movement, in many applications there are critical interfaces among the various
transportation modes. For example, many air, rail, water and pipeline freight
movements involve highway transportation at some point for their initial
collection and final distribution. Interfaces between modes, such as those at
water ports, airports and rail terminals, create interesting transportation
problems but, if handled correctly, can greatly improve the efficiency of the
overall transportation system. However, inter-modal coordination can be
problematic because institutional, regulatory, and other barriers.

1.5 HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION AND THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Within the highway transportation system, traveler options include single-
occupant private vehicles, multi-occupant private vehicles, and public trans-
portation modes (such as bus). It is critical to develop a basic understanding of
the effect that highway-related projects and policies may have on the individual
highway modes of travel (single-occupant private vehicles, bus and so on)
because the distribution of travel among modes will strongly influence overall
highway-system performance. In addition, highway safety and the changing
demographics of highway users are important considerations.

1.5.1 Passenger Transportation Modes and Traffic Congestion

Of the available urban transportation modes (bus, commuter train, subway,
private vehicle, and others), private vehicles, and single-occupant private vehicles
in particular, offer an unequaled level of mobility. The single-occupant private
vehicle has been such a dominant choice that travelers have been willing to pay
substantial capital and operating costs, confront high levels of congestion, and
struggle with parking-related problems just to have the flexibility in travel
departure time and destination choices that is uniquely provided by private
vehicles. In the last 50 years, the percentage of trips taken in private vehicles has
risen from slightly less than 70% to over 90% (public transit and other modes
make up the balance). Over this same period, the average private-vehicle
occupancy has dropped from 1.22 to 1.09 persons per vehicle, reflecting the fact
that the single-occupant vehicle has become an increasingly dominant mode
of travel.
Traffic congestion that has arisen as a result of extensive private-vehicle use,
and low-vehicle occupancy presents a perplexing problem. The high cost of new
highway construction (including monetary, environmental and social costs)
often makes building new highways or adding additional highway capacity an
unattractive option. Trying to manage the demand for highways also has its
problems. For example, programs aimed at reducing congestion by encouraging
travelers to take alternate modes of transportation (bus-fare incentives, increases
in private-vehicle parking fees, tolls and traffic-congestion pricing, rail- and bus-
transit incentives) or increasing vehicle occupancy (high-occupancy vehicle lanes
and employer-based ridesharing programs) can be considered as viable options.
 1.5 Highway Transportation and the Human Element 5

However, such programs have the adverse effect of directing people toward
travel modes that inherently provide lower levels of mobility because no other
mode offers the departure-time and destination-choice flexibility provided by
private, single-occupant vehicles. Managing traffic congestion is an extremely
complex problem with significant economic, social, environmental and political
implications.

1.5.2 Highway Safety

The mobility and opportunities that highway infrastructure provides also have a
human cost. Although safety has always been a primary consideration in
highway design and operation, highways continue to exact a terrible toll in loss
of life, injuries, property damage, and reduced productivity as a result of vehicle
accidents. Highway safety involves technical and behavioral components and the
complexities of the human/machine interface. Because of the high costs of
highway accidents, efforts to improve highway safety have been intensified
dramatically in recent decades. This has resulted in the implementation of new
highway design guidelines and countermeasures (some technical and some
behavioral) aimed at reducing the frequency and severity of highway accidents.
Fortunately, efforts to improve highway design (such as more stringent design
guidelines, breakaway signs, and so on), vehicle occupant protection (safety
belts, padded dashboards, collapsible steering columns, driver- and passenger-
side airbags, improved bumper design), as well as advances in vehicle
technologies (antilock braking, traction control systems, electronic stability
control) and new accident countermeasures (campaigns to reduce drunk
driving), have managed to gradually reduce the fatality rate (the number of
fatalities per mile driven). However, in spite of continuing efforts and
unprecedented advancements in vehicle safety technologies, the total number of
fatalities per year has remained unacceptably high worldwide (in the U.S. the
fatality rate has remained at more than 30,000 per year).
To understand why highway fatality numbers have not dramatically decreased
or why fatality rates (fatalities per distance driven) have not dropped more than
they have as a result of all the safety efforts, a number of possible explanations
arise including: an increase in the overall level of aggressive driving; increasing
levels of disrespect for traffic control devices (red light and stop-sign running being
two of the more notable examples); in-vehicle driving distractions (such as cell
phones); and poor driving skills in the younger and older driving populations.
Two other phenomena are being observed that may be contributing to the
persistently stable number of fatalities. One is that some people drive more
aggressively (speeding, following too closely, frequent lane changing) in vehicles
with advanced safety features, thus offsetting some or all of the benefits of new
safety technologies [Winston et al., 2006]. Another possibility is that many people
are more influenced by style and function than safety features when making
vehicle purchase decisions. This is evidenced by the growing popularity of vehicles
such as sport utility vehicles, mini-vans, and pickup trucks, despite their
consistently overall lower rankings in certain safety categories, such as roll-over
probability, relative to traditional passenger cars. These issues underscore the
6 Chapter 1 Introduction to Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis

overall complexity of the highway safety problem, and the trade-offs that must be
made with regard to cost, safety, and mobility (speed).

1.5.3 Demographic Trends

Travelers’ commuting patterns (which lead to traffic congestion) are inextricably
intertwined with such socioeconomic characteristics as age, income, household
size, education, and job type, as well as the distribution of residential,
commercial, and industrial developments within the region. Many American
metropolitan areas have experienced population declines in central cities
accompanied by a growth in suburban areas. One could argue that the
population shift from the central cities to the suburbs has been made possible by
the increased mobility provided by the major highway projects undertaken
during the 1960s and 1970s. This mobility enabled people to improve their
quality of life by gaining access to affordable housing and land, while still being
able to get to jobs in the central city with acceptable travel times. Conventional
wisdom suggested that as overall metropolitan traffic congestion grew (making
the suburb-to-city commuting pattern much less attractive), commuters would
seek to avoid traffic congestion by reverting back to public transport modes
and/or once again choosing to reside in the central city. This has certainly
happened to some extent, but a different trend has also emerged. Employment
centers have developed in the suburbs and now provide a viable alternative to
the suburb-to-city commute (the suburb-to-suburb commute). The result is a
continuing tendency toward low-density, private vehicle–based development as
people seek to retain the high quality of life associated with such development.
Ongoing demographic trends also present engineers with an ever-moving
target that further complicates the problem of providing mobility and safety. An
example is the rising average age of the U.S. population that has resulted from
population cohorts and advances in medical technology that prolong life.
Because older people tend to have slower reaction times, taking longer to
respond to driving situations that require action, engineers must confront the
possibility of changing highway design guidelines and practices to accommodate
slower reaction times and the potentially higher variance of reaction times
among highway users.

1.6 HIGHWAYS AND EVOLVING TECHNOLOGIES

As in all fields, technological advances at least offer the promise of solving
complex problems. For highways, technologies can be classified into those
impacting infrastructure, vehicles, and traffic control.

1.6.1 Infrastructure Technologies

Investments in highway infrastructure have been made continuously throughout
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such investments have understandably
varied over the years in response to need, and political and national priorities.
For example, in the U.S., an extraordinary capital investment in highways
during the 1960s and 1970s was undertaken by constructing the interstate
highway system and upgrading and constructing many other highways. The
 1.6 Highways and Evolving Technologies 7

economic and political climate that permitted such an ambitious construction

program has not been replicated before or since. It is difficult to imagine, in
today’s economic and political environment, that a project of the magnitude of
the interstate highway system would ever be seriously considered. This is because
of the prohibitive costs associated with land acquisition and construction and
the community and environmental impacts that would result.
It is also important to realize that highways are long-lasting investments that
require maintenance and rehabilitation at regular intervals. The legacy of a major
capital investment in highway infrastructure is the proportionate maintenance and
rehabilitation schedules that will follow. Although there are sometimes compelling
reasons to defer maintenance and rehabilitation (including the associated
construction costs and the impact of the reconstruction on traffic), such deferral
can result in unacceptable losses in mobility and safety as well as more costly
rehabilitation later.
As a consequence of past capital investments in highway infrastructure and
the current high cost of highway construction and rehabilitation, there is a
strong emphasis on developing and applying new technologies to more
economically construct and extend the life of new facilities and to effectively
combat an aging highway infrastructure. Included in this effort are the extensive
development and application of new sensing technologies in the emerging field of
structural health monitoring. There are also opportunities to extend the life
expectancy of new infrastructure with the ongoing advances in material science.
Such technological advances are essential elements in the future of highway
infrastructure.

1.6.2 Traffic Control Technologies

Traffic signals at highway intersections are a familiar traffic control technology.
At signalized intersections, the trade-off between mobility and safety is brought
into sharp focus. Procedures for developing traffic-signal control plans (allocating
green time to conflicting traffic movements) have made significant advances over
the years. Today, signals at critical intersections can be designed to respond
quickly to prevailing traffic flows, groups of signals can be coordinated to provide
a smooth through-flow of traffic, and, in some cases, computers control entire
networks of signals. Still, at some level, the effectiveness of improvements in signal
control are fundamentally limited by the reaction times and the driving behavior
of the motoring public as well as the braking and acceleration performance of the
vehicles they drive. This presents highway engineers with a formidable barrier.
In addition to traffic signal controls, numerous safety, navigational, and
congestion-mitigation technologies are reaching the market under the broad
heading of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Such technological efforts
offer the potential to reduce traffic congestion and improve safety on highways
by providing an unprecedented level of traffic control. There are, however, many
obstacles associated with ITS implementation, including system reliability,
human response and the human/machine interface. Numerous traffic control
technologies offer the potential for considerable improvement in the efficient use
of the highway infrastructure, but there remain limits defined by vehicle
performance characteristics and their human operators.
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
of commodities shall be produced. Industry becomes, as Mr. Spencer
says, “substantially independent.” He does not mean, however, that
it needs no regulation. It needs as much as ever a constant and nice
adjustment of the things produced to the current requirements of
the community; but this adjustment is now secured not by the
interference of a political ruler, but by a system which has
spontaneously developed itself amongst the trading and
manufacturing classes. It is a system, says Mr. Spencer, {39} which we
may call “internuncial, through which the various structures (i.e.
manufacturing firms, etc.) receive from one another stimuli or
checks, caused by rises and falls in the consumption of their
respective products. . . . Markets in the chief towns show dealers the
varying relations of supply and demand; and the reports of these
transactions, diffused by the press, prompt each locality to increase
or decrease of its special functions. . . . That is to say, there has
arisen, in addition to the political regulating system, an industrial
regulating system, which carries on its co-ordinating function
independently—a separate plexus of connected ganglia.”
We have now looked at social evolution, as the product of both
those sets of causes—the “external factors” and the “internal”—by
which Mr. Spencer explains it, and have followed it, under both
aspects, from the earliest beginnings of progress to the dawn and
development of civilisation, such as history knows it. Our account of
Mr. Spencer’s theory of the ascent of man and society is necessarily
very incomplete; but the various conclusions mentioned in it may be
said to be exhaustively typical of the conclusions of social science as
Mr. Spencer conceives of it.
 And now let us consider what the nature of those conclusions is.
We shall find that they are, one and all of them, conclusions with
regard to aggregates. All the phenomena with which they deal are
phenomena not of individuals, not of different classes, but of masses
of men, communities, races, nations, {40} the units of which are
regarded as being virtually so similar, that what is true of one is
virtually true of all. This similarity certainly is not imputed to all
mankind. Men are recognised as having been different in one epoch
from what they become in another, and one race and the inhabitants
of one climate as being different from other men differently born
and circumstanced. The primitive millions who could hardly walk
upright, and whose sexual relations resembled those of the animals,
are distinguished from their erect successors who married and lived
in families; and the strong and energetic races are distinguished
from their weaker contemporaries. But each of these aggregates is
regarded as a unit in itself. The conquering race which has grown
vigorous in dry regions, and the inferior race enslaved by it, which
has lost its strength in moist regions, are contrasted sharply with
each other; but neither is made the subject of any internal division,
nor treated as though the units composing it were not virtually
similar. Mr. Spencer of course admits (for this is one of the
fundamental parts of his philosophy) that these wholes, these
aggregates, progress through a constant differentiation of their
parts, different functions being performed by an increasing number
of groups; but the units who compose these groups, and whom he
calls the “internal factors,” are regarded by him as being congenitally
each a counterpart of the others; and their different functions and
their different acquired aptitudes are {41} regarded as the result of
different external circumstances which press into different moulds
one and the same material. Thus when the single group from which
the nation originally springs undergoes, as it becomes more
numerous, what Mr. Spencer calls the process of “fission,” and
spreads itself in search of food over an ever-extending area, new
groups separate not because they have different appetites, but
because, having the same appetites, they must satisfy them in
different places by the exercise of the same faculties. Division of
labour, as we have seen, he explains in the same way; and not its
origin only, but its latest and most elaborate developments. Of the
manufacturing businesses of to-day, for instance, with their
promoters, managers, capitalists, and multitudes of various
workmen, not only is each business treated by him as a single unit,
but each of these units, or ganglia, is a unit which differs from the
rest for accidental reasons only, as a gardener who happens to be
digging may differ from a gardener who happens to be raking a
walk; and he describes the whole as “a plexus of ganglia connected
by an internuncial system.”
The use of this last phrase, and the physiological analogy
suggested by it, illustrate yet more clearly the fact here insisted on—
namely, that for Mr. Spencer the sociologist’s true unit of interest is
the social aggregate, as a whole, to the exclusion of the individual or
of the class. The latter are merely the ganglia, or veins, or nerves,
which are nothing {42} except as connected with the organism to
which they belong. Each social aggregate, in fact, is a single animal;
and whatever is achieved or suffered by any class or individual
within it, is really achieved or suffered, in the eye of the Spencerian
sociologist, not by the class or the individual, but by that corporate
animal, the community.
Now a study of these phenomena of aggregates is, as has been
said already, valuable for speculative purposes. It has led those who
have pursued it to a variety of important conclusions which have
largely revolutionised our conception of human history, and of the
conditions that engender civilisations or else preclude their
possibility. It has shown us human life as a great unfolding drama,
but it has hardly given us any help at all in dealing with the practical
problems that belong to our own day; and the reason of this, which
has already been stated generally, must be apparent the moment we
consider what these practical problems are. Their general character
is sufficiently indicated by such familiar antitheses as aristocracy and
democracy, the few and the many, rich and poor, capital and labour,
or, as Mr. Kidd puts it, collectivists and the opponents of collectivism.
In other words, the social problems of to-day—like the social
problems of most other periods—are problems which arise out of the
differences between class and class. That is to say, they depend on,
and derive their sole meaning from phenomena which are not
referable to the social aggregate as a whole, but which {43} are
manifested severally by distinct and independent parts. The social
aggregate, when regarded from this standpoint, is no longer a single
animal, whose pains or pleasures reveal themselves in a single
consciousness. It is a litter of animals, each of which has a
consciousness of its own, and, together with its consciousness,
interests of its own also, which are opposed to those of the others,
instead of coinciding with them.
 And now let us consider more closely out of what this opposition
arises. Mr. Spencer, as we have seen, in our rapid survey of his
arguments, lays great stress on the fact that as men rise into
aggregates, they do so only on condition of submitting themselves
to governors, military in the first place, and at a later stage civil. The
truth, however, which he thus elaborates, whatever may be its
speculative importance, fails to have any bearing on any practical
problem, because it is not a truth about which there has ever been
any practical disagreement. Aristocrat, democrat, and socialist all
agree that there must be orderly government of some sort, and
official governors to administer to it. The point at issue between
them is not whether some must govern and others submit to be
governed, but how the individuals who perform the work of
government shall be chosen, and what, apart from their official
superiority and authority, shall be their position with regard to the
rest of the community. Why should they enjoy any special social
advantage? Or if they are to enjoy it, why should they be usually {44}
drawn from a small privileged class, and not from the masses of the
community, sinking to the general level again when their tenure of
office terminates? Such are the questions proposed by one party;
whilst the other party replies by contending that the limited class in
question can alone supply governors of the required talents and
character. Of this clash of opinions and interests, which is as old as
civilisation itself, though in each age it assumes some different form,
Mr. Spencer’s social science necessarily takes no cognisance,
because the parts of each social aggregate have for him no separate
existence.
 The same criticism applies to his treatment of economic
production. He explains, as we have seen, the origin of the division
of labour, showing how “unlikeness between the products of
different districts” inevitably led to “the localisation of industries,”
turning one set of savages—to use his own example—into potters,
another into makers of baskets. But here again we have a truth
which, whatever its speculative interest, has no bearing on any
practical problem; for no one denies that division of labour is
necessary, nor do any of the difficulties of to-day turn upon its
remote origin. Socialists and individualists are alike ready to admit
that different men must follow different industries. The point at issue
is why, within the limits of the same industry, different men pursue it
on different levels, some being masters and capitalists, some being
labourers and subordinates. Here, just as in the sphere of political
and military government, {45} we have one class defending its
existing position and privileges, and another class attacking or
questioning them; and it is out of circumstances such as these, thus
briefly indicated, that the practical social problems of the present
day arise.
Now the question at the bottom of these can be reduced to very
simple terms. If all members of the community were content with
existing social arrangements, it is needless to say there would be no
social problems at all. Such problems are due entirely to the
existence of persons who are not contented, and who desire that
certain of these arrangements should be changed. It will be seen,
accordingly, that the great and fundamental question which, as a
practical guide, the sociologist is asked to answer, is whether or how
far the changes desired by the discontented are practicable; and the
first step towards ascertaining how far the arrangements in question
can be turned into something which they are not, is to ascertain
precisely how they have come to be what they are.
But this way of putting the case is still not sufficiently definite.
Mr. Spencer himself has put it in somewhat similar language; and yet
in doing so he has missed the heart of the problem. Mr. Spencer’s
speculative gaze, travelling over the past and present, sees one
generation melting like a cloud into another, and takes no note of
the individuals that compose each. The practical sociologist must
adopt a very different method of observation. He must remember
that practical problems arise {46} and become practical, not in virtue
of their relation to mankind generally, but in virtue of their relation
to each particular generation that is confronted by them; and a
particular generation in any given community, and the different
classes into which the community is divided, are made up
respectively of particular men and women. In asking, therefore, how
the social arrangements we have been considering have come to be
what they are, we must not ask in vague and general terms why a
portion of the social aggregate occupies a position which contents it,
and another portion a position which exasperates it; but we must
consider the individuals of which each portion, at any given time, is
composed, and begin the inquiry at the point at which they begin it
themselves. “Why am I—Tom or Dick or Harry—included in that
portion of the aggregate which occupies an inferior position? And
why are these men—William or James or George—more fortunate
than I, and included in the portion of the aggregate which occupies
a superior position?” To this question there are but three possible
answers. The inferior position of Tom or Dick or Harry is due to his
differing from William or James or George in external circumstances,
which theoretically, at all events, might all be equalised—such, for
example, as his education; or it is due to his differing from them in
certain congenital faculties, with respect to which men can never be
made equal—as, for example, in his brain power or his physical
energy; or it is due to his differing {47} from them in external
circumstances which have arisen naturally from differences in the
congenital faculties of others, and which, if they could be equalised
at all, could never be equalised with anything like completeness—
such, for example, as the possession by William and James and
George of leisured and intellectual homes secured for them by gifted
fathers, and the want of such homes and fathers on the part of Tom
and Dick and Harry.
The first question, accordingly, which we have to ask is as
follows. Taking Tom or Dick or Harry as a type of those classes who
happen to occupy an inferior position in the aggregate, and
comparing him with others who happen to occupy superior positions,
we have to ask how far he is condemned to the inferior position
which he resents by such external circumstances as conceivably
could be equalised by legislation, and how far by some congenital
inferiority of his own, or circumstances naturally arising out of the
congenital inferiority of others. Or we may put the question
conversely, and ask how William and George and James have come
to occupy the positions which Tom, Dick, and Harry envy. Do they
owe their positions solely to unjust and arbitrary legislation, which a
genuinely democratic parliament could and would undo? Or to
exceptional abilities of their own, of which no parliament could
deprive them? Or to advantages secured for them by the exceptional
abilities of their fathers, which no parliament could interfere with, or,
at all events, could abolish, without {48} entering on a conflict with
the instincts of human nature, and interfering with the springs of all
human action?
Now that external circumstances of a kind, easily alterable by
legislation, have been, and often are, responsible for many social
inequalities, is a fact which we may here assume without particularly
discussing it. The inquiry, therefore, narrows itself still further, and
resolves itself into this: Do the congenital superiorities or inferiorities
of the persons, or of parents of the persons, who at any given time
are occupying in the social aggregate superior and inferior positions,
play any part in the production of these social inequalities at all?
This question must plainly be the practical sociologist’s starting-
point; for if social inequalities are due wholly to alterable and
artificial circumstances, social conditions are capable, theoretically, at
all events, of being equalised; but if, on the other hand, inferior and
superior positions are partly, at all events, the result of the
congenital inequalities of individuals, over which no legislation can
exercise the least control, then a natural limit is set to the
possibilities of the levelling process; and it is the business of the
sociologist, if he aspires to be a practical guide, to begin with
ascertaining what these limits are. Are, then, the congenital
inequalities of men a factor in the production of social inequalities,
or are they not?
Now to many people it will seem that even to ask this question is
superfluous. They will regard {49} it as a matter patent to common
sense that men’s congenital inequalities are to a large extent the
cause, in every society, of such social inequalities as exist in it; and
they will possibly say that it is a mere waste of time to discuss a
truth which is so self-evident. It happens, however, that the more
obvious it seems to be to common sense, the more necessary it is
for us to begin our present inquiry with insisting on it; and the
reason is that, in spite of its being so obvious, the whole school of
contemporary sociologists, with Mr. Spencer as their head, base their
whole method of sociological study on a denial of it. By their method
of dealing with social aggregates only, they deny not only the
influence, but even the existence of congenital inequalities, and
endeavour to explain them away as an illusion of the unscientific
mind. They admit, indeed, as our quotation from Mr. Spencer
showed, that the primitive man was congenitally different from man
in later ages. They admit that the individuals reared in a dry climate,
who formed the conquering aggregates, were congenitally different
from the individuals reared in a moist climate, who formed the
enslaved aggregates; but they absolutely refuse to take any account
whatever of the congenital inequalities by which individuals within
the same aggregate are differentiated.
In order to show the reader that such is literally the case, we
need not rely merely on such inferences as have just been drawn
from the manner in which Mr. Spencer applies his method, and from
the {50} general character of his conclusions. We have the direct
evidence of his own categorical statements. Let us turn again to the
criticism with which, as we have already seen, he prefaces his whole
series of sociological writings, and which may be taken as his
fundamental profession of faith—his criticism, namely, of what he
calls “the great-man theory,” his rejection of it as being a theory
which would render all social science impossible, and his enunciation
of the theory which he contends must take its place. It may seem to
some readers that his rejection of the great man as a vera causa
which will explain social phenomena amounts to no more than a
rejection of that exaggerated view of history which expresses itself
in the works of writers such as Froude and Carlyle, and which
vaguely attributes all the progressive changes of humanity to the
personality of rulers, of political and military autocrats—such as
Henry VIII., Cromwell, and Frederick the Great of Prussia. And
indeed, to judge by Mr. Spencer’s language, it is this exaggerated
view which has been most frequently present in his mind, as we may
see by referring to the passage already quoted, which concludes his
demonstration that the “great-man theory” is false. With the sole
exception, he says, of the military struggles of primitive tribes, “new
activities, new institutions, new ideas, unobtrusively make their
appearance, without the aid of any king or legislator; and if you wish
to understand the phenomena of social evolution, you will not do it
should you read yourself {51} blind over the biographies of all the
great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Napoleon
the Treacherous.”
But Mr. Spencer, in rejecting the great “ruler and legislator” as a
factor in social evolution unworthy of the attention of the sociologist,
is really rejecting a great deal else besides. He is really rejecting
every inequality in capacity by which a certain number of men are
differentiated from, and raised above others. In order to show that
such is the case, we will avail ourselves of his own words. We will,
then, start with one casual remark out of many, in which Mr.
Spencer, forgetting his own theories, slips into a method of
observation truer than the one he advocates. “Men,” he writes in his
Study of Sociology, “who have aptitudes for accumulating
observations are rarely men given to generalising; whilst men given
to generalising are commonly men who, mostly using the
observation of others, observe for themselves less from love of
particular facts than from the desire to put such facts to use.”
Nothing can be clearer than the distinction here drawn. It is one of
great importance in the elucidation of many social problems; and it
deals not with the likeness, but with a congenital difference, which
exists between men belonging to the same social aggregate. But
now let us compare this with another passage, in which Mr. Spencer,
returning again to his theory, explains how members of the same
aggregate are to be treated by any sociologist who would claim to
be a man of science. {52} “Amongst societies of all orders and sizes,”
he writes, “sociology has to ascertain what traits there are in
common, determined by the common traits of human beings; what
less general traits, distinguishing certain groups of societies, result
from traits distinguishing certain races of men; and what
peculiarities in each society are traceable to the peculiarities of its
members.” This is clumsily expressed; but its meaning, which is
quite obvious, may be seen by taking, as a typical society, that of
England. The sociologist, in explaining English society, will have to
consider, according to Mr. Spencer, first, what traits Englishmen have
in virtue of being human creatures; secondly, he will have to
consider what traits they have in virtue of being Europeans, not
Orientals; and, thirdly, he will have to consider what traits they have
in virtue of being Englishmen, not Frenchmen or Germans.
The reader will at once perceive the contrast between the spirit
of these two passages. In the former Mr. Spencer notes, with great
penetration and accuracy, a most important point of difference
between two sets of men belonging to the same society. In the latter
he deals with societies as single bodies, the members of which
possess no personal traits whatever, except such as they all possess
alike; and all the traits in which they differ from one another, such as
the one just alluded to, of necessity disappear from the field of
vision altogether. Should any doubt as to the matter still remain in
the reader’s mind, it will be dispelled by {53} the quotation of one
further passage. “A true social aggregate,” he says [“as distinct from
a mere large family], is a union of like individuals, independent of
one another in parentage, and approximately equal in capacities.”
Here is the case stated with the most absolute clearness. All
congenital inequalities, as was said just now, between the various
individuals who make up the aggregate are ignored; and it is upon
this hypothesis of approximately equal units, acted on by different
external circumstances, that he attempts to build up his whole
system of sociology. He is, indeed, little as he himself may suspect it,
reproducing in another form the error of Karl Marx and the earlier of
the so-called “scientific socialists,” who maintained that all wealth
was the product of common or average labour, measured by time,
and that hour for hour any one labourer necessarily produced as
much wealth as another. The socialists of to-day are already
beginning to see that this monstrous, though ingeniously advocated,
doctrine is untenable as the foundation of economics; and yet,
strange to say, a doctrine strictly equivalent to it forms the accepted
foundation of contemporary social science. That science starts with
the hypothesis of approximately equal units, and ignores the
congenital differences between the individuals who compose the
aggregate. We shall find it to be ultimately from differences of this
kind that all the practical problems which beset civilisation spring,
and that the inability of the modern {54} sociologists, complained of
by Mr. Kidd and Professor Marshall, to throw on these problems any
definite light is simply the natural and inevitable result of excluding
the differences in question altogether from their scientific purview.
We will, in the next chapter, consider the whole range of
arguments used by Mr. Spencer and others in justification of this
error.
CHAPTER III
GREAT MEN, AS THE TRUE CAUSE OF PROGRESS

It is evident that an error of the kind now in question does not

represent the carelessness of the untrained thinker. It is nothing if
not deliberate; and indeed Mr. Spencer admits that it is altogether in
opposition to the opinions which men naturally hold. Accordingly, the
arguments by which he and his followers justify it, and have actually
imposed it on all the sociological thinkers of their generation,
require, before we reject them, to be examined with the utmost
care.
Let us then turn our attention once again to the grounds on
which Mr. Spencer refuses to admit the great or exceptional man as
a true factor in the production of social change. If the reader will
reflect upon the account that has been already given of Mr.
Spencer’s arguments in connection with this point, he will find that
Mr. Spencer rejects the great man for two reasons, which are not
only distinct, but are, when interpreted closely, not entirely
consistent with each other. One of these reasons is that the great, or
exceptional man does {56} not really produce those great changes of
which he is nevertheless “the proximate initiator”; the other is that,
outside the sphere of primitive warfare, he does not even
proximately initiate any great changes at all. The first of these two
contentions is expressed with sufficient clearness in his statement “if
there is to be anything like a real explanation” of those changes of
which the great man is the “proximate initiator”—changes, to quote
an example which he himself gives, such as those produced by the
conquests of Julius Cæsar—this explanation must be sought not in
the great man himself, but “in the aggregate of social conditions out
of which he and they (i.e. the changes commonly supposed to have
been produced by him) have arisen.” Mr. Spencer’s second
contention is expressed in the following passage, the concluding
words of which have been quoted already, but on which it will be
presently necessary for us to insist again. “Recognising,” he says,
“what truth there is in the great-man theory, we may say that, if
limited to the history of primitive societies, the histories of which are
histories of little else than endeavours to destroy one another, it
approximately expresses fact in representing the great leader as all-
important. But its immense error lies in the assumption that what
was once true was true for ever, and that a relation of ruler and
ruled which was good at one time is good for all time. Just as fast as
the predatory activity of early tribes diminishes, just as fast as large
aggregates are formed, so fast do societies {57} begin to give origin
to new activities, new ideas, all of which unobtrusively make their
appearance without the aid of any king or legislator.”
It will be necessary to deal with these two contentions
separately; and we will begin with the second, as set forth in the
words just quoted. We shall find it valuable as an example of that
singular confusion of thought by which all the reasoning of our
sociologists with regard to this question is vitiated. Mr. Spencer
speaks of an “immense error” which he is pointing out and
correcting. The “immense error” in reality is to be found in his own
conception. It is hard to imagine anything more arbitrary and more
gratuitously false than the contrast which he here draws between
the actions of men in primitive war, for the success of which he
admits a great leader to have been essential, and their various
actions and activities as manifested in peaceful progress, which, he
contends, neither require leadership nor exhibit traces of its
influence. We are at this moment altogether waiving the question of
how far the great leader, when he is the proximate cause of the
military successes of his tribe, is their cause in any deeper sense. It
is enough for us now to take Mr. Spencer’s admission that the leader
is really the cause, in some sense or other, of the social changes
connected with early warfare; and, keeping to this sense, let us
consider in what possible way less causality can be attributed to the
actions of great men and leaders in the sphere of peaceful progress.
{58}

“A primitive society,” if it is to become powerful in war—this Mr.

Spencer admits—must have a great leader to direct it. But what
precisely is it that such a leader is and does? Such a leader leads,
because he is one mind or personality impressing for the moment its
superior qualities on many minds or personalities. He supplies the
fighting men of his society with an intelligence not their own—often
with a courage, a presence of mind, and a resolution. He dictates to
them the directions in which their feet are to carry them; the
manner in which they are to group themselves; the movements of
their hands and arms. He gives the word, and a thousand men dig
trenches. He gives the word again, and a thousand men wield
swords; now he makes them advance; now he makes them halt; and
the measure of his greatness as a leader is to be found in those
results which, by directing the action of all these men, he elicits from
it.
 And now from the triumphs of war let us turn to those of peace.
“These,” says Mr. Spencer, “unlike the former, make their appearance
unobtrusively, without the aid of any king or legislator.” It may, no
doubt, be true that they do appear unobtrusively in the sense that
they are not accompanied by trumpets and drums and tom-toms. A
factory for the production of toffee, or of trimmings for ladies’
petticoats does not require an Ivan the Terrible to direct it, nor are
Mr. Spencer’s sentences as he writes them punctuated by discharges
of artillery. But if the essence of kingship and {59} leadership is to
command the actions of others, the larger part of the progressive
activities of peace, and the arts and products of civilisation, result
from and imply the influence of kings and leaders, in essentially the
same sense as do the successes of primitive war, the only difference
being that the kings are here more numerous, and though they do
not wear any arms or uniforms, are incomparably more autocratic
than the kings and czars who do.
As a particularly clear illustration of this important truth, let us
take Mr. Spencer himself, and place him before his own eyes as an
autocratic king or ruler. In certain respects he is so; and it is only
because he is so that he has been able to give, through his books,
his thoughts and theories to the world. For let us examine any one
of his volumes and consider what it is, in so far as it differs from any
other volume—let us say from a treatise on the cutting of trousers,
or an attack on the Spencerian philosophy—which is printed in
similar type on pages of the same size. It differs solely in the order
in which the letters have been arranged by the hands of the
compositors; and its value as a work of philosophy consequently
depends altogether on a certain complicated series of movements
which the hands of the compositors have made. And how has this
prolonged series of minute movements been secured? It has been
secured by the fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer, through his
manuscript, has given the compositors a prolonged series of orders,
which their hands, day after day, have been obliged to obey {60}
passively. He has been as absolute a master of all their professional
actions as ever was the most arbitrary general of the professional
actions of his soldiery; and there is absolutely no difference in point
of command and obedience between the compositors who, at Mr.
Spencer’s bidding, put into type the words “homogeneity” and “the
Unknowable” and the Guards who charged the French at the bidding
of the Duke of Wellington.
Precisely the same thing is true of all scientific inventions—not
indeed of inventions as mere ideas and discoveries, but of inventions
and discoveries applied practically to the service of civilisation. The
mere discovery of certain properties belonging to material
substances, or the thinking out of some new machine or process,
may be the work of one man, who has command over nobody
except himself. But the moment he proceeds to make his machine or
process useful—to apply it to the purpose of actual business or
manufacture—he is obliged to secure for himself an entire army of
mercenaries, who act under his orders in precisely the same way as
soldiers act under the orders of the military leader, or as the
compositors act under the orders of Mr. Spencer. When the electric
telegraph was supplemented by the invention of the telephone,
telephones were produced, and could have been produced, only by a
multitude of men performing a series of manual actions which were
different in detail from anything they had performed before, and
which, if it had not been for the inventor, would never {61} have been
performed at all. They filed or they cast pieces of metal into new
shapes; with these pieces of metal they connected in new order
pieces of other materials, such as wood and vulcanite, the shape of
these last being new and special also; and every piece of material
shaped or connected with another piece was the exact resultant of
so many manual movements made in passive obedience to the
inventor’s autocratic orders. It was only because his orders were
obeyed with such humble fidelity and completeness that these
movements resulted in telephones, enriching the world with a new
convenience, and not in the old-fashioned telegraphic machines, or
in penholders, or vulcanite inkstands, or even in useless heaps of
shavings and brass filings. And the same is the case with every
invention or contrivance which has helped to build up the fabric of
modern material civilisation.
Civilisation, however, even in its most material sense, does not
consist of contrivances and inventions only. “The one operation,”
says Mill, “of putting things into fit places . . . is all that man does, or
can do, with matter. He has no other means of acting on it than by
moving it.” But valuable as this formula is, it is not sufficiently
comprehensive; for there is another economic process which, to the
ordinary mind at all events, is hardly suggested by such a phrase as
“to move matter.”
The process referred to consists in the moving of men. What is
meant by the distinction here drawn is this—that the industrial
efficiency of a community {62} does not depend solely on the muscles
of the manual workers being given a right direction, so that they
shall shape material objects in such and such a way; but it depends
also on the movements which are prescribed to the men, being
prescribed to the men best fitted to perform them, and being
prescribed to them in such order that when each movement has to
be made, the men told off to make it shall be ready to make it at the
moment. Here we see part of the secret of the success of the great
contractor.
The importance of these considerations becomes all the clearer
to us when we reflect on the fact that the mere production of
commodities, and the production of the means of production, form
but a part of the processes which advance, maintain, and indeed
constitute civilisation. A part almost equally large consists in the
rendering of various personal services, which often, no doubt,
involve the utilisation of improved appliances, but which almost as
often are neither more nor less than the performance of actions of a
simple and ordinary kind, the merit and demerit, the wastefulness or
the economy of which depend on their being performed with
absolute punctuality and despatch. A good example of this is the
case of a large hotel. Whether a large hotel is carried on at a profit
or at a loss depends almost entirely on this question of personal
management. The success of a successful manager does not depend
on his capacity for inventing new methods of waiting, of cooking, or
of making beds. It depends on his {63} capacity for organising his
staff of cooks, waiters, and chamber-maids. This is well expressed
by that most significant American saying, “He’s a smart man, but he
couldn’t keep a hotel”; the meaning being that one of the most
important, and at the same time one of the rarest faculties required
for maintaining a complicated civilisation like our own is the faculty
by which, given a number of tasks, one man governs a number of
men in the act of cooperatively performing them.
Examples of this kind might be indefinitely multiplied, but those
just adduced are quite sufficient to prove the sole point insisted on
at the present moment—namely, that whatever be the part (and Mr.
Spencer admits it to be “all-important”) which the great man plays
as a leader in primitive warfare, a part precisely similar in kind is
played by other great men in the peaceful processes, and, above all,
in the progress of civilisation.
And now, having dealt with this point, let us turn to Mr. Spencer’s
other contention—his contention namely that, whatever the part
may be, and however seemingly important, which the great man
plays in producing social changes, he is, in any case, nothing but
their “proximate initiator”;—that “they have their chief cause in the
generations he descended from”;—and that if there is to be anything
like a real and scientific explanation of them, it must be sought in
the aggregate of conditions out of which both he and they have
arisen, and not in the great man’s personality as revealed to us by
any {64} records of his life, or by any analysis of his peculiar faculties.
We have already seen in a general way how this feat of merging
the great man in “the aggregate of conditions out of which he has
arisen” is performed by Mr. Spencer himself. Let us now turn for a
moment to three other writers who, though differing from him as to
certain of his conclusions, have with regard to this particular point
done little else than popularise and apply his teaching.
“It needs only a little reflection,” writes Mr. Kidd, “to enable us to
perceive that the marvellous accomplishments of modern civilisation
are primarily the measure of the social stability and social efficiency,
and not of the intellectual pre-eminence of the peoples who have
produced them. . . . For it must be remembered that even the ablest
men amongst us, whose names go down to history connected with
great discoveries and inventions, have each in reality advanced the
sum of knowledge by only a small addition. In the fulness of time,
and when the ground has been slowly and laboriously prepared for
it, the great idea fructifies and the discovery is made. It is, in fact,
the work not of one, but of a great number of persons. How true it
is that all the great ideas have been the products of the time rather
than of individuals may be the more readily realised when it is
remembered that, as regards a large number of them, there have
been rival claims put forward for the honour of authorship by
persons who, working quite independently, have arrived at like
results almost {65} simultaneously. Thus rival and independent claims
have been made for the discovery of the differential calculus . . . the
invention of the steam engine, . . . the methods of spectrum
analysis, the telegraph, the telephone, as well as many other
discoveries.” And then Mr. Kidd proceeds to quote with approval the
following sentence from an essay which was written by an American
socialist, Mr. Bellamy; and the sentence has been repeated with
solemn and triumphant unction in half the socialistic books which
have been given to the world since. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine
parts out of the thousand of every man’s produce are the result of
his social inheritance and environment.” “This is so,” remarks Mr.
Kidd, “and it is, if possible, even more true of the work of our brain
than of the work of our hands.” To these passages we must add one
from Mr. Sidney Webb, who is, intellectually, a favourable example of
a modern English socialist. Referring to the socialistic proposal that
all kinds of workers, no matter what their work, should be paid an
equal wage, “this equality,” he says, “has an abstract justification, as
the special ability or energy with which some persons are born is an
unearned increment due to the effect of the struggle for existence
upon their ancestors, and consequently, having been produced by
society, is as much due to society as the unearned increment of
rent.”
Here we have then, in the words of these four writers, Mr.
Spencer, Mr. Kidd, Mr. Bellamy, and {66} Mr. Sidney Webb, the case
against the great man set fully before us; and we may accordingly
proceed to analyse it. We shall find that it divides itself into four
separate arguments, which are constantly recurring in some form or
other in all the works of our modern sociological writers, and
especially in the works of those who are democratic or socialistic in
their sympathies. Firstly, there is the argument that in any advanced
civilisation not one of the improvements made during any given
epoch would have been possible if a variety of other improvements
and the accumulation of various knowledge had not gone before it;
and that thus the man who is called the inventor or author of the
improvement is merely the vehicle or delegate of forces outside
himself. Secondly, there is the argument that the inventor or author
of the improvement, even if we attribute to him some special ability
of his own, is in respect of his own congenital energies merely the
product and expression of preceding generations and circumstances.
Of the four arguments in question, these are the most important;
but they are constantly reinforced by two others. One is drawn from
the fact that several independent workers often arrive
simultaneously at the same discovery. The other is drawn from the
fact—or what is alleged to be the fact—that the interval which
divides even the greatest man from his fellows, alike in respect of
what he is and of what he accomplishes, is really extremely slight,
and not worth considering. {67}
For convenience’ sake, we will deal with these two latter
arguments first, and put them out of the way before we approach
the others. We will begin with the argument drawn from the fact
that the same discovery is often made simultaneously by
independent workers. This would perhaps hardly be worth discussing
if it were not used so constantly by such a variety of serious writers.
The fact is true enough, but what is the utmost that it proves? If two
or three men make the same discovery at once, this does not prove,
as it is supposed to do, that all men are approximately equal, but
that two or three men, instead of one man, are greater than the rest
of their fellow-workers. If three horses at a race out-distance all
competitors, and pass the winning-post within the same three
seconds, this does not prove that a cart-horse is as swift as the
Derby favourite. As a matter of fact, that more men than one should
reach at the same time the same discovery independently is
precisely what we should be led to expect, when we consider what
discovery is. The facts of nature which form the subject-matter of
the discoverer are in themselves as independent of the men who
discover them as an Alpine peak is of the men who attempt to scale
it. They are indeed precisely analogous to a peak which all
discoverers are attempting to scale at once; and the fact that three
men make the same discovery simultaneously does no more to show
that any of their neighbours could have made it, and that it is made
in reality, not by them, but by {68} their generation, than the fact that
the three most intrepid cragsmen in Europe meet at last on the
same virgin summit, which other adventurers had sought to scale in
vain, would prove the feat to have been really accomplished by the
mass of tourists at Interlaken, who had never climbed anywhere
except by the Rigi railway, and whose stomachs would be turned by
a precipice of twenty feet.
Let us now turn to the argument that the inequalities between
men’s abilities are small, that the work accomplished by even the
ablest is small also, and that the exceptional man as a separate
subject of study may, in the words of a writer who will be quoted
presently, be in consequence “safely neglected.” The answer to this
is that whether an inequality be great or small depends altogether
on the point from which the total altitude is measured. If a child who
is three feet high, and a giant who is nine feet high, are both of
them standing on the summit of Mont Blanc, the difference between
the elevation of their respective heads above the sea-level will be
infinitesimal; but no one who was discussing the question of human
stature would say that little children and giants were of
approximately the same height. Similarly, if our object is to compare
men in general with all other living creatures, no doubt the
difference between the ordinary man and a microbe is incomparably
greater than the difference between an ordinary man and Newton;
but if our object is to compare men with men, in relation to this or
that mental capacity—let {69} us say the capacity for scientific and
mathematical discovery—the difference which separates one
ordinary man from another is insignificant when compared with the
difference by which Newton is separated from both of them. And it is
this latter sort of difference which alone concerns the sociologist.
The difference which separates men from microbes is nothing to
him. And what is true of what men are, is equally true of what they
do. The addition made by any one great man to knowledge may be
small when compared with the knowledge, regarded in its totality,
which has been gathered together by all other great men preceding
him; but it may at the same time be incalculably great when
compared with the additions made by the ordinary men, his
contemporaries.
Let us make this matter yet clearer by reference to one more
authority, who, though endeavouring to confirm the very argument
which is here being exposed, is, little as he perceives it, assassinated
by his own illustrations. In Macaulay’s essay on Dryden there occurs
the following passage, a part of which anticipates the exact
phraseology of Mr. Spencer. “It is the age that makes the man, not
the man that makes the age. . . . The inequalities of the intellect,
like the inequalities of the surface of the globe, bear so small a
proportion to the mass, that in calculating its great revolutions they
may safely be neglected.” The passage is quoted for the sake of this
last simile. For those who study the human destiny as a whole—who
{70} survey it as speculative and remote observers—the inequalities of

intellect may, it is quite true, be neglected as safely as the

inequalities of the surface of a planet are neglected by the
astronomer who is engaged in calculating its revolutions. But
because these latter inequalities are nothing to the astronomer, it
does not follow that they are nothing to the engineer and the
geographer. To the astronomer the Alps may be an infinitesimal and
negligible excrescence, but they were not this to Hannibal or the
makers of the Mont Cenis tunnel. What to the astronomer are all the
dykes in Holland? But they are all the difference to the Dutch
between a dead nation and a living one.
And the same difference, even in its most minute details, holds
good between speculative, or as we may call it star-gazing, sociology
and sociology as a practical science; for is it not one of Mr. Spencer’s
most important and interesting contentions that these very
irregularities of the earth’s surface—these lands, seas, plains,
valleys, and mountains—which, when compared with the mass of
the earth, are so absolutely inappreciable, constitute some of the
most important of the “external factors” of human history and
civilisation? And the same holds good of the inequalities of the
human intellect. They may be nothing to the social star-gazer, but to
the social politician they are everything.
So much, then, for two of the most shallow sophisms that ever
imposed themselves on presumably serious reasoners. We will now
turn to {71} those two other arguments in which the case against the
great man finds its main support, and which, however misleading
they may be, must be examined at greater length. In both of these
the distinctly exceptional character of the great man is assumed, or
at all events is not denied, but it is represented as being, if it exists,
not properly the great man’s own. The first argument refers it to
aggregates of external conditions—the knowledge accumulated for
the great man’s use, the character of his fellow-citizens, who are
ready to carry out his orders, and generally to what Mr. Bellamy calls
his “social inheritance and environment.” The second argument
refers it to the great man’s line of ancestors, insisting that he
inherits from them his own exceptional capacities, which capacities
his ancestors acquired by being members of society, and of which it
is accordingly contended that society is ultimately the source.
Now on both these arguments, before we consider them in
detail, there is one broad criticism to be made, which applies to both
equally. There is a certain sense—a remote and speculative sense—
in which they are both of them quite true, and indeed are almost
truisms; but for practical purposes they are either not true at all, or
if true, are altogether irrelevant; and it is necessary to show the
reader, by a few simple examples, that in the doctrine that
statements can be at once true and not true there is no
philosophical hair-splitting, and no Hegelian paradox, but merely the
assertion of a {72} fact which, when once attention has been called to
it, common sense will perceive to be as obvious as it is important.
It was just now observed that the same thing can be great and
not great, according to the things with which we compare it. In the
same way the same statement may be true or not true, according to
the nature of the discussion on which it is brought to bear. Let us
take as an example those familiar statements of fact which are given
in terms of averages. If the vast majority of any given population
vary in height between the limits of five feet six and six feet, the
statement that a man’s average height is from five feet seven to five
feet eight would be a truth most important to the producers of
ready-made overcoats. But if half the population were two feet high,
and half rather more than nine feet, to give the average stature as
something like five feet seven would be for the coatmakers the most
absurd misstatement imaginable, and would lead them to make, if
they acted on it, garments that would fit nobody.
 Let us turn from the question of the truth of a statement to the
question of its mere relevance; and we can illustrate what has been
said by an example equally homely. In the transference of goods by
rail, these have to be sorted according to bulk, weight, shape,
fragility, perishability, and so forth. In deciding which are to be sent
by fast trains, and which by slow, the primary question will be that
of perishability. When the perishable and {73} the non-perishable shall
have been separated, and they are being placed on the trains
allotted to them, the primary questions will be those of shape,
weight, and fragility. But so long as the preparatory separation is in
progress, to assert that the goods possess any of these latter
characteristics will be wholly irrelevant, no matter how true. Boxes of
fish will not be put with book parcels because neither of them are
fragile, or because they are both oblong; and each characteristic,
and every classification based on it, will be either relevant or
irrelevant, full of meaning or meaningless, according to what
question, out of a considerable series, has to be answered at the
moment by the officials who superintend the business.
And now let us go back to the two arguments that are before us;
and we shall be prepared to see how, though true for the
speculative philosopher, they have no meaning, or only a false
meaning, for any practical man.
We will first take that which is expressed with sufficient plainness
in the passage quoted from Mr. Sidney Webb, and which insists on
the great man’s debt to society generally, not for his external
circumstances, but for his personal character and capacities. The
idea involved in it is very easy to grasp. The great man’s congenital
superiority is an inheritance from his superior ancestors; but his
ancestors would not have had it to hand on to him if they had not
been forced to develop such superiorities as they possessed by
exerting them in a competitive struggle {74} with the great mass of
their contemporaries. Thus the mass of their contemporaries formed
a strop or hone on which the superior faculties of these men were
sharpened; and the great man of to-day, to whom the superior
faculties have descended, owes them accordingly, not to his own
ancestors only, but to the mass of inferior men who struggled with
them, and were worsted in the struggle. In other words, the
greatness of the exceptional man has really been produced by the
whole body of society in the past; and the results of it ought to be
divided amongst the whole body of society in the present.
Now that the above line of argument has a certain kind of truth
in it, it is hardly necessary to observe; and for biologists,
psychologists, and speculative philosophers generally, such truth as
it possesses may no doubt be of value; but that this truth has no
relation whatever to practical life, and no applicability to any one of
its problems, can be seen by considering the kind of results we shall
arrive at, if, adopting the reasoning of Mr. Webb and his friends, we
merely carry it out to the more immediate of its logical
consequences.
Let us begin with their reasoning, so far as it concerns the past.
If the inferior competitors who were beaten by the great man’s
ancestors are to be credited with having helped to produce the
talents by which they were themselves defeated, and must therefore
be held to have had a claim on the wealth which these talents
produced, which claim has descended to the inferior majority of {75}
to-day, the same claim might be advanced by any weaker nation
which, after a series of battles, succumbs finally to the stronger. In
the Franco-German War the French might have said to the Germans,
“You acquired by fighting with us, the faculties which have enabled
you to conquer us. Your strength therefore, in reality, belongs to us,
not you; and hence justice requires that you should give us back
Alsace.” In the same way it might be urged that all the idle
apprentices of the past have, by the warning they afforded,
stimulated the industry of the industrious, and therefore in abstract
justice had a claim on their earnings.
Let us now take Mr. Webb’s reasoning so far as it concerns the
present, and we shall find that it results in similar fantastic
puerilities. If the great man of to-day owes his greatness to society
as a whole, it is to society as a whole that the idle man owes his
idleness, the stupid man his stupidity, the dishonest man his
dishonesty; and if the great man who produces an exceptional
amount of wealth can, with justice, claim no more than the average
man who produces little, the man who is so idle that he shirks
producing anything may with equal justice claim as much wealth as
either. His constitutional fault, and his constitutional disinclination to
mend it, are both due to society, and society, not he, must suffer.
And the same thing holds good of every form of economic
incompetence.
The absurdity of Mr. Webb’s position will be seen yet more clearly
when we see how it looks {76} when stated in the language of Mr.
Bellamy. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts out of the thousand of
every man’s produce are the result of his inheritance and his
environment.” Now if this proposition has any practical application, it
must mean that the whole living population—great men and ordinary
men, labourers and directors of labour—who are commonly held to
be the producers of the income of Great Britain to-day, really
produce of it only one farthing in the pound; and hence, if we still
persist in considering the proposition a practical one, we shall be
forced to conclude that the whole of the living population might at
any given moment stop work altogether, or fall into a trance like the
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and the production would continue with
hardly an appreciable diminution.
Again, if the proposition has any practical bearing on economics,
it must necessarily have a bearing precisely similar on morals. If a
man of to-day produces only a thousandth part of what he seems to
produce, it is equally evident that he does only a thousandth part of
what he seems to do. Let us see, if we accept this theory, to what
sort of conclusions it will lead us. One conclusion to which it will lead
us at once is the following—that each of us is responsible only for a
thousandth part of his actions; and from this will follow others more
remarkable still. Since the holiest man has elements of evil in him,
and the worst man elements of good, the good deeds for which we
honour the saint may {77} really be the result of his antecedents, and
his few faulty deeds may be all that we are to attribute to himself;
whilst, conversely, the criminal’s antecedents may have been the
cause of all his crimes and vices, and he may himself have done
nothing but some acts of unnoticed kindness. It will be thus
impossible to form any true judgment of anybody; for the real St.
Peter may have been merely a false and truculent ruffian, and the
real Judas Iscariot may have been fit for Abraham’s bosom. And yet
even these conclusions deducible from the premises of Mr. Bellamy
are sane when compared with those deducible from the premises of
Mr. Sidney Webb; for Mr. Bellamy would allow a man to be
responsible for a thousandth part of his actions at all events, whilst
Mr. Sidney Webb would not allow that anybody either did or was
responsible for anything.
And now, finally, let us turn to that other argument which seeks
to eliminate the causality of the great man, not by proving that he
owes his superior brain-power to society, but by proving that
superior brain-power has little to do with his achievements, their
principal cause being the appliances, the opportunities, and the
accumulated knowledge at his command; and that these, at all
events, are due not to himself, but others—to the efforts of past
generations, and the legacy they have left to the present. This is the
argument which is mainly relied upon by Mr. Spencer. He insists on
the fact that none of the great inventors or discoverers could have
made their discoveries or {78} inventions if centuries of past progress
had not prepared the way for them. “A Laplace, for instance,” he
says, “could not have got very far with the Mécanique Céleste unless
he had been aided by the slowly developed system of mathematics,
which we trace back to its beginnings amongst the ancient
Egyptians”; and his many other illustrations are all of the same kind.
If we consider the meaning of this argument carefully we shall
see that its logical outcome is not to deny to the great man all
superiority whatsoever, but to exhibit his superiority as being less
than it is usually supposed to be. Laplace, Mr. Spencer would say,
may have been personally a little above the level of his
contemporaries, but he owed most of his elevation to sitting on the
shoulders of his predecessors. Now if this reduction of the great
man’s reputed greatness to such very small proportions has any
Welcome to Our Bookstore - The Ultimate Destination for Book Lovers
Are you passionate about testbank and eager to explore new worlds of
knowledge? At our website, we offer a vast collection of books that
cater to every interest and age group. From classic literature to
specialized publications, self-help books, and children’s stories, we
have it all! Each book is a gateway to new adventures, helping you
expand your knowledge and nourish your soul
Experience Convenient and Enjoyable Book Shopping Our website is more
than just an online bookstore—it’s a bridge connecting readers to the
timeless values of culture and wisdom. With a sleek and user-friendly
interface and a smart search system, you can find your favorite books
quickly and easily. Enjoy special promotions, fast home delivery, and
a seamless shopping experience that saves you time and enhances your
love for reading.
Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and
personal growth!

ebooksecure.com