CHAPTER IV.—­PROPORTION OF NOTEWORTHIES TO THE GENERALITY.

The materials on which the subject of this chapter depends are too various to lead to a single definite and trustworthy answer.  Men who have won their way to the front out of uncongenial environments owe their success principally, I believe, to their untiring energy, and to an exceptionally strong inclination in youth towards the pursuits in which they afterwards distinguished themselves.  They do not seem often to be characterized by an ability that continues pre-eminent on a wider stage, because after they have fully won a position for themselves, and become engaged in work along with others who had no early difficulties to contend with, they do not, as a rule, show greatly higher natural ability than their colleagues.  This is noticeable in committees and in other assemblies or societies where intellects are pitted against one another.  The bulk of existing noteworthies seem to have had but little more than a fair education as small boys, during which their eagerness and aptitude for study led to their receiving favour and facilities.  If, in such cases, the aptitudes are scholastic, a moderate sum suffices to give the boy a better education, enabling him to win scholarships and to enter a University.  If they lie in other directions, the boy attracts notice from some more congenial source, and is helped onwards in life by other means.  The demand for exceptional ability, when combined with energy and good character, is so great that a lad who is gifted with them is hardly more likely to remain overlooked than a bird’s nest in the playground of a school.  But, by whatever means noteworthiness is achieved, it is usually after a course of repeated and half-unconscious testings of intelligence, energy, and character, which build up repute brick by brick.

If we compare the number of those who achieved noteworthiness through their own exertions with the numbers of the greatly more numerous persons whose names are registered in legal, clerical, medical, official, military, and naval directories, or in those of the titled classes[A] and landed gentry, or lastly, of those of the immense commercial world, the proportion of one noteworthy person to one hundred of the generality who were equally well circumstanced as himself does not seem to be an over-estimate.

[A] By a rough count of the entries in Burke’s “Peerage, Baronetage
    and Knightage,” I find that upwards of 24,000 ladies are of
    sufficient rank to be included by name in his Table of
    Precedence.

CHAPTER V.—­NOTEWORTHINESS AS A MEASURE OF ABILITY.

Success is the joint result of the natural powers of mind and body, and of favourable circumstances.  Those of the latter which fall into definite groups will be distinguished as “environment,” while the others, which evade classification, will be called “accidental.”