l6O GREAT MEN OF THE WORLD. 



There are several reasons for saying that they would not. In the 

 first place, the law of probabilities, as applied to ordinary individuals, 

 would divide these unknown men pretty evenly throughout our ten 

 classes, leaving the results the same as they are now. In the second 

 place, the same law, as it has been shown to apply to selected groups 

 of great men, would divide these unknown men in about the same 

 ratio in which the known men have been divided, thus further in- 

 creasing the higher classes at the expense of the lower. In the 

 third place, we already have in the ten ranked classes, and in the 

 two groups immediately succeeding them, nearly one-half of our 

 entire list definitely located above the average birth-rank, hence the 

 evening process would require that almost the entire list of un- 

 known persons should fall in the lower classes. This is a combina- 

 tion which no one will for a moment presume to be possible. And 

 in the fourth place, even if the entire unknown list should fall in 

 the lower classes, it does not contain enough men of transcendent 

 mental greatness to offset the men in classes A and B. 



There remains the one question : Can there be found, outside 

 of the 800 or 900 men here recorded, enough men born in the 

 lower classes to expand these classes to one hundred men each, 

 and at the same time bring the mental standard of these classes up 

 to the average of the one hundred recorded in class A? I will 

 leave this question to be answered by anyone who thinks that he 

 can do this, in the meantime feeling confident that it cannot be 

 done. 



PROOF BY TEN GREAT MEN. 



In fact we might rest our case on ten great men taken from ten 

 different countries. If I look among the Hebrews for the greatest 

 man ever produced among them and find Moses, the law of prob- 



