A “ POPULAR FALLACY ” EXPLODED.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9140, 8 May 1908, Page 7

A “ POPULAR FALLACY ” EXPLODED.

In Munsey’s recently, Mr D. O. S. Lowell rather indignantly examines the “popular fallacy” as to ministers’ children turning out worse than anyone else’s. There is, lie finds, absolutely no evidence to support it, but, on the contrary, a to disprove it. The article is fully illustrated with portraits of clergymen’s sous who have attained great distinction. How incomplete it is may be inferred from the that no portrait of Cecil Rhodes is cluded, nor is he even mentioned. From census figures, and allowing for Roman Catholics, who do not marry, and assuming also —what Mr Gallon denied— ‘ that clergymen have on an average, as many children as other men, tiieir sons in the United States should be to other men’s sons in the proportion of 1 to 221. Therefore, if clergymen’s sous just hold their own witii other men’s, the proportion of them finding a place in “Who’s Who,” for instance, should be lin 231. But it is nearly 18 times as much, in spite of some particularly well-known men who are certainly clergymen’s sons not having been stated to he so. Oliver Wendall Holmes, George Bancroft, the historian, Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, Samuel Morse (of the Morse telegraph), Lowell, Robert Ingersell, Bishop Potter, President Cleveland, and Mr Henry James are some of the best-known American clergymen’s sons who seem to have distinguished themselves in the greatest possible variety of ways, some having even been railway “kings,” Egyptologists, and playwrights. Allowing for the father’s position having often not been stated, the writer says nearly one in every 12 Americans who iiave risen to distinction has been a clergyman’s or, more correctly, a minister’s son. As far as can be ascertained from the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ about one person of distinction in nine in England, is a clergyman’s son. A Swiss scientist, M. de Candolle, investigated the subjeet some 20®years ago, commenting especially on the large proportion of scientists and learned men in Europe during the past two centuries who had been sons of ministers or pastors. He cited in his long list, among many other names, those of Agassiz, the naturalist; ‘Dr. Jenner, Linnmns, Arthur Young, of “Travels in France” fame; Hallam, Thomas Hobbes, Sismondi, Addison, Ben Johnson, J. P. Richter, Jonathan Swift, and Sjir Christopher Wren. But he forgot Lord Nelson, the Wesleys, Lord TennySon, Dean Stanley, John Keble, Matthew Arnold, and others.