ABSTRACT
Today, indeed, the love of equality is vastly stronger than any other motivant of political behavior, except perhaps the thirst for money and power, with which it is closely connected. Furthermore, the contemporary striving for equality is part and parcel of a more fundamental phenomenon—the quest for democratic justice, which surely ranks as one of the protean forces of modern history. Granted the theory and practice of equality are today quite different from what they were in both the ancient and medieval worlds; nonetheless a hard core of the equality ideal has remained fairly constant through the centuries, as has the common man's attachment to the ideal. Furthermore, though the definitions and rationales of equality have become more intricate and sophisticated over time, the mythic, chiliastic nature of the ideal—which is what really moves most people—has changed only in the scope of its influence.
