Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/456

452 per cent, of the whole) is no more likely to produce a man of genius than is the one per cent, (or less than one per cent.) which, from the standpoint of eugenics, we rightly call the crême de la crême.

Thus we see why men like Lincoln and Franklin, who spring from the great reservoir of the commonalty, do not in the least upset one's belief in heredity, provided they do not occur very frequently. For they are the happy combinations of qualities derived from maternal and paternal sources.

All this does not deny that in some ways environment and, possibly, free will, play a measurable role in the determination of human fate, but it does suggest that the reliance which has been so freely bestowed on these social, institutional and metaphysical forces has been an exaggerated one.

The high percentages among illustrious men in this country—as high, in fact, as it is in Europe, is a very suggestive point. Opportunities are supposed to be freer in America, and social lines less strictly drawn. We should certainly expect to find in this country, notable names less often running in families; unless, of course, the eugenist's theory that it is nearly all a matter of heredity be indeed correct. At any rate, our much-vaunted American equality, liberty and opportunity have done nothing to make distinction in this country any less of a "family affair" than in the older civilizations of Europe.