es and wishes no more than the moon did. It is
precisely in this manner that much of the education of to-day operates
in consequence of current attempts to equalise it[30]; and since
education is the cause of the evils here in question, it is in some
reform of education that we must hope to find a cure. What the general
nature of this reform would be can be indicated in a few words. It would
not involve a reversal, it would involve a modification only, of the
principle now in vogue, and can, indeed, best be expressed by means of
the same formula, if we do but add to it a single qualifying word--that
is to say, the word "relative" prefixed to the word "equality," when we
speak of equality of opportunity as the end at which we ought to aim.
Let me explain my meaning.

The logical end of all action is happiness; and happiness, so far as it
depends on economic conditions at all, is an equation between desire and
attainment. The capacities of men being unequal, and the objects of
desire which they could, under the most favourable circumstances, make
their own, being unequal likewise, the ideal object of education, as a
means to happiness, is twofold. It is, on the one hand, so to develop
each man's congenital faculties as to raise them to their maximum power
of providing him with what he desires; and on the other hand to limit
his desires, by a due regulation of his expectations, to such objects
as his faculties, when thus developed, render approximately if not
completely attainable. Thus, relatively to the individual, the ideal
object of education is in all cases the same; but since individuals are
not equal to one another, education, if it is to perform an equal
service for each, must be in its absolute character to an indefinite
extent various; just as a tailor, if he is to give to all his customers
equal opportunities of being well dressed, will not offer them coats of
the same size and pattern. He will offer them coats which are equal only
in this--namely, their equally successful adaptation to the figures of
their respective wearers.

Of course, so to graduate any actual course of education that in the
case of each individual it is the best which it is possible to conceive
for him--that it should at once enable him to make the most of his
powers, and "regulate," as Ruskin says, "his imagination and his hopes"
in accordance with them, would require a clairvoyance and prevision not
given to man; but the end here specifi