 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
12
Hereditary Genius
number. Ever since then, whenever a million is mentioned, I recall the long
perspective of the avenue of Bushey Park, with its stately chestnuts clothed
from top to bottom with spikes of flowers, bright in the sunshine, and I
imagine a similarly continuous floral band, of ten miles in length.
In illustration of the value of the extreme rigour implied by a selection of
one in a million, I will take the following instance. The Oxford and
Cambridge boat-race excites almost a national enthusiasm, and the men
who represent their Universities as competing crews have good reason to
be proud of being the selected champions of such large bodies. The crew of
each boat consists of eight men, selected out of about 800 students; namely,
the available undergraduates of about two successive years. In other
words, the selection that is popularly felt to be so strict, is only as one in a
hundred. Now, suppose there had been so vast a number of universities that
it would have been possible to bring together 800 men, each of whom had
pulled in a University crew, and that from this body the eight best were
selected to form a special crew of comparatively rare merit: the selection of
each of these would be as 1 to 10, 000 ordinary men. Let this process be
repeated, and then, and not till then, do you arrive at a superlative crew,
representing selections of one in a million. This is a perfectly fair deduction,
because the youths at the Universities are a hap-hazard collection of men,
so far as regards their thews and sinews. No one is sent to a University on
account of his powerful muscle. Or, to put the same facts into another
form:— it would require a period of no less than 200 years, before either
University could furnish eight men, each of whom would have sufficient
boating eminence to rank as one of the medium crew. Twenty thousand
years must elapse before eight men could be furnished, each of whom
would have the rank of the superlative crew.
 |
|
 |
|