opt certain of the principles professed by some given set of men who
happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid to do so would be
to make a mark of weakness on our part.

But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a
lie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal,
nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it
does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable
equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is
due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people,
blood of their blood and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled
and wrought and suffered for them, and at the end died for them, who
always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or
for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of
idealism and sound common-sense. He said (I omit what was of merely
local significance):

I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to
include all men, but that they did not mean to declare all men
equal _in all respects_. They did not mean to say all men were
equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social
capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they
did consider all men created equal--equal in certain inalienable
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean
to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying
that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it
immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for
free society which should be familiar to all--constantly looked
to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly
attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly
spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the
happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere.

We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would make
us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which means
injustice; the inequality of right, of opportunity, of privilege. We
are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far
as is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that
each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in
him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so f