CHAPTER XV.
EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY Having now dealt with two of those three ideas or conceptions which, though not necessarily connected with the specific doctrines of socialism, owe much of their present diffusion to the activity of socialistic preachers--that is to say, the idea, purely statistical, that labour, as contrasted with the directive ability of it, actually produces much more than it gets, and the further idea that the many could ameliorate their own position by appropriating the interest now received by the few; having dealt with these two ideas, it remains for us to consider the third--namely, that which is generally suggested by the formula Equality of Opportunity, or, more particularly (for this is what concerns us here), equality of opportunity in the domain of economic production.
We must start with recollecting that if the wealth of a country depends mainly, as we have here seen that it does, on the efforts of those of its citizens whose industrial talent is the greatest, the more effectively all such talent is provided with an opportunity of exerting itself the greater will the wealth and prosperity of that country be.

In other words, if potential talent is to be actualised, opportunity is as needful for its exercise as is the stimulus of a proportionate reward.
That economic opportunity ought, therefore, to be equalised, so far as possible, is, as an abstract principle, too obvious to need demonstration.

But abstract principles are useless till we apply them to a concrete world; and when we apply our abstract doctrine of opportunity to the complex facts of society and human nature, a principle so simple in theory will undergo as many modifications as a film of level water will if we spill it over an uneven surface.
The first fact which will confront us, when we come down from theory to facts, is one which could not be more forcibly emphasised than it has been by a socialistic writer,[25] whose utterances were quoted in one of our previous chapters.

This is the fact that, in respect of their powers of production, just as of most others, human beings are in the highest degree unequal.

They are unequal in intellect and imagination.