CQNSCIOUSNESS IN THE FIRST UNITY 20T

and enlarged, and he escapes therébythe tyranny of external gains.

THE last three chapters hâve been occupied with certain spécial kinds of expérience— Pain, Moral Effort, Love — ^whicfa médiate the birth of Freedom in the soûl; — Freedom or, as it has been hère described, Consdousness in the Second Unity, being one of three main characteristics of the inward Democracy. With another of thèse characteristics, cosmic emotionalism (or Consdousness in the third Unity), we hâve also dealt; and there remains the third, which is the subject of this chapter; EquaJity (or Consdousness in the First Unity).

Equality is a common, but an elusive, word. It is not easily defined ; and, so far as defined, most people fight shy of the idea of it. It seems to be of the flimsiest stuS that dreams are made of , and they fear to introduce it into contact with actual life. They think of it as a strange jet of idealistic enthusiasm which was flung up from the depths in the lurid disturbances of the French Révolution; or as a somewhat sinister claim made by those who hâve not and would Uke to hâve. Others blunt the keen edge of the word by explaining it in some such phrase as " equality of opportunity," but this is rather an obscuration than a solution of the problem.

Certain things may be ruled out at once.

a08 DEFINITION OF EQUALITY

Equality, for ^umiple, is not sameness. It is not a mathematical equality. That two persons should be equal does not mean that they ahould j each be the * ' double ' ' (in any sensé) of the other. The présence of equaUty is, as in the case of the leaves of a tree, compatible with a complète absence of sameness. Two people are not equal as two bricks may be equal in measurement, weight, quaHty — ^if only for the reason that Society is a structure, not a heap.

Neither is it mechanical equality. There îs a tendency in the élaboration of organization Sa some sections of a modern community to produce a kind of machine-made man; to standardize individuals; to approximate them to mère items in a mechanism, so that one may be sul> stituted for another like screws. Hère is an equaUty which is something hke sameness ; but precisely hère is something which is profoundly contradictory and destructive of manhood and Ufe.

Equality, again, is not uniformity. It is not something produced by a levelling process, either up or down. The phrase a *'dead level" is suggestive. A tree may be pruned to a certain shape, but in a week' s time the artificial outlitie will be destroyed. It is not possible to level a living thing. Uniformity implies the use of a mould under pressure ; to some extent the quenching and crushing out of individuahty. No sane reformer is working for such an end as thîs. No

NONCONFORMITY 209

true vision of life ofiers such a vîew as this. If men could be passed through some sort of machine — say, a particular type of éducation — so as to corne ont compressed into a uniform shape, there is an original and irrésistible force dwelling at the centre of every individual which would either shatter or distort the pattem into which it had been moulded. A man's signature naturally plays mischief with copperplate. As Emerson said, every man who is worthy of the name is a nonconformist. He will not be coerced into a pattem. Many men are extraordinarily patient, submissive, docile ; they willingly suff er many limitations in the interests of what appears to be the common good ; but there is a Umit to the Umitations. There is a boundary to the dominion of organization. There is a term to sufferance. When that term is reached, sooner or later, the situation becomes intolérable, and the mildest of men finds himself nonconformist, revolutionary, malgré soi. Ail of which is obviously healthy, Ufeward.

EquaUty is not to be f ound in extemals ; nor in those internai qualities, either, which are more immediately manifested and perceived. EquaUty, for example, is not equaUty in ability. If individuals were to be completely stripped of ail covering things, things extemally attached — houses, lands, possessions, body — they would not appear as so many transparent sphères of nûndstuff (let us say) precisely equal in size, capacity,

EQCAUrr AMSD DIFFERENCES

In tiicsedecper areas are still aie gieat sonls» and mean smîs : soc^ d iae tciAuie, and sonls of coarse JM* irg^ : tfme aie ncn of cxtiaordînary ^iritual T!scc and men w1k> havt prartkaHy no spiritual irsm at al ; nKn w1k> aie ezpansive, esqdosive, cernes ot zroial and ajàiiiual force, and others và»> are passive and înot. There aie men of sai±^ ^reat sod that ibcy tfhmnph i^odously over t2e sîi^t a=£avTMirable ocMidîticHis, giants who

Iters vitli digniiy. Sunyan, Caiey , in a cobfakr's leathern a ganet; Ilisen orBoéhinen, sfivîng fram hand to mouth ;

Garnie Ks kgÎQn ; — soch as thèse cannot be sçcàaesr of as bcîng in any scnse on ïbe same level oc T^socL sfxritoal capaàty, moral <piaEty, neiih the tetts of thoasands cl ksser men and women wbo Gwn them as masters and gmdes.

In mbat sensé, then. can eqoality be piedicted of men and vomen so diverse in place, fonction, gift. capacty. abîlity. vdiose distinct individuaËtv seems to be of ttte very essence of their being, and nbose mntoal diflEerenœs are necessary in tbe social nnity ?

Browniog came ahnost vdtbin sight of the ansvrer vrben he wrote,

AD service lanks the same vnÛL God — Wiâi God. wbos^ puppeis best and woist Aie we ; tliere îs no last nor first.

" Puppets " is not good ; it suggests the me-

EQUALITY IN SERVICE 211

chanical equality which we hâve excluded, and a dead level of personal insignificance. A poet of Browning' s order, however, must not be taken up on a Word, and the gênerai thought in the Unes is true. We are ail equal in the sensé that we hâve each a place and a function vdthin the Whole, and each of us functioning in our place is necessary to the Whole. There is no extemal equality between the great muscle which flexes the fighting arm, and the tiny muscle which moves the eyelid or compresses the tear-gland ; yet, on the plane of service, each is made equal to the other by the body's need of each ; and this is capable of practical proof , since the fighting arm would not be of much service if the due compression of the tear-gland did not keep the eye clear. The pièces on a chess-board are unequal in value, as they stand ; but for the purposes of the combination by which the master makes a bid for victory, each pièce and pawn in the combination is on an equality, in the sensé that the combination as a movement works equally through each, and apart f rom the exercise of the position and capacity of each at its fullest the combination will break down.

Ail service is not the same ; neither, if one t3T>e of service is artificially isolated from another and compared with it in range and efïect, is ail service equal ; common sensé could not hold that the ploughman is, when so judged, equal to the poet; but ail service "ranks the same" from