Social Environment and Eugenics 91 



France, and that possibly the methods used by 

 biometricians might be employed, at least in 

 part, to make the results more definite and con- 

 clusive. Accordingly a study has been made, 

 the statistical summary of which appears in the 

 Appendix. 



The purpose of this study is to discover 

 whether in the United States the production of 

 noted m-en is correlated in any marked degree 

 w^ith density of population, and with one or 

 two other associated environmental factors. 

 The question is somewhat the same as the one 

 commonly asked: Does the great man come 

 from the country or the city ? But in view of 

 the available data the question is broadened to 

 read : Are noted men more likely to come from 

 the crowded urban states, with their superior 

 w^ealth and opportunities, than from sparsely 

 settled states, and if so, may the correlation 

 be considered a measure of the influence of 

 environment ? 



The first difficulty to be encountered is the 

 question of just who are the great men. It 

 will not do to take merely the few whom all 

 might agree upon, since the crux of the corre- 

 lation method is the use of numbers sufficiently 

 large to cancel the numerous chance forces 



