GREAT MEN OF THE WORLD. 1 63 



power be simply the result of chance, then, according to the law 

 of probabilities, it should be possible to find thousands of persons 

 who are the mental equal of Franklin and who have birth-ancestries 

 equally far at the other extreme of the scale. But such thousands 

 cannot be found, nor is it possible to find, out of the millions of 

 persons so born, a solitary individual who approaches, even in a 

 remote degree, the intellectual power of Franklin. Rare as are 

 birth-ancestries as high as that of Franklin, they are not rare in 

 our class A men. His is exceeded by those of Augustus, and 

 Moses, and, if we could get at the truth of the matter, we would 

 probably find it exceeded in a number of other cases. 



