But in this sense has the cry for equality any meaning? In so far as certain sections of the community may still believe that their interest is not so perfectly safeguarded as that of [p76] other sections, the cry for equality of treatment has as much meaning to-day as it had in the last years of the 18th century, but beyond this one claim, it is difficult to discover any meaning in it whatsoever. Unfortunately, however, this very necessary and incontrovertible limitation of the idea of equality, is not likely to deter those whose base purpose may best be served by extending the significance of the word beyond its proper bounds, when appealing to the least desirable elements in every nation; and unless in the mass of the people of all countries there is that understanding of the term which alone bears any resemblance to reality, mankind will continue at intervals to be incited to energetic though fruitless violence in the pursuit of a phantom which can have no practical or effective existence outside the calculations of a mathematician’s brain. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 10: Perhaps it is only fair to remind the reader that Jefferson was the United States minister plenipotentiary in Paris in 1785, and that he had, therefore, imbibed deeply much of the nonsense that was current in France at the time.] [Footnote 11: See _The French Revolution_, by Louis Madelin, p. 15. The author continues: “He [Condorcet] and his co-religionists, who knew nothing of true sociology, which has its foundations in psychology, here prove themselves still more ignorant of history.”] [Footnote 12: Rousseau. Vol. I., p. 181.] [Footnote 13: See Tennyson, _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_.] [Footnote 14: See also H. de Balzac. _Le Cabinet des Antiques_: “En France, ce qu’il y a de plus national, est la vanité. La masse des vanités blessées y a donné soif d’égalité.”] [Footnote 15: Nature’s failures and society’s failures are not identical. Nature’s failure is frequently a creature below par, he is frequently botched and undesirable. Society’s failure may be an extremely desirable person, to whom modern conditions are so loathsome that he cannot adapt himself to them and become successful. That is why the Eugenists, who are prone to class the unsuccessful of the age with the undesirable, still have a good deal to learn. The unsuccessful now-a-days are certainly the biologically “unfit”; but the question that must be decided before you conclude that they are also “undesirable” is whether present conditions demand desirable or undesirable qualities in those who become successfully adapted to them,--in those, that is to say, who are “fit.”] [p77] CHAPTER IV FREEDOM “Freedom such as God hath given Unto all beneath His heaven, With their breath, and from their birth, Though guilt would sweep it from the earth.” --Byron (_Poems on Napoleon_).