300 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



not have been made by any social institutions, but none the 

 less the work they did might have been accomplished by 

 others and perhaps their fame would have been allotted to 

 others. There may have been in England other family lines 

 equal in natural ability to the Darwins and in this country 

 other individuals as well constituted as Lincoln, but undis- 

 tinguished from lack of opportunity. It is still more probable 

 that such conditions obtain in Russia and in China, in whose 

 graveyards there may lie innumerable *' mute inglorious " 

 Miltons, Lincolns and Darwins. 



"The most exceptional ability may be suppressed by cir- 

 cumstances; but it can sometimes deal with them on equal 

 or perhaps superior terms. Thus the writer has pointed out 

 how widely distributed in race, age and performance are the 

 most distinguished men who have lived. When we turn 

 from the most eminent men to those next in rank, we may 

 doubt whether their natural ability has not been equaled by 

 thousands who have not attained distinction. Among the 

 two hundred most eminent men who have lived in the his- 

 tory of the world are: Napoleon III, Nero, Fox, Julian, 

 Fenelon, Clive, Alberoni, Bentley and Gerson. It is quite 

 conceivable that there are at present living in the United 

 States hundreds or thousands of men having as great natural 

 ability as these. There may be a hundred thousand men and 

 women having the natural and specific ability of the thou- 

 sand in this country who have accomplished the best 

 scientific work. 



"President A. Lawrence Lowell has remarked that we have 

 a better chance of rearing eaglets from eagles' eggs placed 

 under a hen than from hen's eggs placed in an eagle's nest. 

 But it is equally true that we have a better chance of raising 

 tame eaglets in a chicken coop than in an eyrie. The differ- 

 ence between a man uninterested in science and a scientific 

 man is not that between a chicken and an eagle, but that 

 between an untrained chicken and a trick cock. Some 

 cockerels can be trained better than others, but there are in- 

 numerable cockerels that might be trained and are not. 



