Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Popular Science Monthly

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man produces something merely ingenious, something which does not serve a considerable portion of humanity in the way of satisfying a want, if his creation does not pass into use, he does not step into the current of the world's history as a fruitful factor, he fails to attain to the rank of talent. This objective measure of the value of the producer puts talent into direct relation to the concept of social evolution and progress. Society has been an evolution. Collective humanity has gone through distinctive metamorphoses. Distinct strides in advance have been made, tendencies have manifested themselves, conditions have changed so that larger satisfactions have ensued, democracy in the essential wants of mankind has been wrought out. Society is more complex in its quantitative aspect. It is more serviceable by reason of its greater specialization. Since progress stands for improvement it has come to be regarded as a desirable thing. In the sociological conception of things the genius possesses a specific social function. He is not a passing curiosity. He is not produced for amusement. He does not stand unrelated. He is the product of his age, is articulated with its life, performs an office which is of consequence to it. He is the connecting link between the past and the future. He takes what was and so combines it anew as to produce what is to be. He is the innovator, the initiator, the agent of transformation, the creator of a new order. Hence he is the exceptional man. The masses of men are imitators. They make nothing new, add nothing to the mechanism of social structure, introduce no new functions, produce no achievements, do nothing which changes the order of things. The common people are quite as important for the purposes of society as are the talented. Society must be conserved most of the time or we should all float down the stream of change too rapidly for comfort. Hence the function of the great mass of individuals is to seize and use the achievements which the creators, the talented have brought into existence. We may conclude, therefore, that if society is to be improved and if the lives of the great body of human beings are to be endowed with more and more blessings, material and spiritual, we must look to the men of talent, the men of achievement, and to them 'alone, for the initiation of these results. We may say, then, that we have discovered not only the method of estimating the value of talent, but also in what its value consists. If progress is desirable, talent by means of which that progress is secured is likewise valuable. And, like other things, its value is measured by its scarcity. It is now incumbent on us to attempt to discover the extent of the supply of this commodity, both actual and possible. I shall refer to two estimates of the amount of talent in existence which have been made because they differ so much in their conclusions as to the extent of talent, and because they exhibit quite different view-points and methods. The great English scientist and benefactor of the race, Sir Francis Galton, in his work entitled "Hereditary Genius" made a computation of the number of men of eminence in the British Isles. This estimate was made nearly a half-century ago and has generally been accepted as representing actual conditions. One means of discovering the number was by taking a catalogue of "Men of The Times" which contained about 2,500 names, one half of which were Americans and Europeans. He found that most of the men were past fifty years of age. Relative to this he states: 'It appears that in the cases of high (but by no means in that of the highest) merit, a man must outlive the age of fifty to be sure of being widely appreciated. It takes time for an able man, born in the humbler ranks of life, to emerge from them and to take his natural position.'[1] [1] Cattell's investigations of American men of science disproves this statement for Americans. He finds that only a few men enter the ranks of that class of men after the age of fifty, and that none of that age reach the highest place. The fecund age is from 35 to 45; ("American men of Science," p. 575.) After eliminating the non-British individuals he compared the number of celebrities above fifty with males of the same age for the whole British population. He found about 850 who were above fifty. Of this age there were about 2,000,000 males in the British Isles. Hence the meritorious were as 425 to 1,000,000, and the more select were as 250 to 1,000,000. He stated what he considered the qualifications of the more select as follows: 'The qualifications for belonging to what I call the more select part are, in my mind, that a man should have distinguished himself pretty frequently either by purely original work, or as a leader of opinion. I wholly exclude notoriety obtained by a single act. This is a fairly well defined line, because there is not room for many men to become eminent.' Mr. Galton made another estimate by studying an obituary list published in The Times in 1868. This contained 50 men of the select class. He considered it broader than his former estimate because it excluded men dying before they attained their broadest reputation, and more rigorous because it excluded old men who had previously attained a reputation which they were not able to sustain. He consequently lowered the age to 45. In Great Britain there were 210,000 males who died yearly of that age. This gave a result of 50 men of exceptional merit to 210,000 of the population, or 238 to the million. His third estimate was made by the study of obituaries of many years back. This led to similar conclusions, namely, that about 250 to the million is an ample estimate of the number of eminent men. He says: '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.' The other estimate of the amount of talent in existence has been made by one of our most eminent American sociologists, the late Lester F. Ward. The elaborate treatment of this matter is found in his "Applied Sociology," and offers an illustration of a most rigorous and thorough application of the scientific method to the subject in question. The essential facts for the

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