Idea of equality: an anthology

The idea of equality lies embedded in the very foundation of west ern civilization, in the amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Hebraic Christian ideas and institutions. In part, it is based upon conceptions of natural right and natural law, which are essential elements of a sound philosophy of man and nature and God. Thus it possesses a con siderable history before it receives characteristic statement in the great legal and political documents of the eighteenth century. Since the history of the idea of equality has received much less attention than the history of liberty, this anthology seeks to bring together a wide variety of characteristic statements which reveal the historical development of the idea of equality. There is of course a certain violence done to a man's thought when specific passages from his writings are selected which may contradict what he has written elsewhere or about which he may have later changed his mind. No claim is intended here that the selections are always completely representative of a man's work. The purpose is rather to reveal something of the range and complexity of the development of the idea of equality in western thought. The basic pattern of the development and operation of the idea of equality can be discovered only by a historical study of its empirical data.

The question of what equality should mean in practical terms in our contemporary urban and technological civilization characterized by cultural heterogeneity and uncertainty about the value and purpose of an individual's life is indeed a difficult and pressing problem. This anthology does not offer the systematic analysis which this question requires. Its modest hope is that it may give some historical perspective which may illumine and restrain the less flexible analyses of this question.