What must now be noted is that as matters have been conducted hitherto, attempts to make educational opportunities equal do tend to produce an equality of a certain kind.

Though they have no tendency to equalise powers of achievement, they tend to produce an artificial equality of expectation.

In order to elucidate the nature of this fact, and its significance, I cannot do better than quote a passage from Ruskin, admirable for its trenchant felicity, which, since it occurs in a book much admired by socialists, may be commended to their special attention.[29] Economic demand, Ruskin says, is the expression of economic desires; but the constitution of human nature is such that these desires are divisible into two distinct kinds--desires for the commodities which men "need," and desires for commodities which they "wish for." The former arise from those appetites and appetencies in respect of which all are equal.

They are virtually a fixed quantity, and the economic commodities requisite for their healthy satisfaction constitute a minimum which is virtually the same for all men.

The latter, instead of being fixed, are capable of indefinite variation, and in these--the desires for what men "wish for" but do not "need"-- we have the origin "of three-fourths of the demands existing in the world." "These demands are," he proceeds, "romantic.