may strive to
preserve the inefficient and improvident, should it do so by hampering
and restraining those wiser and more capable? We must expect nature to
deal with society, with states and nations, as it does with
individuals. If a state by its laws discourages the exercise to its
full extent of the efficiency of the few and renders less severe the
penalties for the inefficiency and imprudence of the many, it cannot
long maintain any advantageous position among other nations. Whatever
the precepts of religion, of philanthropy, or of other virtues may
require, the precepts of justice do not require society to support men
in idleness nor even to furnish them with employment. Neither do the
precepts of justice require the state to furnish opportunities, nor
even to establish equality of opportunity, but only equality of right
to take advantage of opportunity. It is a saying, but not a fact, that
opportunity knocks once at every man's door. Nature does not bring
opportunities, much less equal opportunities, to men's doors. It
requires men to go out and search for opportunities, or at least to be
on the watch for them, as it requires men to search or watch for other
things they desire; and he of the quickest perception and most
farsighted will soonest see them, and when seen he does not feel any
obligation to share them with others less vigilant or even less
fortunate. Society does not support its members, they support it and
must support it and themselves by their own exertions, find their own
place, find employment for themselves, so far as the precepts of
justice are concerned.

However prevalent the sentiment that more than equality of right to
use his opportunities is due to any one, it is not an instinctive
sentiment. The contrary is the fact. Unless we are dominated by some
other sentiment than justice, we instinctively yield assent to
Aristotle's proposition that the prize flute should be awarded to the
best flute player whether opulent or indigent, literate or illiterate,
citizen or slave. A group of small children exploring the fields and
woods for wild flowers will concede to each what flowers he finds
whether by his better eyes or better luck. So with groups of small
boys fishing in the streams and brooks. In games of cards for stakes,
the players do not expect to hold cards of equal value and they
concede the stakes to the winner, whether won by his greater skill or
superior cards.

Also there is an instin