Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
In accordance with the advice of Diogenes of Apollonia in the beginningof his treatise on Natural Philosophy—"It appears to me to be well forevery one who commences any sort of philosophical treatise to lay downsome undeniable principle to start with"—we offer this:
All men are created unequal.
It would be a most interesting study to trace the growth in the world ofthe doctrine of "equality." That is not the purpose of this essay, anyfurther than is necessary for definition. We use the term in its popularsense, in the meaning, somewhat vague, it is true, which it has had sincethe middle of the eighteenth century. In the popular apprehension it isapt to be confounded with uniformity; and this not without reason, sincein many applications of the theory the tendency is to produce likeness oruniformity. Nature, with equal laws, tends always to diversity; anddoubtless the just notion of equality in human affairs consists withunlikeness. Our purpose is to note some of the tendencies of the dogma asit is at present understood by a considerable portion of mankind.
We regard the formulated doctrine as modern. It would be too much to saythat some notion of the "equality of men" did not underlie thesocialistic and communistic ideas which prevailed from time to time inthe ancient world, and broke out with volcanic violence in the Grecianand Roman communities. But those popular movements seem to us ratherblind struggles against physical evils, and to be distinguished fromthose more intelligent actions based upon the theory which began to stirEurope prior to the Reformation.
It is sufficient for our purpose to take the well-defined theory ofmodern times. Whether the ideal republic of Plato was merely a convenientform for philosophical speculation, or whether, as the greatest authorityon political economy in Germany, Dr. William Roscher, thinks, it "was nomere fancy"; whether Plato's notion of the identity of man and the Stateis compatible with the theory of equality, or whether it is, as manycommunists say, indispensable to it, we need not here discuss. It is truethat in his Republic almost all the social theories which have beendeduced from the modern proclamation of equality are elaborated. Therewas to be a community of property, and also a community of wives andchildren. The equality of the sexes was insisted on to the extent ofliving in common, identical education and pursuits, equal share in alllabors, in occupations, and in government. Between the sexes there wasallowed only one ultimate difference. The Greeks, as Professor Jowettsays, had noble conceptions of womanhood; but Plato's ideal for the sexeshad no counterpart in their actual life, nor could they have understoodthe sort of equality upon which he insisted. The same is true of theRomans throughout their history.
More than any other Oriental peoples the Egyptians of the Ancient Empireentertained the idea of the equality of the sexes; but the equality ofman was not conceived by them. Still less did any notion of it exist inthe Jewish state. It was the fashion with the socialists of 1793, as ithas been with the international assemblages at Geneva in our own day, totrace the genesis of their notions back to the first Christian age. Thefar-reaching influence of the new gospel in the liberation of the humanmind and in promoting just and divinely-ordered relations among men isadmitted; its origination of the social and political dogma we areconsidering is denied. We do not find that Christ himself anywhereexpressed it or acted on it. He associated with the lowly, the vile, theoutcast; he taught that