Here, perhaps, it is worth while for a moment to dwell upon the meaning of equality. Nothing is easier than to make it a notion utterly devoid of all common sense.[2] It does not mean identity of treatment. The ultimate fact of the variety of human nature, our differences of both hereditary capacity and social nurture, these are inescapable. To treat men so different as Newton and Byron, Cromwell and Rousseau, in a precisely similar way is patently absurd. But equality does not mean identity of treatment. It is an insistence that there is no difference inherent in nature between the claims of men to happiness. It is therefore an argument that society shall not construct barriers against those claims which weigh more heavily upon some than upon others. It shall not exclude men from the legal profession because they are black or Wesleyans or freemasons. It shall not deny access to the Courts to men of whose opinions society in general disapproves. The idea of equality is obviously an idea of levelling. It is an attempt to give each man as similar a chance as possible to utilize what powers he may possess. It means that he is to count in the framing of decisions where these affect him, that whatever legal rights inhere in any other man as a citizen, shall inhere in him also; that where differences of treatment are meted out by society to different persons, those differences shall be capable of explanation in terms of the common good. It means the recognition of urgent need in all--food, for instance, and clothing, and shelter--before there is special recognition of non-urgent claims in any. Equality, so regarded, seems to me inescapably connected with freedom. For equality, so regarded, seems, in the first place, to mean the organization of opportunities; and, in the second place, it means that no man’s opportunities are sacrificed, except on terms of social principle, to the claims of another. In the view I am taking, no child could be deprived of education that another might receive it; but in a choice of men say for a post in the Treasury, one might be preferred to another on the ground of ability or character or training. The idea of equality, in a word, is such an organization of opportunity that no man’s personality suffers frustration to the private benefit of others. He is given his chance that he may use his freedom to experiment with his powers. He knows that in his effort to attain happiness no barriers impede him differently from their incidence upon others. He may not win his objective, but, at least, he cannot claim that society has so weighted the scale against him as to assure his defeat.