It was in America that I first began to meditate on the problem of equality, and I have given it much thought at intervals during several years.  The great difficulty is to avoid repeating stale commonplaces on the matter.  The robust Briton bellows, “Equality!  Divide up all the property in the world equally among the inhabitants, and there would be rich and poor, just as before, within a week!” The robust man thinks that settles the whole matter at once.  Then we have the stock story of the three practical communists who forced themselves upon the society of Baron Rothschild, and explained their views at some length.  The Baron said:  “Gentlemen, I have made a little calculation, and I find that, if I divided my property equally among my fellow-citizens, your share would be one florin each.  Oblige me by accepting that sum at once, and permit me to wish you good-morning.”  This was very neat in its way, but I want to talk just a little more seriously of a problem which concerns the daily life of us all, and affects our mental health, our placidity, and our self-respect very intimately.  In the first place, we have to consider the deplorable exhibitions made by poor humanity whenever equality has been fairly insisted on in any community.  The Frenchmen of 1792 thought that a great principle had been asserted when the President of the Convention said to the king, “You may sit down, Louis.”  It seemed fine to the gallery when the queenly Marie Antoinette was addressed as the widow Capet; but what a poor business it was after all!  The howling familiarity of the mob never touched the real dignity of the royal woman, and their brutality was only a murderous form of Yankee servant’s mean “independence.”  I cannot treat the subject at all without going into necessary subtleties which never occurred to an enraged mob or a bloodthirsty and insolent official; I cannot accept the bald jeers of a comfortable, purse-proud citizen as being of any weight, and I am just as loath to heed the wire-drawn platitudes of the average philosopher.  If we accept the very first maxim of biology, and agree that no two individuals of any living species are exactly alike, we have a starting-point from which we can proceed to argue sensibly.  We may pass over the countless millions of inequalities which we observe in the lower orders of living things:  and there is no need to emphasize distinctions which are plain to every child.  When we come to speak of the race of men we reach the only concern which has a passionate and vital interest for us; even the amazing researches and conclusions of the naturalists have no attraction for us unless they throw a light, no matter how oblique, on our mysterious being and our mysterious fate.  The law which regulates the differentiation of species applies with especial significance when we consider the birth of human individuals; the law which ordains that out of countless millions of animalculae which once shed their remains on the