ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 

 TABLE XXVII 



93 



LITERARY RELATIVES OF AMERICAN LITERATI, CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO 

 DEGREE OF RELATIONSHIP 1 



roll. There were only thirteen literati born per million 

 of the general population, while forty-five literary sons 

 and daughters were born in a group of one thousand 

 men and women of letters. In other words, a popula- 

 tion one thousand times as great as the group of authors 

 considered produced less than a third as many literary 

 children. 



It is thus obvious that many related people do achieve 

 prominence in the same field. What does the fact prove? 

 Is it an argument for nature or nurture? How is one to 

 know which is responsible for the appearance of a litter- 

 ateur? To consider a concrete case, the reader may well 

 ask, " Am I to conclude that Cotton Mather was a fam- 

 ous author because he inherited the talent of his father, 

 Increase Mather? May not his start in letters have been 

 due to the fact that he was brought up in the family of 

 the foremost scholar of Massachusetts?" It is impossible 

 to deny that the latter circumstance may indeed have been 



1 The total number of relationships recorded is somewhat more 

 than half the total number of related literati, because of several cases 

 in which one family possessed three or more writers. In each family 

 the number of relationships recorded in the table is equal to the total 

 number of relatives, minus one. 



