One set of conditions essential to this result has been described already—those, that is to say, by which the possession of wealth is secured to the producers of it, and the persons to whom they leave it. But to these must be added another set of an entirely distinct character—that is to say, the conditions which, the motive to exertion being given, shall render exertion of the kind required possible for the largest number who happen to be theoretically capable of it. Now modern democratic thinkers have supplied the world with a formula by which, in their judgment, these conditions are sufficiently indicated. This formula is “equality of opportunity,” and we cannot begin our consideration of the question better than by taking this as a {328} starting-point, and asking what truth is contained in it. We may at once admit, then, that if it is taken in an abstract sense, it sums up a truth which is, beyond doubt, indisputable; for if each individual having exceptional potentialities as a wealth-producer, which require nothing but the favour of circumstances to ensure their being turned into actualities, could be provided with circumstances so nicely adapted to his idiosyncrasies that these potentialities might be developed to the utmost extent possible, the productive powers of the community, it is almost needless to observe, would be raised in that case to their utmost possible efficiency. Such an ideal condition of things as this, however, is impossible for the following, if for no other, reason. Successful parents as a rule will employ part of their wealth—at all events they will employ the positions which they have won by their own ability—to provide opportunities of a special kind for their sons; therefore, whatever the State might do for its youths and young men in general, exceptional parents for their sons would be able to do something more. Equality of opportunity, therefore, represents an ideal condition which we never can reach, but to which we can only approximate; and the only practical questions for us are accordingly these: how far towards this ideal can political action carry us, and what results are to be anticipated from our nearest possible approach to it?
Now the answer to both these questions will very largely depend on the existing conditions of the {329} community with reference to which they are asked. For though men’s powers of equalising opportunities are limited, their powers of making them unequal may be said to be indefinitely great; and the more unequal they have been made at the time when we ask our questions, the greater will the progress be which there will be room for us to make towards equalising them, and the greater will be the social advantages which we may hope to secure by making it. In France, for example, before the first Revolution, the laws affecting industry had almost ruined the nation, not because by unduly favouring one class they led to wealth being concentrated, but because by unduly hampering other classes they prevented its being produced; and the sweeping away by the Revolution of the old feudal inequalities, though it had none of the millennial effects which the Revolutionists themselves hoped for, has had others equally striking, though of a very different kind. It has not made men equal in point of wealth, but it has increased to an astonishing extent the wealth of all classes alike. And the way in which it has done this has been by removing artificial impediments to the development and free exercise of exceptional productive talent; or in other words, by an equalisation of economic opportunities.
But the kind of equality that has thus been reached may be described as being of a negative rather than a positive kind. It depends on the absence of artificial impediments to production, rather than on the supply of any artificial helps to {330} it; which means that it depends on the absence of everything that might obstruct the strong, rather than on measures or institutions that should artificially lend strength to the weak. Now, so far as industrial ability of the highest kind is concerned, it is probable that this negative condition of things, which is merely the complete embodiment of a policy of laisser-faire, represents the utmost that, in any civilised country, can be done by the process of equalisation with any beneficial result. For in wealth-production the men whose capacities are really of the first order will, when not positively impeded, make their own opportunities for themselves; and the genius who is born with every opportunity waiting for him has but a few years’ start of the genius who is born with none. That such is the case is abundantly illustrated by history. If we consider the most famous of the men whose originality of mind and extraordinary spirit of enterprise have been chief amongst the forces which have enriched the civilised world, we shall find that those whose names most readily occur to us have had no opportunities save such as their own genius made for them. Arkwright, Cartwright, Watt, Stephenson, the intrepid and enduring adventurers who, in the teeth of prolonged opposition, laid the foundations of the modern manufacture of iron; Columbus, who gave to Europe a new hemisphere—all these have been men born amongst social circumstances which conspired to deny them rather than to provide them with opportunities. And if we turn from {331} Europe to new countries like America, and consider the leaders of economic production there, we shall find that the histories of these men have been similar. Nor, indeed, in this fact is there anything to be wondered at. In the sphere of industry, just as in the sphere of art, the greatest men will never be suppressed. They are always sure to assert themselves, and the struggle with adverse circumstances will, instead of crushing, strengthen them.
It may therefore be safely said that no equalisation of opportunity which goes beyond the abolition of arbitrary and unequal impediments would tend to increase the number of those exceptional men whose productive faculties are really of the first order. And this inference is supported by a large number of analogies drawn from domains of activity other than economic. Any workman’s boy, for example, who has any taste for books has now in England, before he is fifteen, more educational opportunities than Shakespeare had in all his lifetime. But the number of Shakespeares has not appreciably increased. Again, popular education has given to the whole French army advantages confined to a few at the time of Napoleon’s boyhood. Every private carries the marshal’s bâton in his knapsack. And yet democratic France, with all its equalisation of opportunity, has not produced a series of new Napoleons. On the contrary, the mountain, after years and generations of labour, does nothing at last but give birth to a Boulanger.
Though faculties of the first order, however, are {332} independent of artificial assistance, many of an inferior, but still of an exceptional kind, are not; and it cannot be doubted that the supply of these last will depend very largely on the degree to which facilities for self-development are given by the State to those who desire to take advantage of them. Thus, though the spread of education in this country has not increased the number of Shakespeares, it has enormously increased the number of those who can write good English. And no doubt in the domain of wealth-production it has had an analogous effect. This effect, however, though real, has been enormously exaggerated; and it has been exaggerated for a particular reason. Social reformers have confused two things together. They have confused talents which are exceptional in their very nature, with accomplishments which are exceptional only because they are not universally taught. Thus reading and writing, for instance, were rare accomplishments once. Of all accomplishments they are the most universal now; and there is not the least doubt that there are very many others which, with equal opportunities, might be acquired by almost anybody, but which yet, as a matter of fact, are still confined to a minority. In this fact that education may increase the accomplishments of a community, social reformers have fancied that they discovered an indication of the extent to which education could elicit exceptional talent. But to call into practical activity by means of external help exceptional faculties, of which the supply is necessarily limited, is a very {333} different process from evoking by similar means faculties which are potential in everybody, and the supply of which can be increased indefinitely; and it is a process, moreover, which produces very different results. Let us consider how this is.
For productive faculties of the highest order, which not only minister to progress, but initiate it, and which make, as if by a conjuring trick, the hands of the average labourer produce new commodities of which he never would have dreamed himself—for faculties such as these, the demand is always unlimited. There are productive faculties also, exceptional although they are inferior, the demand for which is usually greater than the supply. But with regard to those faculties or accomplishments which are only exceptional accidentally, and which might be, like reading, conceivably made universal, the case is precisely opposite, and it is so for two reasons. In the first place, these accomplishments, which anybody might conceivably acquire—knowledge of French, for instance, or of book-keeping—though they may minister to the business of wealth-production, yet have no tendency in themselves to make the business grow. The number of persons, then, possessing these accomplishments who at any given time can put them to a productive use is limited by the condition in which production at that time is. Thus the number of clerks which a mercantile firm can employ is limited by the business which the firm happens to be doing; and though this business might be enlarged by the enterprise of one new {334} partner, it would not be enlarged, when there were no letters to copy, by the accession of ten young men who could copy letters beautifully. In the second place, even at times when the national business is growing, and the demand for these accomplishments is for the moment greater than the supply, any attempt by the State to make their development general would produce a supply indefinitely greater than the demand. Thus to multiply the number of labourers’ sons possessing accomplishments that would fit them for the work of clerks would not be to increase the number of young men who would wear black coats, and sit on stools in offices, instead of working in factories, or laying bricks, or ploughing. Instead of raising the position of the plough-boy to the same level as the clerk’s, it would lower the clerk’s salary to the level of the plough-boy’s wages; and clerk and plough-boy would be alike sufferers by the process.
The beneficial effects, then, to be looked for from an equalisation of opportunity have been exaggerated by democratic thinkers because they have failed to perceive those facts. They have confounded the development of accomplishments which might conceivably be acquired by all with the development of faculties which, even potentially, are possessed by a few only. They see that education can increase the number of possible clerks, and they have therefore imagined that it can, with similar ease and certainty, increase the number of efficient men of genius. It must, however, be distinctly stated that {335} the error in their conclusion is one of exaggeration only. There is much exceptional talent which, though not of the highest order, will, when opportunity is given it, increase the wealth of the community, but which will, without the educational help of the State, be lost; and it may frankly be admitted that, within certain limits, the equalising of educational opportunity plays a very important part in supplying the community with exceptionally efficient citizens.
But the main difficulties involved in the artificial equalisation of opportunity are not concerned with the problem of how to produce good results by it. They are connected with the problem of how to avoid producing bad results. Let us consider what the possible bad results of it are.
In a general way they are indicated, or indirectly implied, in the saying so dear to the sterner and more thoughtless of the Conservatives—that popular education does nothing but promote discontent. Sweeping statements of this kind, however, though they may have an element of truth in them, are valueless till they have been carefully qualified; for what we have to ask about them is not whether they are true, but how far they are true, and in what precise senses. Thus, though it is true that the danger of diffusing education lies in the discontent that may thereby be promoted, some kinds of discontent are not dangerous—they are beneficial; therefore the danger of diffusing education lies in its tendency to promote not discontent generally, but {336} discontent of certain special kinds; and it is necessary to discriminate carefully what these kinds are.
Now the kind of discontent which Conservatives generally have in view, when they denounce education because they think it tends to promote it, is by no means that from which danger really arises. What they generally have in view is a discontent with his circumstances which they think education will produce in the average working man. In reality, however, the primary danger of education is not to be looked for in its effects upon average men at all. It is to be looked for in its effects upon men who are distinctly exceptional.