who laughs at the blind should wear spectacles, and he who notices him is near-sighted.
Strange! that which has frightened so many minds is not, after all, an objection to equality—it is the very condition on which equality exists!…
Natural inequality the condition of equality of fortunes!… What a paradox!… I repeat my assertion, that no one may think I have blundered—inequality of powers is the sine qua non of equality of fortunes.
There are two things to be considered in society—functions and relations.
I. Functions. Every laborer is supposed to be capable of performing the task assigned to him; or, to use a common expression, “every workman must know his trade.” The workman equal to his work,—there is an equation between functionary and function.
In society, functions are not alike; there must be, then, different capacities. Further,—certain functions demand greater intelligence and powers; then there are people of superior mind and talent. For the performance of work necessarily involves a workman: from the need springs the idea, and the idea makes the producer. We only know what our senses long for and our intelligence demands; we have no keen desire for things of which we cannot conceive, and the greater our powers of conception, the greater our capabilities of production.
Thus, functions arising from needs, needs from desires, and desires from spontaneous perception and imagination, the same intelligence which imagines can also produce; consequently, no labor is superior to the laborer. In a word, if the function calls out the functionary, it is because the functionary exists before the function.
