numbers than it has existed in the most fruitful regions of the
French people.

Mr. Ward's studies have led him to conclude that talent is
latent in society, that it exists in greater abundance than we
have ever dared to expect, that all classes possess it equally
and would manifest it equally if obstacles were removed or
opportunities offered for its development. Education is the key
to the situation in his estimation. It affords the opportunity
which latent talent requires for its promotion, and if this
were intelligently applied to all classes and to both sexes
alike instead of securing one man of talent for each 4,000
persons as Mr. Galton held, we would be able to mature one for
every 500 of our population. This would represent an
eight-hundred-per-cent. increase of the talented class, an
eight-fold multiplication. It is an estimate of not the number
of the talented who are known to be such, but of society's
potential or latent talent.[2]

[2] Investigations made on school children by the Binet test
indicate Ward's estimate is conservative. It has been found
that from two to three out of every hundred children are of
exceptional ability, thus belonging to the talented, or at
least merit class.



Because these estimates are so divergent, it may be worth while
to consider the reason for the difference. And in taking this
up we come to the fundamentally distinct point of view of the