uld have a vote, but that if one man has a vote and
another has not, there should be some adequate reason for the
difference. It does not prove that every man should work eight hours a
day and have a shilling an hour; but that differences of hours or of
pay and, equally, uniformity of hours and pay, should have some
sufficient justification. This is a deeper principle, which in some
cases justifies and in others does not justify the rule of equality.
The rule of equality follows from it under certain conditions, and has
gained credit because, in point of fact, those conditions have often
been satisfied.

The revolutionary demand for equality was, historically speaking, a
protest against arbitrary inequality. It was a protest against the
existence of privileges accompanied by no duties. When the rich man
could only answer the question, "What have you done to justify your
position?" by the famous phrase of Beaumarchais, "I took the trouble to
be born," he was obviously in a false position. The demand for a
society founded upon reason, in this sense that a sufficient reason
should be given for all differences, was, it seems to me, perfectly
right; and, moreover, was enough to condemn the then established
system. But when this demand has been so constructed as to twist a
logical rule, applicable to all scientific reasoning, into a dogmatic
assertion that certain concrete beings were in fact equal, and to infer
that they should have equal rights, it ceased to be logical at all, and
has been a fruitful parent of many fallacies. Reasonable beings require
a sufficient reason for all differences of conduct, for the difference
between their treatment of a man and a monkey or a white man and a
black, as well as for differences between treatment of rich and poor or
wise men and fools; and there must, as the same principle implies, be
also a sufficient reason for treating all members of a given class
equally. We have to consider whether, for any given purpose, the
differences between human beings and animals, Englishmen and negroes,
men and women, are or are not of importance for our purpose. When the
differences are irrelevant we neglect them or admit the claim to
equality of treatment. But the question as to relevance is not to be
taken for granted either way. It would be a very convenient but a very
unjustifiable assumption in many cases, as it might save an astronomer
trouble if he assumed that every star was equal to every othe