GREAT MEN OF THE WORLD. 157 



to several other men in the same groups. But it will be noticed that 

 Prof. Lombroso does not make any such remarks about any indi- 

 vidual in the three groups included in classes A and B, which are 

 five times as numerous as those in the last three groups. As I am 

 not personally responsible for the times at which the fathers of these 

 men conceived their sons, it cannot be charged that I selected and 

 arranged them with the view of applying Prof. Lombroso's criti- 

 cism to them. 



COMPARISON BY NUMBERS. 



Taking those whose birth-ranks I have recorded, we have 354 

 eminent men. Although only 9.17 per cent of all births are to 

 fathers over 45 years of age while 11.25 P er cent are t0 fathers 

 under 25, we have 128 persons who were sons of old fathers as 

 against fifteen who were sons of young fathers. By calculation I 

 have shifted the lines of division between the groups of men so as 

 to cause these lines to fall at the ages of our standard scale, and the 

 result of this calculation is shown in Fig. 9. 



This diagram shows a gradual increase in the number of emi- 

 nent men as the fathers grow older, and a very pronounced increase 

 at the extreme age. Even if we did not have these men standing 

 up in a row before us so that we could compare the quality of one 

 group with the quality of another, the mere matter of numbers 

 would be very emphatic. The diagram also shows the peculiar 

 prominence of class b which we previously noticed in Fig. 6. An 

 inspection of the last three groups shows that they contain a good 

 many men who were heirs to titles and authority, and it is almost 

 certain that their eminence is due to inherited position rather than 

 to inherited intellect. In the last two of these groups this class of 

 men is more numerous than in the third group, and if the men of 



