Again,  our  national  structure,  from  the  town-meeting
to  the  federal  government,  is  based,  both  consciously  and
unconsciously,  both  fundamentally  and  imperfectly,  upon
the  broad  principle  that  all  men,  in  their  naturally
organized  relations  with  the  community  as  a  whole,  are
born  "  free  and  equal  "  ;  and  that  any  other  relation  of
an  opposite  sort,  whether  organized  or  sporadic,  is
unnatural  and  must  stunt  and  distort  the  social  organism
and  degenerate  the  naturally  useful  individual  into  a
social  sore.
This  principle  of  secular  ethics  will  also  be  taken  into
the  premises.  To  those  men  who,  albeit  often  able  to
read,  write,  publish  and  be  read,  are  so  limited  in  under-
standing as  to  be  unable  to  perceive  the  fundamental  dif-
ference between  this  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  all  men  in
the  eye  of  the  state  and  the  absurd  proposition  that  all
men  are  alike,  or  even  equivalent,  my  word  at  the  outset
is  that  they  cannot  possibly  agree  with  what  follows,  nor
even  learn  from  It  Its  lesson.  But  their  quarrel  is  not
with  my  conclusions;  it  is  with  my  premises.  The  fact
remains  that  all  men  are  by  nature  born  free  and  equal :
possessing  freedom  of  Initiative,  and  in  their  relation
toward  the  Supreme  Intelligence  and  toward  the  organ-
ized state,  equal.  The  natural,  rapid  and  wholesome
growth  of  our  nation,  in  all  things  essential.  Is  due  to
the  foresight  with  which  Its  fathers  founded  it  upon
this  fundamental  natural  fact.     If  It  shall  have  developed


356  THE    COST    OF    COMPETITION

later  that  any  man  is  either  hampered  in  his  initiative  or
treated  unequally  from  his  fellows  by  his  own  community,
it  is  plainly  because  man  has  artificially  invaded  and
broken  this  fundamentally  natural  relation  between  indi-
vidual and  community.
