It must be observed, further, that the dogma of equality is not satisfied by the usual admission that one is in favor of an equality of rights and opportunities, but is against the sweeping application of the theory made by the socialists and communists.  The obvious reply is that equal rights and a fair chance are not possible without equality of condition, and that property and the whole artificial constitution of society necessitate inequality of condition.  The damage from the current exaggeration of equality is that the attempt to realize the dogma in fact—­and the attempt is everywhere on foot—­can lead only to mischief and disappointment.

It would be considered a humorous suggestion to advocate inequality as a theory or as a working dogma.  Let us recognize it, however, as a fact, and shape the efforts for the improvement of the race in accordance with it, encouraging it in some directions, restraining it from injustice in others.  Working by this recognition, we shall save the race from many failures and bitter disappointments, and spare the world the spectacle of republics ending in despotism and experiments in government ending in anarchy.

WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME?

By Charles Dudley Warner

   Delivered before the Alumni of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y.,
   Wednesday, June 26, 1872

Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascend the platform, and there to stand and deliver.  The voice was the voice of President North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used by Cicero and Julius Caesar.  I remember the flattering invitation—­it is the classic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten the gender of the nouns that end in ‘um—­orator proximus’, the grateful voice said, ‘ascendat, videlicet,’ and so forth.  To be proclaimed an orator, and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous tongue, in the face of a world waiting for orators, stirred one’s blood like the herald’s trumpet when the lists are thrown open.  Alas! for most of us, who crowded so eagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as orators on any stage.

The facility of the world for swallowing up orators, and company after company of educated young men, has been remarked.  But it is almost incredible to me now that the class of 1851, with its classic sympathies and its many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the flood of the world so soon and so silently, causing scarcely a ripple in the smoothly flowing stream.  I suppose the phenomenon has been repeated for twenty years.  Do the young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on their ordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and their familiar vacation correspondence in the language of Aristophanes?  I hope so.  I hope they are more proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twenty years ago were, for I have still great faith in a culture that is so