Putting aside the women for the moment, we find that Great Britain has produced no fewer than 859 men of a high degree of intellectual eminence. These I classify, according to the direction of their activities, as follows: Actors, 23; Artists (painters, sculptors, architects), 69; Business Men, 3; Divines, 128; Doctors, 7; Lawyers, 35; Men of Letters, 150; Men of Science (and inventors), 94; Musical Composers, 14; Philanthropists, 4; Philosophers, 27; Poets, 98; Politicians (statesmen, agitators, administrators, etc.), 113; Sailors, 29; Scholars, 40; Schoolmasters, 4; Soldiers, 46; Travelers and Explorers, 9.
It is necessary to make certain remarks concerning this classification. In the first place, there is some amount of duplication, owing to one man having sometimes distinguished himself in more than one field. This I have sought to minimize by placing a man only in those departments in which he really reached a high degree of eminence; thus many individuals belonging to the church or the law appear in my lists only as Politicians, Philosophers or Men of Letters, and not as Divines or Lawyers. It must be admitted, however, that, in a large proportion of cases, the question of classification and of duplication remains difficult and doubtful. The longest and most miscellaneous group is that of Men of Letters. It would have been possible to include the Poets also in this group, and in some cases (especially in regard to some of the Elizabethan dramatists) it has been difficult to decide into which group a writer should fall; but, on the whole, the Poets were too large, important and homogeneous a group to be merged into the miscellaneous body of Men of Letters. The smallness of the group of Business Men will probably attract attention. It would, indeed, be possible to enlarge the group somewhat, especially by including various prosperous publishers and newspaper proprietors; but it scarcely appeared that the biographers of these worthies regarded them as persons of extraordinary intellectual ability, and it was also notable that in many cases they owed much to birth and circumstances; in any case, the group would still remain small. It may seem strange that 'a nation of shopkeepers' should have produced so few merchant princes entitled to figure brilliantly in this 'Dictionary.' The real reason seems to be that a man of marked ability is not content to achieve success in business only; he uses his business capacity merely as an instrument for attaining further ends, to become free to devote himself to literary or scientific aims, and especially to obtain an entry into politics; business success is thus subordinated to success in other fields. It must be added that, while many inventors have used their scientific activity to build up large businesses, their claim to recognition in the 'Dictionary' remains that of men of science. Another unexpectedly small group is that of Doctors. Here, again, it would have been possible to enlarge the group somewhat by including a certain number of
