VARIOUS KINDS OF INEQ UALITY 1 19 



unequal than the gifts of different singers? In Book n 

 every school and university we see multitudes of 

 young men and boys whose opportunities of learn- in the schoiar- 

 ing are not only similar but identical, but ofthe P same y 

 whom, in respect to assimilating what they are sc 

 taught, not one in ten rises appreciably above a 

 certain level, and not one in a hundred rises above 

 it signally. We have Virgil at one end of the 

 scale, and Bavius and Maevius at the other ; at one 

 end Patti, and the other the vocalist of the street ; at 

 one end a Scaliger and a Newton, and at the other 

 the idler and the dunce, who can hardly conjugate 

 TUTTTW or stumble across the Asses' Bridge. And in 

 practical life the same phenomenon repeats itself. 

 Let us take any department of social activity or pro- 

 duction, on the results of which the welfare of society 

 at any given time depends. Let us take, for instance, and similarly 



, , r . . . in practical 



the work 01 government, or invention, or commercial Hf e . 

 enterprise. In each of these we shall find a large 

 number of men, each doing what is in him to 

 subserve some particular end ; and we shall find a 

 few producing results which are great both for 

 themselves and others, and the many producing 

 results which are uniform in their individual 

 pettiness. 



It is perfectly true that in these great depart- 

 ments of practical life there may not be so 

 obvious or so widely extended an equality of 

 opportunity as that which prevails amongst poets, 

 or amongst scholars in the same seminary, but in 

 each department there will be a large number, at all 



