HALL OF FAME MEN. 113 



ing from his four grandparents, and the correspondingly more 

 numerous factors arising from his more remote ancestors. 



RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF FATHER AND MOTHER. 



Partly because the father is usually older than the mother, 

 partly because he is usually the more mentally active of the two, 

 and partly because characters acquired by one sex are usually trans- 

 mitted more fully to the same sex than to the other sex, the father 

 is more important in the mental heredity of a man than is the 

 mother. On the other hand, the law by which characters are often 

 transmitted in a dormant condition from a maternal grandfather 

 to a grandson may make the mother an important factor, provided 

 that her father was such. 



To get a somewhat better view of these twenty-five men they 

 have been grouped in table VII by a combination between their 

 ranks from their own letters and their birth-ranks from all ances- 

 tors, and also by a combination embracing these two factors and 

 the third factor of fame. The first of these groupings improves 

 the "letter" grouping by bringing in the effect of more remote 

 ancestors, and improves the "all ancestors" grouping by giving 

 more importance to the immediate ancestors. The grouping by 

 three elements improves the other combination by bringing fame 

 to rectify, in a measure, the more or less fragmentary character of 

 the "all ancestors" element. Fame also recognizes the mental 

 activity of the individual, an element that is entirely absent from 

 our ancestral investigations. On the other hand Fame brings in 

 the error of recognizing what is spectacular in contradistinction to 

 what is purely mental greatness. It is also somewhat influenced 

 by prejudice, and by a lack of appreciation of the kind of work 

 with which those who determine fame are not familiar. 



