I am going to define education simply as the process of making a man of a man, First, note that the thing is a process, that-is, something that takes time. In understanding any process the most important consideration is its end, and this we have said to be the perfection in his own kind of the person educated. We must notice further that any being of which it can be said that it is perfectible, in its own kind, can be perfect only in a relative and not in an absolute way. What is perfectible, even when perfect, will lack the perfection of having always been perfect. It will be perfect only in a particular kind, since what becomes must always be of a particular kind. God alone is perfect absolutely and hence the notion of education is not applicable to him, as it is to the pseudo-god of W. James. Further, what is perfect of its own kind or in a relative way, cannot be the sufficient reason for its own perfection. It must exist in view of that whose perfection is wholly contained in its own act of existence, that is in God. We may thus say that education is the process of making a man of a man because God is God. In other words, being a man makes no sense apart from God, being like whose perfection is the only perfection which a perfectible being can have.

To know what education is, therefore, we must know something about what man is and in order to know what man is we must know something about what God is . . .