The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights because they assumed that all men are equal. God created all men equal, endowing them with fundamentally the same capabilities and talents, breathing into all of them the breath of His spirit. All distinctions between men are only artificial, the product of social, human that is to say, transitory institutions. What is imperishable in man his spirit is undoubtedly the same in rich and poor, noble and commoner, white and colored. Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.
Men are altogether unequal.
Even between brothers there exist the most marked differences in physical and mental attributes. Men are not equal, and the demand for equality under the law can by no means be grounded in the contention that equal treatment is due to equals. There are two distinct reasons why all men should receive equal treatment under the law. One was already mentioned when we analyzed the objections to involuntary servitude. In order for human labor to realize its highest attainable productivity, the worker must be free, because only the free worker, enjoying in the form of wages the fruits of his own industry, will exert himself to the full.