Ancient Roots. The idea of equal protection seems
originally to be rooted in the individual's relations to
nature and to God. In relation to nature, men have
always primordially and collectively feared other crea-
tures and the elements, and thereby found a common
ground for mutual protection, sharing an empathic
sense of a levelling equality. For example, the seasonal
overflowing of the Nile made all helpless equally, re-
gardless of station. In his relation to God, man believed
that a higher will rewarded all the faithful equally in
a later, if not the present, world. In both the natural
and supernatural domains, however, differences were
undeniably recognized: a stronger physique was better
for hunting, whereas an older head might be preferred
for advice. These dissimilarities undoubtedly led to a
social stratification of chieftains and priests in an hier-
archical, if not a caste, system, with varied supporting
justifications such as hereditary innate differences or
divine dispensation. Economic and social distinctions
eventually followed, and wars and conquests also re-
sulted in the capture and enslavement of man by his
fellows.
The originally felt need for equality of protection
is found even among early civilized peoples, who at
the same time also practiced inequality. However, the
idea of justice functioned to compel equal protection
in various ways. Thus Egypt's kings were divine, and
they sanctioned oppressive regimes, but Thutmose III
(ca. 1500 B.C.) nevertheless charged his new chief jus-
tice that “thou shalt act alike to all”; in the Coffin
Text a god announced he had “made every man like
his fellow” and “made the floodwaters of the Nile for
the benefit of the poor man and the great man alike,
and given all men equal access to the kingdom of the
dead” (Muller, p. 58). So the Hebraic theocracy set
up the Ten Commandments to be administered evenly
among the chosen tribes, while the Mesopotamian King
Hammurabi (ca. 2100? B.C.) legalized inequality by
adjusting penalties and damages to rank.
The Greeks felt united against all others, whom they
called barbaroi, and practiced a form of political
equality in that a marketplace assemblage of all the
citizens (demokratia) made the laws and administered
justice, as did the Germanic tribes a thousand years
later. Greek society was democratic and unequal, and
Janus-like, presented two faces, best exemplified in the
ideas of Plato and Aristotle. “Equality consists in the
same treatment of similar persons,” wrote Aristotle;
“equality [is] not, however, for all, but only for equals.
And inequality is... only for unequals” (Politics
1280a). What the Greeks so taught and practiced was
continued in subsequent years and centuries; for exam-
ple, Rome applied to all equally the same general
principles of the jus gentium.
The sense and practice of inequality in society and
religion continued into the Middle Ages, with Saint
Augustine defending government, private property,
and slavery, and Aquinas also expounding different
“just” prices for each separate class in society. The
Renaissance revolt against authoritarianism in all fields
of knowledge and belief, for example, Luther, Rabelais,
and Ramus (1515-72), may have inspired subsequent
centuries, but without exception every nation then
upheld the inequality of classes and the unequal treat-
ment or protection in the distribution of land and
wealth. The Reformation was not much better; Luther
exalted the God-derived power of the prince and glor-
ified the state and its class system, while Hobbes's
sophisticated liberalism gave it support in a rationalist
political philosophy.
Nevertheless, the idea of man's supremacy over na-
ture led to a great levelling movement in Western
political, religious, and social history, with a conse-
quent desire for equality and like treatment. This was
translated in many countries and in various ways, e.g.,
the English Revolution of 1688, which projected
Locke's idea of a social contract among men who were
all equal, an idea which the German Enlightenment
reciprocated, for example, in Wolff's (1679-1754) view
that all men are equal before nature. And this view
is, of course, the essence of the American Declaration
of Independence of 1776, which exalted the doctrine
that “all men are created equal,” and of the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(1789) which stated “Men are born, and always con-
tinue, free and equal in respect of their rights.”
Through both these documents the middle class
achieved political power; Adam Smith's (1723-90) idea
of free competition put all persons on a plane of origi-
nal economic equality; in the nineteenth century Dar-
win gave a scientific imprimatur to man's basic equal-
ity, at least in forebears; and the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century nationalization and internation-
alization of democratic ideas adopted the Enlight-
enment's idea of man's political right to equality
everywhere.
This levelling movement was, however, not uniform
in time or degree; even the Constitution of the United
States partly repudiated the Declaration's egalitarian
statement by supporting a system which safeguarded
property and class distinctions to a degree; and, despite
the idea's growth, questions were asked concerning
what sort of equality it was which taxed all equally
regardless of differences in wealth. As Anatole France
formulated it: “The law in its majestic equality, forbids
the rich as well as the poor to sleep under the bridges,
to beg in the streets, and steal bread.” And when the
consequences of such individual equality resulted in
an economic laissez-faire exploitation with inequality
and hardships occurring, many people and nations
rejected the practice if not the theory of such a defini-
tion and application of the idea.
