CHAPTER IX.--MARKED AND UNMARKED DEGREES OF NOTEWORTHINESS._Noteworthy families (modern science)

Persons who are technically "noteworthy" are by no means of equal

eminence, some being of the highest distinction, while others barely

deserve the title. It is therefore important to ascertain the amount

of error to which a statistical discussion is liable that treats

everyone who ranks as noteworthy at all on equal terms. The problem

resembles a familiar one that relates to methods for electing

Parliamentary representatives, such as have been proposed at various

times, whether it should be by the coarse method of one man one vote,

or through some elaborate arrangement which seems highly preferable

at first sight, but may be found on further consideration to lead to

much the same results.

In order to test the question, I marked each noteworthy person whose

name occurs in the list of sixty-six families at the end of this book

with 3, 2, or 1, according to what I considered his deserts, and soon

found that it was easy to mark them with fair consistency. It is not

necessary to give the rules which guided me, as they were very often

modified by considerations, each obvious enough in itself, but

difficult to summarize as a whole. Various provisional trials were

made; I then began afresh by rejecting a few names as undeserving any

mark at all, and, having marked the remainder individually, found

that a total of 657 marks had been awarded to 332 persons; 117 of

them had received 3 marks; 101, 2 marks; 104, 1 mark; so the three

subdivisions were approximately equal in number. The marks being too

few to justify detailed treatment, I have grouped the kinsmen into

first, second, and third degrees, and into first cousins, the latter

requiring a group to themselves. The first degree contains father and

brothers; the second, grandfathers and uncles; the third,

great-grandparents and great-uncles. The results are shown in Table

VI. The marks assigned to each of the groups are given in the first

line (total 657), and the number of the noteworthy persons in each

group who received any mark at all is shown in the third line (total

329). In order to compare the first and third lines of entries on

equal terms, those in the first were multiplied by 329 and divided by

657, and then entered in the second line. The closeness of

resemblance between the second and third lines emphatically answers

the question to be solved. There is no significant difference between

the results of the marked and the unmarked observations. The reason

probably is that the distribution of triple, double, and single marks

separately is much the same in each of the groups, and therefore

remains alike when the three sets of marks are in use at the same

time. It is thus made clear that trouble taken in carefully marking

names for different degrees of noteworthiness would be wasted in such

a rough inquiry as this.

TABLE VI.--COMPARISON OF RESULTS WITH AND WITHOUT

MARKS IN THE SIXTY-FIVE FAMILIES.

___________________________________________________________________

| | | | | | |

|______________________|________|________|________|_________|_______|

| | | | | | |

|Number of marks | 225 | 208 | 102 | 122 | 657 |

|______________________|________|________|________|_________|_______|

| | | | | | |

| proportionately | 113 | 104 | 51 | 61 | 329 |

| unmarked | 110 | 112 | 46 | 61 | 329 |

|______________________|________|________|________|_________|_______|

| | | | | | |

| Mean | 111 | 108 | 49 | 61 | 329 |

|______________________|________|________|________|_________|_______|

Table VII., in the next chapter, affords an interesting illustration

of the character of the ignorance concerning the noteworthiness of

kinsmen in distant degrees, showing that it is much lessened when

they bear the same surname as their father, or even as the maiden

surname of their mother. The argument is this: Table V. has already

shown that _me bros_ are, speaking roughly, as frequently noteworthy

as _fa bros_--fifty-two of the one to forty-five of the other--so

noteworthiness is so far an equal characteristic of the maternal and

paternal lines, resembling in that respect nearly all the qualities

that are transmitted purely through heredity. There ought, therefore,

to be as many persons recorded as noteworthy in each of the four

different kinds of great-grandparents. The same should be the case in

each of the four kinds of great-uncles. But this is not so in either

case. The noteworthy great-grandfathers, _fa fa fa_, who bear the

same name as the subject are twice as numerous as the _me fa fa_ who

bear the maiden surname of the mother, and more than five times as

numerous as either of the other two, the _fa me fa_ and _me me fa_,

whose surnames differ from both, unless it be through some accident,

whether of a cross marriage or a chance similarity of names. It is

just the same with the great-uncles. Now, the figures for

great-grandfathers and great-uncles run so closely alike that they

may fairly be grouped together, in order to obtain a more impressive

whole--namely, two sorts of these kinsmen, bearing the same name as

the Subject, contain between them 23 noteworthies, or 11.50 each; two

sorts having the mother's maiden surname contain together 11

noteworthies, or 5.50 each; four sorts containing between them 7

names, or an average of 1.75 each. These figures are self-consistent,

being each the sum of two practically equal constituents, and they

are sufficiently numerous to be significant. The remarkable

differences in their numbers, 11.50, 5.50, 1.75, when they ought to

have been equal, has therefore to be accounted for, and the

explanation given above seems both reasonable and sufficient.