ORIGIN OF SOCIAL INEQUALITIES 47 



from them in external circumstances which have Book i 

 arisen naturally from differences in the congenital 

 faculties of others, and which, if they could be 

 equalised at all, could never be equalised with 

 anything like completeness such, for example, as 

 the possession by William and James and George 

 of leisured and intellectual homes secured for them 

 by gifted fathers, and the want of such homes and 

 fathers on the part of Tom and Dick and Harry. 



The first question, accordingly, which we have to Are inequalities 

 ask is as follows. Taking Tom or Dick or Harry loEabie U 

 as a type of those classes who happen to occupy an dent^di-cum- 

 inferior position in the aggregate, and comparing stances? 

 him with others who happen to occupy superior 

 positions, we have to ask how far he is condemned 

 to the inferior position which he resents by such 

 external circumstances as conceivably could be 

 equalised by legislation, and how far by some 

 congenital inferiority of his own, or circumstances 

 naturally arising out of the congenital inferiority 

 of others. Or we may put the question conversely, 

 and ask how William and George and James have 

 come to occupy the positions which Tom, Dick, 

 and Harry envy. Do they owe their positions 

 solely to unjust and arbitrary legislation, which a 

 genuinely democratic parliament could and would or are they 

 undo ? Or to exceptional abilities of their own, of 

 which no parliament could deprive them ? Or to 



1 * 



advantages secured for them by the exceptional can ever do 



i -I- r i r i away with? 



abilities of their fathers, which no parliament could 

 interfere with, or, at all events, could abolish, without 



con- 

 in- 

 ies 

 which no one 



