EQUALITY. 



481 



EQUALITY. 1 



By MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



THERE is a maxim which we all know, which 

 occurs in our copy-books, which occurs in 

 that solemn and beautiful formulary against which 

 the Nonconformist genius is just now so angrily 

 chafing — the burial-service. The maxim is this : 

 " Evil communications corrupt good manners." 

 It is taken from one of the chapters of the Epis- 

 tles to the Corinthians ; but originally it is a line 

 of poetry, of Greek poetry. Quid Athenis et 

 Hierosolymis ? asks a Father ; what have Athens 

 and Jerusalem to do with one another? Well, 

 at any rate, the Jerusalemite Paul, exhorting his 

 converts, enforces what he is saying by a verse 

 of Athenian comedy, a verse, probably, from the 

 great master of that comedy, a man unsurpassed 

 for fine and just observation of human life, Menan- 

 der. QQtipovffiv tfdri xP^ ff ^ ofii\lai naKai — " Evil 

 communications corrupt good manners." 



In that collection of single, sententious lines, 

 printed at the end of Menander's fragments, 

 where we now find the maxim quoted by St. 

 Paul, there is another striking maxim, not alien 

 certainly to the language of the Christian reli- 

 gion, but which has not passed into our copy- 

 books : " Choose equality and flee greed." The 

 same profound observer, who laid down the max- 

 im so universally accepted by us that it has be- 

 come commonplace, the maxim that evil com- 

 munications corrupt good manners, laid down 

 too, as a no less sure result of the accurate study 

 of human life, this other maxim also : " Choose 

 equality and flee greed " — 'Io-oV^ra S'alpov Kal 

 irXtove^iav (pvye. 



PleonerAa, or greed, the wishing and trying 

 for the bigger share, we know under the name of 

 covetousness. We understand by covetousness 

 something different from what pleonexia really 

 means: we understand by it the longing for other 

 people's goods ; and covetousness, so understood, 

 it is a commonplace of morals and of religion 

 with us that we should shun. As to the duty 

 of pursuing equality, there is no such consent 

 among us. Indeed, the consent is the other way, 

 the consent is against equality. Equality before 

 the law we all take as a matter of course ; that 

 is not the equality which we mean when we talk 

 of equality. When we talk of equality we un- 

 derstand social equality ; and for equality in this 

 1 Address delivered at the Royal Institution. 



67 



Frenchified sense of the term almost everybody 

 in England has a hard word. About four years 

 ago Lord Beaconsfield held it up to reprobation 

 in a speech to the students at Glasgow — a speech 

 so interesting, that being asked soon afterward 

 to hold a discourse at Glasgow, I said that if one 

 spoke there at all at that time, it would be impos- 

 sible to speak on any other subject than equal- 

 ity. However, it is a great way to Glasgow, 

 and I never yet have been able to go and speak 

 there. But the testimonies against equality have 

 been steadily accumulating from the date of 

 Lord Beaconsfield's Glasgow speech down to the 

 present hour, when Sir Eiskine May winds up 

 his- new and important "History of Democracy" 

 by saying : " France has aimed at social equal- 

 ity. The fearful troubles through which she has 

 passed have checked her prosperity, demoralized 

 her society, and arrested the intellectual growth 

 of her people." Mr. Froude is more his own 

 master than I am, and he has been able to go to 

 Edinburgh and to speak there upon equality. 

 Mr. Froude told his hearers that equality splits a 

 nation into "' a multitude of disconnected units," 

 that "the masses require leaders whom they can 

 trust," and that " the natural leaders in a healthy 

 country are the gentry." And only just before 

 " The History of Democracy " came out, we had 

 that exciting passage of arms between Mr. Lowe 

 and Mr. Gladstone, where equality, poor thing, 

 received blows from them both. Mr. Lowe de- 

 clared that " no concession should be made to 

 the cry for equality, unless it appears that the 

 state is menaced with more danger by its refusal 

 than by its admission. No such case exists now 

 or ever has existed in this country." And Mr. 

 Gladstone replied that equality was so utterly 

 unattractive to the people of this country, ine- 

 quality was so dear to their hearts, that to talk 

 of concessions being made to the cry for equality 

 was absurd. " There is no broad political idea," 

 says Mr. Gladstone, quite truly, " which has en- 

 tered less into the formation of the political sys- 

 tem of this country than the love of equality.' 

 And he adds: "It is not the love of equality 

 which has carried into every corner of the coun- 

 try the distinct, undeniable popular preference, 

 wherever other things are equal, for a man who 

 is a lord over a man who is not. The love of 



