466 
EDUCATION A PROCESS 
intelligence at the top down 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. Y ou 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 that 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 44 give ” a 
people 44 self-government,” any more than it is possible 
to 44 give” an individual 44 self-help.” You know that 
the Arab proverb runs, 44 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 
arid the same rights, the same guarantees, and yet have 
seen them fail miserably and lamentably, and sink into 
