Okay, my first response was particularly smart@ss, though I think it still has great merit. I would therefore add: a real man reserves the absolute right to edit his list at will; consultation be hanged.

I confess that re-reading the Esquire list, I quite like it. Not as a hard checklist, but as an off-beat and amusing and well-written piece. It endeavours to frame the impossible, that fleeting entity, the Well-Rounded Man.

It seems we've given up on that ideal; we know too much about too much; we despair of knowing enough to claim that title. Everyone is a specialist now. We're all tribal, and entrenched, in our niches, knowing more and more about less and less. Our only WRM is fictional, on the big screen.

It used to be that the Well-Rounded Man was the goal of education. He had a working understanding of science, of commerce, of governance, of philosophy and religion, of the military and aesthetic arts. He could fight a duel, go to war, hold his own in conversation, and dazzle the ladies at the ball. An officer, gentleman, and scholar, with practical savvy and social graces. This idea is as old as the Greeks; and I seem to recall that H.G. Wells tried his hand at framing this as well, which puts us well into the 20th century. I also note that Google has some 2.67 million hits for that phrase.

(For the record, I have no objection to the Well-Rounded Woman either. In every sense of the phrase. I am proud to count my DW as one of these.)

So, if you buy my long-winded argument: what defines the Well-Rounded Man in this day and age?