The increase in eminent men as we approach our own day may be partly a matter of perspective. Still the numbers should normally increase with larger population and multiplication of opportunity and interests. It is unfortunately very difficult to compare the number of great men with the total population from which they arose. Were a curve of this sort drawn, however, it would be very dfferent from that here exhibited. The rise in modern times would be much less; and the Greek and Roman periods would surpass that of the end of the eighteenth century.
In our curve there are three noticeable breaks. Perhaps nothing could serve better than such a curve to impress on the minds of school children, or even on our own, the eddies in the stream. It must be remembered that the curves give the numbers of men born in each half century, while the period in which they nourished is about fifty years later. Thus in the fourteenth century there was a pause followed by a gradual improvement and an extraordinary fruition at the end of the fifteenth century. Painting is represented in Italy by Raphael, Angelo, Leonardo, Titian, Correggio and Sarto, in Germany by Holbein and Dürer. Savonarola failed, while Luther led a reformation. Columbus discovered a new world and Copernicus discovered innumerable worlds. There was then a pause in progress, until a century later England and France took the lead. Spenser was quickly followed by Shakespeare, who did not stand alone among English dramatists. A little later Molière, Racine and Corneille represented the drama in a group of eminent French men of letters. Descartes and Bacon revived philosophy and science; while Italy, failing in art, produced Galileo.
The latter part of the seventeenth century was a sterile period, followed by a revival culminating in the French revolution. Here, as in other periods, it is difficult to decide how far men were made eminent by circumstance and how far great men were leaders in new movements. The social upheaval in France gave eminence to political and military leaders who otherwise would have remained in obscurity, and given a Napoleon his complement is a Wellington. The progress of science may in part be an answer to the demands of increasing population. But philosophy and art also witnessed a renaissance. In Germany we have Kant, Goethe and the development of music, in England, poets speaking a new language. Here great men seem not so much the creatures as the creators of their environment.
As we come nearer to our own times it becomes increasingly difficult to measure tendencies by the methods we are using. The positions of men on the list are subject to larger probable and constant errors. Byron may be a household word on the continent and Shelley unknown, while the best criticism may place Shelley above Byron. Our list places Mendelssohn above Bach and ignores Schumann altogether—
