Organization, which is instrument or means, tends to become an end in itself. This is the fate of most organized causes; a movement arises with its standardized labels and values, its stereotyped mannerisms, its rigamarole. Success is estimated in terms of material effects, tangible results, numbers and power. The organizer takes precedence over those who possess the interest which it is his task to serve. When a man becomes a labor organizer, he stops work. Many university presidents are not themselves teachers or even scholars. They are good organizers, and with very much the same methods and standards of value one could as well organize a labor union or an insurance company. This is no criticism of the college president. His practical ability is requisite of modern conditions. But ways of thinking and of feeling are elusive and essentially personal, and when the attempt is made to institutionalize them they vanish and a lifeless imitation is substituted. You may as well try to organize the weather as to organize faith, hope and love. “Organized charity” is almost a contradiction in terms. Organized religion is a garden of artificial flowers, badly faded too. The spiritual life of the race was carefully weeded out long ago. To know the effect of organization upon education, one need only attend a convention of the National Educational Association, or familiarize oneself with the public school system anywhere. The system supplants education. The present interest in adult education is in part a protest against the system. The thirst for knowledge is nowhere more genuine and healthy than in such groups as those which attend The People’s Institute of New York and other educational centers where learning is pursued with a minimum of organization. In such places people who desire further knowledge of some subject in which they are interested come together, voluntarily, and their only basis of association is their common intellectual interest. There is no cult or “movement”; there are no promoters for there is nothing to promote. There are no ulterior ends to serve and there are no outside influences or regulations save those necessary to insure honest scholarship and competent instruction. Many adult students would resent any attempt at further organization. There is in existence at the present time a World Association for adult education, and there was recently formed an American Association. But these associations have no ambition to guide or control or to standardize. Nor are they equipped to do so. One of the greatest services that such an association, made up of teachers and students, could perform would be to work to prevent the diversion of the present interest in popular education to ends that are not educational.