r star.

The application of this is, I think, obvious. The _a priori_
assumption of the equality of men is, in some sense, easily refuted.
But the refutation does not entitle us to assume that arbitrary
inequality, inequality for which no adequate ground can be assigned, is
therefore justifiable. It merely shows that the problem is more complex
than has been assumed at first sight. "All men ought to be equal." If
you mean equal in natural capacity or character, it is enough to say
that what is impossible cannot be. If you propose that the industrious
and idle, the good and bad, the wise and foolish, should share equally
in social advantages, the reply is equally obvious, that such a scheme,
if possible, would be injurious to the qualities on which human welfare
depends. If you say that men should be rewarded solely according to
their intrinsic merits, we must ask, do you mean to abstract from the
adventitious advantages of education, social surroundings, and so
forth, or to take men as they actually are, whatever the circumstances
to which their development is owing? To ask what a man would have been
had he been in a different position from his youth, is to ask for an
impossible solution, and one, moreover, of no practical bearing. I
shall not employ a drunkard if I am in want of a butler, whether he has
become a drunkard under overpowering temptation or become a drunkard
from inherited dipsomania. But if, on the other hand, I take the man
for what he is, without asking how he has come to be what he is, I
leave the source at least of all the vast inequalities of which we
complain. The difficulty, which I will not try to develop further,
underlies, as I think, the really vital difference of method by which
different schools attempt to answer the appeal for social justice.

The school of so-called individualists finds, in fact, that equality in
their sense is incompatible with the varied differences due to the
complete growth of the social structure. They look upon men simply as
so many independent units of varying qualities, no doubt, but still
capable of being considered for political and social purposes as equal.
They ask virtually what justice would demand if we had before us a
crowd of independent applicants for the good things of the world, and
the simplest answer is to distribute the good things equally. If it is
replied that the idle and the industrious should not be upon the same
footing, they are ready to agree