It remains for us to consider the case of those who are fitted, or believe themselves to be fitted, for work of a wider kind, and who aspire to gain, by performing this, an indefinitely ampler remuneration.

This ambitious and exceptionally active class is the class for which the promise of equal opportunities possesses its main significance, and in its relation to which it mainly requires to be examined.

Indeed, the writer from whom we are quoting recognises this himself; for he gives his special attention to the economic position of those who, in greater or less degree, are endowed with what he calls "genius"; and in order to illustrate how socialism would deal with these, he cites two cases from the annals of electrical engineering, in which opportunities, not forthcoming otherwise, were given by the state to inventors of realising successful inventions.
Now, what our author and others who reason like him forget, is that the opportunities with which we are here concerned differ in one all-important particular from those which concern us in the case either of education or of ordinary employment.

If one boy uses his educational opportunities ill, he does nothing to prejudice the opportunities of others who use them well.

Should a sorter of letters, who, if he had been sharp and trustworthy, might have risen to the highest and best-paid post in his department, throw his opportunities away by inattention or otherwise, the loss resulting is confined to the man himself.