A STUDY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY SUCCESS. 245 



An inspection of Fig. 2 from the standpoint of the first of these 

 possibilities (noting only the left of each pair of ordinates) shows at 

 a glance that the musician distances all competitors in the race for 

 distinction. This is not hard to understand when we recall the infant 

 prodigies who frequently figure on our bill boards, or consider that 

 nature has in most cases contributed more largely to his success than 

 has nurture. Of those callings which presuppose a professional or at 

 least an extended preparation, that of scientist seems from our figure 

 to promise the earliest recognition. This is perhaps due to the fact 

 that for him the actual work of life is entered with a completer intel- 

 lectual equipment than by most of the others, and that the period of 

 preparation offers opportunities for research and original investiga- 

 tion which may bring renown even before life work is begun. This 

 would also apply to the college professor with perhaps fully as much 

 force and in a lesser degree to the librarian and the educator. These 

 four then might be included in a class in which the period of prepara- 

 tion is extended, but for which work of a high order might be expected 

 immediately on its completion and positions of some prominence 

 aspired to from the start. Next in the race for renown come the actor 

 and the author, almost neck and neck. If we concluded that nature had 

 most to do with the musician's success and nurture with the educator's 

 we should be forced to place the author and the actor in a class in which 

 those two forces divide the honors more evenly. No doubt one must be 

 born an actor or an author to rise to a high rank, but after all, the mak- 

 ing process is not to be despised as a factor, and this takes time. Except 

 for the soldier and the sailor, whose ability to rise to prominence, at 

 least in time of peace, is determined by the rapidity with which those 

 above him are retired from service, and the congressman and the states- 

 man, whose minimum limit is prescribed by law, the rest of the voca- 

 tions shown upon the chart fall, it seems to me, into a class for which 

 the schools, as organized means of education, provide no adequate prep- 

 aration and for which that preparation must come, to a great extent, 

 from the vocation itself. As an illustration of what I mean: the 

 scientist, or even the college professor, who has devoted thirty years 

 of life to study, can enter his profession from the top, while the business 

 man and financier, for whom the accumulation of wealth is a desid- 

 eratum, or the lawyer and the doctor, who must command a practice, 

 or the minister, who needs a congregation, must, with the same period 

 of intellectual infancy, enter it from the bottom and devote a few more 

 years to the climbing process. In so far as the physician is an in- 

 vestigator the conditions of the scientist apply to him and no doubt the 

 considerable number who are such accounts for the fact that his 

 recognition comes earlier than that of his competitors in law and the 

 pulpit. The surprising thing of the figure is perhaps the slowness with 



