Who are ihi- Twenty Greatest Men 



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1)0 the twenty greatest men in ilie history of the world, 

 hut no list would satisfy me unless it included — 



"(i) Chatham, who was the first man to realise 

 that the future of the British Empire was on the other 

 side of the Atlantic : 



" (2) Alexander Hamilton, who gave us the Federal 

 principle ; 



" (3) Robert Owen, the Father of Co-operation 

 and Co-partnership ; 



" (4) Mazzini, who warned the working men of his 

 and all successive generations to distrust any leader 

 who spoke to them of their ' rights ' and not of their 

 ' duty." 



"I cannot think at the present moment of any four 

 men whose inspiration and ideals are more wanted as 

 a remedy for our present ills." 



SoMi; Criticisms and Suggestions. 



Among those who have answered my letter asking 

 ihem to contribute to the symposium upon the subject 

 I have had several letters from notables, who have 

 excused tiiemselves on one ground and another. For 

 instance. Lord Rosebery, who is as well qualified as 

 anyone in the world to draw up a list, declares that it 

 " would require a more complete knowledge of history 

 and a clearer definition of the word ' great ' than I am 

 prepared to give." 



Lord Rayleigh, although much interested in the 

 rival lists, did not see his way to draw up one of his 

 own, but he says Clalileo and F'araday are hard to 

 pass over, and why should not sculpture, painting, 

 and music be represented as well as poetry ? 



Sir John Gorst declined to draw up any list, on the 

 ground that history did not afford materials for 

 forming ah adequate judgment as to the comparative 

 greatness of our fellow-creatures. 



Maarten Maartens writes : " Vou have started well. 

 Your man of money remembered only men of metal ; 

 your philosopher ignores Beethoven and Rembrandt.' 

 -You will easily attain the object set forth in your 

 accompanying letter, and i)rove— but was the thing 

 really worth proving i"— that the world knows nothing 

 of its greatest men." 



A brother Scot, whom I regard as the most typical 

 Scotsman of our time, wrote saying he felt it would 

 he " painting the lily " to touch Mr. Carnegie's list. 

 He says : — 



Tliouclils fluicil lliimjt;li my mincj as I read it. The first 

 one W.1S rather meanly cynical, but it did come: Some of 

 .Mr. CnrncKle's greatest of mankind arc tho>c who have helped 

 him most 'o amas.s his millions I That is rather mean, 1 fear; 

 but is it not true t 



Then I Ihoiiyht of Tennyson's call to work our souls as 

 nobly .IS our iron, and perceived that Mr. Carnegie had not 

 heeded it. 



When I noticed the yreal disproportion of spiritual to 

 mechanical, I could not help saying : What a poor halfpenny- 

 worth of bread to all this/uick I 



And, lazily, it appears lo me that, according to .Mr. Carnegie, 

 religion is im element in human greatness. 



'I'he list was rather mcliiiicholy reading. 



Dk. Alfred R. \\ali,..\(je. 



Our greatest modern man of science is Dr. Alfred 

 Russel Wallace, who almost tied with Darwin in the 

 discovery of the great principle which has been the 

 inspiration of modern science. He does not enter 

 into the subject at the same length as Mr. Frederic 

 Harrison, but he makes the very practical suggestion 

 that in compiling lists of great men they should be 

 arranged in chronological order. If this is done it 

 will be found that eleven out of Mr. Carnegie's list of 

 twenty greatest men were born in the eighteenth 

 century, and none were born before the fifteenth. 



Dr. Wallace writes : — " Mr. Carnegie's list of the 

 twenty greatest men is the most preposterous I have 

 ever seen ! I can only retain one of them— namely, 

 Shakespeare. I daresay I should alter mine a good 

 deal if I had more time to give to it. I take ' great- 

 ness ' to apply to chanukr more than to any one or 

 more striking or useful discoveries which have often 

 been made by very small — and what a Yankee might 

 call a ' one-horse ' man. The great difficulty is that 

 around any one supremely great man there is a 

 cluster of others almost as great, who might almost 

 monopolise the whole twenty, as in the case of 

 Socrates and Michaelangelo. I think my list fairly 

 shows the different types of greatness. Scott, 

 Dickens, and R Owen will be most objected toj 

 but 1 could give very good reasons for including 

 each of them. I think Jenner in Mr. Cartiegie's list 

 is perhaps the very smallest of over-estimated men. 

 Both Columbus and Lincoln seem to me second- 

 rate." 



Homer, loth or i uh century B.C 



Buddha, 5th century B.C. 



Pericles, about 490 B.C. 



Phidias, about 490 B.C. 



Socrates, about 469 B.C. 



Alexander the Great, B.C. 356— B.C. 323 



Archimedes, B.C. 287— B.C. 212. 



Jesus of Nazareth. 



Alfred the Great, 849 — 901. 



Michael Angelo, 1475— 1564. 



Shakespeare, 1564— -1616. 



Newton, 1642 — 1727. 



Swedenborg, 1688 — 1772. 



Washington, 1732—1799. 



Walter Scott, 1771— 1832. 



Robert Owen of Lanark, 1771— 1858. 



Faraday, 1791 — 1867. 



Darwin, 1809 — 1882. 



Charles Dickens, 1812- -1870. 



Tolstoi, 1828— 1910. 



• Princi'. von Bt low. 

 One of the most interesting lists which Mr. Carnegie's 

 bold challenge to the world has jjroduced is that of 

 Prince von Biilow, the late Imperial Chancellor of 

 (Germany, who frotn his charming retreat in Rotiie 

 has sent me his list of the twenty greatest men, 

 moved thereto by his remembrance of the pleasant 



