362 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



took six biographical dictionaries or encyclopaedias* two English, two 

 French, one German and one American and found the two thousand 

 men (approximately) in each who were allowed the longest articles. 

 In this way some 6,000 men were found. I then selected the men who 

 appeared in the lists of at least three of the dictionaries, and from these 

 (some 1,600) selected the thousand who were allowed the greatest 

 average space, the value of the separate dictionaries being reduced to 

 a common standard. Thus was obtained not only the thousand men 

 esteemed the most eminent, but also the order in which they stand. 



This list represents the point of view of these dictionaries, and 

 would be somewhat different had other works been selected. Mathe- 

 matical science can indeed assign a probable error to each name on the 

 list, and tell us how likely it is that the man should be there, and 

 within what limits his place on the list is likely to be correct. But the 

 greater men of the thousand would remain whatever the authorities 

 collated; and although the personal names of the lesser men might 

 vary, this would affect but little the statistics sought. The preparation 

 of this list required more work than may be supposed, but it has an 

 objective impartiality and value, which it would not have if the names 

 had been selected by an easier method. 



According to this list the ten most eminent men are Napoleon, 

 Shakespeare, Mahommed, Voltaire, Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Csesar, 

 Luther, Plato. There is no doubt but that Napoleon is the most emi- 

 nent man who has lived. Yet it should give us pause to think that this 

 Titan of anarchy stands first in the thoughts of most men. It is curious 

 that these ten preeminent men are so widely separated in race and age 

 two Greeks, two Frenchmen, two Germans, two Englishmen, one 

 Roman and one Arab : two in the fifth century and one in the first cen- 

 tury before Christ, one in the sixth, one in the fifteenth, two in the 

 sixteenth and three in the eighteenth century. The ten names last on 

 the list are Otho, Sertorius, Macpherson, Claudian, Domitian, Bugeaud, 

 Charles I. of Naples, Fauriel, Enfantin and Babeuf. These are scarcely 

 great men, yet they fairly represent the lower limits of the thousand 

 who are most eminent. Each hundred in the list shows a nice gradation 

 in eminence. There are indeed many cases where each of us would 

 shift a man up or down, but further examination will show that the 

 opinion in such cases is usually individual, not having the objective 

 validity of this series. I give for reference the thousand preeminent 

 men of the world in the order of eminence, divided into groups of one 

 hundred. 



* ' Lippincott's Biographical Dictionary,' 'The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 

 Rose's ' Biographical Dictionary,' ' Le dictionnaire de biographie generale,' 

 Beaujean's ' Dictionnaire biographique ' and Brockhaus's ' Conversationslexicon.' 

 There is no biographical dictionary in German nor any encyclopedia as satis- 

 factory as the Britannica, neither do such works exist in Italian, Dutch or 

 Scandinavian, otherwise it would have been desirable to have used them. 



