The first of them is false because, as has just been shown, there is a large amount of really exceptional talent which, if developed, would work nothing but mischief, and which ought, consequently, for the sake of everybody, not to be developed, but suppressed. The second is false because all tastes and talents are good or bad, useful for a man or useless, according to the conditions under which his life will be passed; and the conditions of the rich are altogether exceptional. Societies have existed in which they have been enjoyed by nobody. It would be impossible to construct a society in which they should be enjoyed by more than a few. The attempt, therefore, to give to everybody a rich man’s education is like including skating in the curriculum, and fur coats in the wardrobe, of a thousand boys, when nine hundred of them are to spend their lives in the tropics. Both these false principles rest on that radically false theory of society which it is the principal object of the present volume to expose—the theory that civilisation is the product of men approximately equal in capacities, and that in proportion as these equal capacities have equal opportunities of development, there will naturally be an approximation to an {348} equality of social conditions. The facts of the case are precisely the reverse of these. Civilisation originated in, and is still maintained by, men whose capacities are unequal to those of the majority; and just as there is no tendency towards equality in capacity, so, for reasons which have been explained in the last chapter, there is no tendency towards equality in social conditions. Inequalities of condition may at some times be greater than at others, but the fact that at times they show a tendency to become less is no more a sign that they have any tendency to disappear than the fact that an economy has been effected in the consumption of coal on board a steamship is a sign that steam has a tendency to be generated without fire. It is therefore a scientific certainty that of each generation of children in every civilised country the majority will, throughout their subsequent lives, occupy positions very different from those of the few. Most of the members of each class will remain in the position in which they were born; but there will be a gradual descent from the upper classes of their weaker members into the lower, and amongst the stronger members of the lower classes there will be a constant potential desire to push their way into the upper. Some of these last are strong in potential desire only. With others the strength of desire is accompanied by corresponding talent, by means of which, if developed, the position which they desire will be obtained. It will be obtained by the talent of these men, because the talent of such men is creative; and when it is {349} developed it renders those who possess it actual additions to the civilising forces of the community.