s, 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."

The superstitions of old times cling so tenaciously to modern thought
that the words "accident" and "chance" commonly connote some
mysterious agency. Nothing of the kind is implied here. The word
"accident" and the like is used in these pages simply to express the
effect of unknown or unnoted causes, without the slightest
implication that they are unknowable. In most cases their neglect has
been partly due to their individual insignificance, though their
combined effect may be very powerful when a multitude work in the
same direction. Moreover, a trifling pressure at the right spot
suffices to release a hair-trigger and thereby to cause an explosion;
similarly, with personal and social