nder the ground,--our acquiescence
can only be justified in the sight of humanity by the conviction that
this is one of the temporary conditions of a vast process, working
forwards through the impulse and agency of the finer human spirits, but
needing much blood, many tears, uncounted myriads of lives, and
immeasurable geologic periods of time, for its high and beneficent
consummation. There is nothing surprising, perhaps nothing deeply
condemnable, in the burning anger for which this acquiescence is often
changed in the more impatient natures. As against the ignoble host who
think that the present ordering of men, with all its prodigious
inequalities, is in foundation and substance the perfection of social
blessedness, Rousseau was almost in the right. If the only alternative
to the present social order remaining in perpetuity were a retrogression
to some such condition as that of the islanders of the South Sea, a
lover of his fellow-creatures might look upon the result, so far as it
affected the happiness of the bulk of them, with tolerably complete
indifference. It is only the faith that we are moving slowly away from
the existing order, as our ancestors moved slowly away from the old want
of order, that makes the present endurable, and makes any tenacious
effort to raise the future possible.

* * * * *

An immense quantity of nonsense has been talked about the equality of
man, for which those who deny that doctrine and those who assert it may
divide the responsibility. It is in reality true or false, according to
the doctrines with which it is confronted. As against the theory that
the existing way of sharing the laboriously acquired fruits and delights
of the earth is a just representation and fair counterpart of natural
inequalities among men in merit and capacity, the revolutionary theory
is true, and the passionate revolutionary cry for equality of external
chance most righteous and unanswerable. But the issues do not end here.
Take such propositions as these:--there are differences in the capacity
of men for serving the community; the well-being of the community
demands the allotment of high function in proportion to high faculty;
the rights of man in politics are confined to a right of the same
protection for his own interests as is given to the interests of others.
As against these principles, the revolutionary deductions from the
equality of man are false. And such pretensions