FACULTIES OF THE FIRST ORDER 331 



Europe to new countries like America, and consider Book iv 

 the leaders of economic production there, we shall 

 find that the histories of these men have been similar. 

 Nor, indeed, in this fact is there anything to be 

 wondered at. In the sphere of industry, just as in 

 the sphere of art, the greatest men will never be 

 suppressed. They are always sure to assert them- 

 selves, and the struggle with adverse circumstances 

 will, instead of crushing, strengthen them. 



It may therefore be safely said that no equalisation 

 of opportunity which goes beyond the abolition of arbi- 

 trary and unequal impediments would tend to increase 

 the number of those exceptional men whose produc- and w m secure 

 tive faculties are really of the first order. And this 

 inference is supported by a large number of analogies 

 drawn from domains of activity other than economic. that exists - 

 Any workman's boy, for example, who has any 

 taste for books has now in England, before he is 

 fifteen, more educational opportunities than Shake- 

 speare had in all his lifetime. But the number of 

 Shakespeares has not appreciably increased. Again, 

 popular education has given to the whole French 

 army advantages confined to a few at the time of 

 Napoleon's boyhood. Every private carries the 

 marshal's baton in his knapsack. And yet demo- 

 cratic France, with all its equalisation of opportunity, 

 has not produced a series of new Napoleons. On 

 the contrary, the mountain, after years and genera- 

 tions of labour, does nothing at last but give birth 

 to a Boulanger. 



Though faculties of the first order, however, are 



