4 8. ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTWN 



Book i entering on a conflict with the instincts of human 

 nature, and interfering with the springs of all human 

 action ? 



social inequaii- Now that external circumstances of a kind, easily 

 due teTS2li. alterable by legislation, have been, and often are, 

 stances; responsible for many social inequalities, is a fact 

 which we may here assume without particularly dis- 

 cussing it. The inquiry, therefore, narrows itself 

 still further, and resolves itself into this : Do the 

 congenital superiorities or inferiorities of the persons, 

 or of parents of the persons, who at any given time 

 are occupying in the social aggregate superior and 

 inferior positions, play any part in the production of 

 these social inequalities at all ? 



This question must plainly be the practical 

 sociologist's starting-point ; for if social inequalities 

 are due wholly to alterable and artificial circum- 

 stances, social conditions are capable, theoretically, 

 at all events, of being equalised ; but if, on the 

 other hand, inferior and superior positions are partly, 

 at all events, the result of the congenital inequalities 

 of individuals, over which no legislation can exercise 

 the least control, then a natural limit is set to the 

 possibilities of the levelling process ; and it is the 

 business of the sociologist, if he aspires to be a 

 but most practical guide, to begin with ascertaining what 

 people win these limits are. Are, then, the congenital in- 



admit that con- 

 genital in- equalities of men a factor in the production of social 



equalities in . ^ . 



talent have inequalities, or are they not r 



much to do T 1 MI i 



with them. Now to many people it will seem that even to 



ask this question is superfluous. They will regard 



