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10
Hereditary Genius
names of many whose abilities were high, but who died too young to have
earned the wide reputation they deserved; and it was more rigorous,
because I excluded old men who had earned distinction in years gone by,
but had not shown themselves capable in later times to come again to the
front. On the first ground, it was necessary to lower the limit of the age of
the population with whom they should be compared. Forty-five years of age
seemed to me a fair limit, including, as it was supposed to do, a year or two
of broken health preceding decease. Now, 210,000 males die annually in the
British isles above the age of forty-five; therefore, the ratio of the more
select portion of the “Men of the Time” on these data is as 50 to 210, 000,
or as 238 to a million.
Thirdly, I consulted obituaries of many years back, when the population of
these islands was much smaller, and they appeared to me to lead to similar
conclusions, viz. that 250 to a million is an ample estimate.
There would be no difficulty in making a further selection out of these, to
any degree of rigour. We could select the 200, the 100, or the 50 best out of
the 250, without much uncertainty. But I do not see my way to work
downwards. If I were asked to choose the thousand per million best men, I
should feel we had descended to a level where there existed no sure data
for guidance, where accident and opportunity had undue influence, and
where it was impossible to distinguish general eminence from local
reputation, or from mere notoriety.
These considerations define the sense in which I propose to employ the
word “eminent.” When I speak of an eminent man, I mean one who has
achieved a position that is attained by only 250 persons in each million of
men, or by one person in each 4,000. 4,000 is a very large number—difficult
for persons to realise who are not accustomed to deal with great
assemblages. On the
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