community's life; although, of course, it must be supplemented by the
work of the other men whose education and activities are literary and
scholastic, of the men who work in politics or law, or in literary and
clerical positions.
Never forget that in any country the most important activities are the
activities of the man who works with head or hands in the ordinary
life of the community, whether he be handicraftsman, farmer, or
business man--no matter what his occupation, so long as it is useful
and no matter what his position, from the guiding 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. 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
that the granting of a paper constitution, prefaced by some
high-sounding declaration, 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 corruption and anarchy and tyranny, simply
because the people for whom the constitution was made did not develop
the qualities which alone would enable them to take advantage of it.
With any people the essential quality to show is, not haste in
grasping after a power which it is only too easy to misuse, but a
slow, steady, resolute development of those substantial qualities,
such as the love of justice, the love of fair play, the spirit of
self-reliance, of moderation, which alone enable a people to govern
themselves. In this long and even tedious but absolutely essential
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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