ows by its own.]

"To him that hath shall be given," says the Gospel, representing as a
principle of divine justice one that undoubtedly holds in earthly
economy. A not dissimilar observation is made in the proverb:
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law." Indeed, some trifling
acquisition often gives an animal an initial advantage which may easily
roll up and increase prodigiously, becoming the basis of prolonged good
fortune. Sometimes this initial advantage is a matter of natural
structure, like talent, strength, or goodness; sometimes an accidental
accretion, like breeding, instruction, or wealth. Such advantages grow
by the opportunities they make; and it is possible for a man launched
into the world at the right moment with the right equipment to mount
easily from eminence to eminence and accomplish very great things
without doing more than genially follow his instincts and respond with
ardour, like an Alexander or a Shakespeare, to his opportunities. A
great endowment, doubled by great good fortune, raises men like these
into supreme representatives of mankind.

[Sidenote: Its causes natural and its privileges just.]

It is no loss of liberty to subordinate ourselves to a natural leader.
On the contrary, we thereby seize an opportunity to exercise our
freedom, availing ourselves of the best instrument obtainable to
accomplish our ends. A man may be a natural either by his character or
by his position. The advantages a man draws from that peculiar structure
of his brain which renders him, for instance, a ready speaker or an
ingenious mathematician, are by common consent regarded as legitimate
advantages. The public will use and reward such ability without jealousy
and with positive delight. In an unsophisticated age the same feeling
prevails in regard to those advantages which a man may draw from more
external circumstances. If a traveller, having been shipwrecked in some
expedition, should learn the secrets of an unknown land, its arts and
resources, his fellow-citizens, on his return, would not hesitate to
follow his direction in respect to those novel matters. It would be
senseless folly on their part to begrudge him his adventitious eminence
and refuse to esteem him of more consequence than their uninitiated
selves. Yet when people, ignoring the natural causes of all that is
called artificial, think that but for an unlucky chance they, too, might
have enjoyed the advantages which raise other men above them, t