The Lessons of History

For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even whe

classes: by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them.

perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts.

If equality of educational opportunity can be established, democracy will be real and justified. For this is the vital truth beneath its catchwords: that though men cannot be equal, their access to education and opportunity can be made more nearly equal. The rights of man are not rights to office and power, but the rights of entry into every avenue

But much of what we call intelligence is the result of individual education, opportunity, and experience; and there is no evidence that such intellectual acquirements are transmitted in the genes.

cynic remarked that “you mustn’t enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it.” However, ignorance is not long enthroned, for it lends itself to manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion.

suzerainty

The freedom of the part varies with the security of the whole; individualism will diminish in America and England as geographical protection ceases.

Laws which were once presented as the decrees of a god-given king are now frankly the confused commands of fallible men.