l62 GREAT MEN OF THE WORLD. 



PROOF BY ONE MAN ALONE. 



I have said that we might rest our case on ten men alone. We 

 may go even farther and rest it upon one individual of this ten, 

 as on Augustus or Moses, or better yet on Franklin, because the 

 dates for Franklin are known and may be verified. Franklin takes 

 the birth-rank of 51, his father takes the rank of 57, his mother 

 ranks 50, his paternal grandfather has a rank that is probably over 

 65, and there are two other generations of known high rank to be 

 accounted for. Now, I find that successive births in high ranks are 

 much more rare than successive births in low ranks. In the gene- 

 alogy from which our standard is taken, I find only a single case of 

 two successive generations in the male line in class A and no case 

 of three generations successively so born. On the other hand I 

 found numerous cases of two successive generations born in class 

 a, and out of a small group taken at random I found one case 

 where class a extended over three generations. This is from the 

 same source from which the classes were established, and shows 

 that early reproduction is much more fertile than late reproduc- 

 tion, especially in the second and third generations. From these 

 considerations, from what I have previously shown to be the case 

 in Ireland and Scotland, and from what will appear later as to 

 what occurs in the different countries of the world, I have satisfied 

 myself that for each case in which both father and son take birth- 

 ranks of 50 or over, there are literally hundreds of cases in which 

 the father and son both take birth-ranks of 25 or under. If we 

 extend this from two generations to three generations and include 

 one on the mother's side — all being 50 or more — then the number 

 of persons of corresponding low rank to one of such high rank 

 increases tremendously. If the birth of a son of great intellectual 



