It is, on the one hand, so to develop each man's congenital faculties as to raise them to their maximum power of providing him with what he desires; and on the other hand to limit his desires, by a due regulation of his expectations, to such objects as his faculties, when thus developed, render approximately if not completely attainable.

Thus, relatively to the individual, the ideal object of education is in all cases the same; but since individuals are not equal to one another, education, if it is to perform an equal service for each, must be in its absolute character to an indefinite extent various; just as a tailor, if he is to give to all his customers equal opportunities of being well dressed, will not offer them coats of the same size and pattern.

He will offer them coats which are equal only in this--namely, their equally successful adaptation to the figures of their respective wearers.
Of course, so to graduate any actual course of education that in the case of each individual it is the best which it is possible to conceive for him--that it should at once enable him to make the most of his powers, and "regulate," as Ruskin says, "his imagination and his hopes" in accordance with them, would require a clairvoyance and prevision not given to man; but the end here specified--namely, an equality of opportunity which is relative--is the only kind of equality which is even theoretically possible; and it is one, moreover, to which a constant approximation can be made.

The absolute equality which is contemplated by socialists, and by others who are more or less vaguely influenced by socialistic sentiment, is, on the contrary, an ideal which either could not be realised at all, or which, in proportion as it was realised, would be ruinous to the nation which provided it, and would bring nothing but disappointment to those who were most importunate in demanding it.

The only conceivable means, indeed, by which it could be extended beyond the first few years of life, would be by a constant process of handicapping--that is to say, by applying to education the same policy that trade-unions apply to ordinary labour.