Abstract

Democratic Assumptions - IV

No fundamental of the democratic creed is more assailable, as none has been more successfully attacked, than the dogma of human equality. The proposition that all men are born equal, if looked at as an axiom of political science, is indeed patently absurd. The difficulty nowadays for any thinking man is not to perceive its absurdity, but to understand the reasons, which have at times commended it to universal acceptance. Difference is the law of the universe; it is certainly the law of human nature. But though the doctrine that all men are created equal neither needs nor repays confutation, every serious student must feel that the arguments used to expose the favorite error of political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and of his acknowledged or unacknowledged followers are unsatisfactory.