which, will excite the commemorative instinct hereafter.
In estimating the magnitude of human action, there is need of some workable measure or gauge which shall operate independently of mere contemporary opinion. Contemporary fame is often withheld as arbitrarily as it is bestowed. Posthumous fame at times comes into being with strange Suddenness, without any contemporary heralding at all. How suggestive to the student of biography is the fact that the name and work of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk and biological enquirer, who died nearly thirty years ago "unwept, unhonoured and Unsung," should fill ten columns of the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a space in excess of that devoted to any one of the numerous heroes of science who enjoyed repute in their own lifetime. Current fame- is no sure evidence of biographic fitness. The tumult and the shouting die and they may leave nothing behind which satisfies the biographic tests of completeness, seriousness and magnitude.
