466 EDUCATION A PROCESS 



intelligence at the top doAvn all the way through, just 

 as long as his work is good. I preach this to you here 

 by the banks of the Nile, and it is the identical doctrine 

 I preach no less earnestly by the banks of the Hudson, 

 the Mississippi, and the Columbia. 



Remember always that the securing of a substantial 

 education, whether by the individual or by a people, 

 is attained only by a process, not by an act. You can no 

 more make a man really educated by giving him a 

 certain curriculum of studies than you can make a 

 people fit for self-government by giving it a paper 

 constitution. The training of an individual so as to fit 

 him to do good work in the world is a matter of years, 

 just as the training of a nation to fit it successfully to 

 fulfil the duties of self-government is a matter, not of a 

 decade or two, but of generations. There are foolish 

 empiricists who believe tliat the granting of a paper 

 constitution, prefaced by some high-sounding declara- 

 tion, of itself confers the power of self-government upon 

 a people. This is never so. Nobody can " give " a 

 people " self-government," any more than it is possible 

 to "give" an individual "self-help." You know that 

 the Arab proverb runs, " God helps those who help 

 themselves." In the long-run, the only permanent way 

 by which an individual can be helped is to help him to 

 help himself, and this is one of the things your University 

 should inculcate. But it must be his own slow growth in 

 character that is the final and determining factor in the 

 problem. So it is with a people. In the two Americas we 

 have seen certain commonwealths rise and prosper greatly. 

 We have also seen other commonwealths start under 

 identically the same conditions, with the same freedom 

 and the same rights, the same guarantees, and yet have 

 seen them fail miserably and lamentably, and sink into 



