THE BEAUTY OF EQUALITY.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9304, 3 January 1896, Page 3

THE BEAUTY OF EQUALITY.

Century Magazine. Equality is such a beautiful thing that I wonder people can ever have any other ideal. It is the only social joy, the only comfort. If you meet an inferior or a superior, you are at once wretched. Do you have any pleasure of the man who stands behind your chair at dinner? No more than the man across the table who, because he is richer or of better family, or of greater distinction, treats you de haul en has. You spoil the joy of life for your ipferior, just as your superior spoils the joy of life for you. Tho sense of inferiority infuriates; the sense of superiority intoxicates. The madness is more or less violent, as temperament varies ; but in some form it is felt wherever inequality is seen ; and good society, which always hates a scene, instinctively does its best to ignore inequality. Of course it can do this only on a very partial and restricted scale, and of course the result is an effect of equality, and not equality itself, or equality merely for the moment.

Perhaps it is because we know society to be merely a make-believe in its equality that so many society people regard a real equality as impossible, and are content to remain in the make-believe. But even the pretence of equality is precious, and it has more honesty in it than the pretence of inequality. There is nothing so essentially false as that and the superior, when he takes thought, is as distinctly aware of the fact as the inferior. Humanity is always seeking equality. The patrician wishes to be with his equals because his inferiors make him uneasy; the plebeian wishes to be with his equals because his superiors make him unhappy. This fact accounts for inequality itself, for classes. Inferiority and superiority were intolerable to men, and so they formed themselves into classes, that inside of these classes they might have the peace, the comfort, of equality ; and each kept himself to his own class for that reason.

I doubt, in fine, if anybody really wants inequality. None but the superiors ever pretend to want it; the inferiors openly or secretly detest it. I doubt whether the superiors have any comfort in it ; the body of a man, especially the face of a man, with his more or less squirming, is not an agreeable footing, and I think no one truly enjoys the bad eminence it gives him. What we truly enjoy in each other is likeness, not unlikeness, that is what makes the pleasure of good society. There is no rest save on the common ground. If I meet a man of different tradition, different religion, different race, different language, I am pleased with him for a moment, as I should be with a fairy or an amiable goblin ; but he presently bores mc, when the surprise of him is over. I find that we have no common ground. The perpetual yearning of our hearts is for intelligent response, and this caa come only from our equals, from equality.