Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/522

518, without the least idea of carrying forward the present research. It had always been a matter of grave doubt in my own mind whether the exceptionally gifted of earth were better or worse than the ordinary run of mankind. Examples like Napoleon, Bacon, Byron and Catherine II. of Russia come to mind, and then we all have a feeling that the very good are perhaps a little simple-minded, and besides, according to tradition, they 'die young.' This pessimistic view of things is, however, not borne out by the facts.

On looking over the number of individuals in each grade one sees that nearly a half of all concerned fall in the two middle grades (5) and (6). This exemplifies what is known as 'the law of deviation from an average,' and means that when a large number of measurements are taken of any biological characteristic and graded in a numerical series, they will fall so that proportionally more lie in the grades approaching the mean and less and less as the measurements show extreme variation. On this view, then, in any homogeneous group of persons, fools are as rare as geniuses, and may differ much from the mean; but the great mass of humanity are such that in any given characteristic, one is much like another. The social scale is not to be conceived of as a pyramid in which the favored few are represented at the apex, and the masses below, more and more numerous as we descend the scale; but rather as a figure like a Rugby football with the masses occupying the medium zone. Actual paupers are as rare as the very rich. In the tables below we see the frequency in each of the ten grades for moral qualities, the males and females having been studied separately.

Space will not permit printing an entire list of 597 names or giving bibliographical references. Such details will be included in a work on the general subject of heredity in royalty which I hope will appear shortly. The three upper and three lower grades are, however, given below, and since the results of study of the extreme ends determine largely the conclusion obtained, the majority who lie close to mediocrity may just as well be given less attention.

It is, of course, difficult, indeed impossible, for any one to arrange people according to their reputed virtues in a perfectly satisfactory manner. It is, however, not as difficult as it might at first sight seem, especially if one remembers that by far the majority are to be in the