Adult education is selective. Its aim is not to provide a slight increase of information and a few noble sentiments for the rank and file, but to select out of the undifferentiated mass those who are naturally capable of becoming something more than automatons. These need no credits or examinations or promise of diplomas to spur them to intellectual effort. They would gain wisdom if there were no educational institutions, or classes, or lectures. But they need advice and the fellowship of other studious minds, for they are often lonely. Very few even professional students can easily carry on their studies when isolated from their kind. Hence the existence of universities. The rush and racket of our industrial civilization are so great that there is need to establish for those whose minds can rise above it, an environment where thought is leisurely and where people may be found who have had learning long enough to be at home with it. The isolated student, like the person learning to swim, makes much needless effort. He tries to stuff his head with learning. He needs time to meditate upon what he learns, talk about it, assimilate it, see its relations to his knowledge and experience as a whole. I believe this to be the value of group discussion, where there is a real meeting of minds. I do not, however, as some seem to do, believe that a company of uninformed people talking nonsense are necessarily engaged in a work of mutual education. It is not as groups that men may attain wisdom. With all the aid possible from others, education is necessarily an individual achievement. We need adult education not because it is a path to some Utopia, or imaginary triumph of the masses, or because it will add to the contentment of the poor, or improve their morals and their industrial efficiency, or raise the tone of politics. We need adult education for the same reason that we need any education at all. From the beginning of time men of a certain type have sought such knowledge of the riddle of existence as would make some measure of excellence possible to man. The result of all their striving is a vast body of knowledge which is the heritage of the men and women of our time. To share in the possession of this knowledge and to work for its improvement and increase is to men and women of a certain type simply to attain to their true human estate. They desire education because that is the kind of animal they happen to be. Such persons are different from the common lot. It is not that they may possess some secret information which the others may not have. They have a different _goal_.