ABSTRACT
It is the first of these ‘self-evident truths’ that gives psycho logists cause to stop and think. Can the signers of the Declaration have really meant that all men are equal, when they had among their own number so many individuals of strikingly different personalities, and when certainly Benja min Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were obviously more able than many of the rest? From the context it is probable that what was meant by equality of mankind is implied in the second ‘truth*, that all men have equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Probably these eminent men did not really mean that all men are equal in ability and personality or even that they are all created equal in the sense that they are equal by nature and heredity and differ only by education and opportunity. Whatever they may have meant, there is no doubt that the fact of individual differences creates a problem for democracy.
