Who are the Twenty 



find that I cannot give you a list, but will conclude 

 with the mention of a fable taught to children in the 

 Spanish-speaking countries. 



" There was an island whose inhabitants, though 

 blessed with many gifts of nature, were unacquainted 

 with hens and their ])rogeny. Once upon a time 

 there arrived on that island a man with a few hens 

 and roosters ; as may be suspected, eggs ensued, 

 ^and the man taught the pco|>le that those eggs could 

 be eaten, if boiled. The man eventually died, as 

 happens to most men. 



" For a long time, maybe a decade or so, the 

 people went on eating boiled eggs. One day there 

 arose a genius who discovered that eggs might be 

 fried. Shortly alter another one produced the 

 omelette ; later on someone scrambled them, and so 

 on. A great man of the locality who had amassed a 

 considerable fortune celebrated a national festival 

 in order to honour the discoverers of fried eggs, 

 omelettes, and scrambled eggs, and great was the 

 joy and great was the honour heaped ui)on the happy 

 inventors. But alas ! an importunate intruder with a 

 memory happened on this occasion to obtrude his 

 obnoxious remarks, saying : ' All this is very well, but 

 what about the man who brought the hens ? ' 



" Without prying too deeply into the evolution of 

 knowledge, and mentioning solely what lies on the 

 surface, I would ask in the case of Mr. Carnegie : 

 ' Where is Bacon, who was greatly instrumental in 

 teaching men how to learn by experimenting?' 

 Without that teaching neither printing, nor electricity, 

 nor water-meters, nor steel processes, nor steam- 

 engines, nor telephones, nor cotton - spinning 

 machinery, nor locomotives, nor rotary engines, 

 whose discpverers are all included in .\lr. Carnegie's 

 list, would ever have been invented. To refer to 

 the simile, people would have continued eating boiled 



,-,_t(IS." < 



Maakien Maartens' l.isr. 



Mr. Maarten Maartens, who, on my first appeal, 

 refused to attempt to fill in the li.st, has relented, auvl 

 I am glad to publish the following interesting com- 

 munication from his pen : — 



" 1 have looked again at your (luestion. It seems 

 to me that your demftnd was clear, many a response 

 confu.sed. You do not ask for ' greatness ' ot 

 character, for fiiat often remains unknown, or oi 

 accidental effect, as in a chance invention, or ol 

 unintended well-doing, for then Pontius I'ilate, foi 

 instance, were the greatest man that ever lived. You 

 ask for the greatest impression, as a personality, on 

 the whole race throughout its common life. If thai 

 is correct there can hardly be much discussion aboiM 

 your list : — 



1. Mo.ses. 



2. I'aul. 



3. Homer. 



4. Socrates - 



I'lalo. 



.Aristotle. 



Alexander the (Jreat. 

 Julius C;esar. 

 The Buddha. 



141 



" I have bracketed 4 because the personality is, as 

 a world-impression, one. 



" W'ith your uneijuallcd journalistic acumen, if I 

 may be permitted to say so, you have fixed on exactly 

 the right limit. Fifteen would have been impossible, 

 twenty-five quite easy. Personally, I should place 

 Augustine above Luther, Leonardo above Michael 

 Angelo, perhaps I And Francis Bacon, Galileo, and 

 Goethe should have got in had you not just banged 

 the door in their faces. The matter is nowise one 

 of personal sympathy. I have had to admit that 

 brute Alexander the Great and that brute Napoleon. 

 I have been able to exclude that brute Peter the 

 Great, yet the last-named was not a self-seeking 

 slaughterer of thousands like the other two. But, if 

 you stand away and look down the history of the 

 race objectively, the twenty stars shine, to my mind, 

 immovable for all. With all due admiration, for 

 instance, for the persistence of Columbus, it seems 

 absurd to call him one of the twenty greatest because 

 he unintentionally invented the Americans. As soon 

 praise the potter for the rose ! 



" Having written so much, I cannot resist sending 

 \ou a patriotic list of greatest names in the making of 



n^li'trafh !.y] 



r.iiwti ,M„i 1 , 



Mr. Maaiten Maartens. 



