CHAPTER IIIEQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITYThe two great facts, then, that have been elucidated by our inquiry thus far, are these: in the first place, all progress and civilisation, and more especially all production of wealth, results from a complicated process in which, man for man, a minority plays a part incalculably greater than the majority; and consequently, in the second place, the minority, man for man, possesses wealth that is correspondingly greater than the wealth of the majority, likewise. In addition to these facts a third has been elucidated also, to which it in desirable that we should give renewed attention. Since great men not only produce wealth directly, but produce it indirectly by producing wealth which produces it, and which they are enabled to hand on to their children, the wealthy class is at any particular moment always more numerous than those members of it who are engaged actually in production. In Great Britain, for example, it has been estimated that two-thirds of the aggregate income that pays income tax is rent or interest on capital, and that one-third represents{325}the direct products of work. We may therefore here adopt the rough hypothesis that out of each generation of our wealthy class a third part is enriching itself by the process of direct production, and two-thirds are living on the products produced for them indirectly by the capital or the means of production which were created by their fathers and their grandfathers. Now such being the case, what we have to notice is as follows. Though the members of the wealthy class are not always changing, as they would be were no saving of capital, no interest, and no bequest allowed, they are still changing gradually from generation to generation, so that whilst the class, as a class, always possesses a nucleus of families with whom wealth and the traditions of wealth are hereditary, a number of individuals born in it are constantly disappearing over its borders, and a number of other individuals are constantly passing into it.††The most permanent form of hereditary wealth is land; but only a small minority of our existing landed families existed as landed families at the time of the last Heralds’ visitation. Thus, though the estates of this country are as old as the country itself, the actual possession of a large proportion of them by their owners, at any given time, represents their purchase by wealth recently created, and is, in fact, recent wealth converted into another form.And if there is a change like this in the possession of landed wealth, there is a still more rapid change in the possession of commercial capital. One of the many childish assumptions of Karl Marx was the assumption on which a good deal of his reasoning rests—that the English middle classes of the present century owed their capital and positions to social opportunities which had come to them as the heirs and descendants of the merchants and wealthier sheep-farmers who began to make fortunes four hundred years ago. As a matter of fact by far the larger part of the great commercial businesses and commercial fortunes now existing in this country have been founded during the past hundred, and many within the past fifty years, by men who were the sons of ordinary wage-paid labourers, and who were no more heirs to the men who formed the middle class under the Tudors than they were to the merchants who are celebrated in theArabian Nights. That such is the case is shown with sufficient clearness by the following figures, which refer to commercial incomes during the thirty years which followed the first Great Exhibition. During these years, whilst the population increased by about 30 per cent, fortunes of over ten thousand a year were multiplied by 100 per cent, fortunes of from five to ten thousand by 96 per cent, and fortunes of from five to six hundred by 308 per cent. It is obvious, then, that when a class is augmented in one generation by a number of new members from three to ten times as great as its natural increase would account for, most of its new members must have come to it from some class outside, and have gained their place in it solely by their own exertions.{326}Thus in spite of the permanence which interest gives to wealth, the families that live merely on interest are constantly tending to disappear, and their places are being taken by the men whose exceptional faculties, whose business ability, whose enterprise and strenuous will, actually contribute most to the productive forces of the country. It was observed by J. S. Mill with regard to political government that this “is always in,or is passing into, the hands” of the men who are at the time the true repositories of power. In the same way the wealth of any progressive country is always in, or is passing into, the hands of the men who by their own abilities are engaged actively in producing it.{327}Such being the case, then, the material civilisation of a country—the wealth of the few or the progressive comfort of the many—depends on the extent to which its potentially great wealth-producers, as they come into the world, generation after generation, are induced by circumstances to develop their exceptional talents, and devote them to the maintenance and improvement of the productive process. For those, therefore, who regard the material welfare of a community as the test and basis of its welfare in all other ways, the abiding social problem is always this: how to adjust circumstances in such a way that the smallest possible number of these potentially great wealth-producers may be wasted, and the largest possible number may be induced to exert themselves to the utmost.One set of conditions essential to this result has been described already—those, that is to say, by which the possession of wealth is secured to the producers of it, and the persons to whom they leave it. But to these must be added another set of an entirely distinct character—that is to say, the conditions which, the motive to exertion being given, shall render exertion of the kind required possible for the largest number who happen to be theoretically capable of it. Now modern democratic thinkers have supplied the world with a formula by which, in their judgment, these conditions are sufficiently indicated. This formula is “equality of opportunity,” and we cannot begin our consideration of the question better than by taking this as a{328}starting-point, and asking what truth is contained in it. We may at once admit, then, that if it is taken in an abstract sense, it sums up a truth which is, beyond doubt, indisputable; for if each individual having exceptional potentialities as a wealth-producer, which require nothing but the favour of circumstances to ensure their being turned into actualities, could be provided with circumstances so nicely adapted to his idiosyncrasies that these potentialities might be developed to the utmost extent possible, the productive powers of the community, it is almost needless to observe, would be raised in that case to their utmost possible efficiency. Such an ideal condition of things as this, however, is impossible for the following, if for no other, reason. Successful parents as a rule will employ part of their wealth—at all events they will employ the positions which they have won by their own ability—to provide opportunities of a special kind for their sons; therefore, whatever the State might do for its youths and young men in general, exceptional parents for their sons would be able to do something more. Equality of opportunity, therefore, represents an ideal condition which we never can reach, but to which we can only approximate; and the only practical questions for us are accordingly these: how far towards this ideal can political action carry us, and what results are to be anticipated from our nearest possible approach to it?Now the answer to both these questions will very largely depend on the existing conditions of the{329}community with reference to which they are asked. For though men’s powers of equalising opportunities are limited, their powers of making them unequal may be said to be indefinitely great; and the more unequal they have been made at the time when we ask our questions, the greater will the progress be which there will be room for us to make towards equalising them, and the greater will be the social advantages which we may hope to secure by making it. In France, for example, before the first Revolution, the laws affecting industry had almost ruined the nation, not because by unduly favouring one class they led to wealth being concentrated, but because by unduly hampering other classes they prevented its being produced; and the sweeping away by the Revolution of the old feudal inequalities, though it had none of the millennial effects which the Revolutionists themselves hoped for, has had others equally striking, though of a very different kind. It has not made men equal in point of wealth, but it has increased to an astonishing extent the wealth of all classes alike. And the way in which it has done this has been by removing artificial impediments to the development and free exercise of exceptional productive talent; or in other words, by an equalisation of economic opportunities.But the kind of equality that has thus been reached may be described as being of a negative rather than a positive kind. It depends on the absence of artificial impediments to production, rather than on the supply of any artificial helps to{330}it; which means that it depends on the absence of everything that might obstruct the strong, rather than on measures or institutions that should artificially lend strength to the weak. Now, so far as industrial ability of the highest kind is concerned, it is probable that this negative condition of things, which is merely the complete embodiment of a policy oflaisser-faire, represents the utmost that, in any civilised country, can be done by the process of equalisation with any beneficial result. For in wealth-production the men whose capacities are really of the first order will, when not positively impeded, make their own opportunities for themselves; and the genius who is born with every opportunity waiting for him has but a few years’ start of the genius who is born with none. That such is the case is abundantly illustrated by history. If we consider the most famous of the men whose originality of mind and extraordinary spirit of enterprise have been chief amongst the forces which have enriched the civilised world, we shall find that those whose names most readily occur to us have had no opportunities save such as their own genius made for them. Arkwright, Cartwright, Watt, Stephenson, the intrepid and enduring adventurers who, in the teeth of prolonged opposition, laid the foundations of the modern manufacture of iron; Columbus, who gave to Europe a new hemisphere—all these have been men born amongst social circumstances which conspired to deny them rather than to provide them with opportunities. And if we turn from{331}Europe to new countries like America, and consider 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 themselves, 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 arbitrary and unequal impediments would tend to increase the number of those exceptional men whose productive 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. Any workman’s boy, for example, who has any taste for books has now in England, before he is fifteen, more educational opportunities than Shakespeare 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’sbâtonin his knapsack. And yet democratic France, with all its equalisation of opportunity, has not produced a series of new Napoleons. On the contrary, the mountain, after years and generations of labour, does nothing at last but give birth to a Boulanger.Though faculties of the first order, however, are{332}independent of artificial assistance, many of an inferior, but still of an exceptional kind, are not; and it cannot be doubted that the supply of these last will depend very largely on the degree to which facilities for self-development are given by the State to those who desire to take advantage of them. Thus, though the spread of education in this country has not increased the number of Shakespeares, it has enormously increased the number of those who can write good English. And no doubt in the domain of wealth-production it has had an analogous effect. This effect, however, though real, has been enormously exaggerated; and it has been exaggerated for a particular reason. Social reformers have confused two things together. They have confused talents which are exceptional in their very nature, with accomplishments which are exceptional only because they are not universally taught. Thus reading and writing, for instance, were rare accomplishments once. Of all accomplishments they are the most universal now; and there is not the least doubt that there are very many others which, with equal opportunities, might be acquired by almost anybody, but which yet, as a matter of fact, are still confined to a minority. In this fact that education may increase the accomplishments of a community, social reformers have fancied that they discovered an indication of the extent to which education could elicit exceptional talent. But to call into practical activity by means of external help exceptional faculties, of which the supply is necessarily limited, is a very{333}different process from evoking by similar means faculties which are potential in everybody, and the supply of which can be increased indefinitely; and it is a process, moreover, which produces very different results. Let us consider how this is.For productive faculties of the highest order, which not only minister to progress, but initiate it, and which make, as if by a conjuring trick, the hands of the average labourer produce new commodities of which he never would have dreamed himself—for faculties such as these, the demand is always unlimited. There are productive faculties also, exceptional although they are inferior, the demand for which is usually greater than the supply. But with regard to those faculties or accomplishments which are only exceptional accidentally, and which might be, like reading, conceivably made universal, the case is precisely opposite, and it is so for two reasons. In the first place, these accomplishments, which anybody might conceivably acquire—knowledge of French, for instance, or of book-keeping—though they may minister to the business of wealth-production, yet have no tendency in themselves to make the business grow. The number of persons, then, possessing these accomplishments who at any given time can put them to a productive use is limited by the condition in which production at that time is. Thus the number of clerks which a mercantile firm can employ is limited by the business which the firm happens to be doing; and though this business might be enlarged by the enterprise of one new{334}partner, it would not be enlarged, when there were no letters to copy, by the accession of ten young men who could copy letters beautifully. In the second place, even at times when the national business is growing, and the demand for these accomplishments is for the moment greater than the supply, any attempt by the State to make their development general would produce a supply indefinitely greater than the demand. Thus to multiply the number of labourers’ sons possessing accomplishments that would fit them for the work of clerks would not be to increase the number of young men who would wear black coats, and sit on stools in offices, instead of working in factories, or laying bricks, or ploughing. Instead of raising the position of the plough-boy to the same level as the clerk’s, it would lower the clerk’s salary to the level of the plough-boy’s wages; and clerk and plough-boy would be alike sufferers by the process.The beneficial effects, then, to be looked for from an equalisation of opportunity have been exaggerated by democratic thinkers because they have failed to perceive those facts. They have confounded the development of accomplishments which might conceivably be acquired by all with the development of faculties which, even potentially, are possessed by a few only. They see that education can increase the number of possible clerks, and they have therefore imagined that it can, with similar ease and certainty, increase the number of efficient men of genius. It must, however, be distinctly stated that{335}the error in their conclusion is one of exaggeration only. There is much exceptional talent which, though not of the highest order, will, when opportunity is given it, increase the wealth of the community, but which will, without the educational help of the State, be lost; and it may frankly be admitted that, within certain limits, the equalising of educational opportunity plays a very important part in supplying the community with exceptionally efficient citizens.But the main difficulties involved in the artificial equalisation of opportunity are not concerned with the problem of how to produce good results by it. They are connected with the problem of how to avoid producing bad results. Let us consider what the possible bad results of it are.In a general way they are indicated, or indirectly implied, in the saying so dear to the sterner and more thoughtless of the Conservatives—that popular education does nothing but promote discontent. Sweeping statements of this kind, however, though they may have an element of truth in them, are valueless till they have been carefully qualified; for what we have to ask about them is not whether they are true, but how far they are true, and in what precise senses. Thus, though it is true that the danger of diffusing education lies in the discontent that may thereby be promoted, some kinds of discontent are not dangerous—they are beneficial; therefore the danger of diffusing education lies in its tendency to promote not discontent generally, but{336}discontent of certain special kinds; and it is necessary to discriminate carefully what these kinds are.Now the kind of discontent which Conservatives generally have in view, when they denounce education because they think it tends to promote it, is by no means that from which danger really arises. What they generally have in view is a discontent with his circumstances which they think education will produce in the average working man. In reality, however, the primary danger of education is not to be looked for in its effects upon average men at all. It is to be looked for in its effects upon men who are distinctly exceptional.In order to understand how this is, let the reader reflect once more on one of the main truths that have been insisted on in the present volume—namely, that though all progress is the work of great or exceptional men, all great or exceptional men do not promote progress equally, and some of them indeed do not promote it at all. Progress results from the victory of the fittest of these over the less fit in the struggle to gain dominion over the thoughts and actions of others. Let the reader reflect also on the analysis that was given of the various qualities which go to make up greatness—that is to say, the qualities by which dominion over others is obtained. It was pointed out that greatness is a highly composite thing; that it need not necessarily imply any moral, nor indeed any intellectual superiority; and as an illustration of this it was mentioned that many most{337}important political movements have been produced by men whose greatness consisted merely in ordinary sense joined to, and made efficient by, an extraordinary strength of will. It is necessary now to follow this line of observation farther, and to point out that if extraordinary strength of will can produce beneficial effects when allied with ordinary sense, it is equally capable of producing effects that are mischievous when allied with stupidity, or with that kind of imperfect intellect which is as quick in defending and popularising, as it is in being duped by fallacies. And with these latter qualities it is allied as often as with the former. It is a great mistake to suppose that even the most false and foolish opinions which have influenced multitudes to their own detriment have been originated and promulgated by men who were altogether weak and inferior. On the contrary, most of the follies which have disturbed or retarded civilisation have been due to the influence of men who, though morally or intellectually contemptible, have possessed a vigour of character far beyond what is ordinary.Now, if education has the effect attributed to it of liberating the will and developing the intellectual powers of men in whom the intellect is really acute and sound, there is an obvious danger of its having the same effect on men whose intellect is unbalanced and imperfect. To some of such intellects, no doubt, it may give clearness and equilibrium; but there are others for which it does nothing, except to increase their powers of reasoning wrongly; and when an{338}intellect of this kind is allied with a naturally strong will, the effect of education is to let loose a wild horse, merely in order that it may run away with a lunatic.It must be remembered that the strength of a man’s will, though depending as a potentiality on the character with which he happens to be born, depends as an actual force on his desire for certain objects or results, coupled with the belief that he can attain these by action. Now, when a man’s powers of action are capable of realising his desires—as when a man who desires to be wealthy has the talents that produce wealth, or when the man who desires to be Prime Minister has the talents of a great statesman—his career satisfies himself, and is presumably serviceable to his country. In many cases, however, desire is exceptionally great, and generates also a strong impulse to act, but the capacity for that kind of action by which the desired object might be obtained is small. Thus many men desire exceptional wealth, but find themselves incapable of the peculiar kind of action that produces it. Their will, accordingly, if it makes them act at all, is like a steam-engine which merely puts useless machinery into motion; or if it fails to make them act, as it very often does, it shakes them to pieces with a kind of intellectual retching. These unhappy persons owe the condition in which they find themselves mainly to an over-estimate of their own powers; and this over-estimate is generally the direct result of education, which, by making them{339}falsely imagine themselves capable of attaining wealth, actualises a fruitless desire for it, which might otherwise have remained latent. When education has this effect on a man it is an unmitigated evil for himself, and very frequently for others.Again, education, besides actualising exceptional desires which are wholly unaccompanied by any exceptional faculties that correspond to them, actualises desires accompanied by faculties which are really exceptional, and which produce results undoubtedly more than ordinary, but are nevertheless incapable of complete development. Many men, for instance, have gifts for music and poetry which, though genuine so far as they go, have yet some fatal defect in them, and will never produce, however devotedly they are exercised, any results possessing artistic value. Now the fact that progress is caused by a struggle between exceptional men, of course implies that some of them shall be less efficient than the others. It is by struggling with the less efficient that the superiority of the most efficient is realised; and in order that it may be found who the most efficient are, the inferior as well as the superior must put their capacities to the test. It is therefore unavoidably one object of education to stimulate the activity of some exceptional men whose own efforts are foredoomed to ultimate failure. Failures, however, differ in degree and kind. Some men fail because they can accomplish nothing of what they attempt, like the dreamers who have wasted their{340}lives in trying to make perpetual motions. Some fail because, though they accomplish something, others accomplish more; and the production of what is the best makes the second best valueless. Thus nine inventors might produce nine motor-cars, each of which worked well enough to command a considerable sale; but if a tenth inventor was to produce another which was faster, simpler, more durable, and cheaper than any of these, all the rest would drop out of use altogether, and be practically as valueless as the mad aggregation of wheels by which the seeker for the perpetual motion endeavoured to accomplish the impossible. Between the men who fail, however, because they succeed less than others, and the men who fail because they do not succeed at all, there is a great practical difference. The men who fail only because others succeed better than they do, contribute to the very success of the men by whom they are defeated; for they raise the standard of achievement which these men have to overpass. But the men who fail because they accomplish nothing waste their own lives without benefiting anybody. In the domain of economic production the truth of this is obvious. It is not less so in the domain of speculative thought. Scientific theories are constantly put forward which, though not true, are sufficiently near the truth to have some definite relation to it; and those who actually reach it find in errors of this kind an indispensable assistance. Nothing gives to truth so keen and clear an outline as the refuted errors of really powerful thinkers. But{341}there are errors, on the other hand, which, though it may be necessary to refute them because they have imposed themselves on a number of ignorant people, do nothing to advance the discovery of truth whatever, and the activity of those who originate them is altogether mischievous. Thus whilst the reasonings of heretical thinkers like Arius, by the controversy they provoked, were very largely instrumental in advancing orthodox theology to really logical completeness, the philosophy of religion owes absolutely nothing to Joanna Southcott or the American prophet Harris. Accordingly, whilst it is impossible to say with precision where the line is to be drawn between the exceptional talents which, if developed, would be of use in the progressive struggle and those which are so defective that their influences would be merely mischievous, it is obvious that talent of this latter kind is sufficiently plentiful to render its development dangerous.History teems with examples of this fact, and so do the unwritten annals of the social life around us. Henri Murger in his studies of Bohemian Paris bears eloquent witness to the tragic absurdity of the results caused by the development of imperfect artistic talent, and the miserable endings of men who, if they had not tried to be artists, might have lived and thriven as honest and healthyouvriers; whilst, according as we hold vaccination to be a blessing to the world or a curse, we must necessarily hold that it would have been far better for everybody if the talents of the men who invented it, or else{342}those of the men who now oppose it, had been killed by the frosts of ignorance, and never allowed to blossom.But the commonest examples of talent that is wholly mischievous are afforded by certain classes of politicians and social agitators. There is a large number of men whose potential activity is considerable, and whose intellect has a natural nimbleness which will enable them, when stimulated by education, to seize on plausible fallacies and impose them both on themselves and others. Politicians of this class are familiar figures enough. The social agitator, whose mental equipment is similar, is more familiar still. Many attempts have been made to give a scientific explanation of those constant attacks on the existing organisation of society which are common to all civilised countries, and go by the name of socialism. Socialism is said by some to be the protest of increasing poverty against increasing wealth; by some to be the natural voice of highly organised labour, which has come at last to be capable of self-government; and by some to be an embodiment of the esoteric philosophy of Hegel. In reality it is the embodiment of the results of indiscriminate education on talents which are exceptional, but at the same time inefficient. The avowed object of socialism is a redistribution of wealth; but the most striking characteristic of all the socialistic leaders has been an incapacity to produce the thing which they are so anxious to distribute. The wish to{343}redistribute it in some of them arises from sentiments of benevolence; in some from fallacious reasoning; and in some from personal envy; but in none has it been accompanied by those particular faculties on which the actual production of wealth in large quantities depends. Socialism, therefore, so far as it is a serious theory, is essentially an attempt on the part of men who are themselves economically impotent to prove that they, and others like them, have some reasonable right to possess and divide amongst themselves what they are constitutionally powerless to make for themselves. The result has been the elaboration of a theory of production which sometimes declares that wealth is produced by “aggregates of conditions,” or “social inheritances,” or “environments,” as Mr. Spencer, Mr. Bellamy, and Mr. Sidney Webb tell us; and sometimes that it is produced by “average labour measured by time,” as Karl Marx tells us,—the one doctrine being that wealth is produced by nobody, and that one man has thus as good a right to it as another; the other being that it is produced in equal quantities by everybody, and that everybody on that ground has a right to an equal quantity of it. Both doctrines agree in this, that they altogether miss and divert the attention of the mind from the forces and conditions on which wealth-production depends in reality.Now if the elaboration of these fallacies had been confined to men who were capable of presenting them in a really arguable form, and if they had been promulgated only amongst classes who were capable{344}of passing a scientific judgment on them, they might have played—and within limits they have played—a valuable part in eliciting the truth opposed to them. But they have become wholly mischievous when, through the agency of indiscriminate education, they have influenced men who, whilst wanting in intellectual judgment, are nevertheless endowed with a potential activity of character, and who, when this is developed, at once become powerful agents in disseminating fallacies amongst others even less capable of criticising them than themselves. Thus many of the leaders of the “new unionism” in England are to be credited with energy of a really remarkable kind; but unfortunately the energy is united to such defective intellectual powers, that the more vigorously these are employed, the more mischievous and absurd is the result. The general resolutions that have been passed at Trade Union conferences declaring that no progress is possible till all the means of production shall have been nationalised, or the doctrine of the “new unionists” that wages control prices, are all results of the exercise of faculties which, though in some respects doubtless superior to those of the average man, had far better have never been developed at all.It is men like these—the men with ill-balanced or abortive talents—the men with strong wills and defective intellects, the men whose ambition is developed by the smallest educational stimulus, but who have no talents proportionate to it which any{345}education could develop—it is men like these who invest with its principal dangers the equalisation of educational opportunity; and if education, as so many Conservatives say, really does nothing but promote popular discontent, it promotes discontent amongst the great masses of the population less from the manner in which it affects the average man directly, than from the manner in which it affects men who are inefficiently exceptional, and who, not having the gifts that would enable them to rise in any society, endeavour to persuade the masses that society, as at present constituted, is an organised conspiracy of the few to keep everybody else down.The equalisation of educational opportunity has, therefore, two dangers—the danger of developing wants in the average man which could never be generally satisfied under any social arrangements; and the danger of developing the talents of a certain class of exceptional men which are naturally incomplete, and which the more fully they were developed, would only become more mischievous both to their possessors and to society.And these dangers correspond with the two objects for the sake of which the equalisation of educational opportunity is advocated. One of these objects is the raising the condition of the average man; the other is the securing, alike for himself and for society, the full benefit of the potential gifts of the exceptional man. The average man, however, is not made better or happier by being filled in early life with importunate wants and propensities which he{346}will, when he comes to maturity, be unable to gratify; nor is any one made better or happier by the development of gifts which, however exceptional, can, by reason of their incompleteness, do nothing but give currency to error, or initiate abortive action.It is the latter of these dangers that is practically the source of the former. The average man would, as has been said already, probably suffer little from over-development under existing systems of education if it were not for the effects of these systems on inefficiently exceptional men whose superiorities ought never to be developed at all. It is doubtless impossible to avoid this danger completely. If educational opportunities are to be of a kind that will enable the efficiently exceptional to work their way to the top, and advance or maintain civilisation by their influence or domination over others, it is inevitable that a certain proportion of the inefficiently exceptional will be induced to develop their unhappy capabilities also; but the number of these may, at all events, be reduced to a minimum. The fundamental fault of contemporary educational theories is, that in proportion to the completeness with which they were carried out, they would tend to raise the number of these men to a maximum. And the reason why they would have this tendency is that they are founded on two absolutely false principles.The first of these principles is, that whatever potential talents any man may possess, it is desirable to assist and encourage him to develop them to the utmost. The second is that the type of{347}education and culture to which education generally should, so far as is possible, be assimilated, is the kind of education and culture that is actually prevalent amongst the rich.It is impossible to meet these principles with too emphatic a negative.The first of them is false because, as has just been shown, there is a large amount of really exceptional talent which, if developed, would work nothing but mischief, and which ought, consequently, for the sake of everybody, not to be developed, but suppressed. The second is false because all tastes and talents are good or bad, useful for a man or useless, according to the conditions under which his life will be passed; and the conditions of the rich are altogether exceptional. Societies have existed in which they have been enjoyed by nobody. It would be impossible to construct a society in which they should be enjoyed by more than a few. The attempt, therefore, to give to everybody a rich man’s education is like including skating in the curriculum, and fur coats in the wardrobe, of a thousand boys, when nine hundred of them are to spend their lives in the tropics.Both these false principles rest on that radically false theory of society which it is the principal object of the present volume to expose—the theory that civilisation is the product of men approximately equal in capacities, and that in proportion as these equal capacities have equal opportunities of development, there will naturally be an approximation to an{348}equality of social conditions. The facts of the case are precisely the reverse of these. Civilisation originated in, and is still maintained by, men whose capacities are unequal to those of the majority; and just as there is no tendency towards equality in capacity, so, for reasons which have been explained in the last chapter, there is no tendency towards equality in social conditions. Inequalities of condition may at some times be greater than at others, but the fact that at times they show a tendency to become less is no more a sign that they have any tendency to disappear than the fact that an economy has been effected in the consumption of coal on board a steamship is a sign that steam has a tendency to be generated without fire. It is therefore a scientific certainty that of each generation of children in every civilised country the majority will, throughout their subsequent lives, occupy positions very different from those of the few. Most of the members of each class will remain in the position in which they were born; but there will be a gradual descent from the upper classes of their weaker members into the lower, and amongst the stronger members of the lower classes there will be a constant potential desire to push their way into the upper. Some of these last are strong in potential desire only. With others the strength of desire is accompanied by corresponding talent, by means of which, if developed, the position which they desire will be obtained. It will be obtained by the talent of these men, because the talent of such men is creative; and when it is{349}developed it renders those who possess it actual additions to the civilising forces of the community.With regard, then, to exceptional men, the object of education should be to stimulate the ambitions of those of them whose talents are efficient, whilst discouraging the ambitions of those whose talents are inherently defective. The stronger the ambitions of the former are, the better for themselves and for the community. Men like these are the true gold-mines of their country. The stronger the ambitions and the larger the opportunities of the latter, the more will the health and strength of the social organism be interfered with.With regard to the average man, the object of education should be to develop in him such tastes or accomplishments as will assist him in the work by which he is to live, and enable him to make the most of such means of enjoyment as are within his reach, whilst leaving him untormented with a desire for enjoyments that are beyond it; and the crucial fact on which it is necessary to insist is that the circumstances of different classes are permanently and necessarily different, and that for the average man of each class the education that will make the most of his life is necessarily different also.In other words, the only true equality of educational opportunity is an equal opportunity for each, not of acquiring the same knowledge or developing the same faculties, but of acquiring the knowledge and of developing the faculties which, given his circumstances and given his natural capacities, will{350}do most to make him a useful, a contented, and a happy man.Unfortunately these conclusions, simple and obvious as they seem, run directly counter to that entire theory of society which, with more or less consciousness, and with more or less precision, is held by the school of writers, reformers, and politicians, who suppose themselves, in some exclusive sense, to have social progress at heart; and also to that mass of diffused sentiment which, though not expressing itself formally in any theoretical propositions, has that theory as its foundation, and bears to it, as a political force, the same relation that vapour bears to water. These conclusions, therefore, which imply inequality in capacity as the cause of social progress, and inequality in social circumstances as the necessary and permanent conditions of it, are, like most of the other conclusions put forward in this work, certain to be met with objections of the most vehement kind, which it will now be necessary for us fairly and carefully to consider. We shall find that, as we do so, the entire arguments of the present work are summed up and brought together before us; and however incompatible they may be with the false conception of progress, of class relationships, and of the structure of society generally, which are at present mischievously popular, they form the foundation of hopes, for all classes, far more solid than those, the fallacy of which they aim at demonstrating.
The two great facts, then, that have been elucidated by our inquiry thus far, are these: in the first place, all progress and civilisation, and more especially all production of wealth, results from a complicated process in which, man for man, a minority plays a part incalculably greater than the majority; and consequently, in the second place, the minority, man for man, possesses wealth that is correspondingly greater than the wealth of the majority, likewise. In addition to these facts a third has been elucidated also, to which it in desirable that we should give renewed attention. Since great men not only produce wealth directly, but produce it indirectly by producing wealth which produces it, and which they are enabled to hand on to their children, the wealthy class is at any particular moment always more numerous than those members of it who are engaged actually in production. In Great Britain, for example, it has been estimated that two-thirds of the aggregate income that pays income tax is rent or interest on capital, and that one-third represents{325}the direct products of work. We may therefore here adopt the rough hypothesis that out of each generation of our wealthy class a third part is enriching itself by the process of direct production, and two-thirds are living on the products produced for them indirectly by the capital or the means of production which were created by their fathers and their grandfathers. Now such being the case, what we have to notice is as follows. Though the members of the wealthy class are not always changing, as they would be were no saving of capital, no interest, and no bequest allowed, they are still changing gradually from generation to generation, so that whilst the class, as a class, always possesses a nucleus of families with whom wealth and the traditions of wealth are hereditary, a number of individuals born in it are constantly disappearing over its borders, and a number of other individuals are constantly passing into it.†
†The most permanent form of hereditary wealth is land; but only a small minority of our existing landed families existed as landed families at the time of the last Heralds’ visitation. Thus, though the estates of this country are as old as the country itself, the actual possession of a large proportion of them by their owners, at any given time, represents their purchase by wealth recently created, and is, in fact, recent wealth converted into another form.And if there is a change like this in the possession of landed wealth, there is a still more rapid change in the possession of commercial capital. One of the many childish assumptions of Karl Marx was the assumption on which a good deal of his reasoning rests—that the English middle classes of the present century owed their capital and positions to social opportunities which had come to them as the heirs and descendants of the merchants and wealthier sheep-farmers who began to make fortunes four hundred years ago. As a matter of fact by far the larger part of the great commercial businesses and commercial fortunes now existing in this country have been founded during the past hundred, and many within the past fifty years, by men who were the sons of ordinary wage-paid labourers, and who were no more heirs to the men who formed the middle class under the Tudors than they were to the merchants who are celebrated in theArabian Nights. That such is the case is shown with sufficient clearness by the following figures, which refer to commercial incomes during the thirty years which followed the first Great Exhibition. During these years, whilst the population increased by about 30 per cent, fortunes of over ten thousand a year were multiplied by 100 per cent, fortunes of from five to ten thousand by 96 per cent, and fortunes of from five to six hundred by 308 per cent. It is obvious, then, that when a class is augmented in one generation by a number of new members from three to ten times as great as its natural increase would account for, most of its new members must have come to it from some class outside, and have gained their place in it solely by their own exertions.
†The most permanent form of hereditary wealth is land; but only a small minority of our existing landed families existed as landed families at the time of the last Heralds’ visitation. Thus, though the estates of this country are as old as the country itself, the actual possession of a large proportion of them by their owners, at any given time, represents their purchase by wealth recently created, and is, in fact, recent wealth converted into another form.
And if there is a change like this in the possession of landed wealth, there is a still more rapid change in the possession of commercial capital. One of the many childish assumptions of Karl Marx was the assumption on which a good deal of his reasoning rests—that the English middle classes of the present century owed their capital and positions to social opportunities which had come to them as the heirs and descendants of the merchants and wealthier sheep-farmers who began to make fortunes four hundred years ago. As a matter of fact by far the larger part of the great commercial businesses and commercial fortunes now existing in this country have been founded during the past hundred, and many within the past fifty years, by men who were the sons of ordinary wage-paid labourers, and who were no more heirs to the men who formed the middle class under the Tudors than they were to the merchants who are celebrated in theArabian Nights. That such is the case is shown with sufficient clearness by the following figures, which refer to commercial incomes during the thirty years which followed the first Great Exhibition. During these years, whilst the population increased by about 30 per cent, fortunes of over ten thousand a year were multiplied by 100 per cent, fortunes of from five to ten thousand by 96 per cent, and fortunes of from five to six hundred by 308 per cent. It is obvious, then, that when a class is augmented in one generation by a number of new members from three to ten times as great as its natural increase would account for, most of its new members must have come to it from some class outside, and have gained their place in it solely by their own exertions.
{326}
Thus in spite of the permanence which interest gives to wealth, the families that live merely on interest are constantly tending to disappear, and their places are being taken by the men whose exceptional faculties, whose business ability, whose enterprise and strenuous will, actually contribute most to the productive forces of the country. It was observed by J. S. Mill with regard to political government that this “is always in,or is passing into, the hands” of the men who are at the time the true repositories of power. In the same way the wealth of any progressive country is always in, or is passing into, the hands of the men who by their own abilities are engaged actively in producing it.{327}
Such being the case, then, the material civilisation of a country—the wealth of the few or the progressive comfort of the many—depends on the extent to which its potentially great wealth-producers, as they come into the world, generation after generation, are induced by circumstances to develop their exceptional talents, and devote them to the maintenance and improvement of the productive process. For those, therefore, who regard the material welfare of a community as the test and basis of its welfare in all other ways, the abiding social problem is always this: how to adjust circumstances in such a way that the smallest possible number of these potentially great wealth-producers may be wasted, and the largest possible number may be induced to exert themselves to the utmost.
One set of conditions essential to this result has been described already—those, that is to say, by which the possession of wealth is secured to the producers of it, and the persons to whom they leave it. But to these must be added another set of an entirely distinct character—that is to say, the conditions which, the motive to exertion being given, shall render exertion of the kind required possible for the largest number who happen to be theoretically capable of it. Now modern democratic thinkers have supplied the world with a formula by which, in their judgment, these conditions are sufficiently indicated. This formula is “equality of opportunity,” and we cannot begin our consideration of the question better than by taking this as a{328}starting-point, and asking what truth is contained in it. We may at once admit, then, that if it is taken in an abstract sense, it sums up a truth which is, beyond doubt, indisputable; for if each individual having exceptional potentialities as a wealth-producer, which require nothing but the favour of circumstances to ensure their being turned into actualities, could be provided with circumstances so nicely adapted to his idiosyncrasies that these potentialities might be developed to the utmost extent possible, the productive powers of the community, it is almost needless to observe, would be raised in that case to their utmost possible efficiency. Such an ideal condition of things as this, however, is impossible for the following, if for no other, reason. Successful parents as a rule will employ part of their wealth—at all events they will employ the positions which they have won by their own ability—to provide opportunities of a special kind for their sons; therefore, whatever the State might do for its youths and young men in general, exceptional parents for their sons would be able to do something more. Equality of opportunity, therefore, represents an ideal condition which we never can reach, but to which we can only approximate; and the only practical questions for us are accordingly these: how far towards this ideal can political action carry us, and what results are to be anticipated from our nearest possible approach to it?
Now the answer to both these questions will very largely depend on the existing conditions of the{329}community with reference to which they are asked. For though men’s powers of equalising opportunities are limited, their powers of making them unequal may be said to be indefinitely great; and the more unequal they have been made at the time when we ask our questions, the greater will the progress be which there will be room for us to make towards equalising them, and the greater will be the social advantages which we may hope to secure by making it. In France, for example, before the first Revolution, the laws affecting industry had almost ruined the nation, not because by unduly favouring one class they led to wealth being concentrated, but because by unduly hampering other classes they prevented its being produced; and the sweeping away by the Revolution of the old feudal inequalities, though it had none of the millennial effects which the Revolutionists themselves hoped for, has had others equally striking, though of a very different kind. It has not made men equal in point of wealth, but it has increased to an astonishing extent the wealth of all classes alike. And the way in which it has done this has been by removing artificial impediments to the development and free exercise of exceptional productive talent; or in other words, by an equalisation of economic opportunities.
But the kind of equality that has thus been reached may be described as being of a negative rather than a positive kind. It depends on the absence of artificial impediments to production, rather than on the supply of any artificial helps to{330}it; which means that it depends on the absence of everything that might obstruct the strong, rather than on measures or institutions that should artificially lend strength to the weak. Now, so far as industrial ability of the highest kind is concerned, it is probable that this negative condition of things, which is merely the complete embodiment of a policy oflaisser-faire, represents the utmost that, in any civilised country, can be done by the process of equalisation with any beneficial result. For in wealth-production the men whose capacities are really of the first order will, when not positively impeded, make their own opportunities for themselves; and the genius who is born with every opportunity waiting for him has but a few years’ start of the genius who is born with none. That such is the case is abundantly illustrated by history. If we consider the most famous of the men whose originality of mind and extraordinary spirit of enterprise have been chief amongst the forces which have enriched the civilised world, we shall find that those whose names most readily occur to us have had no opportunities save such as their own genius made for them. Arkwright, Cartwright, Watt, Stephenson, the intrepid and enduring adventurers who, in the teeth of prolonged opposition, laid the foundations of the modern manufacture of iron; Columbus, who gave to Europe a new hemisphere—all these have been men born amongst social circumstances which conspired to deny them rather than to provide them with opportunities. And if we turn from{331}Europe to new countries like America, and consider 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 themselves, 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 arbitrary and unequal impediments would tend to increase the number of those exceptional men whose productive 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. Any workman’s boy, for example, who has any taste for books has now in England, before he is fifteen, more educational opportunities than Shakespeare 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’sbâtonin his knapsack. And yet democratic France, with all its equalisation of opportunity, has not produced a series of new Napoleons. On the contrary, the mountain, after years and generations of labour, does nothing at last but give birth to a Boulanger.
Though faculties of the first order, however, are{332}independent of artificial assistance, many of an inferior, but still of an exceptional kind, are not; and it cannot be doubted that the supply of these last will depend very largely on the degree to which facilities for self-development are given by the State to those who desire to take advantage of them. Thus, though the spread of education in this country has not increased the number of Shakespeares, it has enormously increased the number of those who can write good English. And no doubt in the domain of wealth-production it has had an analogous effect. This effect, however, though real, has been enormously exaggerated; and it has been exaggerated for a particular reason. Social reformers have confused two things together. They have confused talents which are exceptional in their very nature, with accomplishments which are exceptional only because they are not universally taught. Thus reading and writing, for instance, were rare accomplishments once. Of all accomplishments they are the most universal now; and there is not the least doubt that there are very many others which, with equal opportunities, might be acquired by almost anybody, but which yet, as a matter of fact, are still confined to a minority. In this fact that education may increase the accomplishments of a community, social reformers have fancied that they discovered an indication of the extent to which education could elicit exceptional talent. But to call into practical activity by means of external help exceptional faculties, of which the supply is necessarily limited, is a very{333}different process from evoking by similar means faculties which are potential in everybody, and the supply of which can be increased indefinitely; and it is a process, moreover, which produces very different results. Let us consider how this is.
For productive faculties of the highest order, which not only minister to progress, but initiate it, and which make, as if by a conjuring trick, the hands of the average labourer produce new commodities of which he never would have dreamed himself—for faculties such as these, the demand is always unlimited. There are productive faculties also, exceptional although they are inferior, the demand for which is usually greater than the supply. But with regard to those faculties or accomplishments which are only exceptional accidentally, and which might be, like reading, conceivably made universal, the case is precisely opposite, and it is so for two reasons. In the first place, these accomplishments, which anybody might conceivably acquire—knowledge of French, for instance, or of book-keeping—though they may minister to the business of wealth-production, yet have no tendency in themselves to make the business grow. The number of persons, then, possessing these accomplishments who at any given time can put them to a productive use is limited by the condition in which production at that time is. Thus the number of clerks which a mercantile firm can employ is limited by the business which the firm happens to be doing; and though this business might be enlarged by the enterprise of one new{334}partner, it would not be enlarged, when there were no letters to copy, by the accession of ten young men who could copy letters beautifully. In the second place, even at times when the national business is growing, and the demand for these accomplishments is for the moment greater than the supply, any attempt by the State to make their development general would produce a supply indefinitely greater than the demand. Thus to multiply the number of labourers’ sons possessing accomplishments that would fit them for the work of clerks would not be to increase the number of young men who would wear black coats, and sit on stools in offices, instead of working in factories, or laying bricks, or ploughing. Instead of raising the position of the plough-boy to the same level as the clerk’s, it would lower the clerk’s salary to the level of the plough-boy’s wages; and clerk and plough-boy would be alike sufferers by the process.
The beneficial effects, then, to be looked for from an equalisation of opportunity have been exaggerated by democratic thinkers because they have failed to perceive those facts. They have confounded the development of accomplishments which might conceivably be acquired by all with the development of faculties which, even potentially, are possessed by a few only. They see that education can increase the number of possible clerks, and they have therefore imagined that it can, with similar ease and certainty, increase the number of efficient men of genius. It must, however, be distinctly stated that{335}the error in their conclusion is one of exaggeration only. There is much exceptional talent which, though not of the highest order, will, when opportunity is given it, increase the wealth of the community, but which will, without the educational help of the State, be lost; and it may frankly be admitted that, within certain limits, the equalising of educational opportunity plays a very important part in supplying the community with exceptionally efficient citizens.
But the main difficulties involved in the artificial equalisation of opportunity are not concerned with the problem of how to produce good results by it. They are connected with the problem of how to avoid producing bad results. Let us consider what the possible bad results of it are.
In a general way they are indicated, or indirectly implied, in the saying so dear to the sterner and more thoughtless of the Conservatives—that popular education does nothing but promote discontent. Sweeping statements of this kind, however, though they may have an element of truth in them, are valueless till they have been carefully qualified; for what we have to ask about them is not whether they are true, but how far they are true, and in what precise senses. Thus, though it is true that the danger of diffusing education lies in the discontent that may thereby be promoted, some kinds of discontent are not dangerous—they are beneficial; therefore the danger of diffusing education lies in its tendency to promote not discontent generally, but{336}discontent of certain special kinds; and it is necessary to discriminate carefully what these kinds are.
Now the kind of discontent which Conservatives generally have in view, when they denounce education because they think it tends to promote it, is by no means that from which danger really arises. What they generally have in view is a discontent with his circumstances which they think education will produce in the average working man. In reality, however, the primary danger of education is not to be looked for in its effects upon average men at all. It is to be looked for in its effects upon men who are distinctly exceptional.
In order to understand how this is, let the reader reflect once more on one of the main truths that have been insisted on in the present volume—namely, that though all progress is the work of great or exceptional men, all great or exceptional men do not promote progress equally, and some of them indeed do not promote it at all. Progress results from the victory of the fittest of these over the less fit in the struggle to gain dominion over the thoughts and actions of others. Let the reader reflect also on the analysis that was given of the various qualities which go to make up greatness—that is to say, the qualities by which dominion over others is obtained. It was pointed out that greatness is a highly composite thing; that it need not necessarily imply any moral, nor indeed any intellectual superiority; and as an illustration of this it was mentioned that many most{337}important political movements have been produced by men whose greatness consisted merely in ordinary sense joined to, and made efficient by, an extraordinary strength of will. It is necessary now to follow this line of observation farther, and to point out that if extraordinary strength of will can produce beneficial effects when allied with ordinary sense, it is equally capable of producing effects that are mischievous when allied with stupidity, or with that kind of imperfect intellect which is as quick in defending and popularising, as it is in being duped by fallacies. And with these latter qualities it is allied as often as with the former. It is a great mistake to suppose that even the most false and foolish opinions which have influenced multitudes to their own detriment have been originated and promulgated by men who were altogether weak and inferior. On the contrary, most of the follies which have disturbed or retarded civilisation have been due to the influence of men who, though morally or intellectually contemptible, have possessed a vigour of character far beyond what is ordinary.
Now, if education has the effect attributed to it of liberating the will and developing the intellectual powers of men in whom the intellect is really acute and sound, there is an obvious danger of its having the same effect on men whose intellect is unbalanced and imperfect. To some of such intellects, no doubt, it may give clearness and equilibrium; but there are others for which it does nothing, except to increase their powers of reasoning wrongly; and when an{338}intellect of this kind is allied with a naturally strong will, the effect of education is to let loose a wild horse, merely in order that it may run away with a lunatic.
It must be remembered that the strength of a man’s will, though depending as a potentiality on the character with which he happens to be born, depends as an actual force on his desire for certain objects or results, coupled with the belief that he can attain these by action. Now, when a man’s powers of action are capable of realising his desires—as when a man who desires to be wealthy has the talents that produce wealth, or when the man who desires to be Prime Minister has the talents of a great statesman—his career satisfies himself, and is presumably serviceable to his country. In many cases, however, desire is exceptionally great, and generates also a strong impulse to act, but the capacity for that kind of action by which the desired object might be obtained is small. Thus many men desire exceptional wealth, but find themselves incapable of the peculiar kind of action that produces it. Their will, accordingly, if it makes them act at all, is like a steam-engine which merely puts useless machinery into motion; or if it fails to make them act, as it very often does, it shakes them to pieces with a kind of intellectual retching. These unhappy persons owe the condition in which they find themselves mainly to an over-estimate of their own powers; and this over-estimate is generally the direct result of education, which, by making them{339}falsely imagine themselves capable of attaining wealth, actualises a fruitless desire for it, which might otherwise have remained latent. When education has this effect on a man it is an unmitigated evil for himself, and very frequently for others.
Again, education, besides actualising exceptional desires which are wholly unaccompanied by any exceptional faculties that correspond to them, actualises desires accompanied by faculties which are really exceptional, and which produce results undoubtedly more than ordinary, but are nevertheless incapable of complete development. Many men, for instance, have gifts for music and poetry which, though genuine so far as they go, have yet some fatal defect in them, and will never produce, however devotedly they are exercised, any results possessing artistic value. Now the fact that progress is caused by a struggle between exceptional men, of course implies that some of them shall be less efficient than the others. It is by struggling with the less efficient that the superiority of the most efficient is realised; and in order that it may be found who the most efficient are, the inferior as well as the superior must put their capacities to the test. It is therefore unavoidably one object of education to stimulate the activity of some exceptional men whose own efforts are foredoomed to ultimate failure. Failures, however, differ in degree and kind. Some men fail because they can accomplish nothing of what they attempt, like the dreamers who have wasted their{340}lives in trying to make perpetual motions. Some fail because, though they accomplish something, others accomplish more; and the production of what is the best makes the second best valueless. Thus nine inventors might produce nine motor-cars, each of which worked well enough to command a considerable sale; but if a tenth inventor was to produce another which was faster, simpler, more durable, and cheaper than any of these, all the rest would drop out of use altogether, and be practically as valueless as the mad aggregation of wheels by which the seeker for the perpetual motion endeavoured to accomplish the impossible. Between the men who fail, however, because they succeed less than others, and the men who fail because they do not succeed at all, there is a great practical difference. The men who fail only because others succeed better than they do, contribute to the very success of the men by whom they are defeated; for they raise the standard of achievement which these men have to overpass. But the men who fail because they accomplish nothing waste their own lives without benefiting anybody. In the domain of economic production the truth of this is obvious. It is not less so in the domain of speculative thought. Scientific theories are constantly put forward which, though not true, are sufficiently near the truth to have some definite relation to it; and those who actually reach it find in errors of this kind an indispensable assistance. Nothing gives to truth so keen and clear an outline as the refuted errors of really powerful thinkers. But{341}there are errors, on the other hand, which, though it may be necessary to refute them because they have imposed themselves on a number of ignorant people, do nothing to advance the discovery of truth whatever, and the activity of those who originate them is altogether mischievous. Thus whilst the reasonings of heretical thinkers like Arius, by the controversy they provoked, were very largely instrumental in advancing orthodox theology to really logical completeness, the philosophy of religion owes absolutely nothing to Joanna Southcott or the American prophet Harris. Accordingly, whilst it is impossible to say with precision where the line is to be drawn between the exceptional talents which, if developed, would be of use in the progressive struggle and those which are so defective that their influences would be merely mischievous, it is obvious that talent of this latter kind is sufficiently plentiful to render its development dangerous.
History teems with examples of this fact, and so do the unwritten annals of the social life around us. Henri Murger in his studies of Bohemian Paris bears eloquent witness to the tragic absurdity of the results caused by the development of imperfect artistic talent, and the miserable endings of men who, if they had not tried to be artists, might have lived and thriven as honest and healthyouvriers; whilst, according as we hold vaccination to be a blessing to the world or a curse, we must necessarily hold that it would have been far better for everybody if the talents of the men who invented it, or else{342}those of the men who now oppose it, had been killed by the frosts of ignorance, and never allowed to blossom.
But the commonest examples of talent that is wholly mischievous are afforded by certain classes of politicians and social agitators. There is a large number of men whose potential activity is considerable, and whose intellect has a natural nimbleness which will enable them, when stimulated by education, to seize on plausible fallacies and impose them both on themselves and others. Politicians of this class are familiar figures enough. The social agitator, whose mental equipment is similar, is more familiar still. Many attempts have been made to give a scientific explanation of those constant attacks on the existing organisation of society which are common to all civilised countries, and go by the name of socialism. Socialism is said by some to be the protest of increasing poverty against increasing wealth; by some to be the natural voice of highly organised labour, which has come at last to be capable of self-government; and by some to be an embodiment of the esoteric philosophy of Hegel. In reality it is the embodiment of the results of indiscriminate education on talents which are exceptional, but at the same time inefficient. The avowed object of socialism is a redistribution of wealth; but the most striking characteristic of all the socialistic leaders has been an incapacity to produce the thing which they are so anxious to distribute. The wish to{343}redistribute it in some of them arises from sentiments of benevolence; in some from fallacious reasoning; and in some from personal envy; but in none has it been accompanied by those particular faculties on which the actual production of wealth in large quantities depends. Socialism, therefore, so far as it is a serious theory, is essentially an attempt on the part of men who are themselves economically impotent to prove that they, and others like them, have some reasonable right to possess and divide amongst themselves what they are constitutionally powerless to make for themselves. The result has been the elaboration of a theory of production which sometimes declares that wealth is produced by “aggregates of conditions,” or “social inheritances,” or “environments,” as Mr. Spencer, Mr. Bellamy, and Mr. Sidney Webb tell us; and sometimes that it is produced by “average labour measured by time,” as Karl Marx tells us,—the one doctrine being that wealth is produced by nobody, and that one man has thus as good a right to it as another; the other being that it is produced in equal quantities by everybody, and that everybody on that ground has a right to an equal quantity of it. Both doctrines agree in this, that they altogether miss and divert the attention of the mind from the forces and conditions on which wealth-production depends in reality.
Now if the elaboration of these fallacies had been confined to men who were capable of presenting them in a really arguable form, and if they had been promulgated only amongst classes who were capable{344}of passing a scientific judgment on them, they might have played—and within limits they have played—a valuable part in eliciting the truth opposed to them. But they have become wholly mischievous when, through the agency of indiscriminate education, they have influenced men who, whilst wanting in intellectual judgment, are nevertheless endowed with a potential activity of character, and who, when this is developed, at once become powerful agents in disseminating fallacies amongst others even less capable of criticising them than themselves. Thus many of the leaders of the “new unionism” in England are to be credited with energy of a really remarkable kind; but unfortunately the energy is united to such defective intellectual powers, that the more vigorously these are employed, the more mischievous and absurd is the result. The general resolutions that have been passed at Trade Union conferences declaring that no progress is possible till all the means of production shall have been nationalised, or the doctrine of the “new unionists” that wages control prices, are all results of the exercise of faculties which, though in some respects doubtless superior to those of the average man, had far better have never been developed at all.
It is men like these—the men with ill-balanced or abortive talents—the men with strong wills and defective intellects, the men whose ambition is developed by the smallest educational stimulus, but who have no talents proportionate to it which any{345}education could develop—it is men like these who invest with its principal dangers the equalisation of educational opportunity; and if education, as so many Conservatives say, really does nothing but promote popular discontent, it promotes discontent amongst the great masses of the population less from the manner in which it affects the average man directly, than from the manner in which it affects men who are inefficiently exceptional, and who, not having the gifts that would enable them to rise in any society, endeavour to persuade the masses that society, as at present constituted, is an organised conspiracy of the few to keep everybody else down.
The equalisation of educational opportunity has, therefore, two dangers—the danger of developing wants in the average man which could never be generally satisfied under any social arrangements; and the danger of developing the talents of a certain class of exceptional men which are naturally incomplete, and which the more fully they were developed, would only become more mischievous both to their possessors and to society.
And these dangers correspond with the two objects for the sake of which the equalisation of educational opportunity is advocated. One of these objects is the raising the condition of the average man; the other is the securing, alike for himself and for society, the full benefit of the potential gifts of the exceptional man. The average man, however, is not made better or happier by being filled in early life with importunate wants and propensities which he{346}will, when he comes to maturity, be unable to gratify; nor is any one made better or happier by the development of gifts which, however exceptional, can, by reason of their incompleteness, do nothing but give currency to error, or initiate abortive action.
It is the latter of these dangers that is practically the source of the former. The average man would, as has been said already, probably suffer little from over-development under existing systems of education if it were not for the effects of these systems on inefficiently exceptional men whose superiorities ought never to be developed at all. It is doubtless impossible to avoid this danger completely. If educational opportunities are to be of a kind that will enable the efficiently exceptional to work their way to the top, and advance or maintain civilisation by their influence or domination over others, it is inevitable that a certain proportion of the inefficiently exceptional will be induced to develop their unhappy capabilities also; but the number of these may, at all events, be reduced to a minimum. The fundamental fault of contemporary educational theories is, that in proportion to the completeness with which they were carried out, they would tend to raise the number of these men to a maximum. And the reason why they would have this tendency is that they are founded on two absolutely false principles.
The first of these principles is, that whatever potential talents any man may possess, it is desirable to assist and encourage him to develop them to the utmost. The second is that the type of{347}education and culture to which education generally should, so far as is possible, be assimilated, is the kind of education and culture that is actually prevalent amongst the rich.
It is impossible to meet these principles with too emphatic a negative.
The first of them is false because, as has just been shown, there is a large amount of really exceptional talent which, if developed, would work nothing but mischief, and which ought, consequently, for the sake of everybody, not to be developed, but suppressed. The second is false because all tastes and talents are good or bad, useful for a man or useless, according to the conditions under which his life will be passed; and the conditions of the rich are altogether exceptional. Societies have existed in which they have been enjoyed by nobody. It would be impossible to construct a society in which they should be enjoyed by more than a few. The attempt, therefore, to give to everybody a rich man’s education is like including skating in the curriculum, and fur coats in the wardrobe, of a thousand boys, when nine hundred of them are to spend their lives in the tropics.
Both these false principles rest on that radically false theory of society which it is the principal object of the present volume to expose—the theory that civilisation is the product of men approximately equal in capacities, and that in proportion as these equal capacities have equal opportunities of development, there will naturally be an approximation to an{348}equality of social conditions. The facts of the case are precisely the reverse of these. Civilisation originated in, and is still maintained by, men whose capacities are unequal to those of the majority; and just as there is no tendency towards equality in capacity, so, for reasons which have been explained in the last chapter, there is no tendency towards equality in social conditions. Inequalities of condition may at some times be greater than at others, but the fact that at times they show a tendency to become less is no more a sign that they have any tendency to disappear than the fact that an economy has been effected in the consumption of coal on board a steamship is a sign that steam has a tendency to be generated without fire. It is therefore a scientific certainty that of each generation of children in every civilised country the majority will, throughout their subsequent lives, occupy positions very different from those of the few. Most of the members of each class will remain in the position in which they were born; but there will be a gradual descent from the upper classes of their weaker members into the lower, and amongst the stronger members of the lower classes there will be a constant potential desire to push their way into the upper. Some of these last are strong in potential desire only. With others the strength of desire is accompanied by corresponding talent, by means of which, if developed, the position which they desire will be obtained. It will be obtained by the talent of these men, because the talent of such men is creative; and when it is{349}developed it renders those who possess it actual additions to the civilising forces of the community.
With regard, then, to exceptional men, the object of education should be to stimulate the ambitions of those of them whose talents are efficient, whilst discouraging the ambitions of those whose talents are inherently defective. The stronger the ambitions of the former are, the better for themselves and for the community. Men like these are the true gold-mines of their country. The stronger the ambitions and the larger the opportunities of the latter, the more will the health and strength of the social organism be interfered with.
With regard to the average man, the object of education should be to develop in him such tastes or accomplishments as will assist him in the work by which he is to live, and enable him to make the most of such means of enjoyment as are within his reach, whilst leaving him untormented with a desire for enjoyments that are beyond it; and the crucial fact on which it is necessary to insist is that the circumstances of different classes are permanently and necessarily different, and that for the average man of each class the education that will make the most of his life is necessarily different also.
In other words, the only true equality of educational opportunity is an equal opportunity for each, not of acquiring the same knowledge or developing the same faculties, but of acquiring the knowledge and of developing the faculties which, given his circumstances and given his natural capacities, will{350}do most to make him a useful, a contented, and a happy man.
Unfortunately these conclusions, simple and obvious as they seem, run directly counter to that entire theory of society which, with more or less consciousness, and with more or less precision, is held by the school of writers, reformers, and politicians, who suppose themselves, in some exclusive sense, to have social progress at heart; and also to that mass of diffused sentiment which, though not expressing itself formally in any theoretical propositions, has that theory as its foundation, and bears to it, as a political force, the same relation that vapour bears to water. These conclusions, therefore, which imply inequality in capacity as the cause of social progress, and inequality in social circumstances as the necessary and permanent conditions of it, are, like most of the other conclusions put forward in this work, certain to be met with objections of the most vehement kind, which it will now be necessary for us fairly and carefully to consider. We shall find that, as we do so, the entire arguments of the present work are summed up and brought together before us; and however incompatible they may be with the false conception of progress, of class relationships, and of the structure of society generally, which are at present mischievously popular, they form the foundation of hopes, for all classes, far more solid than those, the fallacy of which they aim at demonstrating.