Sir, - I enjoyed Vincent Browne's urbane breast-beating in his piece, "Largesse and egalitarian hypocrites" (Opinion, November 8th); but I have to confess that I found it, like most moaning about inequality, superficial and unconvincing. Equality is a mathematical concept; mankind is a brotherhood of the incomparable. Every man has the gift of life; after that every man has the chance to make something absolutely unique of that gift. He doesn't want to sit and look at his "equality". He is driven to make something extraordinary of it and the gifts with which he does this cannot be compared with anyone else's gifts.
Mankind is a brotherhood, but no one will ever quite see this brotherhood in the same way. The needs behind the choices that each human existence makes are as incomparable as the choices. That is why power ceases to be power when it is evenly distributed.
Power is not power if it does not succeed, even if it is only the power of the poor Christian to suffer. If it succeeds, then, hey presto, it is a fact.
You are given it, you grab it, or you win it, but it is not distributed to you. Yours, etc.,
PATRICK PYE, Piperstown, Tallaght, Dublin 24.