546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



single eminent doctor, and if it were not for the presence of two men 

 of the very first rank — Darwin and Landor — they would constitute a 

 somewhat mediocre group. It is an interesting, and I think a signifi- 

 cant, fact that the fathers of as many as 25 artists exercised either a 

 craft or some trade very closely allied to a craft. Great actors and 

 actresses, more than any other group of eminent persons, tend to be of 

 low, obscure or dubious birth; 4, at least, can be definitely set down 

 as the children of unskilled laborers. 



When we survey the field of investigation I have here very briefly 

 summarized, the most striking fact we encounter is the extraordinary 

 extent to which British men and women of genius have been produced 

 by the highest and smallest social classes, and the minute part which 

 has been played by the 'teeming masses' in building up British civiliza- 

 tion.' This is not altogether an unexpected result, though it has not 

 before been shown to hold good for the entire field of the intellectual 

 ability of a country.* To realize the enormous preponderance of the 

 aristocracy in the production of these eminent men, and the oligarchic 

 basis of British civilization, it must be remembered not only, as I 

 have already pointed out, that a very considerable proportion of the 

 'Doubtful' group belong to 'old families,' which are certainly often 

 'good families,' but also that I have excluded altogether the children 

 of peers, notwithstanding that they form a group which has played a 

 very important part indeed in the national life. As we descend the social 

 pyramid, although we are dealing with an ever- vaster mass of human 

 material, the appearance of any individual of eminent ability becomes 

 an ever rarer phenomenon, while the eminent persons belonging to the 

 lowest and most numerous class of all are, numerically at all events, an 

 almost negligible quantity. 



One is tempted to ask how far the industrial progress of the nine- 

 teenth century, the growth of factories, the development of urban life, 

 will alter the conditions affecting the production of eminent men. It 

 seems clear that, taking English history as a whole, the conditions of 

 rural life have been most favorable to the production of genius. The 

 minor aristocracy and the clergy — the 'gentlemen' of England — living 

 on the soil in the open air, in a life of independence at once laborious 

 and leisurely, have been able to give their children good opportunities 



*In Maclean's statistical study of the origins of British men of ability during 

 the nineteentli century it is shown that 26 per cent, of those of known origin 

 were sons of 'aristocrats, officials, etc.'; the result was almost identical when the 

 100 men of preeminent ability were considered separately. Mr. C. H. Cooley 

 ('Annals of the American Academy,' May, 1897) investigated the point in regard 

 to a group of distinguished European poets, philosophers and men of letters, and 

 found that 45 belonged to the upper and upper middle classes, 24 to the lower 

 middle class, and only 2 to tiie lower class. 



