But if we ask just how this freedom is to be had, we find that there is no simple answer. It differs for every person and for every phase of his growth, and is always the outcome not of one or two circumstances, but of the whole system in which he lives. We cannot fix upon any particular point in a man’s history as the one at which he is, once for all, given or denied opportunity. He needs it all his life, and we may well demand that he have it during his prenatal development as well as after birth; or, going back still further, we may try, by controlling propagation, to see that he has a good hereditary capacity to start with. Supposing that we begin at birth, we may regard newborn children as undeveloped organisms, each of which has aptitudes more or less different from those of any other. These differences of aptitude are the basis of the future social differentiation, but we have no means of knowing what they are. Opportunity, if it is to be at all complete, must begin right away; it should consist, apparently, in a continuous process, lasting from birth to death, which shall awaken, encourage, and nourish the individual in such a way as to enable his highest personal and social development. The study of it means that our whole society must be considered with a view to the manner in which it aids or hinders this process. The trend of social development is such as to make opportunity more and more a matter of intelligent provision, less and less one which can take care of itself. Recent history presents the growth of a complex, specialized system, offering, as time goes on, more functions and requiring more selection and preparation to perform them rightly. I say “rightly” because many of them may be and are performed, after a fashion, with very little selection or preparation; but the full human and social function of the individual normally requires a personal development proportionate to the development of the whole. Formerly a boy growing up on a farm, let us say, had his social possibilities in plain sight: he could either continue on the farm or apprentice himself to one of several trades and professions in the neighboring town. Nowadays a thousand careers are theoretically open to him, but these are mostly out of sight, and there is no easy way of finding out just what they are, whether they are suitable to him, or how he may hope to attain them. The whole situation calls for a knowledge and preparation far beyond what can be expected of unaided intelligence. If we are really to have opportunity we must evidently make a science of it, and apply this science to the actual interworking of the individual with the social whole.