ties of
suffering, it has been said, arise from inequalities of social
conditions. Intelligence, morality, will, in fact all human faculties,
develop more or less according to their environment; men are born
equal; they become unequal as the result of different environment; pay
the same care and attention to all and they will remain equal, and if
they are equal, the theory seems to imply, evil will disappear from
the face of the earth.

This is not so.

Inequality of suffering does not result from inequality of condition.
Many a poor tiller of the fields enjoys a degree of peace and
happiness that those favoured by birth or fortune would envy. Disease
visits poor and rich alike; moral suffering is more especially the
appanage of the so-called higher classes, and if obscurity and poverty
render certain troubles specially severe, wealth and rank play the
same _role_ in afflictions of another kind; there is a dark side to
every picture. More than this, inequality of condition is one of the
fundamental factors of social equilibrium; without it, many urgent and
even indispensable functions would be neglected, numerous general
needs would remain unsatisfied; so-called menial work, which, in a
state of society that is still imperfect and consequently selfish, is
performed only in the hope of remuneration, would never be done at
all; every man would have to provide for the whole of his necessities;
no one could find time for self-improvement or for flinging himself
entirely into those divers branches of activity which, if personal
interest were absent, would make life infinitely better and progress
extremely rapid. The partisans of this theory rely on diversity of
tastes to fill the diversity of functions that are necessary in social
life: another illusion. The inferior, painful, or difficult tasks will
never find sufficient workers, whilst easy or honourable posts will
always be overcrowded. To believe the contrary would be to shut one's
eyes to the present imperfection of men; it would mean the belief that
they were noble and lofty beings, eager for self-sacrifice, demanding
only to work for the happiness of all, without a single thought of
their personal preferences; it would mean seeing, in present-day
humanity, that of the future in which each individual has attained to
such a degree of perfection that not a single idle, ill-disposed, or
stupid person is to be found amongst them, for each one would regard
himself as the