No Monopoly of Brains

1905

Hopeful Sign That Proves This the Age of Opportunity

One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the apparent decay of the breed of so-called great men — those mighty personalities that in former times stood out like a solitary tree in a vast prairie.

The reason for it, of course, is the distinction of all those old-time monopolies of brains which stunted all human beings except a few who, by chance rather than by superiority of fibre, grew and developed. There are thousands, literally thousands, of men now living who, if they had lived a century or so ago and had done a work similar to which they are doing without any very sonorous fanfare upon the trumpets of fame, would have been the talk of the world and the main topic of history.

And how many of the so-called great achievements of so-called great statesmen, soldiers and thinkers of former times would be impossible to-day, because those achievements depended chiefly upon the ignorance and incapacity of the overwhelming mass of the men of their day!

Truly, this is the age of opportunity. — Saturday Evening Post.