them to
a concrete world; and when we apply our abstract doctrine of opportunity
to the complex facts of society and human nature, a principle so simple
in theory will undergo as many modifications as a film of level water
will if we spill it over an uneven surface.

The first fact which will confront us, when we come down from theory to
facts, is one which could not be more forcibly emphasised than it has
been by a socialistic writer,[25] whose utterances were quoted in one of
our previous chapters. This is the fact that, in respect of their powers
of production, just as of most others, human beings are in the highest
degree unequal. They are unequal in intellect and imagination. More
especially they are unequal in energy, alertness, executive capacity,
initiative and in what we may describe generally as practical driving
force. Such being the case, then, if it could actually be brought about
that every individual at a given period of his life should start with
economic opportunities identical with those of his contemporaries, each
generation would be like horses chosen at haphazard, and started at the
same instant to struggle over the same course in the direction of a
common winning-post. And what would be the result? A few individuals
would be out of sight in a moment; the mass at various distances would
be struggling far behind them, and a large residuum would have been
blown before it had advanced a furlong. Thus, by making men's
adventitious opportunities equal, we should no more equalise the result
for the sake of which the opportunities were demanded than we should
give every cab-horse in London a chance of winning the Derby by allowing
it on Derby Day to go plodding over the course at Epsom. On the
contrary, by inducing all to contemplate the same kind of success, we
should be multiplying the sense of failure and dooming the majority to a
gratuitous discontent with positions in which they might have taken a
pride had they not learned to look beyond them.

And now, from this fact, to which we shall come back presently, let us
turn to the question of how, and in what respects, equality of
opportunity is in practical life attainable.

The most obvious manner in which an approach to such equality can be
made is by an equalisation of opportunities for education in early life,
or, in other words, by a similar course of schooling, a similar access
to books, and similar leisure for studying them. But even here, at th