more scientific men per thousand of its population than New England has hitherto produced. In the first list of the thousand leading scientific men, Massachusetts produced 109 and Connecticut 87 per million of their population. Of the younger men added to the list in the second arrangement under comparable conditions, Massachusetts produced 85 and Connecticut 57. The other North Atlantic states failed in like measure, while the central states show a gain—Michigan from 36 to 74, Minnesota from 23 to 59, etc. These changes must be attributed to an altered environment, not to an altered racial stock. Japan had no scientific men a generation ago and China has none now, but it may be that in a few years their contributions to science will rival ours.
A Darwin born in China in 1809 could not have become a Darwin, nor could a Lincoln born here on the same day have become a Lincoln had there been no civil war. If the two infants had been exchanged there would have been no Darwin in America and no Lincoln in England. Darwin was a member of a distinguished family line possessing high natural ability and the advantages of opportunity and wealth. Lincoln had no parental inheritance of ability or wealth, but he too had innate capacity and the opportunity of circumstance. If no infants had been born with the peculiar natural constitutions of Darwin and Lincoln, men like them could 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 undistinguished 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 circumstances; 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.[1] 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 history of the world are: Napoleon III., Nero, Fox, Julian, Fénelon, 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
- ↑ "A Statistical Study of Eminent Men," The Popular Science Monthly, 1903
