e to
consider the deplorable exhibitions made by poor humanity whenever
equality has been fairly insisted on in any community. The Frenchmen of
1792 thought that a great principle had been asserted when the President
of the Convention said to the king, "You may sit down, Louis." It seemed
fine to the gallery when the queenly Marie Antoinette was addressed as
the widow Capet; but what a poor business it was after all! The howling
familiarity of the mob never touched the real dignity of the royal
woman, and their brutality was only a murderous form of Yankee servant's
mean "independence." I cannot treat the subject at all without going
into necessary subtleties which never occurred to an enraged mob or a
bloodthirsty and insolent official; I cannot accept the bald jeers of a
comfortable, purse-proud citizen as being of any weight, and I am just
as loath to heed the wire-drawn platitudes of the average philosopher.
If we accept the very first maxim of biology, and agree that no two
individuals of any living species are exactly alike, we have a
starting-point from which we can proceed to argue sensibly. We may pass
over the countless millions of inequalities which we observe in the
lower orders of living things: and there is no need to emphasize
distinctions which are plain to every child. When we come to speak of
the race of men we reach the only concern which has a passionate and
vital interest for us; even the amazing researches and conclusions of
the naturalists have no attraction for us unless they throw a light, no
matter how oblique, on our mysterious being and our mysterious fate. The
law which regulates the differentiation of species applies with
especial significance when we consider the birth of human individuals;
the law which ordains that out of countless millions of animalculae
which once shed their remains on the floor of the deep sea, or that now
swarm in any pond, there shall be no two alike, holds accurately for the
myriads of men who are born and pass away. The type is the same; there
are fixed resemblances, but exact similarity never. The struggle for
existence, no matter what direction it may take, always ends in the
singling out of individuals who, in some respect or other, are worthy to
survive, while the weak perish and the elements of their bodies go to
form new individuals. It soon becomes plain that the crazy cry for
equality is really only a weak protest against the hardships of the
battle for exi