More especially they are unequal in energy, alertness, executive capacity, initiative and in what we may describe generally as practical driving force.

Such being the case, then, if it could actually be brought about that every individual at a given period of his life should start with economic opportunities identical with those of his contemporaries, each generation would be like horses chosen at haphazard, and started at the same instant to struggle over the same course in the direction of a common winning-post.

And what would be the result?
A few individuals would be out of sight in a moment; the mass at various distances would be struggling far behind them, and a large residuum would have been blown before it had advanced a furlong.

Thus, by making men's adventitious opportunities equal, we should no more equalise the result for the sake of which the opportunities were demanded than we should give every cab-horse in London a chance of winning the Derby by allowing it on Derby Day to go plodding over the course at Epsom.

On the contrary, by inducing all to contemplate the same kind of success, we should be multiplying the sense of failure and dooming the majority to a gratuitous discontent with positions in which they might have taken a pride had they not learned to look beyond them.
And now, from this fact, to which we shall come back presently, let us turn to the question of how, and in what respects, equality of opportunity is in practical life attainable.
The most obvious manner in which an approach to such equality can be made is by an equalisation of opportunities for education in early life, or, in other words, by a similar course of schooling, a similar access to books, and similar leisure for studying them.