though the amount of such genius is overestimated by reformers, because they confuse talents rare in themselves with accomplishments that are only rare accidentally • 332 The latter can be increased indefinitely, the former not • 333 For real productive genius there is always room, • 333 but the economic utility of mere accomplishments is limited by the conditions of production at the time • 333 Thus to produce more possible clerks than are wanted merely lowers the wages of those employed, without increasing the utility of those who are not employed • 334 Still, within limits, educational help from the State does much to increase the supply of exceptional, though not great, talent • 335 But the main difficulty involved in the equalising of educational opportunity is not the production of good results, but the avoidance of bad • 335 The bad results are the stimulating of discontent, not in average men, but in men who are really exceptional • 336 but those exceptional gifts are ill-balanced or have some flaw in them • 337 For if education sets free and stimulates sound intellectual powers • 337 it will similarly stimulate intellects that are not sound, • 338 or wills, with no intellect to match, and will generate a desire for wealth in men who are not capable of creating it, • 338 and thus will merely produce needless misery and mischief • 339 Education, again, stimulates faculties that can really produce exceptional results, but not results that are complete • 339 The progressive struggle requires that the intellects of some should be stimulated, whose efforts fail • 340 But those failures that promote progress are failures that partially succeed • 340 But there are abortive talents which produce failures that have no relation to success. Those talents are purely mischievous; • 341 for example, the failure of the would-be artist, • 341 or that of the man who popularises wrong medical treatment • 342 But the commonest example of this kind of man is the socialistic agitator, • 342 who demands the redistribution of wealth, whilst absolutely powerless to produce it, • 343 and who consequently invents false theories about its production, which do nothing but demoralise those who are duped by them • 343 (though even these theories can be discussed with profit under certain circumstances) • 344 Men like these embody the two chief dangers of the equalisation of educational opportunity, • 345 namely, the rousing in the average man wants he cannot satisfy, and the stimulating of talents that are constitutionally imperfect • 345 The latter of these dangers is the source of the former • 346 It cannot be completely avoided, but the present theories of education tend to heighten, not to minimise it • 346 The current theory that all talents should be developed is false, • 347 so is the theory that all tastes should be cultivated in all alike. The education proper for the rich is not a type but an exception • 347