for their work. The same remark applies
to every profession for which intellectual culture is a qualification.
Do we regret the fact? Would we sentence three-quarters of the nation
to remain stupid, in order that the fools in the remaining quarter may
have a better chance? That would be contrary to every democratic
instinct, to the highest as well as the lowest. But if I say, every
office and every profession shall be open to every man; success in it
shall depend upon his abilities and merits; and, further, every child
in the country shall have the opportunity of acquiring the necessary
qualifications, what is that but to accept and to stimulate the spirit
of competition? What, I ask, is the alternative? Should people be
appointed by interest? Or is nobody to be anxious for official or
professional or literary or commercial success, but only to develop his
powers from a sense of duty, and wait till some infallible observer
comes round and says, "Friend, take this position, which you deserve"?
Somehow I do not think that last scheme practicable at present. But,
even in that case, I do not see how the merits of any man are to be
tested without enabling him to prove by experiment that he is the most
meritorious person; and, if that be admitted, is not every step in
promoting education, in equalising, therefore, the position from which
men start for the race, a direct encouragement to competition?

Carlyle was fond of saying that Napoleon's great message to mankind was
the declaration that careers should be open to talent, or the tools
given to him who could use them. Surely that was a sound principle; and
one which, so far as I can see, cannot be applied without stimulating
competition. The doctrine, indeed, is unpalatable to many Socialists.
To me, it seems to be one to which only the cowardly and the indolent
can object in principle. Will not a society be the better off, in which
every man is set to work upon the tasks for which he is most fitted? If
we allowed our teaching and our thinking to be done by blockheads; our
hard labour to be done by men whose muscles were less developed than
their brains; made our soldiers out of our cowards, and our sailors out
of the sea-sick,--should we be better off? It seems, certainly, to me,
that whatever may be the best constitution of society, one mark of it
will be the tendency to distribute all social functions according to
the fitness of the agents; to place trust where trust is