single eminent doctor, and if it were not for the presence of two men of the very first rank—Darwin and Landor—they would constitute a somewhat mediocre group. It is an interesting, and I think a significant, fact that the fathers of as many as 25 artists exercised either a craft or some trade very closely allied to a craft. Great actors and actresses, more than any other group of eminent persons, tend to be of low, obscure or dubious birth; 4, at least, can be definitely set down as the children of unskilled laborers.
When we survey the field of investigation I have here very briefly summarized, the most striking fact we encounter is the extraordinary extent to which British men and women of genius have been produced by the highest and smallest social classes, and the minute part which has been played by the 'teeming masses' in building up British civilization.' This is not altogether an unexpected result, though it has not before been shown to hold good for the entire field of the intellectual ability of a country.[1] To realize the enormous preponderance of the aristocracy in the production of these eminent men, and the oligarchic basis of British civilization, it must be remembered not only, as I have already pointed out, that a very considerable proportion of the 'Doubtful' group belong to 'old families,' which are certainly often 'good families,' but also that I have excluded altogether the children of peers, notwithstanding that they form a group which has played a very important part indeed in the national life. As we descend the social pyramid, although we are dealing with an ever-vaster mass of human material, the appearance of any individual of eminent ability becomes an ever rarer phenomenon, while the eminent persons belonging to the lowest and most numerous class of all are, numerically at all events, an almost negligible quantity.
One is tempted to ask how far the industrial progress of the nineteenth century, the growth of factories, the development of urban life, will alter the conditions affecting the production of eminent men. It seems clear that, taking English history as a whole, the conditions of rural life have been most favorable to the production of genius. The minor aristocracy and the clergy—the 'gentlemen' of England—living on the soil in the open air, in a life of independence at once laborious and leisurely, have been able to give their children good opportunities
- ↑ In Maclean's statistical study of the origins of British men of ability during the nineteenth century it is shown that 26 per cent, of those of known origin were sons of 'aristocrats, officials, etc.'; the result was almost identical when the 100 men of preëminent ability were considered separately. Mr. C. H. Cooley ('Annals of the American Academy,' May, 1897) investigated the point in regard to a group of distinguished European poets, philosophers and men of letters, and found that 45 belonged to the upper and upper middle classes, 24 to the lower middle class, and only 2 to the lower class.
