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.  But even here, at this preliminary stage, we shall find that the equality of opportunity is to a large extent illusory.  Let us suppose that there are two boys, equal in general intelligence, and unequal only in their powers of mental concentration, who start their study of German side by side in the same class-room.  One boy, in the course of a year or so, will be able to read German books almost as easily as books in his own language, while the other will hardly be able to guess the drift of a sentence without laborious reference to his hated grammar and dictionary.  Now, when once a situation such as this has arisen, the opportunities of the two boys have ceased to be equal any longer.  The one has placed himself at an indefinite advantage over the other, which is quite distinct from the superiority originally inherent in himself.  Among the educational opportunities which reformers desire to equalise, one of the chief is that of access to adequate libraries; and it is, they say, in this respect more perhaps than any other that the rich man has at present an unfair advantage over the poor.  It is virtually this precise advantage that will now be in possession of the boy who has thus far outstripped his classmate.  In his mastery of German he has a key to a vast literature—­a key which the other has not.  He is now like a rich man with an illimitable library of his own, while the other by comparison is like a poor man who can get at no books at all.  Thus if opportunity, in its most fundamental form, were equalised for all boys, no matter how completely, the equality would be only momentary.  It would begin to disappear by the end of the first few months, not because the boys would still, as they did at starting, be bringing to their tasks intrinsically unequal faculties, but because some of them would have already monopolised the aid of an adventitious knowledge by which the practical efficiency of their natural faculties would be multiplied.

But education is merely a preliminary to the actual business of life.  Let us pass on to the case of our equally educated youths when they enter on the practical business of making their own fortunes.  What kind of equal opportunity can be possibly provided for them now?