Herbert Spencer

Not the equality of men, but the equality of their claims to make the best of themselves within the limits mutually produced, has all along been my principle.…
The equality alleged [in Social Statics] is not among men themselves, but among their claims to equally-​limited spheres for the exercise of their faculties: an utterly different proposition.

Herbert Spencer, in a letter to W. H. Hudson, a former assistant, rejecting his consent to Hudson dedicating his book on Jean-​Jacques Rousseau to him (January 7, 1903). The book went on to be published as Rousseau and Naturalism in Life and Thought (1903), dedicated to Dr. Frederick James Furnivall. Spencer went on to say, in that letter, that the “equality” he had alleged in his first book, Social Statics (1851), “is not among men themselves, but among their claims to equally-​limited spheres for the exercise of their faculties: an utterly different proposition. [T. H.] Huxley confused the two and spread the confusion, and I am anxious that it should not be further spread.”