opposition, laid the foundations of the modern manufacture of iron; Columbus, who gave to Europe a new hemisphere—all these have been men born amongst social circumstances which conspired to deny them rather than to provide them with opportunities. And if we turn from {331} Europe to new countries like America, and consider the leaders of economic production there, we shall find that the histories of these men have been similar. Nor, indeed, in this fact is there anything to be wondered at. In the sphere of industry, just as in the sphere of art, the greatest men will never be suppressed. They are always sure to assert themselves, and the struggle with adverse circumstances will, instead of crushing, strengthen them. It may therefore be safely said that no equalisation of opportunity which goes beyond the abolition of arbitrary and unequal impediments would tend to increase the number of those exceptional men whose productive faculties are really of the first order. And this inference is supported by a large number of analogies drawn from domains of activity other than economic. Any workman’s boy, for example, who has any taste for books has now in England, before he is fifteen, more educational opportunities than Shakespeare had in all his lifetime. But the number of Shakespeares has not appreciably increased. Again, popular education has given to the whole French army advantages confined to a few at the time of Napoleon’s boyhood. Every private carries the marshal’s _bâton_ in his knapsack. And yet democratic France, with all its equalisation of opportunity, has not produced a series of new Napoleons. On the contrary, the mountain, after years and generations of labour, does nothing at last but give birth to a Boulanger.