Here lies absolute and final equality, and the State, the Law, the Church are bound to guard this equality in the one case and the other with equal force; indeed, those of the lower racial and family types claim even more faithful guardianship than those of the higher, for they can accomplish less for themselves and by themselves. But the fundamental and inescapable inequality, in intellect, in character, and in capacity, which I insist is one of the conditioning factors in life, is vociferously denied, but ruthlessly enforced, by the people that will be the first to denounce any restatement of what is after all no more than a patent fact. A little less enthusiasm for shibboleths, and a little more intelligent regard for history and palpable conditions, will show that the assumed equality between men "on the strength of their manhood alone," the sufficiency of education for correcting the accidental differences that show themselves, and the scheme of life that is worked out along democratic lines on the basis of this essential (or potential) equality, are "fond things vainly imagined" which must be radically modified before the world can begin a sane and wholesome building-up after the great purgation of war. That equality between men which exists by virtue of the presence in each of an immortal soul, involves an even distribution of justice and the protection of law, without distinction of persons, and an even measure of charity and compassion, but it does not involve the admission of a claim to equality of action or the denial of varied status, since race-values, both of blood and of the _gens_ enter in to establish differences in character, in intelligence and in capacity which cannot be changed by education, environment or heredity within periods which are practical considerations with society. If we could still hold the old Darwinian dogmas of the origin of species through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and if the equally august and authoritative dogma of the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics were longer tenable, then perhaps we might invoke faith, hope and patience and continue our generous method of imperilling present society while we fixed our eyes on the vision of that to come when environment, education and heredity had accomplished their perfect work. Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--science is rapidly reconsidering its earlier and somewhat hasty conclusions, and the consensus of the most authoritative opinion seems to be that we must believe these things no longer. Failing these premises, on which we have laboured so long and so honestly and so sincerely, we are again thrown back on the testimony of history and our own observation, and with this reversal we also are bound to reconsider both our premises and the constitution of those systems and institutions we have erected on them as a foundation.