312 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



AMEEICAN TITLES AND DISTIXCTIOXS. 



By Professor W. Le CONTE STEVENS, 



WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY. 



rpHOMAS CARLYLE is credited with the statement that England 

 -■- has a population of twenty or thirty millions — 'mostfy fools.' 

 The definition of fool is not given. If the word means anything else 

 than an expression of dislike it is that the unfortunate man who bears 

 such a title is so deficient in intelligence or in good judgment as to be 

 worthy of unenviable distinction. But a distinguished man, whether 

 his distinction be good or bad, stands out among his fellows in some 

 way. It is impossible for the larger part of any mass of human beings 

 composing an organized body, whether the students of an educational 

 institution, or the devotees of fashionable society, or the population of 

 a great nation, to be distinguished. The mere fact that in such a 

 body a majority possesses qualities which might otherwise confer dis- 

 tinction upon an individual destroys the possibility of preeminence 

 based on such possession. Every one recognizes that Carlyle's epigram 

 expressed no objective truth, but that he displayed only the acidity and 

 peevishness of one whose influence was perceptibly waning. 



Epigram is never quite consistent with truth. It may contain 

 enough mixture of truth with falsehood to command the momentary 

 assent of even a thoughtful man. Its essential feature is brightness 

 rather than solidity, and it arrests the attention when accuracy fails 

 to attract. A French writer who has recently passed away, Paul 

 Blouet, visited America some years ago, and the inevitable book of im- 

 pressions was the natural consequence. His fondness for epigram had 

 amused many readers of a previous book entitled 'John Bull and his 

 Island.' The first chapter of 'Jonathan and his Continent' began 

 with the following words in imitation of Carlyle: 'The population of 

 America is sixty millions — mostly colonels.' In a subsequent chapter 

 he emphasized this idea with the statement, "Every American with 

 the least self-respect is colonel or judge; but if you should discover 

 that your interlocutor is neither colonel nor jvidge, call him ' Professor, ' 

 and you are out of the difficulty." This implication that professors 

 belong by exclusion to a class without the least self-respect may be 

 unwelcome to some of the unfortunates who are compelled to carry this 

 mark of Cain; but there is enough truth in the Frenchman's epigram 



