Labor, then, after having distinguished capacities and arranged
their equilibrium by the division of industries, completes the
armament of intelligence, if I may venture to say so, by
machinery. According to the testimony of history as well as
according to analysis, and notwithstanding the anomalies caused
by the antagonism of economic principles, intelligence differs in
men, not by power, clearness, or reach, but, in the first place,
by specialty, or, in the language of the schools, by qualitative
determination, and, in the second place, by exercise and
education. Hence, in the individual as in the collective
man, intelligence is much more a faculty which comes, forms, and
develops, qu{ae} fit, than an entity or entelechy which exists,
wholly formed, prior to apprenticeship. Reason, by whatever name
we call it,--genius, talent, industry,--is at the start a naked
and inert potentiality, which gradually grows in size and
strength, takes on color and form, and shades itself in an
infinite variety of ways. By the importance of its acquirements,
by its capital, in a word, the intelligence of one individual
differs and will always differ from that of another; but, being a
power equal in all at the beginning, social progress must consist
in rendering it, by an ever increasing perfection of methods,
again equal in all at the end.
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