17O MENTAL APTITUDES. 



make this clear. The three military men with birth-ranks over 51 

 are the British rear-admirals Barrington and Popham, and the 

 American general Robert E. Lee. The five at the other extreme 

 are the theologians Channing and Cotton Mather, the philosophers 

 Helvitius and Locke, and the religious reformer Mohammed. I 

 found Barrington because he happened to be one of four brothers, 

 and I accidentally ran across Popham when looking for something 

 else. Whatever may have been the mental ability of Barrington 

 and of Popham, it is quite safe to say that the general public is 

 not as familiar with their names as with the names of Nelson [36], 

 Van Tromp [32], and Decatur [28]. The case of the Barringtons 

 illustrates how custom reverses the natural mental aptitudes of 

 sons, yet custom has not been powerful enough to reverse the gen- 

 eral results of our table. It has, however, operated to spread out 

 the figures more uniformly than would be the case if natural tal- 

 ents were given full play. The Barringtons consisted of four 

 brothers, the eldest, W. W. [39], followed the usual English cus- 

 tom and became the statesman of the family; the second, Daines 

 [49], was a journalist; the third, Samuel [A 2 ], entered the navy 

 and became a rear-admiral; and the fourth, Shulte [56], became a 

 prelate. If we are to judge by the square inches of space given to 

 the biographical sketches of each, of these four brothers, the states- 

 man and the rear-admiral were much less eminent than the other 

 two brothers. In the light of what our table tells us it seems likely 

 that if the eldest and third sons had changed occupations it would 

 have been for the mutual advantage of both, to say nothing of the 

 advantage to the world. I do not have the exact birth-rank of 

 Popham, but I find that he was the twenty-first child of his father, 

 and, like English younger sons in general, probably took to mili- 

 tary life because it was the only thing open to him. 



