There can be no one best type of community organization adapted to the widely varying conditions of all sorts and sizes of rural communities; each community must have a form of organization adapted to its needs. The important thing is not the creation of another new organization in the community, but to afford the means for the better team play of those which already exist. The mechanism must therefore depend upon the character and stage of development of the community and will be modified from time to time as its experience, or that of similar community organizations, warrants. Finally let us remember that community organization is not an end in itself, but that it is merely a means whereby conditions in the community may be made such that every individual in it may have the best possible chance to develop his personality and to enjoy the fellowship of service in the common good. The aim of all social organization is personality, but personality is achieved and can find its own satisfaction only through fellowship. The ideal community but furnishes the social environment in which the human spirit realizes its highest values. FOOTNOTES: [84] Much of this chapter is a revision of parts of an article by the author entitled "Some Fundamentals of Rural Community Organization." Proceedings Third Natl. Country Life Conference, pp. 66-77. [85] See Elliott Dunlap Smith, Proceedings first National Country Life Conference, pp. 36-46 and Appendix C. [86] In this connection, Dr. N. L. Sims in his "The Rural Community" (p. 640. New York. Scribners, 1920), has propounded a most interesting "Law of Rural Socialization":--"Cooperation in rural neighborhoods has its genesis in and development through those forms of association which, beginning on the basis of least cost, gradually rise through planes of increasing cost to the stage of greatest cost in effort demanded, and which give at the same time ever increasing and more enduring benefits and satisfactions to the group." [87] See pp. 74-5, "Some Fundamentals of Rural Community Organization." Proc. 3d National Country Life Conference; and, E. C. Lindeman, "The Community," Chap. X. New York, Association Press, 1921. CHAPTER XVIII COMMUNITY PLANNING So far we have been considering the community with regard to how its people associate, with community psychology and behavior. But we must not forget that the community has a physical basis. The buildings which house these associations at the community center, the church, the school, the grange hall, the stores, with the roads which radiate from it and the farmsteads which they serve, these are the structures which, with the natural topography of stream and hill, give material form to the community and condition its life.