112 HALL OF FAME MEN. 



substitute is seen from the fact that the greatest brains of all are 

 not descended from college graduates but from ancestors who 

 lived a great many years before their sons were born. Of about 

 150 known male ancestors of these 25 famous men, about one in 

 five received a liberal education qualifying him to practice medi- 

 cine, law or divinity. At the time these men lived not more than 

 one in a hundred had such an education, hence it is apparent that 

 a man's chances of becoming famous are increased twenty to one 

 by having an educated ancestor. 



No matter how much we analyze the relationship of these men 

 to their ancestors, each point of view presents a situation that 

 accords perfectly with the theory of use-inheritance, while many 

 of them are inconsistent with, and unexplainable by, any theory 

 that denies use-inheritance. 



It would be an impossible task to arrange these twenty-five 

 men in the order of their mental greatness, because no man is com- 

 petent to properly estimate them. They have originally been 

 arranged by ballot according to fame, and we have arranged them 

 first by their own birth letters, and second by their combined 

 ancestry. That the original arrangement is not satisfactory is 

 apparent from the fact that fame is not necessarily commensurate 

 with mental endowments, though there is certainly an approxima- 

 tion between the two. That neither of the other arrangements is 

 satisfactory will be evident from the fact that a man's greatness 

 depends, 



First, upon his own mental activity, because no amount of 

 hereditary endowment can make a man great if he does not exert 

 himself, and 



Second, upon the four factors arising out of the mental activity 

 and age of each of the two parents, the eight factors similarly aris- 



