Founding Address by Felix Adler

May 15, 1876
New York Society for Ethical Culture

In 1876, the 25-year-old Felix Adler delivered this address in New York City to an audience gathered by a group of men who had organized around Adler’s ideas for founding a new religious and philosophical movement.

FOR a long time the conviction has been dimly felt in the community that, without prejudice to existing institutions, the legal day of weekly rest might be employed to advantage for purposes affecting the general good. During the past few years this conviction has steadily gained in force and urgency, until lately a number of gentlemen have been impelled to give it shape and practical effect.

Conceiving that in so laudable an enterprise they may justly hope for the sympathy and co-operation of the friends of progress, they have invited you to join in their deliberations this evening, and upon me devolves the task of stating, as frankly and plainly as may be, the end we have in view and the means by which its achievement will be attempted. At such a time, when we are about to set forth on a path hitherto untried and likely to lead our lives in a new direction, it appears eminently desirable and proper that we should, in the first place, briefly review the public and private life of the day, in order to determine whether the essential elements that make up the happiness of states and individuals are all duly provided, and if not, where the need lies and how it can best be supplied.

On the face of it, our age exhibits certain distinct traits in which it excels all of its predecessors. Eulogies on the nineteenth century are familiar to our ears, and orators delight to descant upon all the glorious things which it has achieved. Its railways, its printing presses, its increased comforts and refined luxuries - all these are undeniable facts, and yet it is true none the less, that great and unexpected evils have followed in the train of our successes, and that the moral improvement of the nations and their individual components has not kept pace with the march of intellect and the advance of industry. Before the assaults of criticism many ancient strongholds of faith have given way, and doubt is fast spreading even into circles where its expression is forbidden. Morality, long accustomed to the watchful tutelage of faith, finds this connection loosened or severed, while no new protector has arisen to champion her rights, no new instruments been created to enforce her lessons among the people. As a consequence we behold a general laxness in regard to obligations the most sacred and dear. An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.

Far be it from me, indeed, to disparage the importance of commerce or to slight its just claims as an agent in the service of humanity. In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown. But all the more on this account it is necessary to provide a powerful check and counterpoise, lest the pursuit of gain be enhanced to an importance never rightfully its own, lest, in proportion as we enhance our comfort and well-being, comfort and well-being become the main objects of existence, and life’s grander motives and meanings be forgotten. We have already transgressed the limit of safety, and the present disorders of our time are but precursors of other and imminent dangers. The rudder of our ship has ceased to move obedient to the helm. We are drifting on the seething tide of business, each one absorbed in holding his own in the giddy race of competition, each one engrossed in immediate cares and seldom disturbed by thoughts of larger concerns and ampler interests. Even our domestic life has lost much of its former warmth and geniality. The happy spirits of unaffected content and simple endearment are sadly leaving our low-burnt hearth-fires. Ragged and careworn the merchant returns to his home in the evening. He finds his children weary. His own mind is distracted. In these troublous times business cares not unfrequently dog him even into the seclusion of the family circle,. How, then, is he to discover that tranquil leisure, that serenity of soul which he needs to be a true father to his little ones. He cannot form their characters; he cannot justly estimate their needs. Perforce he leaves their educations in part to the wife - and modern wives have their own troubles and are often but little fitted to undertake so arduous a task - in part he must abandon it to strangers. It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion. We wander about festive halls, chewing artificial phrases which we neither believe nor desire to be believed. We breathe a stale and insipid perfume from which the spirit of joy has fled. The brief exhilaration of the dance, the physical stimulus of wine and of food, the nervous excitement of a game of hazard, perhaps these make up the sum total of enjoyment in by far the majority of our so-called parties of pleasure. Surely, of all things melancholy in American life, American mirth is the most melancholy! And were it not for Music - that divine comforter which sometimes wins us to higher flights of emotion and speaks in its own wordless language of an ideal beauty and harmony far transcending the prosy aspirations to which we confess - our life would be utterly blank and colorless. We should be like the bees that build, they know not why, and hive honey whose sweetness they never enjoy. There is a great and crying evil in modern society. It is want of purpose. It is that narrowness of vision which shuts out the wider vistas of the soul. It is the absence of those sublime emotions which, wherever they arise, do not fall to exalt and consecrate existence. True, the void and hollowness of which we speak is covered over by a fair exterior. Men distill a subtle sort of intoxication from the ceaseless flow and shifting changes of affairs, and the deeper they quaff the more potent for awhile is the efficacy of the charm. But there comes a time of rude awakening. A great crisis sweeps over the land. The sinews of trade are relaxed, the springs of wealth are sealed. Old houses, whose foundations seemed as lasting as the hills, give way before the storm. Reverse follows reverse. The man whose energies were hitherto expended in the accumulation of wealth finds himself ruined by the wayside. His business has proved a failure. Is his life, too, therefore a failure? Is there no other object for which he can still live and labor? Nor need we turn to such seasons of unusual disaster in order to exhibit the instability and insufficiency of the common motives of life. There are accidents to which we all are alike exposed and which none, however favored by fortune, can hope to avoid. A blight comes upon our affections. The dearest objects of our solicitude are taken from us. Our home is darkened with the deep darkness of the shadow of death. In such hours, what is to keep our heart from freezing in chill despair, to keep our head high and our step firm, if it be not the deep-seated, long and carefully matured conviction, that man was set into the world to perform a great and unselfish work, independent of his comfort, independent even of his happiness, and that in its performance alone he can find his true solace, his lasting reward? To arouse such courage, to build up and buttress such a conviction, would not this be a loyal and much-needed service?

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

When on the 30th of April, 1789, General Washington was for the first time inducted into the presidential office in this city of New York, he declared that “the national policy would be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” And he appealed to the wisdom and integrity of those first legislators whom the country had chosen under its new constitution, as a pledge and safeguard of the Republic’s future welfare. Could he return to us now in this season of jubilation, how sadly altered would he find the condition of our affairs! There is not a morning’s journal that reaches us that is not besmirched with tales of theft and perjury. The very names that ought to be held up as luminaries of honor have become bywords of villainy, and the foul stench of corruption fills our public offices. See how the Nation, in this the festal epoch of her marriage to Liberty, stands blackened with the crimes of her first dignitaries, and hides her head in shame before the nations! And for what have these miserable men bartered away their honor and that of the people? For the same unhallowed and unreasoning desire of rapid gain which has brought such heavy disaster upon the commercial world: to support the extravagance of their households; to deepen, perhaps, the potations of a carousel! Statesmen and Philanthropists are busy suggesting remedies for the cure of these great evils. But the renovation of our Civil Service, the reform of our Primaries, and whatever other measures may be devised, they all depend in the last instance upon the fidelity of those to whom their execution must be entrusted. They will all fail unless the root of the evil be attacked, unless the conscience of men be aroused, the confusion of right and wrong checked, and the loftier purposes of our being again brought powerfully home to the hearts of the people.

I have spoken of our private needs and of the larger claims of the public well-being. But another question now presents itself, fraught with deeper and tenderer meanings even than these. The children, the heirs of all the great future, what shall we do for them? Into this world of sinfulness and sorrow, with its thousandfold snares and sore temptations, shall we let their white souls go forth without even an effort to keep them stainless? Do you not struggle and toil and trouble, that you may leave them, when you die, some little store of earthly good, something to make their life easier, perhaps, than yours has been - that you may turn to your long sleep, knowing that your children shall not want bread? And for that which is far more precious than bread shall we make no provision? When your bodies have long been mouldering in the grave, they will live, men and women, fighting the world’s battles and bearing the world’s burdens like yourselves. Would you not feel the benign assurance that they will be true men and noble women? that the fair name which you transmit to them will ever be clean in their keeping? that they will be strong even in adversity, because they believe in the destiny of mankind and in the dignity of man? And what efforts do we make to attain this end? We teach them to repeat some scattered verses of the Bible, some doctrine which at their time of life they can but half comprehend at best; and then at thirteen or fourteen, at the very age when doubt begins to arise in the young heart, when in its inefficient gropings towards the light, youth stands most in need of friendly help and counsel we send them out to shift for themselves. Is it with such an armor that we can equip them for the hard hand-to-hand fight of after-life? Or do you conceive a magic charm, a talismanic power to guard from evil, to reside in these empty words which you teach your children’s lips to spell?

Already complaints are multiplying on every hand that that most gracious quality of all that adorns the age of childhood - the quality of reverence - is fast fading from our schools and households; that the oldtime respect for father and mother is diminished, and grown rarer and more uncertain. Twenty years ago, what high prophecies did we not hear of the future of the generation that was growing up! What inspiriting promises of the full bloom into which the still closed petals of their life would one day open! Have the young men of the present day fulfilled these pledges? Has the passive reverence of the child developed into the active aspiration of the man? Do you find them in the higher walks of their professions - I say take them as a whole, and set aside a few brilliant exceptions - have they illustrated the sterling qualities of the race they sprang from, the dearer virtues of our common humanity? We have sown the seeds of long neglect. We are but reaping the bitter Sodom fruit of dead hopes and fair promises turned to ashes. And now I need not appeal to your business instincts to show that any change, if it is to come - and a change must come - can be brought about only, first, by united effort; secondly, by applying that great principle which has been the secret of the enormous progress of industry and commerce in the past century - the salutary principle of division of labor.

You do not build your own houses, nor make your own garments, nor bake your own bread, simply because you know that if you were to attempt all these things they would all be more or less ill done. But you go to the builder to build your house, to the baker to bake your bread, because you know that in limitation there is power, that limitation and combinations are the essentials of success. On this account you limit your own energies to some one of the many callings which society has marked out, and by combination with your fellows, are certain that in proportion as your own part is well performed, you may command the best services in every department in exchange for what you offer. What is true of material wants is also pertinent in the case of intellectual needs. If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts. But you apply to some one in the profession in whose abilities you see reason to confide. The same holds good in every department of knowledge. In every case you turn to the specialist, trusting that, if from any source at all, you will obtain from him the best of what you need. Nor is it otherwise in education. For though you possess a sufficient knowledge of the branches taught in our schools, yet you are well aware that it is one thing to know, and quite another to impart knowledge. And so again you step aside in your own persons to entrust the office of training your children in the arts and sciences to an instructor, to a specialist. And if all this be true, then it follows that, if the moral elevation of ourselves, the moral training of our children, be also an object worth achieving, ay, if it be the highest object of our life on earth, then we dare not trust for its accomplishment to the sparse and meager hours which the busy world leaves us. Then, here as elsewhere, society must set apart some who shall be specialists in this, who shall throw all the energy of temper, all the ardor of aspiration, all the force of heart and intellect, into this difficult but ever glorious work.

The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action. What its great thinkers have thought and written on the deepest problems of life, shall we not hear and enjoy? The future calls upon us to prepare its way. Dare we fail to answer its solemn summons?

And now for all these purposes we propose to unite our efforts in association, and to set apart one day of the seven as a day of weekly reunion, - a day of ease, that shall come to repair the wasted energies of body and mind, and whereon, in the enjoyment of perfect tranquility, the finer relations of our being may find time to acquaint us with their sweet and friendly influences. What that day shall be it is not for us to determine. The usages of American society have long since settled that practically it is, and for the present at least can be, only the Sunday. This is the sole day of respite whereon the great machine of business pauses in its operations, and leaves you to direct your thoughts to other than immediate cares. In the ancient synagogue the Monday and Thursday, in the early church the Wednesday and Friday, were set apart for purposes of higher instruction, over and above the stated Sabbath meetings. If the Monday, the Thursday, the Wednesday, or the Friday had in our community been eliminated from the week of labor, we should accept any one of them with the same willingness. The name of the day is immaterial. It is the opportunity it offers with which alone we are here concerned. And how others see fit to spend the day is foreign to our consideration, and whatever mischievous construction may be placed upon our work will quickly be dispelled, depend upon it, by the character and testimony of the work itself. The young men, at all events, can desist from labor upon no other day than the Sunday. Heads of firms may, if they see fit, incur the risk of taking an exceptional position in the business community; but the young men, who depend upon others for patronage and employment. cannot in this matter select their own course, and if they attempt it will be met by innumerable and insuperable obstacles at every step. But it has been urged by some that the Sunday should be devoted to the intimate intercourse of the domestic circle, from which our merchants are so often debarred at other times. This is an honorable motive, surely, which we are bound to respect. But is it, indeed, believed that a single hour spent in serious contemplation will at all unduly infringe upon the time proper to the home circle? Rather will it give a higher tone to all our occupations, and lend a newer and fresher zest even to those enjoyments which we need and seek.

The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism. They are to consist of a lecture mainly, and, as a pleasing and grateful auxiliary, of music to elevate the heart and give rest to the feelings. The object of the lectures shall be twofold: First, to illustrate the history of human aspirations, its monitions and its examples; to trace the origin of many of those errors of the past whose poisonous tendrils still cling to the life of the present, but also to exhibit its pure and bright examples, and so to enrich the little sphere of our earthly existence by showing the grander connections in which it everywhere stands with the large life of the race. For, as the taste is refined in viewing some work of ideal beauty - some statue vivid with divine suggestion, some painting glowing with the painter’s genius - so, in the contemplation of large thoughts do we ourselves enlarge, and the soul for a time takes on the grandeur and excellency of whatever it truly admires. Secondly, it will be the object of the lecturers to set forth a standard of duty, to discuss our practical duties in the practical present, to make clear the responsibilities which our nature as moral beings imposes upon us in view of the political and social evils of our age, and also to dwell upon those high and tender consolations which the modern view of life does not fail to offer us even in the midst of anguish and affliction. Do not fear, friends, that a priestly office after a new fashion will be thus introduced.

The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one. Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar’s life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds. Moreover, the lecturer is but an instrument in your hands. It is not to him you listen, but to those countless others that speak to you through him in strange tongues, of which he is no more than the humble interpreter. And what he fails to express, what no language that was ever spoken on earth can express - those nameless yearnings of the soul for something better and happier far than aught we know of – Music will give them utterance and solve and soothe them.

We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. And on the other hand we shall be just to those who have ceased to regard them as satisfactory and dispensed with them in their own persons. Freely do I own to this purpose of reconciliation, and candidly do I confess that it is my dearest object to exalt the present movement above the strife of contending sects and parties, and at once to occupy that common ground where we may all meet, believers and unbelievers, for purposes in themselves lofty and unquestioned by any. Surely it is time that a beginning were made in this direction. For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith. The earth has been drenched with blood shed in this cause, the face of day darkened with the blackness of the crimes perpetrated in its name. There have been no direr wars than religious wars, no bitterer hates than religious hates, no fiendish cruelty like religious cruelty; no baser baseness than religious baseness. It has destroyed the peace of families, turned the father against the son, the brother against the brother. And for what? Are we any nearer to unanimity? On the contrary, diversity within the churches and without has never been so widespread as at present. Sects and factions are multiplying on every hand, and every new schism is but the parent of a dozen others. And it must be so. Let us make up our minds to that.

The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect. But if difference be inevitable, nay, welcome in thought, there is a sphere in which unanimity and fellowship are above all things needful. Believe or disbelieve as ye list - we shall at all times respect every honest conviction. But be one with us where there is nothing to divide - in action. Diversity in the creed, unanimity in the deed! This is that practical religion from which none dissents. This is that platform broad enough and solid enough to receive the worshipper and the “infidel.” This is that common ground where we may all grasp hands as brothers, united in mankind’s common cause. The Hebrew prophets said of old, To serve Jehovah is to make your hearts pure and your hands clean from corruption, to help the suffering, to raise the oppressed. Jesus of Nazareth said that he came to comfort the weary and heavy laden. The Philosopher affirms that the true service of religion is the unselfish service of the common weal. There is no difference among them all. There is no difference in the law. But so long have they quarreled concerning the origin of law that the law itself has fallen more and more into abeyance. For indeed, as it is easier to say. “I do not believe,” and have done with it, so also it is easier to say, “I believe,” and thus to bribe one’s way into heaven, as it were, than to fulfill nobly our human duties with all the daily struggle and sacrifice which they involve. “The proposition is peace!” Peace to the warring sects and their clamors, peace also of heart and mind unto us - that peace which is the fruition of purest and highest liberty. Let religion unfurl her white flag over the battlegrounds of the past, and turn the fields she had desolated so long into sunny gardens and embowered retreats. Thither let her call the traveler from the dusty high-road of life to breathe a softer, purer air, laden with the fragrance of the flowers of wonderland, and musical with sweet and restful melody. There shall he bathe his spirit in the crystal waters of the well of truth, and thence proceed again upon his journey with fresher vigor and new elasticity.

Ah, why should there be any more the old dividing line between man and his brother-man? why should the fires of prejudice flare up anew between us? why should we not maintain this common ground which we have found at last, and hedge it round, and protect it - the stronghold of freedom and of all the humanities for the long years to come? Not since the days of the Reformation has there been a crisis so great as this through which the present age is passing. The world is dark around us and the prospect seems deepening in gloom. and yet there is light ahead. On the volume of the past in starry characters it is written - the starry legend greets us shining through the misty vistas of the future - that the great and noble shall not perish from among the sons of men, that the truth will triumph in the end, and that even the humblest of her servants may in this become the instrument of unending good. We are aiding in laying the foundations of a mighty edifice, whose completion shall not be seen in our day, no, nor in centuries upon centuries after us. But happy are we, indeed, if we can contribute even the least towards so high a consummation. The time calls for action. Up, then, and let us do our part faithfully and well. And oh, friends, our children’s children will hold our memories dearer for the work which we begin this hour.

The Ethical Manifold

Felix Adler: An Ethical Philosophy of Life
Chapter V: The Ideal of the Whole and the Ethical Manifold
Original copyright 1918.

The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, furnishes, or rather is, the ideal of the whole. The ethical manifold is the true universe, not "Universe" in the sense in which the word is too laxly used at present to designate those fragmentary and in many respects unconnected lines of experience which might better by way of discrimination be called World.

The ideal of the whole, as the terms imply, must fulfill two conditions: it must be a whole, that is, include all manifoldness whatsoever; and it must be ideal, or perfectly unified. In such an ideal whole the two reality-producing functions of the human mind would find their complete fruition.

Point 1. -- The totality of manifoldness must be comprised.

Point 2. -- The connectedness must be without flaw,

From point one it follows that the ethical manifold cannot be spatial or temporal, since juxtaposition and sequence lapse into indefiniteness, abounding without ceasing, but never attaining or promising the attainment of totality. Our first conclusion then is that the ethical manifold is non-temporal and non-spatial.

Furthermore it is necessary and decisive for the theoretical construction here attempted to keep sharply In view, that the manifoldness may not be derived from the unity, or conversely. The manifold remains forever manifold. This means that in the ethical manifold each member(1) will differ uniquely from all the rest, and preserve his irreducible singularity. The member of the ethical manifold was not created by the One or any One. He is not derived as effect from any cause. Causality does not apply to the ethical manifold, being a category of spatial sequence. The member of the ethical manifold, or the ethical unit, as we may now call him (I say him metaphorically and provisionally) is unbegotten, induplicable, unique. In the ethical manifold each infinitesimal member is indispensable, inasmuch as he is one of the totality of intrinsically unlike differentiae. A duplicate would be superfluous. Inclusion implies indispensableness; no member acquires a place within the ethical universe save on the score of his title, as one of the possible modes of being that are required to complete the totality of manifoldness.

But the reality-producing functions of the mind are two, and they act jointly. The same manifold that is regarded as the scene of irreducible manifoldness, is also regarded sub specie unitatis. The immense practical importance of holding fast to diversity as indefeasible, and at the same time stressing the unity, will amply appear in the course of the third Book. It is this insistence on the two aspects jointly, that distinguishes the theory here worked out from preceding ethical philosophies, and will be found to open new ethical applications to conduct. It is this insistence on the joint action of the two reality-producing functions that will enable us to see in the ideal of the whole a pattern traced, and to derive from this pattern of relations a supreme rule of conduct. If the differences that exist among the members of the manifold be slurred over, if the indefeasible singularity of each member be overlooked, if the many be derived from the One, since the One is an empty concept, we shall gain no light upon the conduct to be followed by each of the many. It is true that our notion of the distinctive difference or the uniqueness of each ethical unit is also empty as far as knowledge goes. The unique is incognizable. Yet we are able to apprehend, and do apprehend, a determinate relation as subsisting between the ethical units, and this relation supplies us with an ideal plan of the ethical universe and a first principle and rule of ethics.' The relation is that of reciprocal universal interdependence.

Consider that an infinite number of ethical entities is presented to our minds--each of them radically different from the rest. In what then possibly can the unity of this infinite assemblage consist? In this -- that the unique difference of each shall be such as to render possible the correlated unique differences of all the rest. It is in this formula that we find the key to a new ethical system, in this conception we get our hand firmly on the notion of right, and by means of it we discover the object which Kant failed to find, the object to which worth attaches, the object which is so indispensable to the ideal of the whole as to authenticate unconditional obligation or rightness in conduct with respect to it. It is as an ethical unit, as a member of the infinite ethical manifold, that man has worth.(2)

In accordance with the above, the first principle of ethics may be expressed in the following formulas:

A. Act as a member of the ethical manifold (the infinite spiritual universe).

B. Act so as to achieve uniqueness (complete individualization-the most completely individualized act is the most ethical).

C. Act so as to elicit in another the distinctive, unique quality characteristic of him as a fellow-member of the infinite whole.

A and B are comprised in C. I am taking three steps toward a fuller exposition of the meaning of the principle. To act as a member according to A is to strive to achieve uniqueness as declared in B. To achieve uniqueness as declared in C is to seek to elicit the diverse uniqueness in others. The actual unique quality in myself is incognizable, and only app ears, so far as it does appear, in the effect produced by myself upon my fellows. Hence, to advance towards uniqueness I must project dynamically my most distinctive mode of energy upon my fellow-members.[pagebreak]

Since the finite nature of man is a clog and screen, clouding and checking the action of man viewed as an ethical unit, it follows that no man will ever succeed in carrying out completely the rule which is derived from the ideal pattern. He will invariably meet with partial frustration in his efforts to do so, and yet in virtue of his ethical character he will always renew the effort. While in physical science the recurrence of phenomena supplies the occasion for exemplification or verification, in conduct, or the sphere of volition, not recurrence but the persistence of the effort after defeat is at least a help to verification, arguing in one's self a consciousness, however obscured, of the relation of reciprocal interdependence and of subjection to the urge or pressure thence derived.(3) It is our own reality-producing functions, exerted to their utmost, to which we are delivered over. Hence the final formulation: So act as to raise up in others the ideal of the relation of give and take, of universal interdependence in which they stand with an infinity of beings like themselves, members of the infinite universe, irreducible, like and unlike themselves in their respective uniqueness.

The simile that may be used is that of a ray of light which has the effect of kindling other rays, unlike but complementary to itself. Each ethical unit, each member of the infinite universe, is to be regarded as a center from which such a ray emanates, touching other centers, and awakening there the light intrinsic in them. Or we may think of a fountain from which stream forth jets of indescribable life-power-playing out of it, playing into other life, and evoking there kindred and yet unkindred life-waves, waves effluent and refluent. Whatever the symbolism may be, inadequate in any case, the idea of the enmeshing of one's life in universal life without loss of distinctness--the everlasting selfhood to be achieved on the contrary, by means of the cross-relation -- is the cardinal point.

I have here to answer one question. By what warrant do I ascribe worth to any human being? Where is the head deserving that this ray that streams out from me shall light upon it? What man or woman merits that he be invested with this glory? Does not the same objection opposed to Kant hold with respect to my own view? It is true that he found no object at all, and sought indirectly to draw from the empty notion of obligation the inference that man is an end per se. Perhaps it will be admitted that the supremely worthwhile object has now been found, the holy thing (holy in two ways, as being inviolable, reverence-inspiring, holding at a distance those who would encroach: and intrinsically priceless as a component of the ethical manifold, as indispensable in a perfect whole). But this object, you will say, is in the air, or in the heavens, and how shall it be made to descend on empirical man?

My answer is that certainly I do not discover the quality of worth in people as an empirical fact. In many people I do not even discover value. Judging from the point of view of bare fact, many of us could very well be spared. Many are even in the way of what is called "progress." And the suggestion of some extreme disciples of Darwin that the degenerate and defective should be removed, or the opinion of others that pestilence and war should be allowed to take the unpleasant business off our hands, is, from the empirical point of view, not easily to be refuted. I can also enter into, if I do not wholly share, the pessimistic mood with regard to actual human nature expressed by Schopenhauer and others. To the list of repulsive human creatures mentioned by Marcus Aurelius in one of his morning meditations, -- the back-biter, the scandal-monger, the informer, etc. -- might be added in modern times, the white-slaver, the exploiter of child-labor, the- fawning politician, and many another revolting type. And even more discouraging in a way, than these examples of deepest human debasement -- the copper natures, as Plato calls them, or the leaden natures, as we might call them -- is the disillusionment we often experience with regard to the so-called gold natures, the discovery of the large admixture of baser metal which is often combined with their gold.
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It is imperative to acquaint oneself, nay, to impregnate one's mind thoroughly with these contrary facts, if the doctrine of worth, the sanest and to my mind the most real of all conceptions, is to be saved from the appearance of an optimistic illusion.

The answer to the objection is that I do not find worth in others or in myself, I attribute it to them and to myself. And why do I attribute it? In virtue of the reality-producing functions of my own mind. I create the ethical manifold. The pressure of the essential rationality within me., seeking to complete itself in the perfect fruition of these functions, i. e., in the positing of a total manifold and its total unification, drives me forward. I need an idea of the whole in order to act rightly, in such a way as to satisfy the dual functions within me. My own nature as a spiritual being urges me to seek this satisfaction. This ideal whole as I have shown, is a complexus of uniquely differentiated units. In order to advance toward uniqueness, in order to achieve what in a word may be called my own truth, to build myself into the truth, to become essentially real, I must seek to elicit the consciousness of the uniqueness and the interrelation in others. I must help others in order to save myself; I must look upon the other as an ethical unit or moral being in order to become a moral being myself. And wherever I find consciousness of relation, of connectedness, even incipient, I project myself upon that consciousness, with a view to awaking in it the consciousness of universal connectedness. Wherever I can hope to get a response I test my power. Fields and trees do not speak to me, as Socrates said, but human beings do. I should attribute worth to stones and to animals could they respond, were the power of forming ideas, without which the idea of relation or connectedness is impossible, apparent in them. Doubtless stones and trees and animals, and the physical world itself, are but the screen behind which lies the infinite universe. But the light of that universe does not break through the screen where it is made up of stones and trees and the lower animals. It breaks through, however faintly, where there is consciousness of relation: and wherever I discover that consciousness I find my opportunity. It is quite possible that the men and women upon whom I try my power will not actually respond. The complaint is often heard from moral persons, or persons who think themselves such, that what they call the moral plan of rousing the moral consciousness in others will not work. Perhaps the plan they follow is not the moral plan at all, but the plan of sympathy or of some other empirically derived rule. But be that as it may, the question is not whether we get the response but whether we shall achieve reality or truth ourselves; in theological terms, save our own life, by trying to elicit the response.

And here one profoundly important practical consideration will come to our aid, namely, the sense of our own imperfection, coupled indeed with the consciousness of inextinguishable power of moral renewal. Instead of attributing the lack of response to the hopeless dullness of the person upon whom we labor, a sense of humility, based on the knowledge of our own exceeding spiritual variability -- best moments followed by worst moments, imperfect grasp on our own ideals, most irnperfect fidelity in executing them-will lead us to turn upon ourselves, and far from permitting us to despair of others, will impel us rather to make ourselves more fitting instruments of spiritual influence than obviously as yet we are.(4)

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Footnotes:

(1) Say not part or element, but member, to distinguish the components of the ethical manifold from such concepts as are used in mathematics and physical science.

(2) The distinction between value and worth must be stressed for it is capital. Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most objective conceivable. Value depends on the wants or needs of our empirical nature. That has value which satisfies our needs or wants. We possess value for one another, for the reason that each of us has wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying, as in the case of sex, of cooperation, in the vocation, etc. But value ceases when the want or need is gratified. The value which one human being has for another is transient. There are, in the strict sense, no permanent values. The value which the majority have for the more advanced and developed members of a community is small; from the standpoint of value most persons are duplicable and dispensable. Consider only the ease with which factory labor is replaced, in consequence of the prolific fertility of the human race. The custom of speaking of ethics as a theory of values is regrettable. It evidences the despair into which many writers on ethics have fallen as to the possibility of discovering an objective basis for rightness.

(3) But the verification itself is the clearer and more explicit vision of the ethical relation, as it ought to be.

(4) The term "ethical unit" used above should be found useful. The chemists have found the concept of the atom useful, though no one has ever seen an atom. And all the sciences have recourse to similar inventions, -- such as the electron, or the ion, or energy regarded as a substance, and in mathematics the sublimated, space-transcending concepts. Looking through the eyes of science, we are taught to see, underlying the grossest forms of matter, imaginary entities which are well-nigh metaphysical in nature. Science starts from the realm of the sensible, and constructs its super-rarefied devices on mechanical models. Then it leaves the field of the intuitively perceptible, and rises by the path of analogy into realms where the notions with which it operates are no longer imaginable. I do not wish, in speaking of an ethical, invisible, and unimaginable entity, to derive the postulation of this conception from science. The ethical concept transcends wholly the field of sensible experience. It is not discovered by way of analogy. It is frankly and overtly super-sensible. It is not exemplified in the effects it produces in the world of volition as the most nearly metaphysical concepts of science are exemplified in the field of phenomena by the recurrences or uniformities which they serve to account for. The ethical concepts are not verified by their results at all, not by recurrences of phenomena, but by the persistence of the effort to attain that which is finitely never attained, and by the more explicit perception of theideal itself which follows the persistent effort; for as has been shown above, when face to face with fundamental truth, seeing is believing. But I allude to these matters in order to show that the movement in ethical thinking represented by the system which I propose is not contrary to the present-day movement in science, but in line with it, though beyond it. It does not ask leave of science; it does not base its certainty on scientific precedent; but neither does it expect a veto from the lips of science. The worthwhileness of scientific endeavor itself depends at bottom on the sanction which the ideal of the complete carrying out of the reality-producing functions lends to their incomplete execution in the world of the space and time manifold.

On the Occasion of the Fifty-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the Ethical Movement

An Address by Dr. Felix Adler
May 10, 1931

In this address, delivered when Dr. Adler was 80 years old and at the end of his career as the founding Leader of Ethical Culture, Adler looks back at the founding of the movement and the 55 years after. At the end, he reflects on possibilities for the movement's future.

IN this solemn moment, at the end of fifty-five years, my mind goes back to a certain May evening in 1876, when I saw before me an assembly of men and women who had summoned me to state explicitly the nature of the proposed Ethical Movement outlined by me in a previous public address. That evening the Society was founded. Of those who were present, the charter members of the society, I am, to the best of my knowledge, to-day the sole survivor. I am as it were the memory of the society. With deep gratitude I think of those who first asked me to lead them along a new path, and who followed so devotedly. They have all passed away, and others, thousands by this time, who succeeded them have passed -- a great procession! I greet them in meditative hours. Their faces are not mournful. Their extended arms point forward. They were interested in the future -- in something great to be. And they put their trust, not in a person but in an idea. From the first they resented the imputation that this could be a merely personal movement, they believed rather that it was destined to acquire a universal significance.

I have decided, in celebration of this anniversary, to speak of the inner history of this society and of the movement. With its outward history you are acquainted. It did not remain a New York society alone. There are the five societies in the United States, the societies in England and on the continent. There are echoes of the movement in the distant East, in Japan. But this outward expansion, though not negligible, must yet appear insignificant to those who appraise a movement by the numerical test. Quantitative memberships ebb and flow. In the long last it is only quality that tells.

I have said that I would speak of the inner sense of the movement. What was the motive that appealed to those who first joined it? I answer: it was the desire to rid their lives of the burden of falseness -- the burden of ceremonies of religion which to them were not true. They felt this especially in critical moments of their lives, as when at the obsequies of one beloved the Christian minister would say in the name of Jesus: "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live" -- that is to say, immortality on the condition of faith in Jesus; or among orthodox Jews, when at the burial the survivor passes between the ranks of his friends, and they say to him: "Be comforted in the midst of those who mourn for Jerusalem," though it no longer even incurred to him to mourn for Jerusalem. Or again, the call for supernatural intervention in the anguished moment of suspense for the recovery of the sick. They desired to shift the burden of falsity from themselves, because falsity is unlivable; and for their children they wished that nothing unlivable should be put into their minds, that those young beings should not have the picture of life obscured by a mist and cloud of untruth.

So much for the more external practices, the ceremonies of the prevailing religions. But beyond these, there were the creeds, embodying a certain philosophy of life, a certain account of the universe and of its origin, also declaring the place that belongs to the Bible, to revelation, etc. If truth was to be the test, a truthful way of living the demand, did these creeds bear the test! More than that -- was any creed hereafter to be accepted! A creed has sometimes been likened to a sarcophagus like that in which the early relics of Alexander the Great were deposited -- of costly stone perhaps adorned with precious symbols, containing within it the remains of what was once power and glory, but is now only dust and ashes.

This is the freethinker's view of the creeds. But is not acceptable to me. For every one of the chief religions has some element of truth, some vital element in it. This has been fearfully overlaid with superstition. But what now matters is to free the grain from the chaff, to rescue as much as possible of the wisdom and the moral insight that past generations have stored in their religions, not to allow any result of the effort of mankind toward truth to perish, to preserve truth but at the same time to restate it in such fashion as to fit it into the larger truth that has since been gained. I say that each of the religions contains some gem which must be rescued from the dross that obscures its brilliance -- some gem that should be saved so as to be placed in a new setting as a jewel in the crown of humanity. On this account, to tell distinctly what our movement was not -- it never was an iconoclastic movement. Even icons, as we have lately observed in the Russian exhibit in this city, have a certain beauty; even idols, statues of the gods like the Olympian Zeus and the Hermes, have a certain greatness -- only they must not be worshiped, as if they were more than similitudes. Our movement was never a Thomas Paine or Ingersoll movement, shattering the beliefs that men held holy, devastating movements since they too often destroyed the sensitiveness of men to whatever is not palpable, not of the senses.

In the very first volume of lectures published, which contrasted Creed and Deed, stressing deed as against creed -- in that very volume you will find appreciations of the great religions of the past, reverence for the old masters hand in hand with aspirations for the new. Nevertheless, I said emphatically, not creed but deed. Why not creed, if it contains an element of truth? Why this sharp antithesis? Because a creed expresses a certain view of the universe and of human life that is supposed to be absolutely true, true for all time. Creed is a Procrustes' bed. If the facts of life do not fit it, they must be stretched, if they overpass the creed they must be contracted into it. And this is true even of the most liberal creeds. Thus to-day, after every ancient dogma has been rejected by them, liberal teachers still insist (it is the "last ditch") that the ethical verities of Jesus are and will ever be unsurpassable. Again, the creed is a formula, something that can be recited, a profession of faith, and experience shows only too clearly that the profession may be on the lips or even in the mind and yet remain without effect in practice. Deed then, not creed, meant the effect on actual conduct to be the test of any philosophy of life. It did not mean, it never was intended to mean, blunt empiricism, action without the guidance of thinking. On the contrary, deeper, fresher thinking on the ever-lasting problems was challenged, in order that the conduct, the doings of men might become nobler. Action without thinking is blind, thinking without action to test it is footless. But there must be no inflexible statements, no inelasticity of the mind in attacking the problems. Is what you think as to the meaning of man's existence true? The test is: is your philosophy vital, is it livable?

The world is sick in many ways. A philosophy of life is like the prescription of a physician intended to produce health. To offer this philosophy as a creed is like asking a patient to swallow the paper on which the prescription is written, in the expectation that a cure will result. The right way is to compound the ingredients prescribed in the doctor's formula, to take in the medicine, and then to decide whether it makes for health and healing.

I have contrasted the movement with the orthodoxies, both fundamentalist and liberal; let me contrast it briefly with the betterment movements, the socialisms, the efforts for the fairer distribution of the products of labor -- the housing movement, the child labor movement, the peace movement -- in all these matters the people who came under the influence of our movement were alert, interested exceedingly, and not without influence.

But there was a definite point of view that distinguished us in regard to the betterment movements. It was explicitly stated from the first, and could not possibly be misapprehended, that the order of means and ends in the conduct of men must be the reverse of that which as a rule obtains. For morality, or any advance in morality, is commonly regarded as a means and mere happiness as the end. Do the right, even the difficult right, in order that you may have as your reward for yourself or others -- happiness. In contrast to this I stated most earnestly and set it down in our publications that our movement is inspired by the belief that the ethical end is itself the supreme end of life to which every other is subordinate, that right relations between men and women, between employers and employees, between people and people, are not to be regarded as the means for making mankind happy, but that right relations are supremely worth while on their own account, that to act rightly is to do the right for right's sake. Not that happiness is underrated, or that we affect to be so superhuman as to despise the things that make for joy. But in the first place we realize that one cannot guarantee happiness. There are too many vicissitudes, too many unforeseen casualties, too many attacks from without, too many bereavements, too many failures of strength. Of course to the extent of our power we endeavor to give the cup of happiness to those we love -- crosswise, as I like to think of it. I not seeking my happiness, but receiving it from the other, and he or she not seeking theirs, but receiving it from me, an interchange of the wine of life. But even so, I should say that to make another, precisely one whom we love, just happy, to have only that in mind, the joy of that life, is to think not highly enough of the beloved person. I heard a man say -- "It is my utmost aim to give my wife every luxury, to gratify her every wish in the matter of attire, in the matter of adornment, in the exquisiteness of her environment." How then does the man think of his wife? Is it as a being to be surrounded with everything that flatters the sense and thereby suffocates the soul? Happiness on the other hand when rightly understood may be itself a means toward spirituality -- the joy of life, the beauty of life, may be the pedestal on which to erect the statue, the earthly harmonies and perfections may be suggestive of that supreme ethical perfection which we are pledged to strive for.

Therefore, in every movement for the improvement of conditions, the cachet of the Ethical Movement has been this: that we have kept the ethical end in mind for which these improved conditions are the means -- better homes, yes, but not only for the comfort, the brightness, the little garden perhaps; but because these necessities or amenities are propitious conditions for the family life as ethically it should be lived. Not the rescuing of the child from the mill and the mine only for the sake of the free development of his physical and mental life, but because the freedom to grow mentally and physically is a condition of the child's manifesting the worth that is potential in him, not the relief of the oppressed from the oppressor merely that they may breathe a deeper breath, but because the state of being oppressed and the state of the oppressor too are hostile to the development of the worth that is latent in man. So I have ever insisted that as Christianity says: "Forgive your enemies," we shall say: Side with your enemies, be on the side of the oppressor, on the side, namely, of that which is not the oppressiveness in him; liberate him too from the tyranny he exercises.

There are some who maintain that the satisfaction of conscience is itself a kind of pleasure, and therefore that we ought not to criticize pleasure as the supreme object of existence. There are higher and lower pleasures, they say, -- pleasures of conscience are preferred by some. But I think this is mere sophistry. There is a kind of serenity possible amid great physical and spiritual anguish, the "peace that passeth understanding," but that is not pleasure in the sense in which the word is commonly understood. Socrates was serene, but he was not happy when he drank the hemlock cup. Jesus was not happy on the cross. And to speak of one of the great martyrs of science, Bruno, who was burned at the stake in 1600 at Rome -- his mood was indeed exalted, but would you say that he was happy when the smoke and the flames gathered about and smothered him? Joy is one of the means of spiritual advance if rightly used, but suffering is another, the more poignant, potent means.

There is one more distinction which it is important to draw. Are we a religious movement? I have already in substance answered that question when I said that a philosophy of life is necessary as a guide to conduct. A religion is a kind of philosophy, but it is not the only one. Like every other philosophy it has to be tested, approved or rejected according to its influence on the ennoblement of men in all their relations.

Now, as the initiator and first Leader of the movement, I would say that I was moved and am moved by a religious impulse. I felt myself to be the channel of a spiritual principle that operates in and through men. What strength I have had has been derived from that. All the influence that I ever exercised is due to that. But so far from claiming that as a special privilege, as charlatans do, my whole aim and purpose was to reveal to others the same principle, dormant but present in them, capable of being roused into astounding action. (As the physicists tell us of inconceivable forces which are locked up in the atom, and which would produce vast effects if they should be released, so I hold that there is a spiritual force in men that can change the face of humanity if once it be released.) But I do not invite you to accept my religion, I ask you to consider the practical directions for the conduct of life which follow from it, and if, having tested them, you find them valid in your experience then they will be of use to you.

In the beginning someone called me a "suppressed atheist." That was a mistake. I did not believe in his God, nor do I now. Someone may say at present that I am a suppressed theist. But let us not debate about a word. I will try to state distinctly what I believe in order that now, if not before, you may understand that I have been driving at, nay, what has been driving me all these years. I believe that Nature is but the outside surface of things, that it is the painted drop curtain behind which the real play is enacted, that there is divinity, that the essential life of the universe is perfect and therefore divine. The two words perfect and divine are synonymous. Dante in speaking of his master, Brunetto Latino, says: "He taught me to eternalize myself." That is the third word that goes with the two others - eternal, perfect, divine. The religion which I hold is intended to help me "eternalize" myself.

I draw a sharp distinction between divine being and divine life. All the theistic religions insist on divine existence, the existence of a divine being -- perfection, eternity, divinity, being contracted into a single individual being. That being is called God. If you believe in that being, you are religious; if not, you are an atheist, they say. I draw the distinction between existence and life. There have been endless attempts to prove the existence of the individual named God. All these attempts have failed -- the argument from design, the argument from evolution, etc.

The attempt to prove by logical argument the existence of an individual deity is foredoomed to failure. And if it succeeded it would not avail. The logical outcome of such a logical argument would be what Aristotle described, -- a self-sufficient, self-contemplating, self-enclosed perfection, between whom and ourselves there could be no relation. If I cannot taste divinity, if I cannot experience it, I have no use for it. Now it is otherwise if I anchor on the conception of divine life. If the perfect life quickens in the universe, then it may quicken in me who am a part of the universe, and of this quickening life I can have actual experience. The uttermost secret of it indeed I cannot penetrate. What essentially life is I cannot tell, but I can know its manifestations. There is an unmistakable difference between a dead stone and an organism. We have the idea of cause and effect which helps us to find our way in nature. We have also the idea of organism, not only the idea, but the experience of it. Now the idea of organism is a spiritual idea. This must be set down distinctly, that animals are only semblances of organisms. An organism is an assemblage of parts each of which is quick with some role it has to play in the whole, while at the same time (and this is vital to the idea) it prompts and quickens every other part to play its diverse role. Each is necessary to the whole, could not be spared, the whole is necessary to each. Life, imperfect as we know it, is found thus far only in connection with animal organisms -- yet the animal is only a most imperfect simulacrum of the organic ideal. For the parts of which it is composed are not irreplaceable, are not strictly necessary. They die, and this quasi-semblance of organism disappears. And therefore life as represented in the perishable animal is not true life, is not the divine life which we seek. For the divine is expressed in three synonyms -- divine and perfect and eternal. Hence my ideal of the divine life is that of an assemblage of parts, a society, a spiritual society, infinite, composed of infinite members infinitely diverse, each eternal, each necessary to the whole, the whole necessary to each. And it is this ideal of the perfect life in which I behold the symbol of the utter reality in things, of the powers and essences that work behind the screen.

The truth of this ideal I can discover in ethical experience, for ethical experience, as I interpret it, is nothing else than my endeavor to act toward my fellow beings as a member of an infinite spiritual society would act toward his fellow-spirits, seeking to quicken them, so as to express the eternal excellence that is potential in each, and thereby making actual the excellence that is in me.

The practical outcome of this daring metaphysics is usable by every one, whether he has a taste for metaphysics or a capacity to follow such speculations or note. I have put it into simple language: Seek the best in others, -- the best is the spiritual part in others -- and thereby you will bring to light the best in yourself.

In the theistic religions of the past, God stands for the individual soul exalted to the degree of the infinite. In this altered conception of divinity it is society exalted to the degree of the infinite, that stands for divinity. It is the social ideal of the divine that is here presented.

Are we then a religious society of this sort or of any other? I warn against the use of the pronoun "we," by an untrue insinuation committing others as well as oneself. That is a bad habit that clings to us from the heritage of the creeds. Some of us are religious and others are not. This society of ours is indeed a strange and new formation. It takes time even for those who belong to it to appreciate the novelty implied. Perhaps three classes of our membership may be discriminated. Some come only to hear, to listen. The gates are open. No one by joining the society is pledged to stay. There is an inflow and an outflow, thousands have come, other thousands have gone. There is an inner group, those who more or less accept the guidance to conduct, the rule of life which has been taught. Others, the innermost group, others unostentatiously, undistinguished from the rest, seeking by the contagion of their endeavor gradually to affect the lives of the others.

They do not affect to be the salt of the earth. They are not of the "holier than thou" kind. They are not puffed up with spiritual pride - the poorest kind of pride imaginable. No, they are characterized rather by a profounder humility, a more poignant sense of their own imperfection.

In a sublime passage, Isaiah exclaims: "Woe is me, for I have seen the vision of the Eternal, and I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!" The vision punishes the seer, condemns him in his own eyes. The grander the vision of the ethical ideal, the more poignantly does he who conceives it realize the almost infinite distance between himself and that grandeur, that separates his performance from that completeness.

How simple comparatively the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament, the Golden Rule of the New, how almost impossible the ethical effort demanded of us, namely, to see the spiritual nature in others despite the hideous appearances that mask it! How can we see it there unless it has become a convincing force in ourselves? And yet, he who sees the vision is akin to that which he sees. And the vision is not a floating ethereal dream, but power flows from it into the seer and necessity is laid upon him to strive to change his life and that of others in accordance with the sublime pattern which the vision holds out to him.

And so I say, turning to actual conditions, the mightiest task is before men individually and collectively -- to reconstruct the family, which is now at lowest ebb, to spiritualize marriage as a compact whereby to evoke reciprocally the excellence of women and men, to spiritualize industry by introducing the functional ethical principle as operative between its various factors, to create in time a corpus spirituale of mankind of which the various peoples of the earth shall be the members.

Little more than half a century of our movement is behind us. We are merely at the beginning. We have merely sketched the contour of the ideal and its structural principle. There must be a deeper psychology, richer experience to fill in the details. There must come a more adequate literature, speaking with a Biblical simplicity that goes through thought straight to heart and will. There must come new songs, texts that tell what we ourselves feel, not what others have felt, a new music perchance produced by some inspired composer who has caught the sense of the new religious conception, and who will create a new type of religious music -- not hallelujahs to the One, not Protestant chorales like those of Bach, however great these may be, not Catholic masses and requiems, but an incomparable harmony expressing the social conception of Divinity -- human groups answering and exciting in one another spiritual aspiration distinctive of each.

At the beginning of my address, I spoke of those who had trusted us in the belief that something great was to come of it all. And now, in closing, I turn to the future, to those to whom we commit our trust, to our unknown successors in the generations and generations. Across the gulf of years I send them my greeting, in the hope that long after my voice shall have been stilled, an echo of what has here been said on this anniversary day will reach them, urging them to carry on so as to bring nearer the day when the sublime vision which hitherto has been seen but faintly and intermittently shall shed its full radiance on a transfigured humanity.

Genuine Service Implies Spiritual Growth

Felix Adler on the meanings of groups in our lives: the excerpt also includes a terse definition of "spiritual" as he presented it late in life.

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…. Every social group -- the family group, the school group, the vocational group -- is a functional group. It has a certain meaning for life to be produced in its members. These meanings are successive, those of the smaller groups broadening out into the larger.

In each case the meaning or object for which the group exists is twofold--the concrete object imposed by nature, and the ideal or spiritual object. (I use the word "spiritual" in the following sense. The law of the jungle is: Live at the expense of other life. The law to be derived from Hedonism is: Live and let live. The spiritual law is: Live in promoting life.) Thus the natural object of the family is to replace the generation now existing by a new generation. Mountains, rocks, and seas remain for thousands of years; human beings after a short duration wither and pass away. The family recruits the ranks in order that the species may not die off.

Again, the natural object of the school, considered as a social group, is to serve as an organ for the transmission of the knowledges, skills, and insights of the past, through the present generation to future generations. The ideal or spiritual object in each case is to produce in the members of the group the functional attitude which I have just described: the will to do one's part in such a manner as to enable one's associates in the group to do their part with the greatest possible excellence. It is this relation that counts most in the development toward personality. Personality, so far as it is attainable, consists in this attitude of mind, nay, of one's whole being, towards the being of others. To put it succinctly: the natural purpose for which the group exists is the occasion (I had almost said the pretext) for the envisagement of the ideal purpose. The natural object is commonly considered the product, the personal relations the by-product; from the spiritual point of view the reverse is true -- the personal relations are the true product, the natural object is the by-product. The formula which I have used in expressing my ethical thought is: Seek to elicit the best in others, and you will thereby challenge and bring to light the hidden best in yourself. That best in others I may now explicitly define as the best performance of function. And in order to elicit that in others every one will discover that it is necessary to transform himself, to reconsider perpetually the manner in which he performs his part, and to improve on it.

In this way, I may add, the conflicting claims of egoism and altruism are transcended. Egoism leads to the over-emphasis of the self and its separateness; altruism leads to the under-estimation of the self in its relation to others. A distinguished scientist quoted the other day the phrase: Allis seruiens, ipse consumer. This expression has a noble sound, but taken too literally is really unsound, for genuine self-love is as indispensable as its antithesis. The two, in fact, are inseparable. Genuine service implies spiritual growth.

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Excerpt from Felix Adler, "Personality: How to Develop It In the Family, The School, and Society." Originally printed in the Report of the Fourth International Moral Education Congress, Rome, 1926. Reprinted in Essays in Honor of John Dewey on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, October 20, 1929, reprinted 1970, Octagon Books, New York.

Festival of the Winter Solstice - Felix Adler, 1884

The festival of the Winter Solstice was originally designed to celebrate the indestructible life in nature. The higher thought today is that the moral life of the world which appears so far as we know, in human beings only, is also indestructible - that after every defeat it rises to new victory - that after every obscuration it shines forth with new brightness.

What is the symbol to which all shall express the thoughts that we in Ethical Culture would connect with the festival of the Winter Solstice? Is it the Christmas tree. or the old Yule tree which prior to the Christmas tree, symbolized the rekindling of the darkened light of the sun? But it expresses only the physical side of the festival, the fact of the evergreen life of external nature. For the higher, the spiritual nature, it does not stand.

The only symbol that can be adequate for us is the child - the child not merely as it plays around the tree, not as it enjoys its gifts, not in relation to its parents who take great pleasure in its happiness, but the child apart from all these connections, the child as the vehicle of a new moral life, and therefore the type of the ever-recurring renewal of the moral life, the child as the promise and the pledge of the whole unspeakable future.