VII ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN 307 



words became burdened in their use by genera- 

 tion after generation ? Has it been free to choose 

 the habits enforced by precept and more surely 

 driven home by example ? Has it been free to 

 invent its own standard of right and wrong ? Or 

 rather, has it not been as much held in bondage 

 by its surroundings and driven hither and thither 

 by the scourge of opinion, as a veritable slave, 

 although the fetters and the whip may be in- 

 visible and intangible ? 



Surely, Aristotle was much nearer the truth in 

 this matter than Hobbes or Rousseau. And if 

 the predicate "born slave" would more nearly 

 agree with fact than " born free," what is to be 

 said about " born equal " ? Rousseau, like the 

 sentimental rhetorician that he was, and half, or 

 more than half, sham, as all sentimental rhetori- 

 cians are, sagaciously fought shy, as we have seen, 

 of the question of the influence of natural upon 

 political equality. But those of us who do not 

 care for sentiment and do care for truth may not 

 evade the consideration of that which is really the 

 key of the position. If Rousseau, instead of 

 letting his children go to the enfants trouvds, had 

 taken the trouble to discharge a father's duties 

 towards them, he would hardly have talked so 

 fast about men being born equal, even in a poli- 

 tical sense. For, if that merely means that all 

 new-born children are political zeros it is, as we 

 have seen, though true enough, nothing to the 



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