THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 77 



sometimes reached by devious ways. Reputation in the 

 world at large is sometimes but ill adjusted to merit. 

 Nevertheless, a high reputation among those of acknow- 

 ledged position in the man's own special sphere is a 

 very good test of his real worth. Few competent men 

 who have studied a subject, and few among the abler 

 members of a profession, could fail to point out the 

 five or ten acknowledged masters in their special line 

 who appear in a decade. Much greater difficulty 

 would be found in naming all the many individuals who 

 must be described as able rather than average. But the 

 few of real eminence are usually known to all who 

 understand their special subject. 



It is in this sense that Gal ton defined eminence. 

 He excluded notoriety obtained by a single act, and 

 restricted his list to those men " who have distinguished 

 themselves pretty frequently either by purely original 

 work, or as leaders of opinion." 



He passed on to estimate the number of such men. 

 He studied the columns of the book of reference then 

 known as Men -of the Time, which, with enlarged 

 boundaries, is now represented by Who s Who. He 

 decided that in the British Isles about five hundred 

 men over fifty might fairly be described as eminent. At 

 that time (1869) there were about two millions of men 

 over fifty years of age in the British Isles. It followed 

 that the proportion of eminent men was about two 

 hundred and fifty to a million. Two other means 

 of calculation were adopted : one from the obituary 

 notices for the past year published in the Times on ist 

 January 1869, and one from obituaries of many years 

 back, when the population was smaller. In each case 



