as that every man could
be made equally fit for every function, or that not only each should
have an equal chance, but that he who uses his chance well and sociably
should be kept on a level in common opinion and trust with him who uses
it ill and unsociably, or does not use it at all,--the whole of this is
obviously most illusory and most disastrous, and in whatever decree any
set of men have ever taken it up, to that degree they have paid
the penalty.

What Rousseau's Discourse meant, what he intended it to mean, and what
his first direct disciples understood it as meaning, is not that all men
are born equal. He never says this, and his recognition of natural
inequality implies the contrary proposition. His position is that the
artificial differences, springing from the conditions of the social
union, do not coincide with the differences in capacity springing from
original constitution; that the tendency of the social union as now
organised is to deepen the artificial inequalities, and make the gulf
between those endowed with privileges and wealth and those not so
endowed ever wider and wider. It would have been very difficult a
hundred years ago to deny the truth of this way of stating the case. If
it has to some extent already ceased to be entirely true, and if violent
popular forces are at work making it less and less true, we owe the
origin of the change, among other causes and influences, not least to
the influence of Rousseau himself, and those whom he inspired. It was
that influence which, though it certainly did not produce, yet did as
certainly give a deep and remarkable bias, first to the American
Revolution, and a dozen years afterwards to the French Revolution.

It would be interesting to trace the different fortunes which awaited
the idea of the equality of man in America and in France. In America it
has always remained strictly within the political order, and perhaps
with the considerable exception of the possibles share it may have had,
along with Christian notions of the brotherhood of man, and
statesmanlike notions of national prosperity, in leading to the
abolition of slavery, it has brought forth no strong moral sentiment
against the ethical and economic bases of any part of the social order.
In France, on the other hand, it was the starting-point of movements
that have had all the fervour and intensity of religions, and have made
men feel about social inequalities the burning shame and wrath with