Self Help

Self Help

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Self Help, by Samuel Smiles
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Self Help
Author: Samuel Smiles
Release Date: June, 1997 [EBook #935] [This file was first posted on
June 10, 1997] [Most recently updated: May 20, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SELF HELP
***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

SELF HELP; WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF CONDUCT AND
PERSEVERANCE
CHAPTER I
--SELF-HELP--NATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL

"The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals
composing it."--J. S. Mill.
"We put too much faith in systems, and look too little to men."--B.
Disraeli.
"Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim,
embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience.
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual;
and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of
national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in
its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is
done FOR men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus
and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to
over-guidance and over- government, the inevitable tendency is to
render them comparatively helpless.
Even the best institutions can give a man no active help. Perhaps the

most they can do is, to leave him free to develop himself and improve
his individual condition. But in all times men have been prone to
believe that their happiness and well-being were to be secured by
means of institutions rather than by their own conduct. Hence the value
of legislation as an agent in human advancement has usually been
much over-estimated. To constitute the millionth part of a Legislature,
by voting for one or two men once in three or five years, however
conscientiously this duty may be performed, can exercise but little
active influence upon any man's life and character. Moreover, it is
every day becoming more clearly understood, that the function of
Government is negative and restrictive, rather than positive and active;
being resolvable principally into protection--protection of life, liberty,
and property. Laws, wisely administered, will secure men in the
enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, whether of mind or body, at a
comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent,
can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken
sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action,
economy, and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
The Government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex
of the individuals composing it. The Government that is ahead of the
people will inevitably be dragged down to their level, as the
Government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up. In
the order of nature, the collective character of a nation will as surely
find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its
own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and
corrupt ignobly. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth
and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions
than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate
of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of the
personal improvement of the men, women, and children of whom
society is composed.
National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and
uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and
vice. What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for
the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own perverted

life; and though we may endeavour to cut them down and extirpate
them by means of Law, they will only spring up again with fresh
luxuriance