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ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ASPECTS OF
ETHICAL RELIGION
Essays in Honor of
FELIX ABLER
On the Fiftieth Anniversary of his
Founding of the Ethical Movement^ 1876
By his Colleagues
Edited by
HORACE J. BRIDGES
Essay Index Reprint Series
|« BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
FREEPORT, NEW YORK
First Published 1926
Reprinted 1968
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:
68-29190
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To Felix Adler
Dear Friend and Leader:
I have the honour, as spokesman for the writers
who have collaborated in producing this volume,
to present it to you as a small token of our
affection and esteem upon the occasion of the
fiftieth anniversary of the Ethical Movement,
wliich you founded in 1876, and of which you have
for this half-century been the guide and inspirer.
In these pages you will find various aspects of
our common faith illustrated and defended. No
attempt has been made to secure unity of theme
or unanimity in thought. In accordance with the
broad mental liberty which has ever been and
must ever be the distinctive characteristic of our
fellowship, each man has chosen his own topic
and presented freely his owti arguments and con-
clusions. Indeed, with the exception of myself, to
whom was entrusted the task of editing and seeing
the volume through the press, none of the writers
has seen any part of the book save his own con-
tribution. Such unity as our work has, therefore,
is due to the spontaneous and uncoerced agree-
ment of independent minds; and, in addition, to
the loyalty and personal love which aU of us
entertain towards you.
In the central thought that animates all you
have done, and all you have said with tongue or
pen, each of your colleagues finds his cardinal
inspiration. With you we all share the conviction
of the inherent, inderivative, intrinsic sacredness
of that common nature which is uniquely differ-
entiated in every member of the human family.
And, like you, we find the authentic stamp and
seal of this lurking divinity not in what man
empirically is, but in the unsleeping law, the voice
of his potential and most real self, which ever
condemns his actual state and record, and sum-
mons him to self -transcendence and self-regenera-
tion. Again, we are at one with you in the certi-
tude that the only path of progress in this infinite
task is that which men follow when they seek to
awaken and liberate the shackled and slumbering
perfection which the intuition of faith afi&rms to
be present in every man. It is in the light of this
postulate of Spiritual Worth that we perceive
the graded series of life's duties, our duties to
family, vocation, nation and humanity, the effort
to fulfil which is the sole means of vindicating
and verifying the faith from which they spring.
In offering this contribution to the celebration
of a great occasion, we unite in the fervent hope
that you may be spared for many years to inspire
the groAvth and extension of the work to which
your life has been devoted, and that its progress,
through our efforts and those of our successors,
may be ever true to the direction given to it by
your far-piercing vision and exalted standards.
On behalf of the writers of this book, I have
the honour, dear Dr. Adler, to subscribe myself,
Yours ever sincerely,
Horace J. Bridges.
Chicago, February 23, 1926.
Contents
PAGE
Ethical MrsTiciSM, Stanton Coit (London) 1
The Ethical Import of History,
David Saville Muzzey 33
The Tragic and Heroic in Life, William M. Salter 55
Distinctive Features of the Ethical Movement,
Alfred W. Martin 71
Ethical Experience as the Basis of Religious
Education, Henry Neumann 113
''All Men Are Created Equal", George E. O'Dell 131
How Far is Art an Aid to Religion ?
Percival Chubb 165
Evolution and the Uniqueness of ]\1an,
Horace J. Bridges . . .' 187
The Spiritual Outlook on Life, Henry J. Golding 227
The Ethics of Abu'l Ala Al ]M\'arri,
Nathaniel Schmidt (Cornell University) . . . .245
Lifers Unused Moral Force,
Harry Snell, M. P. (London) 271
Is THE Ideal Real? George A. Smith (London) . . . .291
Some Ethical Tendencies in the Professions,
Robert D. Kohn 303
On the Art of Living, Wilhelm Boemer (Vienna) 313
The Relation of the Ethical Ideal to Social
Reform, John Lovejoy Elliott 331
Concerning Tolerance, Roy Franklin Dewey
(Chicago) 347
Ethical Culture in Germany After the "War,
Rudolph Penzig (Berlin) 367
A Confession of Faith, S. Burns Weston
(Philadelphia) 399
"Hearing the Witnesses", James Gutmann
(New York) .• 411
ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Ethical Mysticism
By STANTON COIT (London).
As to my empirical self, I let go my hold on
it ... I affirm the real and irreducible existence
of the essential self ... I affirm that the ideal
of perfection which my mind inevitably conceives
has its counterpart in the ultimate reality of
things, is the truest reading of that reality where-
of man is capable ... a part of our living in
the infinite manifold of the spiritual life. The
thought of this, as apprehended, not in terms of
knowledge, but in immediate experience, begets
the peace that passeth understanding. And it is
upon the bosom of that peace that we can pass
safely out of the realm of time and space.
Felix Adler.
I.
IN THIS ESSAY I purpose to tell how the
Ethical Movement strikes a contemporary who,
except for the first five years of its half -century
of work, has viewed it from within and has felt
not so much that he was part of it as that it was
the better part of him. It was thus that Porphyry
in the third century of our era wrote about the neo-
Platonic school of Plotinus, to which he belonged.
Porphyry gave only his intimate impressions and
personal estimates and not an authoritative rec-
ord, but his account is not without objective
value. In reading his Life of Plotinus, while one
notes the individual peculiarities of the disciple.
4 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
yet one can easily discriminate between what is
Platonism, or Plotinus, and what is merely Por-
phyry. I hope that in the same way I shall not
misrepresent the Ethical Movement, although I
give free expression to my own convictions as to
what it is and what it means.
Why I have named such an Essay Ethical
Mysticism will soon become clear, and the reader
can then draw his own conclusions as to whether
the naming of it in this way is to be set down to
eccentricity in the writer or to some essential
characteristic of the thing he is writing about.
In England it has been customary to speak of
the fundamental attitude of the Ethical Societies
towards life and religion as *'Ethicism" — an
ugly word, but useful till a more fitting term is
devised. It was coined about 1888 by Mr. Fred-
eric Harrison, at that time President of the Eng-
lish Positivist Society. He must have realized
that the starting-point and the method of proce-
dure of the Ethical Movement are unique, differ-
ing not only from those of Positivism but from
those of the historic religions; else he could not
have felt that our position required, and deserved
the distinction of, a new label. The question I
shall here raise is: What is "Ethicism''! And
in its briefest form my answer will be: It is
Ethical Mysticism.
Our distinguishing mark cannot be, as is some-
times alleged, the special emphasis we lay upon
the supreme importance of morality. For in their
own way Judaism, Christianity and Mohamme-
danism have placed equal stress upon duty, by
their insistence that behind or within it is the
vn\\ of the almighty Creator of the universe. No
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 5
less insistent upon the same point was the teach-
ing of primitive Buddhism; for it turned the
minds of men away from the whole universe of
power and concentrated their attention exclusively
upon right thinking, right action and the like. It
could not have been, then, the mere emphasis with
which we stress the significance of character and
conduct, which induced so scholarly a thinker and
writer as Frederic Harrison to invent the word
Ethicism. He saw something which was unpre-
cedented, pulsating at the heart of ''Ethical Cul-
ture." What was it!
Anthropologists and historians agree that every
great ethical religion began as, and evolved from,
a worship of a Power or Energy or Being — im-
personal or personal — which overwhelmed and
amazed the mind of man and filled him with a
sense of the stupendous and uncanny, but which
he did not at first see or believe or feel to be
ethical in character. Only after ages of collective
experience had disclosed the social urgency of
right conduct were moral qualities ascribed to the
deity, although undoubtedly men were prompted
to establish religious cults by the felt pressure,
and by a subconscious and confused foreboding,
of social obligation. Thus, through religion, mor-
ality was not only rationalized but projected out-
ward— carried over into the object of religious
veneration. This process, so far as ancient Ju-
daism is concerned, has been recently laid bare to
our view by the higher criticism of the Old Tes-
tament. Rudolf Otto, perhaps the most influential
theologian of Germany now living, in his book en-
titled Das Heilige, says: *'The noble religion of
Moses marks the beginning of a process which
e ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
from that point onward proceeds with ever in-
creasing momentum, by which 'the numinous^ (the
divine) is throughout rationalized and moralised,
i.e. charged with ethical import, until it (the ethical
import) becomes the holy in the fullest sense of
the word.''^ In a different way primitive Buddli-
ism is also an instance of the rationalization and
moralisation of an earlier religion: instead of
charging an external power with ethical import,
it ousted the external power altogether and
retained only man's subjective states of mind and
an inward discipline. Unhappily, however, in
dropping the external object of religious worship,
Buddha also abandoned the objective factor in
ethical experience itself, as if man's thinking
were the whole of moral reality.
Now the Ethical Movement, it seems to me,
begins where the historic ethical religions have
ended and halted. Through thirty centuries, by a
zig-zag line, they have been arriving ever closer
to morality, whilst the Ethical Movement starts
with it. They began with divinity; we, with duty.
They went on to moralize deity ; we, to deify mor-
ality. They said that the Real is good; we say
that the Good is real. The difference in starting-
point and procedure is fundamental as regards
intuitive and logical implications and practical
fruitfulness. Whereas they charged the object of
religious veneration with ethical import, we
charge the object of ethical import with religious
veneration. But Power — the Almighty — still
remains the object of their worship, while Prin-
ciple — the spiritual ideal — will continue to be
the object of ours. Power is the substance of their
^The Idea of the Holy, Oxford, 1923, p. 77.
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 7
deity and goodness its attribute. God is their
noun and good their adjective. With us Good is
the subject and reality the predicate. We start
■with goodness as something Avhich confronts us
and is seen to be not of our making, that is, with
an absohite vahie; and we sanctify it. They
started with a fact which confronted and over-
awed them but had not showTi itself to be good;
and they proceeded to ethicise it.
In the judgment of Rudolph Otto their process
of moralising deity has been carried too far. He
would bring them back to the originally holy
thing, which Avas not perfect truth, beauty and
goodness, but something inscrutable, non-rational
and inaccessible to conceptual investigation : that
is, he would bring them back to the veneration of
raw fact, of crude and elemental power. But if
the complete moralisation of deity is repugnant
to Otto, how much more would be our idea that no
power is holy except that which is inherent in the
spiritual principle of truth, beauty and goodness.
The older religious systems and organizations
have not succeeded in convincing the world that
the power which reigns in or over the universe of
fact is wholly good; but it will be comparatively
easy to demonstrate to a thinking and critical age
that the universe of absolute values is by an
inherent right all-powerful, thus leading men to
bring whatever might is at their command to the
side of right. And yet, if one perceives the ethical
ideal to be the eternal order of things to which
the mind of man is open and with which it is in
vital touch, and if, although it is not yet realised
in finite individuals and social groups, it is never-
theless already real in itself, — its ever-present
8 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
reality tends to become the primal and abiding
principle of one 's life. This being so, the question
whether the ethical ideal ever is to be actualised
in any finite entity or not, becomes a secondary
issue.
In moments when ethical experience grows
clear and vivid, the ideal is seen and felt to be
an ever-present, inexhaustible and indestructible
energy. In the eyes of reason, it is ultimate and
self-evident Truth; for the heart, it is all-satisfy-
ing and chastening Beauty; and for the will, the
creative principle of Personal and Social Activ-
Those who are familiar with the essential fea-
ture in all mystical experience, as it has been
portrayed by gifted men and women in the East
and West, in ancient as well as modern times,
under pagan no less than theistic systems, will
already have anticipated the reasons Avhich have
led me to apply the name Ethical Mysticism to
the intuitive experience that the ethical ideal is
real.
II.
Tlie Ethical Movement has issued from tw^o
great historical traditions. The one — of which
I have spoken — is the increasing ascription of
morality to Power as the object of worship. That
process is now completed and transcended; it is
giving way to an ascription of poAver to Morality
a» the object of worship. This transformation
has been rendered possible by the influence of the
other great tradition which has lived on for more
than two thousand years and, despite unfortunate
arrests in development, has matured in its self-
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 9
expression. The best name for this tradition is
Platonism ; for Plato taught that the Good is the
self-evident ultimate of reason, and he more than
once hinted that it is dynamic and impinges upon
the world of the senses. In the Neo-Platonic
school, culminating in Plotinus in the third cen-
tury after Christ, this hint became the germ of
the doctrine of Emanation, of Descent, or In-
carnation. Thus has been preserved the discovery
of power in Goodness, in opposition to the dogma
of goodness in Power. Although the Platonic
philosophy has been, as Dean Inge never tires
of repeating, the ' ' old loving nurse ' ^ of the Christ-
ian symbol, it is now again feeding its own child,
the universal moral sentiment, which is at last
beginning to take on corporate life in religious
organizations.
III.
The Standard of May, 1923, printed the Presi-
dential Address to the English Ethical Union,
which had been delivered the year before by Prof.
J. H. Muirhead, of the University of Birming-
ham, who in 1885 had assisted in founding the
London Ethical Society and became its first secre-
tary. The title of his discourse was *'A New
Faith for a New Age." Under it he treated of
what he called Prof. Adler's "new inspiration*'
as compared with his ''old one," that which
animated the Ncav York Ethical Society at its
foundation in 1876. He appealed to the members
of the English Ethical Union with these words:
''Trust Felix Adler's new inspiration as you
trusted his old one." His point was that be-
tween 1876 and 1922 the times had changed and
10 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
advanced ; tliat tlion the problem was the inter-
I)retation of the moral consciousness and that
now it ' ' is nothing less than a reinterpretation of
the religions consciousness on the same level and
on the same lines as the reinterpretation which
we sought thirty or forty years ago to give to
the moral consciousness." He maintained that
Prof. Adler's thought and message had advanced
with the times and that his new inspiration met
the need of the new age. ''It was he, so to speak,
who led ethical-minded people out," said Prof.
Muirhead, ' ' and set their feet upon the rock in the
interpretation of the moral consciousness. I am
just as convinced to-day that Felix Adler's new
inspiration is right as I Avas in 1885 when I first
came under his influence."
My only hesitation in accepting fully Prof.
Muirhead 's judgment is due to the fact that, in
my opinion, Prof. Adler has not given utterance
to two inspirations fifty years apart, but has only
issued two instalments of one inspiration. Those
who were in daily personal association with him
many years ago see nothing in his recent books
which was not clearly foreshadoAved and well out-
lined in his earlier publications and lectures, and
especially in his private talks with colleagues. I
do not mean to imply that his thought and utter-
ance have not ripened, nor, when I say that his
teaching has not changed, that this ripening has
not been in great part stimulated by the special
need of the new age. One cannot call a thought
ncAv, when it has merely unfolded and expanded
from within, however much it has been nourished
from without. Prof. Adler's method of communi-
cating his message has also not changed. He does
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 11
not now attempt, nor did he formerly, to impose
the religious side of his teaching upon others
as a condition of membership or leadership in the
Ethical Societies.
Prof. Muirhead's main contention, however, is
right, that now the leader of the Ethical Move-
ment is reinterpreting the religious consciousness
on the same level and on the same lines as at the
first he interpreted the moral consciousness. But
his new task would not now be possible for him,
had he not at the beginning seen the reciprocal
bearings of ethics and religion. From the first
he did not omit to indicate these bearings; but
it was necessary then to disentangle the ethical
from the religious elements in consciousness and
proclaim the autonomy and spiritual priority of
ethics, in order that both the ethical and the re-
ligious consciousness might be cleared of alien
materials which had penetrated from man's ani-
mal instincts and assumed fantastic forms. Prof.
Adler held from the first that the ethical ideal is
not transient, not temporal, not subject to the
vicissitudes of place and time, and not dependent
upon recognition by finite minds, but that it is
itself the real and eternal world which conditions
l)ut is not conditioned by the realm of the senses ;
and it is on this account that he held and still
holds that the ethical is the true bond of religious
union. Although his spiritual teaching has with
tlie years become more explicit, it was from the
first never absent and never purely implicit.
IV.
Bernard Bosanquet, who during the last tliirty
years has been, next to Bradley, the most influen-
12 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tial and original expounder in England of Abso-
lute Idealism, was also one of the organizers of
the London Ethical Society in 1885. He also, like
Muirhead, soon withdrew from its membership.
He, too, has expressed in his books the opinion
that the Ethical Movement stands for the moral,
but not for the religious, consciousness. And as
he did not continue to follow even at a distance
the thought and spirit of our Societies, he re-
mained unaware, even to the time of his death in
1923, of the "new inspiration" which Prof. Muir-
head found in Prof. Adler's Ethical Philosophy
of Life. In his posthumously published essay on
**Life and Philosophy," which appears in the re-
cent volume entitled Contemporary British Phil-
osophy (Personal Statements, First Series),^
Bosanquet refers to the Ethical Movement in the
following terms :
At this point I have in mind especially the
fundamental contrast between the moral and the
rehgious attitude, according; to which moraUty
Hes essentially in a recognition of the "ouffht-to-
be" which is not, and therefore involves an
individualistic conception of perfectibility in
particular finite spirits throughout a temporal
progression. While religion, implying as a sub-
ordinate feature all that morality can imply of
duty and self -improvement, is understood to lie
essentially in a union by faith and will with a
real supreme perfection in which finite imperfec-
tion, though actual, is felt to be transcended
and abolished. The very wide-spread influence
of the ethical culture movement and a progressive
temper akin to it, throughout our higher civiliza-
tion, appears to me to show that the philosophical
lesson typically inherent in the argument to
'Edited by J. H. Muirhead, Loudon, 1924.
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 13
■which I am referring has not at all been mastered
by the enlightenment of to-day; and that, in ti\e
latter's lofty aspiration to a pure humanistic
ethic, it has lost hold of the truth which had been
won by religion in the ancient doctrine for which
justification was essentially by faith. (P. 59.)
Now, whoever lias been acquainted with the
ethical culture movement from within and at its
centre will see instantly that Bosanquet is ascrib-
ing to it a doctrine, or point of view, which it re-
jects as vehemently as does Bosanquet himself;
and on exactly the same grounds. Like him, the
ethical leaders have taught in season and out of
season that morality lies "essentially in a union
. . . with a real supreme perfection in which
finite imperfection, though actual, is felt to be
transcended and abolished. ' ' On lines parallel to
Prof. Adler's, Bosanquet 's inspiration unfolded
and expanded with the j^ears; but as he did not
understand at first and never informed himself
later as to the full import of "ethical culture"
as the ethical leaders conceived it, he fell into the
error of inferring that what he did not see, did
not exist. One need only compare Bosanquet 's
later books with Prof. Adler's, to discover the
striking similarity in their ethical and religious
views. Like Prof. Adler, Bosanquet continued to
regard as incredible: miracles, a special incarna-
tion in the person of Jesus, individual immor-
tality and a personal God; and all these he ac-
counted as detachable from religion without
injury to its essential significance. He believed
that the object of religion transcends humanity,
that the concern of religion (and ethics) is with
values more than human. So does Prof. Adler.
He believed that the supreme end of man's life
14 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
was not contingent upon the future, or upon the
inevitability of human progress or the fate of the
human race. So does Prof. Adler. "What we
are offered is a share in the eternal deed which
constitutes reality," Bosanquet says, "and I am
unable to see what more than this our largest
wishes can demand."^ It seems to me necessary
to point out these striking similarities between
Bosanquet 's attitude towards life and religion
and ours, chiefly because his interpretation of
the Ethical Movement has been, in England at
least, widely accepted by philosophical and
theological writers and their students, and has
caused our Movement to lose the approval of
the very men who, if they understood it aright,
would be the first to give us their support.
Through Bosanquet 's misunderstanding many
others have misunderstood and been biased
against us. For instance, Prof. Webb of Oxford,
in writing in the Hihhert Journal of October,
1923 on "Bernard Bosanquet 's Philosophy of Re-
ligion," says of the Ethical Movement: "He
(Bosanquet) subsequently severed his connection
with it, being increasingly dissatisfied w^th its
substitution of the attempt to abolish evil by a
progressive reform of society for a religious faith
in its subordination to a divine purpose, the ful-
filment of which does not merely lie ahead of us
in some better age which, if it ever come at all,
we cannot hope to live to see, but is eternally
present, and can therefore afford us, through the
conscious identification of our wills therewith, the
satisfaction which the 'meliorism' of the devotees
of what they called 'ethical culture' postponed
^Quoted by Prof. Webb in his Eibiert Journal article.
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 15
to an indefinite future." (pp. 84-5.) Now, as a
matter of fact, wliich any one can verify and
ought to verify before presuniing to write on the
subject, the Ethical Movement does not presume
to abolish evil by a progressive reform of society
instead of by conscious identification of our finite
wills with an eternally present world of spiritual
reality. We do not postpone spiritual satisfaction
to an indefinite future. That is just what we
turn away from, as we open our minds to the
descent of the ever-present ideal reality upon us
and into us.
Again, Prof. Webb in his Hihhert Journal
article says : ' ' In his revolt from the ' mere mor-
ality' of the Ethical Societies and his ever
stronger insistence on the need of religion to give
the assurance which 'mere morality' can never
yield to the man engaged in the battle of life.
..." (pp. 85-6), and so on. But there is no
occasion to finish a sentence which begins so in-
accurately. The be-all and end-all of the Ethical
Societies is to proclaim and demonstrate that
morality is never ''mere morality." Our whole
meaning is that expressed by Emerson in the
passage Avhere lie rebul^es those who chatter
about mere morality, saying that they might as
well talk about "poor God, with nobody to help
him." The members of Ethical Societies have
found the ethical ideal "quick Avith immense vi-
tality." This it is which has drawn them into
religious fellowship. Pure goodness, they have
found, overbrims with spiritual healing power
and its help is always at hand ; it is not to blame
if any man be not cured instantly and lifted into
an atmosphere free from the poisonous hopes and
16 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
fears of self-centred existence. xVccording to
Prof. Webb and Bosanquet, the Ethical Move-
ment does not know this truth; Prof. Muirhead
thinks we have taken fifty years to discover it.
But these scholars had not been listening-in, al-
though we have been broadcasting this message
from the first.
I have said that the Ethical Movement is the
only religious organization which sets up the
Good instead of the neutral stuff of Power as the
ultimate reality. But so to characterise our
Movement is not to imply that its leaders have
originated ethico-spiritual teaching, or have any
monopoly of it. On the contrary, they are, as I
have said, inheritors of an ancient and high tradi-
tion; and they rejoice in the fact that many in-
dividual persons are teaching a similar doctrine.
Ethical mysticism is more widely accepted to-day
than ever before as the foundation of sound re-
ligious belief. It is beginning to be preached
from many Christian pulpits. In the Anglican
Church, under the leadership of Dean Inge, some-
thing which looks like the nucleus of an ecclesiasti-
cal party, in addition to the High, Low and
Broad, seems to be forming itself about the idea
that Truth, Beauty and Goodness are God; and
there is a bare possibility that in a few genera-
tions such a party will be in the ascendant, and
will then not only reinterpret but revise the for-
mulae of all denominations in England in this
ethical sense. But, until then, Ethical Societies
will remain the only religious fellowships based
on the experience that the Good is the eternal
reality.
For upwards of a generation, however, the
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 17
English and Scotch Universities have been con-
spicuous centres of the thought that the ideal of
^^■hat ought to be is the only object of an illumin-
ated religious consciousness. Prof. Muirhead and
Bosanquet are but two representatives of this
academic movement. Another, of still greater
reputation and influence, was Bradley. Take, for
instance, the closing chapter of Bradley's Ethical
Studies, which was published in the same year in
which the New York Ethical Society was founded.
There he offers a view of the relation of ethics
to religion nearly identical in detail with that set
forth by Prof. Adler. No two men of marked
originality have ever j^resented the same truth
independently in forms so closely alike, despite
the long co-operation in thinking and expression
among philosophers concerning the deeper reali-
ties of life. I will not quote the corresponding
passages from Prof. Adler 's writings, as they
are accessible to my readers; but Bradley's book
has now been out of print for many years, and
tlie rare copies still obtainable can be purchased
only at ten times their original price.
One seems almost to hear Prof. Adler speak-
ing, when Bradley says:
Are we to say then that morality is reUgion?
Most certainly not. In morality the ideal is not :
it for ever remains a 'to-be.' The reality in us or
the world is partial and inadequate; and no one
could say that it answers to the ideal, that,
morally considered, botli we and the world are
all we ought to be, and ought to be just what
we are. We have at furthest tlie belief in an
ideal which in its pure completeness is never
real; which, as an ideal, is a mere ^should be.'
And the question is, will that do for religion?
18 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
Ko knower of religion, who was not led away
bv a theory, would answer Yes. iS'or docs it
help us to say that religion is 'morality touched
by emotion';' for loose phrases of this sort may
suggest to the reader what he knows already
without their help, but, properly speaking, they
say nothing, (p. 281.)
Religion is more than morality. In the relig-
ious consciousness we find the belief, however
vague and indistinct, in an object, a not-myself ;
an object, further, which is real. An ideal
which is not real, which is only in our heads,
cannot be the subject of religion ; and in particu-
lar the ideal self, as the 'is to be' which is real
only so far as we put it forth by our wills, and
which, as an ideal, we cannot put forth, is not
a real object, and so not the object for religion.
Hence, because it is unreal, the ideal of personal
morality is not enough for religion. And we
have seen before that the ideal is not realized
in the objective world of the state; so that, apart
from other objections, here again we cannot find
the religious object, (p. 282.)
Eeligion, we have seen, must have an object:
and that object is neither an abstract idea in the
head, nor one particular thing or quality, nor any
collection of such things or qualities, not any
phrase which stands for one of them or a collec-
tion of them. In short it is nothing finite. It
cannot be a thing or person in the world; it can-
not exist in the world, as a part of it, or as this
or that course of events in time; it cannot be the
'xUl,' the sum of things or persons, — since, if
one is not the divine, no putting of ones to-
gether will beget divinity. All this it is not.
Its positive character is that it is real; and fur-
ther, on examining what we find in the religious
consciousness, we discover that it is the ideal
self considered as realised and real. The ideal
self, which in morality is to be, is here the real
ideal which truly is.
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 19
For morals the ideal self was an 'ought/ an 'is
to be' that is not; the object of religion is that
same ideal self, but here it no longer only ought
to be, but also is. This is the nature of the
religious object, though the manner of appre-
hending it may differ widely, may be anything
from the vaguest instinct to the most thoughtful
reflection. . . .
In the very essence of the religious conscious-
ness we find the relation of our tuill to the real
ideal self. We find ourselves, as this or that
will, against the object as the real ideal will,
which is not ourselves, and which stands to us
in such a way that, though real, it is to he rea-
lised, because it is all and the whole reality, (pp.
284-5.)
We find in the religious consciousness the ideal
self as tlie complete reality; and we have, be-
side, its claim upon us. Both elements, and their
relation, are given in one and the same conscious-
ness, (pp. 286-7.)
We have the felt struggle in us of two wills,
with both of which we feel ourselves identified.
And this relation of the divine and human will
in one subject is a ps3'chological impossibility, un-
less they are the wills of one subject. . . . The
religious consciousness implies that God and man
are identical in a subject, (p. 288.)
Has the divine will of the religious conscious-
ness any other content than the moral ideal? ■
We answer, Certainly not. Religion is practical;
it means doing something wliich is a duty.
Apart from duties, there is no duty; and as all
moral duties are also religious, so all religious
duties are also moral, (p. 297.)
And so the content of religion and morality
is the same, though the spirit in which it is done
is widely different, (pp. 288-9.)
Bradley always writes from the point of view
of metaphysics; that is to say, whatever particu-
20 x\SPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
lar event, thing or value he is treating of, he sees
it in relation to experience as a Avhole. He is
nothing, if not comprehensive and systematic;
and his chief interest is Avitli the whole and not
with the parts of trnth. He would also have
wished to be judged by the validity of his system.
But the remarkable thing about great metaphy-
sicians, like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz,
Kant and Bradley, is that they are at the same
time great psephologists, logicians and moralists,
acute observers of particular facts and discern-
ers of vital relations existing among particulars.
Evidently, devotion to metaphj^'^ics, the science of
things in general, does not incapacitate a man for
detailed research and discovery. On the other
hand, men may be great specialists who have no
capacity for metaphysics. But whether any one
could be a great metaphysician without pre-
eminent gifts for minute research and discover}^
is questionable. This is certain, however, that to
judge a philosopher only by the adequacy of his
thought-structure as a whole and to overlook his
contributions to logic, ethics, psychology and the
natural sciences, or to disparage these on account
of the deficiency of that, is to do him an in-
justice; while to ignore these contributions is
also to rob oneself of invaluable treasures. At
least it holds good of Bradley that his system
might be shattered to pieces and yet that every
fragment in itself would be worth preserving and
reinstating in a new system of thought and life.
It will not have escaped the reader of the pass-
ages I have quoted from him, that his brilliantly
analytical and synthetic interpretation of the re-
lation of ethics to religion is purely psychological.
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 21
All he is doing is to report the nature of the
moral and the religious consciousness, their
differences and identities, and the way they
coalesce in the individual mind to reinforce each
other.
Now, it may be bad metaphysics to affirm, as
Bradley does, that in each of us are two wills,
two selves; the one finite, the other infinite; the
one actual, the other ideal; the one temporal, the
other eternal. But from the point of view of
psj^chological observation, the facts appear that
way ; and appearance and reality are in the men-
tal realm one and the same thing. To perceive
two wills in one^s self, two selves in one subject,
and to see them struggling against each other, is
to have or to be two wills and to carry on war
within one's own consciousness. One cannot help
jjerceiving these facts ; and, I repeat, in the sphere
of consciousness to-be-perceived is to be. Meta-
physics may explain or not explain the facts, but
it cannot, and must not attempt to, explain them
away.
Bradley's Ethical Studies presents, as I have
just said, not primarily an ethical, but a psycho-
logical, treatment of moral and religious ex-
perience, although the audacity of its logic and
the soundness and fervour of its ethical and re-
ligious insight and passion may at first divert the
reader from its psychological acumen and sweep
of vision. Bradley's significance for adherents
of the Ethical Movement is that he reduces ethics
and religion to the same ultimate terms as are
indicated and formulated by the Founder of the
Ethical Movement in An Ethical Philosophy of
Life. So far as I know, no other writer on the
22 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
religions consciousness, except Bradley, lias first
treated the psychology of ethical experience inde-
pendently and systematically and then showTi how
the religions differs from the moral consciousness
only by the fact that it subsumes the contents of
the concept "good" under the category of *' re-
ality." The purely moral consciousness starts
with the discrimination betAveen good and bad,
right and wrong; but it suspends judgment as to
whether a thing is right simply because men are
so constituted that they cannot help thinking it
right, or whether it is right because the objective
nature of things constrains them so to believe.
To the religious consciousness, suspension of
judgment on this point is intolerable. Keligion,
although it may embrace much else, is an affirma-
tion by the intellect that the good is real, with the
surrender of the will to this existential judgment.
Religion involves the belief that absolute values,
although purely ideal, are "there." Herein it
asserts the existence of a supersensible order,
Avhich consists of nothing but ideal truth, beauty
and goodness. Its ground for this affirmation is
the kno-sATi, felt and accepted claim which the ab-
solute values make upon our empirical selves and
upon the collective mind of communities of men.
How the religious consciousness, thus reduced to
its elements and linked mth other primary
factors of sane mentality by the ordinary canons
of observation and logical construction, can be
brought into a universal system of truth, does
not concern us here ; but of this we may be sure :
that no universal system of thought can presume
to ignore these ultimate data of religious ex-
perience. Happily, however, science, art and
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 23
spiritual discipline will not and need not wait for
the universal science. It must include them, but
they need not on their own account be included
in it; yet, doubtless, they would gain prestige in
the popular mind by being assigned a worthy
place in an organic bod}^ of truth.
V.
One reservation, it seems to me, must be made
to Bradley's account of the relation of ethics to
religion, although it concerns perhaps more his
manner of presentation than his meaning. He
seems to imply that in religion as such, and
therefore in all religious systems and practices,
the ''content" or ''object" of veneration is,
vaguely or distinctly, the moral ideal. But if this
is what he means, his meaning is not borne out by
historical and psychological knowledge. For four
thousand years, the world over, there have been
religions of which the "object" — or the wor-
shipped attribute of the object — ^was anything
but moral. If deities are essentially moral, or if
morality was naturally the thing that was deified,
how are we to explain the indubitable fact of his-
tory that there has taken place in many religions
a gradual moralisation of deity? Facts force us
to say that at the root of the religious conscious-
ness, as such, is only and simply man's existen-
tial judgment. "IT IS," constitutes the essential
object of worship always, or "I AM" — if the
object is imagined as speaking. From the religion
of the savage to that of Carlyle we find homage
to FACT, a surrender to the inevitable, a sub-
mission of man's spirit to WHAT IS. The mor-
alisation, therefore, of deity is, as I have said
24 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
above, an importation into religion of what is
alien to it, just as the deification of morality is an
importation into ethics of what is alien to it. In
the latter process, ''I OUGHT" is made to de-
clare *'I A^I." This ascription of existence and
potency to I OUGHT is only one species of re-
ligion, a species so rare that it is as yet without
a name, althongh in need of one. Few have ever
seen a specimen of it; and not many have ever
heard of it ; or, having heard, they refuse to recog-
nize that it is a religion at all. It is this rarest
type of religion over which Emerson lamented
that it had never been concreted into a cultus, and
the neglect of which Matthew Arnold bemoaned
in his sonnet entitled **The Divinity":
Wwdom and goodness, they are God! What
schools
Have 3'et so much as heard this simpler lore?
This no Saint preaches, and this no Church
rules ;
'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
Clearly, Bradley does not give us the psychol-
ogy of religion as it is but as it might be and
ought to be, and as it will be if it is to survive the
tests of philosophic and ethical examination. But
he is strictly right in affirming that no religious
consciousness can be satisfied with anything short
of the ''real"; and he is wrong in seeming to
imply that the essence of that "real" of religion
is always or necessarily man's real ideal self. He
ought only to have maintained that nothing but
this can satisfy a fully illuminated moral con-
sciousness. These two words, ideal and real,
however, demand our attention for a moment,
otherwise we may not appreciate the full meaning
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 25
of the assertion that the ^^ object^* of the moral
consciousness cannot become an ** object** of re-
ligions consciousness unless the moral ideal is,
and can be shown to be, real.
No words are in more common use than these
two, and none are better understood or less in
need of definition. Yet they are generally placed
over against each other, as if they could not be
applied to one and the same object at the same
time. What, then, can the religious consciousness
mean in asserting that the '^deaP' self is '*real'*f
It means, in the first place, that the ideals of
truth, beauty and goodness are not figments of
each man's free fancy. They are not to be classed
with delusions or hallucinations or illusions.
They do not belong to the world of dreams, but
are of such stuff as facts are made on. They
confront the wide-awake, critical and sane mind
and constrain it to believe that it has not con-
jured them up out of nothing. Yet these ideals
occupy no space and the passage of time is irrele-
vant to them ; they can neither move nor be moved
by material objects and are in their nature imper-
ceptible to any of our present senses and would for
ever be impalpable to any new senses which the
human mind may acquire or evolve from within.
If, then, they are * ' real * ', but do not belong to the
realm of the senses, they must constitute another
order of existence ; and on this account those who
believe in their reality say that there is a super-
sensible or spiritual w^orld.
In the second place, the religious consciousness
in affirming that the ideal is real means that it
is not merely an output of an a priori disposition,
that it is not due merelv to a constitutional mode
26 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
of valuation by which consciousness reads into
outside objects qualities which are not there. On
the other hand, however, by asserting that the
good is real, religion does not commit itself to
the belief that the absolute values exist apart
from the mind. Rather does it imply that the per-
ceiving spirit, and the spiritual world perceived,
and the intuition which unites the perceiver and
perceived, all three, constitute together the one
spiritual reality. ''The spiritual world," says
Plotinus, "is not outside spirit"; nor is spirit
outside the spiritual world ; nor does the intuition
of it exist by itself. No one of these is prior to
the other. The perceiver, the perceived, and the
perceiving exist together or not at all. At least
this is the doctrine of real-idealism, which is
found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, and which
all those modern philosophers accept who acclaim
the moral ideal to be the object of the illuminated
religious consciousness.
The reader of Bradley's Ethical Studies, how-
ever, no sooner becomes reconciled to accepting
the ideal as real, than he is confronted with the
still more striking paradox that the ideal is a
reality ivliich is not yet realized. How is such a
thing possible? If it is yet to be realized, it is
surely not real.
Now the appearance of contradiction here will
begin to vanish if we first consider an architect's
design for a building. If his design is such that
it never could be executed in steel and stone or
any other materials, it is not a real design. But
if in every detail it is feasible, the reason must be
that it has itself, so to speak, sprung into the
architect's mind out of the real properties of the
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 27
materials to be used, the end to be served and the
ground and situation where the building is to
stand. There is, therefore, nothing arbitrary in
speaking of some ideas in a man's mind as real-
and-yet-to-be-realized, and of others as incapable
of being realized because they are not real.
This analysis, however, has not probed to the
root of the paradox, inasmuch as the ideal of a
thing is not the same as any one's idea of it. No
finite architect has ever had complete insight into
and mastery over the material he wishes to shape,
or the shape he wishes to give it. The ideal of his
building, therefore, is not the idea which is in his
mind, but is the external reality with which his
idea would have tallied, if his insight and mastery
had been ]3erfect. The real ideal of anything, ac-
cordingly, can never be more than approximately
imagined in finite thought and never fully realized
by a finite will. Hence, in the domain of ethics
and religion, there is no sophistry nor vain subt-
lety in the assertion that there is in each of us a
real ideal self which is not yet realized.
It is, furthermore, consistent with the existence
of our real ideal self that there should be inextric-
ably bound up with it many actual imperfect
selves. For, at the beginning, every finite con-
sciousness is aware only of the outermost surface
of its own sphere of being. Through experience
it maj^ gradually penetrate toward its centre, and
in this advance thitherward the astonishing
truth may flash upon it that, while there are many
finite selves, there is at the centre of them all
one and the same real ideal self. This seems to
me good social psychology and logic, and many
philosophers would add that it is good metaphy-
28 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
sics. At least it lays bare the elements and rela-
tions of the moral and the religious consciousness.
It also tends to clarify, deepen and quicken one's
spiritual insight.
Bradley's analysis and synthesis of the ulti-
mate factors in ethical and religious experience,
being, in my judgment, good psychology and logic,
are in accord with the methods of investigation
and of constructive thought which are recognised
as valid in all the sciences and in critical philoso-
phy. If it be so, it will put an end to any conflict
which may have legitimately existed between
science and religion; but it will achieve this
greatly-to-be-desired result only as it rids both
the existing religions and the existing sciences of
elements which antagonise the principle that the
moral ideal is real.
VI.
Whenever any one has had, or claims to have
had, an immediate experience of a reality that is
supersensible, it is the custom of conunon speech
and the universal practice of scholars, to apply
to him the term ''mystic" and to call his ex-
perience "mysticism." Take, then, the case of a
man who says that he knows and feels, not
through any of his bodily senses, but directly,
that the moral ideal is a reality, more real even
than the things which on the testimony of his
senses he believes to exist. How can such a
man escape being classed among the mystics?
And what is liis unmediated knowledge of the
reality of the ideal, with his accompanying re-
sponse of heart and will, but mysticism? If we
withhold this term as inapplicable to such ex-
ETHICAL MYSTICISM 29
perienco, it must be on other grounds than those
of logic. It must be that we are inliibited from doing
so by some mere association of ideas, some pre-
judice or misconception. Often the abuse of a
Avord casts discredit upon its legitimate use. But
one of the functions of science and criticism is
to rescue words from misuses which dull their
edge and mar their delicacy as instruments of
discrimination.
One can well understand why special classes
of mystics should not wish to extend the term so
as to include the intuitive belief in the supreme
reality of the ideal self. They wish to retain the
monopoly of converse with the unseen world,
which they have interpreted as something more
than and very different from the real ideal self;
and their reputation would suffer if a purely
ethical mysticism came into vogue. They have de-
clared that by direct revelation they know the
unseen spiritual world to be an all-wise and all-
powerful person or a society of discarnate finite
spirits, with or without a person at its head. They
have often presumed also to assert that they see
by direct intuition the absent in time and space.
xYccording to their own testimony they can fore-
tell coming events and can conjure up the past.
The}' likewise have announced that they have re-
ceived super-normal powers over disease and over
sinister influences of an occult kind. The words
'* mystic'' and '* mysticism'' are a part of their
capital; and they are naturally alarmed when a
ncAv class of persons arises and declares, also on
the basis of direct experience, that the whole of
mystic experience consists of three things only
(for if it consists of these, such is their nature.
30 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
that it cannot consist of anything else) : (1) au-
thoritative and final insight into the ultimate
reality of the moral ideal, which includes Truth
and Beauty as well as Goodness; (2) enthusiastic
love of it and (3) access of power adequate to the
service of it.
Only the cultivation of this sort of spiritual ex-
perience— only "ethical culture'' as a religion —
can arrest the modern recrudescence of supersti-
tion which is spreading again as it did in Kome in
the third century of our era. Nothing can lift
men above an interest in personal survival after
death and communication with the dead but a
new insight into eternal life, which is one with
ethical living and which renders men indifferent
spiritually to the contingencies of the future,
either those before or after death, whether the
contingencies be those Avhich await oneself or
one's friends or the beloved community to which
one belongs.
Again, only insight into the spiritual nature of
the ethical life can put an end to "fundamental-
ism." Take the one point in theological contro-
versy which concerns the personality of God.
Already the enlightened public accepts the fact
that evil is not any more real to those who believe
in a personal devil as the essence of it than to
those who never think of personifying it. When
the public becomes still more enlightened spirit-
ually, it will see that the good is also real in itself,
and gains nothing in sanctity or power by ascrib-
ing self-conscious intelligence to the ultimate
reality of things. It will know that Emerson was
right w^hen he said: "He does not know what
evil is, or what good is, Avho thinks any ground
ETHICAL MYSTICISM ol
remains to be occupied, after saying that evil is
to be shunned as evil. I doubt not he Avas led by
the desire to insert the element of personality of
Deity. But nothing is added. ' '^
Once more, only a religious devotion to ethical
experience can stop the Avidespread interest in the
practice of mediumship, of clairvoyance and
occultism generally. That alone will cause the
public to see and feel that, again, Emerson was
right as against all such practices, in his comment
upon the visions of Swedenborg. Of this mystic
he says : ' ' His revelations destroy their credit by
running into detail. If a man say that the Holy
Ghost has informed him that the Last Judgment
(or the last of the judgments) took place in 1757;
or that the Dutch, in the other world, live in a
heaven by themselves, and the English in a heaven
bj' themselves; I reply that the Spirit which is
holy is reserved, taciturn, and deals in laws,
(ahosts and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes.
The teachings of the high Spirit are abstemious,
and, in regard to particulars, negative."^ What
norm or measure or standard of valuation can we
have which will expose the falsity of spiritual
aberrations, if we do not regard the moral ideal
itself and its claim upon us as the essence of the
spiritual world! How, except by it, can we dis-
criminate between morbid fancies and religious
verities ?
Perhaps more misleading, however, than the
symbols which are mistaken for things signified
are the pompous systems of speculative thought
which have been built upon fantastic vagaries.
AVhat else can overthrow these systems by under-
^"Swedenborg ; or tlie Mystic."
32 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
raining their foundations, but the intuitive per-
ception that the only content of the supersensible
world is that which the moral consciousness sup-
plies?* Otto traces the defect of these systems to
a confounding of figurative ways of expressing
feeling with rational concepts; but their original
error consists in tiie taking of figures of speech,
instead of the primary data of moral experience,
as the ultimate stuff which is to be generalised
and system atised under the concepts of the under-
standing. Perhaps, however, this is what Otto
really means in the admirable sentence: ''The
characteristic mark of all theosophy is just this :
having confounded analogical and figurative ways
of expressing feeling with rational concepts, it
then SA^stematises them, and out of them spins,
like a monstrous web, a 'Science of God,' which
is and remains something monstrous, whether it
employs the doctrinal terms of scholasticism, as
Eckhart did, or the alchemical substances and
mixtures of Paracelsus, as Bohme did, or the
categories of an animistic logic, as Hegel did,
or the elaborate diction of Indian religion, as
Mrs. Besant does."^ Never will the general public
be safe against ensnarement in such monstrous
webs of rationalized fancies, until it sees that the
content of the religious consciousness is nothing
but the content which the moral consciousness dis-
closes in immediate experience to every sane mind
that will give to it the attention which is its due.
'Op. cit. pp. 111-12.
The Ethical Import
of History
By DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY.
44T N HISTORY," wrote Emerson, '^an idea al-
JL ways overhangs like a moon and rules the
tide which rises simultaneously in the souls of a
generation. ' ' This is but expressing in poetic lan-
guage a truth which is generally recognized by
the scientific historians of the present age. For
example, Karl Lamprecht, the famous Leipzig
liistorian and founder of the Institut fur Uni-
versal Geschiclite, in his monumental work on
German history, begun in 1891, develops the
thesis that every phase of civilization is the ex-
pression of a collective psychical orientation
(seelisclier Gesammtzustand) which dominates
the period and ''like a diapason penetrates all
the historical events of the time. ' ^ In his lectures
on ''What is History?" given before the Con-
gress of Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis Ex-
position of 1904, and repeated at Columbia
University, he substituted for the "hero" theory
of Carlyle and ]\Iichelet, according to which his-
tory is the collective biography of men of superior
force and genius, the doctrine of the socio-psychic
determination of the trend of history, including,
withal, the very shaping of the ideas of the men
of genius themselves. Like testimony is furnished
by Professor James T. Shotwell in the supple-
34 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
inentary chapter to his Introduction to the His-
tory of History, by the summary statement:
*' Looking back over the way we have come, from
the Greek philosophers to the modern economists
and psychologists, one can see in every case that
the interpretation [of history] was but the reflex
of the local environment, the expression of the
dominant interest of the time."
In general accord with this socio-psychological
interpretation of history, there have been numer-
ous suggestions of schemes of successive epochs
or eras of history, schemes not differing essential-
ly among themselves, but all contrasting sharply
with the hallowed division of history into ancient,
mediaeval, and modern, or with such fantastic
theological conceptions as the Augustinian an-
tithesis of the waning terrestrial and the waxing
celestial ''cities," Joachim of Flora's triune dis-
pensation of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit,
or the five monarchies of the seventeenth-century
sectaries. Permitting ourselves a modicum of
sjaicretic privilege, we might summarize the suc-
cessive eras of history according to the generally
accepted views of progressive scholars today as
follows :
First of all was the period of hundreds, per-
haps thousands, of centuries preceding the earliest
written records of civilization, variously called
the primitive age, the custom-making age, the
pre-historic age, the symbolic age, which the re-
searches of the anthropologists have revealed as
a period of incredible conservatism, consecrated
by taboos and regulated by an inviolable rigidity
of custom : a period in which fantastic guesses as
to the forces of nature and fear-ridden depend-
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OP HISTORY 35
ence upon capricious divinities made slavish imita-
tion the norm of life and punished the least de-
viation into originality as a crime which might
bring dire calamity upon the whole tribe. Gradu-
ally migration and conquest brought the con-
sciousness of conflicting customs, and with it the
beginnings of comparative civilization. In the
struggle of competing customs, with the conse-
quent elimination or absorption of the weaker
types, there developed great military states with
preferential customs, still rigidly conservative,
still preserving taboos and traditions under the
l^owerful and jealous guardianship of their priest-
kings. War was the dominating note of this era,
and the great military empires filled the stage of
history. The records of the earliest civilizations
are largely the chronicles of military expeditions
with their incidents of loot, slaughter, and slav-
ery. It is true that the foundations were laid in
these ancient empires for the emergence of the
civilized mind — in the technological acliieve-
ments of the Egyptians, the science and commerce
of the Babylonians, and the political experiments
of the Persians; but the subordination of all
these interests to the exigencies of conquest was
far more complete than in any of the militaristic
states of the modern age. Even Avith the Greeks,
who inaugurated a new intellectual era by casting
otf the shackles of mythological authority and
subjecting inherited institutions to the examina-
tion of reason, it is significant that the absorbing
concern of the historians, from Herodotus, who
first divined the Mediterranean world, to Poly-
bius, who chronicled its unification under Koman
rule, was war. "What in our eves has shrunk to a
36 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
petty quarrel between two Hellenic cit^^ states
was to the master artist Tliucydicles the central
event of history, whose incidents Avere to be
handed do'UTi to posterity as an '^everlasting pos-
session." Julius Caesar was Dictator, Pontifex
Maximus, — and historian.
The intense particularistic nationalism of the
ancient city-state (a political mold which Rome
had not broken through even at the height of her
empire) was shattered by Christianity. Here
was a doctrine of universalism, in which there
was no longer distinction between Greek and bar-
barian, bond and free. Here was, except for a
few hints in Polybius, the first conception of a
philosophy of history, of a universal principle of
integration for human thought and action. But,
unfortunately, that very principle was more fatal
to a constructive investigation of history than
was the narrowest conception of ancient par-
ticularism. For the Christian dogma, by its re-
jection of the world, which is the only stage of
history, put out the footlights and rang doAvn the
curtain on the whole performance, halting and
amateurish as it had been. In spite of the obvious
import of Jesus ^ teaching, that this world was to
be redeemed by the coming of the "kingdom of
heaven" in the hearts of men (what other mean-
ing could the parable of the leaven have?) the
Churcli, which substituted worship of him for
faithfulness to his gospel, transferred its whole
interest to a supernal kingdom of heaven sup-
posed to be inaugurated presently; and, by a
singular mixture of Pauline sarcophobia, pro-
phetic millennialism, Neo-Platonie asceticism, and
a despondent, degenerate Greek philosophy,
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 37
Avhich, in the phrase of Gilbert Murray, had ''lost
its nerve," abandoned the world to a damnable
partnership with "the flesh and the devil." For
a while the noblest element of the decadent Ro-
man Empire, the Stoic philosophers, tried to stim-
ulate a mundane ethics, but their company nar-
rowed to a little group of ''intellectuals," in
striking contrast to the cosmic comprehensive-
ness professed in their doctrine; and when the
"conversion" of Constaritine threw the vast au-
thority of the Empire to the support of the
Church, the stage was set for the millennial
drama of supernaturalism.
Nearly four centuries after the crucifixion of
Jesus, when it would seem to have been evident
that the world Avas likely to continue to be the
scene of human action, and when, indeed, the
Church itself had so far departed from its creed
of world-renunciation as to acquire great material
wealth in basilicas, landed estates, and donations,
Augustine, in a work which was destined to exert
the influence of a divine revelation upon the mind
of the ^riddle Ages, set the imperishable, supernal
City of God over against the moribund, sin-
riddled city of earth; and his pupil Orosius fur-
nished the "pieces justificatives" for this phil-
osophy of mundane despair by collecting into a
voluminous "Universal History" all the horrors
of calamity, war, pestilence, flood, fire, misery,
treachery, and debauchery in the pagan world on
Avhich he could lay his hands. The idea which
overhung the Middle Ages, but more like the
sword of Damocles than like Emerson ^s placid
moon, was the Dies irae, that dreadful day when
the earth should be dissolved in God's avenging
38 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
flames and the heavens be rolled up like a scroll,
revealing the New Jerusalem, the everlasting
abode of the saints.
Naturally, there was no history worthy of the
name during the Middle Ages. The only men
sufficiently educated to Avrite were the clerics, and
the only interest they had in writing was to
chronicle such facts or fables as illustrated their
liypothesis of the vanity of the world, the ulti-
mate triumph of the saints, and the utter dis-
comfiture of Satan. Hence the interminable
monastic annals, the monotonous thousands of
lives of saints, the inexhaustible stock of miracles
wherein the devil is defeated by holy Avater, ges-
tures, prayers, runes, and relics.
From Augustine to Anselm there was slight
promise of any relief from the tyranny of the
supernatural psychosis. However, towards the
close of the eleventh century there came into
European life a number of influences which were
bound in time to result in a new birth of mundane
interest, and therewith to make the progress of
real historical writing, which had been virtually
broken off with Ammianus Marcellinus, possible.
The exploits of Charlemagne, Hugh Capet, and
Otto the Great had stayed the tide of barbarian
invasion and prepared the way for a relatively
stable social order, in which the local security
offered by feudalism became of waning import-
ance. Towns began to multiply north of the Alps
as centers of trade, artisanship, and political ex-
perimentation. The Crusades introduced both a
vast number of new commodities and, what was
of more importance, the knowledge of new cus-
toms and cultures from the East. English,
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 39
French, German, and Italian scholars began to
exploit the wealth of Greek philosophy and Ara-
bic science which had crossed over to Spain with
the Moslem conquerors, but had been for three
centuries shut off from Christian Europe behind
the barrier of the Pyrenees. Besides valuable
knowledge in mathematics, optics, astronomy, ge-
ography, and medicine, the philosophy of Aris-
totle was transmitted in this way to Europe, and,
though condemned at first as ''heathen" by the
University of Paris, it was in less than a gen-
eration accepted by Christian scholars, who used
the Aristotelian categories and dialectic as the
framework and method in rationalizing the ortho-
dox dogmas in the great Summae of scholasticism.
The Church, Avith its immense prestige of cen-
turies of power and its formidable means of com-
pelling obedience through excommunication, inter-
dict, and inquisition, was able for some centuries
still to absorb the accumulating secular influences,
although they are clearly visible in the work of
some of her greatest champions : witness Thomas
Aquinas' speculations on political theory and Al-
bert the Great's investigations in natural science.
It was really this rising tide of secular interests
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, rather
than the brilliant cultural epoch of the Renais-
sance (the conspicuous "seventh wave" of the
tide), that caused the downfall of the mediaeval
ecclesiastical domination and opened the way for
the eventual validation of human and mundane
activities. Had the Renaissance itself been more
heavily weighted on the scientific and ethical sides,
ajid less slavish in its precious imitations of Greek
40 ASPECTS or ETHICAL RELIGION
epigrams and its worship of Greek busts; had it
followed the lead of Roger Bacon and Dante
rather than that of Boccaccio and Cardinal
Bembo, the sixteenth century might have been an
age of progressive enlightenment instead of a pe-
riod of barren theological disputes and devastating
religious wars. As it was, the Reformation, in both
its Protestant and its Catholic form, gave renewed
vigor to the domination of the supernatural, and
rejected with loathing the idea that human reason,
natural science, or secular learning could be a re-
liable guide of life. Martin Luther called his in-
tellect ''the bride of Satan," and the ''Magde-
burg Centuries" and the "Ecclesiastical Annals"
show little advance over Orosius as models of his-
torical writing.
Rehabilitation of secular interests, which we
repeat, can form the only basis for the apprecia-
tion of the history of mankind, is generally con-
ceded to have begun effectively with the work of
the generation of Montaigne, Descartes, and
Francis Bacon. These men shifted the point of
view of thinkers from retrospection to prospect,
summoning them to cease from vain disputations
on inherited dogmas and to devote themselves to
the patient inquisition of the world of nature and
the nature of man. Bacon, in his "Advancement
of Learning" (1604), proposed that a new inven-
tory be taken of the "general state of learning to
be described and represented from age to age,"
and declared that ' ' nature is more subtle than any
argument." In the first phrase he laid the basis
for that comparative view of civilization which is
the very source and condition of history, and in
the second he substituted science for scholasti-
cism.
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 41
It would be vain to argue, in the face of the
proceedings at Dayton, the glare of burning
crosses, and the propaganda of 100 per cent,
chauvinism, that the influence of man's long in-
heritance of superstition and savagery, supported
by the emotional rhetoric which appeals to the
"mind of the herd," has been eradicated from
our civilization. The student of social psychol-
ogy realizes that ages of collective habit leave
their deep impress on the mind of society, just as
years of personal habits make their ''grooves"
in the brain of the individual. Nevertheless, with
the work of men like Bacon and Descartes a new
intellectual orientation was furnished, and from
their day on the progress of scientific and rational
thought has been uninterrupted.
The stages of this progress are measured by
the multiplication of scientific societies in the
seventeenth century, the rise of the Deists, the
Encyclopaedists, the economists, and the "phi-
losophes" of the eighteenth century, and that vast
expansion in the whole field of cultural interests
Avhich has followed the researches of the geolo-
gist, the biologist, the anthropologist, the social
psychologist, and the sociologist in the last hun-
dred years. The wealth of material necessary
for any adequate comprehension of man's past
development and present social status has grown
far beyond the mastery of the most diligent and
competent student of today. The historian can
no longer shut himself up in his little comer with
his paraphernalia of written sources and compila-
tions to portray the episodes of military and dip-
lomatic history, and to tabulate their results in
the changes of boundaries, the chronicles of
42 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
courts, and the struggle of parties for the control
of governments. He must be aware of the psychic
processes, deeply rooted in the experience of the
race, which control and condition the events of
history; and must reckon with the complicated
social mind upon whose workings the researches
of the anthropologist, the psychiatrist, and the
social economist have cast so much light in the
last few years. Instead of regarding his narra-
tive of facts, or alleged facts, furnished by the
documents, as the consummation of his work, he
will rather see these facts themselves as docu-
ments needing interpretation by the psychic and
social urge which motivated them.
How numerous are the elements of this urge
and how different their appeal to the historian
may be seen by the various "interpretations" of
history which have been championed by antago-
nistic "schools." Orosius considerably sublimated
by Hegel, still has his followers in the scholars
who envisage history as the working out of a
divine plan. The Hand of God in American
History is a recent title. Other writers find
the key to the interpretation of history in the will
of "heroes" who dominate their age. Others in
the type of thought of a dominant social class.
There are advocates of economic determinism,
geographical determinism, and cultural determin-
ism. There are historians who agree substantially
with Freeman that "history is past politics,"
and there are those who would make history a
function of bio-chemistry (Mann ist ivas er isst).
I have deliberately avoided the title "The Ethi-
cal Interpretation of History" in this paper, lest
it should be misunderstood as an attempt to show
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 43
that history supports the postulates of some
ethical system or to apply the test of utilitarian-
ism or altruism to explain the actions of Napoleon
Bonaparte or Abraham Lincoln. It is not an-
other "interpretation" of histor}^, along with the
varieties just mentioned, that I am suggesting,
but rather some of the points of contact between
an ethical view of life and the modern attitude
and approach towards the understanding of his-
tory.
First of all is the obvious fact that modern
historiography is based on an ethical principle:
namel}^, the determination to be scrupulously
honest in the acquisition and the presentation of
the facts set down. Even the best of the ancient
historians were not free from the faults of in-
venting, expanding, suppressing, and distorting-
sources of information for the sake of rhetorical
effect or national glory. The historians of the
patristic era and the Middle Ages regarded the
record of the past as a storehouse from which
they could bring forth treasure in the shape of
edifying examples of God's providence and terri-
fying testimonies to his wrath. The volumin-
ous histories of the Reformation period were
elaborate polemical treatises in justification or
in condemnation of the rule of the Roman Church
through the centuries. Mystic and Deist, rational-
ist and romanticist, all allowed their selection and
emphasis of facts to be governed by their devo-
tion to doctrine. It was not until well into the
nineteenth century that a truly scrupulous con-
science was developed in historical methodology,
largely, I believe, through the admirable example
set by the natural sciences. To discover and record
44 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
what actually happened (wie es eigentlich ge.we-
sen), without prior caution as to the possible
effect of such discovery and revelation upon
cherished religious, political, or social doctrines,
became the first duty of the historian. Under
this stimulus the machinery for getting at the
facts of history, sifting the evidence, and testing
the sources was enormously improved through
the refinements of textual and methodological
criticism. Undoubtedly, the scientific historians
became guilty of too much absorption in the
apparatus of factual criticism, to the neglect of
the wider aspects of their subject which were
suggested by the growing body of knowledge in
the allied fields of anthropology, anthropogeogra-
phy, psychology, and sociology — a fault which is
being increasingly appreciated and remedied by
progressive historians today. Nevertheless, no
shortcoming in this respect can obliterate the
primary virtue of faithfulness to the truth in so
far as it can be discovered by the most painstak-
ing research. This is, after all, the effective
prophylactic against the insidious propaganda
which would distort the facts of history to exalt
Americanism, Protestantism, Catholicism, social-
ism, or any other ism; and it is due to an ingrained
respect for the truth that all such attempts in-
spire the reputable historian of today with the
same sort of nausea that quack medicine inspires
in a reputable physician or shyster methods in
an honest lawyer.
Indispensable as fidelity to the facts is, how-
ever, as a first principle of history, it is by no
means the be-all and the end-all of the matter.
Von Ranke's formula wie es eigentlich geivesen
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 45
is ludicrously inadequate as a definition of his-
tory. How can we ever know all that "actually
happened" in the past? What has come down to
us is a highly adventitious collection of data;
and in spite of all the improved methods of criti-
cism and verification, so much uncertainty still
attaches to many of the accepted facts as to give
a certain force to Voltaire's cynical remark, " Les
verites historiques ne sont que des prohabilites."
Moreover, even if we had a complete and verified
catalogue of the events of the past, it would be
still only a catalogue. To know what happened
satisfies curiosity but does not satisfy inquiry.
We want to know the how and the why of his-
tory (wie es eigentlich geworden), as well as the
what of history. We want to understand events,
and not merely to "hear of" them. Even though
this desire may be unrealizable, as the historical
skeptics declare, we refuse to be discouraged in
the attempt. The discrediting of a hundred the-
ories of the interpretation of history will not cure
men of the hope of finding an interpretation of
history. We may admire the subtle skill of Henry
Adams' argument for cosmic pessimism or
chuckle over the delicious humor of Clarence Al-
vord's "Musings of an Inebriated Historian,"
but such moods are only a kind of holiday relaxa-
tion induced by the complexity of the problem.
Fundamentally we insist that history shall have
a meaning: otherwise, the labor of historical ac-
cumulation looks as silly as counting the paving
blocks of a city street.
This faith in the significance of history, like
the fidelity to the facts of history, is an ethical
manifestation. Ethics on its practical side
46 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL EELIGION
(morals) is the art of right living; on its theoret-
ical side it is the elaboration of the conviction
that such behavior is based on a sound philosophy.
Where can the data for such a philosophy be
found except in history? The intuitionalist may
answer that ethics is God's direct revelation to
man in conscience. But we cannot trust a God
who implants the zeal for the inquisition in the
conscience of a Torquemada, the delusion of the
divine right to ruin the lives of millions of men
in the conscience of a pious Hohenzollern, or the
fatuous conviction of the duty to enforce the
teaching of the Hebrew legend of creation in
the conscience of an ignorant Tennessee farmer.
Neither can we accept the necessitarian theory
of ethics, which robs men of their power of moral
choice and reduces them to mere puppets, ani-
mated phenomena of natural laws over which
they have no control and of whose working they
have no inkling of an understanding. It is only
in the conception of history as a product of human
will-relations that ethics can find the data for its
philosophy.
These reflections suggest a further corrobora-
tion of the intimate contact between ethics and
the point of view of the newer history. For the
latter also rejects the transcendental and necessi-
tarian interpretations of human behavior, and
insists that the purport of history is to furnish
the data and the stimulus for a fresh attack upon
the problem of throwing off the traditional tram-
mels of our animal, savage, and conventional
heritage, and remolding our conceptions and our
institutions to accord with the scientific and psy-
chological discoveries of the last two generations.
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 47
Instances of this earnest exhortation could be
cited by the hundreds of pages from the writings
of the progressive students of the social sciences
toda}^ They are all alive to the fearful danger,
made doubly vivid by the catastrophe of the
World War, of trusting complacently in the
bungling, unscientific, rule-of-thumb policies of
state, supported and justified by irrational sur-
vival-forms of tribal ethics, for the regulation
of society in an age made ominously efficient in
its material civilization. They are using objurga-
tion, sarcasm, entreaty, and dire vaticination to
rouse us from the lethargy of conservatism.
Whether civilization can be "salvaged" or not de-
pends on the outcome of the ''race between edu-
cation and catastrophe, ' ' says Mr. Wells : and
he is none too confident that the odds are in favor
of the former. Professor James Harvey Robin-
son in The Neiv History asks what more vital
thing the past has to teach us than the manner
in which our convictions on large questions have
arisen, developed, and changed. "We do not as-
suredly owe most of them to painful personal
excogitation," he says, "but inherit them along
with the institutions and social habits of the land
in which Ave live. Many widespread notions could
by no possibility have originated in modern days,
but have arisen in conditions quite alien to those
of the present. We have too often, in conse-
quence, an outworn intellectual equipment for
new and unheard-of tasks. Only a study of the
vicissitudes of human opinion can make us fully
aware of this and enable us to readjust our views
so as to adapt them to the present environment.
If it be true that opinion tends, in the dynamic
48 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL EELIGION
age in which we live, to lag far behind our chang-
ing environment, how can we better discover the
anachronisms in our views and in our attitude
toward the world than by studying their origin I ' '
And Dr. Wilfred Trotter, in his study of The
Herd Instinct, substitutes a prophetic ultimatum
for Professor Robinson's persuasive interroga-
tion: *'We see man today," says Trotter, ''in-
stead of the frank and courageous recognition
of his status . . . and the determination to let
nothing stand in the way of the security and
permanence of his future, which alone can estab-
lish the safety and happiness of the race, substi-
tuting blind confidence in his destiny, unclouded
faith in the essentially respectful attitude of the
universe toward his moral code, and a belief no
less firm that his traditions and laws and institu-
tions necessarily contain permanent qualities of
reality. Living as he does in a world where out-
side his race no allowances are made for infirmity,
and where figments, however beautiful, never be-
come facts, it needs but little imagination to see
that the probabilities are very great that after
all man will prove to be one more of Nature's
failures, ignominiously to be swept from her
work-table to make way for another venture of
her tireless curiosity and patience."
These opinions are not cited here for the sake
of arguing for or against their soundness, or of
criticising any particular remedy offered by their
authors, like Mr. Wells 's project of universal adult
education or Professor Robinson's proposal for
the ' ' humanization of knowledge ' ' by the circula-
tion of popular hand-books containing those re-
sults of the newer studies in the natural and so-
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 49
cial sciences which are of most importance in
forming new standards of belief and behavior.
My object is to call attention to the ethical im-
port of the warnings. The burden of the message
of the social sciences today is that it is clearly
up to mankind to save its civilization by its own
efforts. There is scant sympathy with the pious
"trust that somehow good will be the final goal
of ill." Neither leaving matters in the hands
of God nor thromng up our own hands in baffled
resignation to the course of events will avail.
AVe must return to the invigorating doctrine of
the competence and the prime duty of man to dis-
cover the way to make the world a worthy habitat
for a better posterity.
Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia, nos te,
Nos faciraus, Fortuna, deam, coeloque locamus.
It is obvious that the role of history in the
social sciences mider such an ethical conviction
Avill not be to magnify national pride by the re-
hearsal of political, diplomatic, and military
triumphs, nor to glorify the present age as the
culmination of a steady march of progress, but
rather to furnish some help, from the record of
the struggles, the failures, and the partial vic-
tories of the past, in the appreciation and recti-
fication of the faults of our own generation. The
man who is preoccupied with the contemplation
of his own virtues and greatness is on the high
road to moral destruction. Yet there are mis-
guided "patriots" who are insisting today with
the zeal of an inquisitor that the chief duty of
the historian is to nurture national megalomania.
True patriotism covers its head with the ashes of
50 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
repentance for a nation's past sins and present
insolence.
Most marked of all the points of contact be-
tween ethics and the newer history is their com-
mon attitude of receptivity of truth from every
quarter of human experience. Realization of the
complexity of the social mind, with its heritage
of animalism, barbarism, and mediaevalism dwell-
ing side by side in thinly partitioned chambers
with the noble aspirations for freedom, righteous-
ness, wisdom, and peace, has justly convinced the
historian of the futility of proceeding on the as-
sumption that man is a constant factor amid the
mutability of events. The ''historical man" is
just as fictitious an abstraction as the "economic
man." The events of history do not explain hu-
man psychosis, but the reverse is the truth.
Therefore the historian cannot ignore or regard
with serene detachment the labors of the anthro-
pologist, the psychologist, and the psychiatrist.
These are his intimate collaborators and, indeed,
often his indispensable guides. He cannot, of
course, master the details of their science, but he
should be alert to recognize the bearing of the
facts and theories which they have to offer upon
his own science. He will, therefore, hold his in-
terpretation of history open to modification, re-
vision, and, if need be, to repudiation in the light
of new truth which may emerge from their re-
searches. In a word, he will eschew the dog-
matic, apriori methodology of the historical
"school" for the tentative, exploratory receptiv-
ity of the scientist.
This, I believe, is the very basic principle of
ethical philosophy and practice. Ethics, too,
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OP HISTORY 51
eschews dogmatism. It is an exploratory disci-
pline. It rejects the theory that an infallible rev-
elation has once for all furnished mankind with
the divine rule of conduct, carrying its own sanc-
tions of reward and punishment. It insists that
man is the architect of his own spiritual fortune,
and it is intent in the search for specifications of
alterations and improvements in the structure.
Far from reposing in the comfortable popular
delusion that we all know what is right by the
voice of conscience, in spite of frequent lapses in
obedience thereto, the serious student of ethics
realizes the enormous complexity of modes of
thought and motives of behavior, due to the
psychic confluence of biological urge, inherited
habit, conscious or unconscious social pres-
sure, self -justifying rationalization, self-deceiving
transference auto-suggestion, introversion, and
the more or less elusive mental lesions with which
we are all to some degree afflicted. If the result-
ing human material with which ethics and history
alike have to reckon is somewhat more mottled
than the neatly standardized man of the rotarian
conception, it at least has the advantage of reality
— "the spotted reality," as Henry Osborn Taylor
has wittily phrased it.
There follow from this tenetative and explora-
tory attitude of mind corollaries of the utmost
importance for our present well-being and future
progress. Let us dwell briefly on two of these
in closing : namely, toleration of variety of opinion
and modesty in the estimate of our present
achievement. There is perhaps no more crying
need, in this day of the regimentation of public
opinion by legislative enactment, inquisitorial
52 ASPECTS OR ETHICAL RELIGION
incompetence, and mass demonstration, than
the cultivation of respect for the freedom of
thought, research, and expression. Unless the
influence of the small minority of original and
fearless thinkers, which has always been the sav-
ing element in civilization, be allowed to leaven
the lump of mediocrity and conformity, we may
expect to witness a progressive degeneration of
culture. For the demagogue's job of piping to
the multitude is fatally attractive and remunera-
tive. " 'Tis as easy as lying," as Hamlet said to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He has but to
govern the stops and blow with his breath. He
will have no difficulty in persuading ignoramuses
that their opinions are as good as those of ex-
perts — because they believe it already. He will
invoke the sacred names of '^religion," 'democ-
racy," and ''patriotism" to cover appeals to per-
secuting zeal and levelling obscurantism. Be-
cause one man's vote is as good as another's in
electing a President, it must be as good in decid-
ing what professors shall be allowed to teach.
Mr. Bryan's late pronouncement that the conmion
people of Tennessee, the farmer Butlers, would
decide the purely biological question of the evolu-
tion of the human body, was, in spite of his inci-
dental profession of friendliness to science, a com-
plete repudiation of science; just as the demand
of certain patriotic zealots that boys and girls
in our schools should be taught that the fathers
of our Republic were impeccable and that the
army and navy in President Madison's adminis-
tration were invincible, in spite of any documen-
tary evidence to the contrary, are a complete
repudiation of history in the name of purifying
THE ETHICAL IMPORT OF HISTORY 53
history. What these misguided people cannot see
is that it is the historian's sense of ethics, and
not his "bolshevism" or his British subvention,
whic?i makes it impossible for him to tell lies ad
^naiorem gloriam patriae. With ludicrous incon-
sistency, these arch-propagandists of patriotism
accuse the truthful historian of — propaganda!
Finally, the undogmatic attitude of history and
ethics in their hospitality and, indeed, their ex-
pectant Avelcome, to new truth is an effective anti-
dote to the poisonous delusion which every gen-
eration is prone to cherish, that it has arrived
at the peak of civilization. Even the great ma-
jority of men today, in the midst of the greed
and hatreds, the vanity, venality, and vulgarity,
the injustice and cruelty which are manifest on
every hand with the slums of our cities, the
bitter war of the classes, the sordid national
rivalries, and the still lingering shadow of a ca-
tastrophe w^hich brought civilization to the verge
of the abyss hanging over us like a pall, can still
pursue the same fatal paths of self-aggrandize-
ment, vain contentions, vainglorious propaganda,
and persecuting prejudice, with bitter hostility
or, at least, scornful indifference to the labors
of the enlightened minority who are devot-
ing their lives to the survey and construction
of the only road that can lead mankind out of
the slough. The lines of cleavage, political,
racial, religious, economic, and moral, run through
society have been many, separating men into the
rulers, and the ruled, the privileged and the un-
privileged; the educated and the ignorant, the
freemen and the slaves, the rich and the poor,
the white and the colored, the sheep and the goats.
54 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL EELIGION
the saved and the lost. But from the historic-
ethical point of view there is but one valid dicho-
tomy, namely, the progressive and the stagnant.
On the one side are the men, of whatever rank,
station, race party or religion, for Avhom the pres-
ent is the golden opportunity to utilize the lessons
that the past can furnish for the creation of a
future worthy of the highest human aspirations.
On the other side are those who exploit the pres-
ent is the golden opportunity to utilize the lessons
came, and leave the future to God — or the de-
luge.
The Tragic and Heroic
in Life«
By WILLIAM M. SALTEE.
IT IS CURIOUS what a tangle our life is. We
reduce it to a few rules, and then something
happens or has to be done outside the rules. We
say that life is active duty, and lo! there come
times when we cannot do. We say all is well in
the world, and everything is for our good, and
then comes an accident that nearly undoes us,
and shakes the very foundations of our existence.
Ordinarily we move through life — at least the
fortunate among us — with a certain smoothness.
We have our food from day to day, and our bed
to go to at night. The sun rises cheerily for us.
We do not suffer pain. If we are at all decent we
have our friends, even those who love us, and we
find much to enjoy: books, society, adventure,
even labor and toil — for there is a joy to the
healthy human animal in asserting his strength
and achieving something. And we think this is
life — when suddenly something breaks the illu-
sion. Disease assails us, or a car knocks us over,
or our horse runs away, or we narrowly escape
drowning or freezing, or worse, burning — and
everything seems different: we realize that pain
and horror are close at hand. It is true that all
*I need scarcely say that this is not a formal essay on the
subject, bein^ little more than a set of reflections that I have
used more or less in popular Sunday addresses.
56 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
may pass and we may almost forget, and yet
whenever we reflect, the old confidence is gone.
We know that life is not necessarily what we be-
fore imagined — yes, it may come over us that
disaster in some form or other is bound to come,
that alien as well as friendly forces are about us
and will some day appear in all their power, that
there will be no way out, that the time for pleasing
expectancy and all the consolations we mortals
like to give to one another will be forever passed.
Yes, there is tragedy in life. We have glimpses
of it now and then, we taste it to the full in time.
The happiest of us, the securest — those who have
come safely out of every accident and recovered
after every illness — have yet something to face
from which there is no escape, no recovery. For
this is the final meaning of tragedy: no change
for the better ; there is the solemnity of the irre-
parable, the unalterable about it.
How can we adjust ourselves to a situation like
this? Alas! many of us do not adjust ourselves.
We sink beneath it, it is too appalling. We may
be happy when we are well, when all is cheerfiil
about us — that is, when the tragic is not in sight ;
but w^hen we face it, even if only in imagination,
somehow the heart sinks mthin us. Indeed, some
of us acquire a more or less constant undertone
of melancholy in contemplating this side of things
— the zest and joy of life have passed now that
we have felt the shadow of the end. What is the
use, we say, when insecurity is ever about us,
with but one termination? From habit, or mere
animal shrinking from death, we may go on with
our daily tasks, but the heart is sick.
Professor James, in discussing types of relig-
THE TRAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE 57
ions experience, distingnished between the once
and the twice born. These terms might almost
apply to the two kinds of human beings I have now
in mind. For the man who thinks of life and the
ways of life, the occupations and the joys of life,
and has no clear vision of anything else, is one
being ; and he who has seen the obverse of all this,
who has looked on suffering and death, is another.
True, the second man may not be bom again,
he may rather quail before his wider discovery,
and become almost as if unborn ; but only he who
has the vision, only he to whom it has struck
home, can pass on to that larger and deeper life
which may not inaptly be described as a second
birth.
The true answer to the tragic in life is the
heroic. The heroic action is different from the
ordinary, in that it involves the overcoming of a
difficulty, and the asserting of superior force. By
heroism, we must not think necessarily of any-
thing spectacular or even of anything public — it
may not be on the battle-field, it may not be in
the public eye at all. An obscure unnoticed man
may be a hero, a woman in a small domestic circle
may be a heroine, anyone may be a hero who faces
difficulty and danger and doubt and uncertainty,
and who says, **Come what may, I will do the
right thing, the strong and manly thing. ^' The
specific kind of heroism I have now in mind is
that which knows the uncertainties, risks and
accidents of existence, the facts of suffering and
defeated hopes, and yet instead of being timorous
and slinking out of the race, enters perhaps more
vigorously into it, resolute to do and dare, taking
the risks, braving the dangers, simply because
58 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
this is a man's part. It is an inner attitude, a
thing of the spirit. You would not know the hero
I am thinking of from any other man or woman
you met on the street. But where another is un-
nerved by life, he is serene. AVhere another is
listless, he is energetic. Where another asks,
*'0f what use?" he is making himself of use.
Where another has dark thoughts, he has light
and cheerful ones. It is not that he is fortunate
in life, successful and prosperous, while others
are unfortunate; outwardly he may be more
unfortunate than they — the difference is in his
reaction, his adjustment, in the quality of mind
and will he puts forth.
Of course, this heroism rests upon or rather
goes together with a certain general view of life.
The view is that we live in a world not made
for us, but into which we have to lit. If man, his
comfort, his happiness, the prolongation of his
life, were the end of things, how differently would
everything be arranged! The sea does not roll
up its devastating waves on occasion, or the earth
quake or volcanoes pour forth their fiery floods
for the benefit of those living near-by. Yes : rain
and wind and storm and tempest, the moving
earth and the shining sun and the stars, all pursue
ends of their own; the animal world too; and
when the ends of these other creations cross with
ours, we suffer, or they suffer — and sometimes
the suffering is simply inevitable. In other words,
it is a mixed, contrary world in which we live;
and man, thrown up in the course of its evolution,
has to hold his own in it. There are, of course,
secret forces of nature friendly to us — else how
could we be here? — but we are not the sole object
THE TRAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE 59
of nature's concern, and have to battle and to
fight. Goethe, who saw life so clearly and sanely,
says the same:
Dieser ist ein Mensch geworden,
Und dass heist ein Kampfer sein.
To live, to be a man, is to put forth force, to
contend.
It makes all the difference in the world whether
we have this general view, and whether it is not
merely an idle, speculative conception, but one
burned into us, and become a veritable habit of
our thoughts. We have so often a sense of hurt
in life when there is no need of it. We are cha-
grined, mortified, cast down, because, forsooth!
we fancied ourselves particularly cared for. AVe
have not been brought up from childhood to the
view that while nature bears us, she leaves us to
help ourselves and to help one another, and that
Ave have to take a man's part, and take a man's
chances as we go through life. While the race is
growing and learning, and before we have ac-
quired the mastery of forces below us (if indeed
we can ever have a complete mastery), we must
expect injury now and then, must expect to be
worsted now and then — accident and sickness are
practically bound to come. What is the use of
living in false dreams of security? What is the
use of fancying the world other than it is? Why
think that we are always going to be well and
happy? Wi\j think that accidents may befall
others, but cannot or at least will not touch
us? Why think there is a Providence, whether
we call it luck or God, that looks after us and
will not allow those dreadful things to happen
60 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
that have happened to other people? It is
disillusion, disappointment, that often makes our
experience so hard; — we had not thought of it,
had not dreamed of such a thing, and our tears
are doubly bitter.
Surely I am not advocating a gloomy view of
life, nor do I mean that we should be holding
before us the ills that may come, but simply that
along with our natural joy in life and our eager
expectation of good things, there should always be
this underthought that things may be different.
We should not bank too heavily on joy and good ;
we should strive for them, and not let our whole
heart go into the striving, but in a corner of our
being, keep a readiness for whatever may befall,
a determination to bear and endure, as well as
to strive and contend.
I am aware that this view may seem different
from the ordinary religious one. And yet the idea
that we are the favorites of the Heavenly Powers,
and that they have arranged ever3i;hing for our
benefit, the idea that there is a Providence watch-
ing over each of us, has always had a limitation.
The religious believer in praying or trusting for
life and safety, is always obliged, if he reflects
deeply, to add, ' * if God wills ! ' ' — for it is impos-
sible, in view of the facts of life, to have one's
confidence absolute. In other words, God may not
will our exemption from sickness and accident,
may not even will that we should live at all — may
will our death. It is the same facts, at bottom the
same view of life, that I have been setting forth
— only now covered by theological phraseology.
An inscrutable, unfathomable will of God is the
same to all practical intents and purposes as an
THE TRAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE 61
inscrutable, unfathomable order or law of nature.
It simply is, and we have to reckon with it, and
bow to it, whether we call it by one name or an-
other. Even the current religious view, then, has
to admit that the world that we see and know is a
mixed and contrary one, that there is tragedy,
human undoing and defeating, that life is often
hard, that we have to have will and courage and
a touch of heroism to go through it, that we must
be inwardly prepared for the worst, and have * * a
heart for any fate.'^
After all, it is in a way a bigger, grander world
with all these contrary tendencies and tragic pos-
sibilities in it, than one would be in which all was
arranged for man and made soft and smooth for
him. Personally he may be inconvenienced, but in
the background of his thought, he feels that a
system of things which sweeps around him and
beyond him is greater than one ordered for his
special benefit, and in his heart he would rather
be a citizen of the greater universe than of the
less. Man loves greatness, singular creature that
he is; at the same time that he is so enormously
selfish and self centred, he may be not without
respect for that which disdains him, for that
which is so lofty that it Avould be humiliated in his
eyes, if its sole function were to serve him. That
is why we love the sea, the winds, the mountains,
the high heavens — they have a range and sweep
of energy all their o^\'n ; in their mighty power we
love in imagination at times to lose ourselves. And
that is why we are willing members of a total sys-
tem of things which serves us only incidentallj^,
which is too great to make its arrangements
simply for our personal good, or even for the
6 a ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
good of the Immaii race. That we are the sport
of accident, that we die, that whole generations
pass, that even the race will pass at last, are signs
that we are incidents in the scheme of the Powers
that bore us, that there is something more and
greater than we to be considered.
Thoughts like these are, I trust, something, and
yet I know that practically the heroic attitude has
a deeper basis. In an essay of Emerson on
''Heroism," which every young person, or for
that matter, every old one, might well read once
a year, Emerson says, in speaking of Plutarch ^s
* ' Lives " — ' ' A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the
schools but of the blood, shines in every anecdote,
and has given that book its immense fame.'' '*A
courage not of the schools but of the hlood" —
the phrase somehow sticks in my ears. Views
and thinking are not all. One who is sometimes
supposed to stand for pure intellect and the power
of ideas, says they are not all — the blood, the
unconscious part of a man, his elemental con-
stitution counts for something.
My own experience is — for I have had a little
— that after being shocked, frightened and mo-
mentarily unnerved by accident or illness, some-
thing not logical, not born of any thinking, but
instinctive, a part as it were of our life-force,
rises in us and makes us willing to risk and try
again — makes us ready to take chances almost
as if we had not been hurt at all. It is not reason-
ing, or calculation, but a stirring of the blood —
it is what we do because deeper than our thoughts
and views is the well of living energy within us,
which continues to flow when we are not thinking,
even when we are sleeping and unconscious, like
THE TIIAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE G3
the ceaseless and sleepless motion of the blood —
indeed, this is one example of it. This unwilling-
ness to be cowed, this rising up to face difhculty
and run risks, is, I hold, natural to us — a part of
our life-dower. With life (which comes to us we
know not how) comes the will to live, the readi-
ness to dare. After a blow, given time enough, we
pick ourselves up, not because we feel we ought
to, but because something within us makes us.
Here then is a case where we may trust to healing
operations of nature itself in normal individuals
— : a case where we are j)roinpted to thank and
bless nature for impulses rising unbidden within
us; and if we find those who do not react in this
way, we have not only, I think, to reason with
them and try to persuade them, but somehow to
touch and to quicken these natural impulses ; for
we may well believe that unless such persons are
wounded nigh unto death, the impulses are still
there, and only need, lilve some part of the body
that has been stunned or is unused, to be brought
into play. It is wonderful what simple physical
medication will sometimes do — what soothing
sleep will do, sleep the great restorer, the rejuv-
enator, sleep that laps us into unconsciousness
and in unconsciousness makes us strong — won-
derful what fresh air and sunshine will do — what
a clear sky or a ruddy sunset will do — what the
sight of a child's fresh face will do. Anything to
touch the inner springs, to waken what is dormant
but not dead within us — anything, that is, to give
us ourselves again; for within ourselves are
power and courage, and all the possibilities of an
heroic attitude to life.
Heroism, I have said, is not altogether to be
64 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
got at by reasoning — it is in tlie blood and con-
stitution of us men — and yet nature may be
aided by the sight or knowledge of heroism in
others. When you see a hero, or hear of one, it
somehow becomes easier, or seems so, to be one
yourself. You could hardly be sensible of the
heroic quality, had you not an affinity to it, a
capacity for it; and yet the sight makes it real,
and your ovna. feeling rises, as it were, to meet it.
How we admire a child that picks itself up after
a tumble and runs on again undaunted ! — we are
ourselves refreshed. How it cheers us to hear of
a farmer or business man who has had odds
against him and still not lost heart ! All who make
mistakes, whether in teaching or in singing, or
painting, or keeping house, or public speaking,
and rise above their discouragements, and are
bent on winning — these are our teachers and in-
spirers, just as potent, though their sole thought
is about themselves, and they know not the lessons
they give.
The classical type of hero is the soldier — and
this is why we admire him, not because he kills
people, but because he takes the risks of being
killed, because over against that possible fate, he
pits his will and personal force, because he is a
match for death, and in his spirit, its equal. And
the soldiers in peace have a similar charm for us
— those who battle against abuses, those who take
their chances of being abused, of having their
names cast out as evil, even of bodily harm — for
when interests are at stake, as they may be, brutal
passions are often aroused, and an effort may be
made to choke the voices that thunder against
wrong. We think, for instance, of Garrison, who
THE TRAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE 65
never breathed a thought of violence in his life,
yet was mobbed by the *' gentlemen " of Boston;
we think of Lincoln stricken down hy an assassin ;
we think of that earlier son of Illinois, Lovejoy,
who gave his breast to the bullets of a mob for the
rights of free speech and opinion; we think of
those who bore obloquy because they were for
peace when others were clamoring for war in
1917. All such examples stir our o^\^l slumbering
heroism — we too, we are sure for the moment,
could be firm and face obloquy and Avrath, not to
say worse things, if an occasion required.
And this leads me on to another point and a
wider view. I have spoken of reacting against
the tragic in life, despite its naturally unnerving
and depressing influence, but I may also say that
the sight or consciousness of the tragic may even
make us the more earnest. The opportunities of
doing and of daring may become the more pre-
cious, because a limit is dra^Mi around them. That
which sickens the weak, may give added deter-
mination to the strong. "We look at the glories of
the sunset, we know they will soon be over, and
this foreboding may sadden you ; but, on the other
hand, it ma}^ make you prize and enjoy that exqui-
site beauty the more. The imminence of change
may make, as a poet has said,
sense more fine,
And light seem holier in its grand decline.^
It is so with life. Life may be the more precious
in our eyes because there is an end to it. Instead
of our days acquiring worth, as is ordinarily
*George Eliot, "The Legend of Jubal."
66 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
argued, because they will go on forever, it may
be just because they are limited that they are so
valuable. The same poet I have just quoted has
pictured the early world of man when the thought
of death first came home to him:
It seemed the light was never loved before,
Xow each man said " 'Twill go and come no
more !"
No budding branch, no pebble from the brook.
No form, no shadow, but new dearness took
From the one thought that life must have an end,
And the last parting now began to send
Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss,
Thrilling them into finer tenderness.
Instead of the fact of death necessarily making
life and its interests and duties less worth while,
I sometimes think that it is partly because we do
not realize the fact of death that we hold life and
the opportunities in life so cheap. We cannot
imagine but that we are going on forever, we
have no keen, piercing sense that our days are
few, and we allow ourselves to do many things
and put off doing many things, to say things and
to leave things unsaid, as we could not if we knew
that our opportunities might at any moment
suddenly be cut off .^ It is often said nowadays, in
antithesis to appeals of older types of religion,
'^ Think on living" — and I have spoken in that
way myself ; but as I go on in life I realize that, if
we are any^vise normal, thinking on death may
make us think on living. I have heard that once
a man had it inscribed on his tombstone *' Think
on Living"; there, I think, it was most effective.
^The earnest solemn mood that the thought of death ma.v
bring is also well pictured in the lines of a distinguished
Englishman recently passed away (Wilfrid S. Blunt) :
THE TRAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE 67
One more point. The characteristic note or
mark of the tragic is, as I have said, the finality
of it — it is an undoing that cannot be made up,
a defeat that is irrevocable. The perfect instance
of it is death — the various tragedies in life, and
that still leave life, are but lesser examples. And
yet I Imow there is something that jars on us in
speaking of human life as involved in absolute
tragedy. Must we admit then that we are to be
defeated, defeated absolutely in the end? Is the
last word to be said of every human life, even
the bravest, death and undoing?
As I analyze the matter a little more carefully,
I see that when we speak of the inevitable tragedy
of death, Ave mean from the standpoint of life
and happiness as objective things continuing in
time. These are undone, undone absolutely; but
how about the will and character, the vital spirit
of a man! Must these be broken, must these dis-
integrate and dissolve away? My question is not
now one of theory (I am not discussing immor-
tality), but of fact, and I hold that the will may
If I could live without the thought of death,
Forf^etful of Time's waste, the soul's decay,
I would not ask for other joy than breath
AVilh light and sound of birds and the sun's ray.
I could sit on untroubled day by day
Watching the grass grow, and the wild flowers range
Fi-om blue to yellow and from red to grey
In natural sequence as the seasons change.
I could afford to wait, but for the hurt
Of this dull tick of time which chides my ear.
But now I dare not sit with loins ungirt
And staff unlifted, for death stands too near.
I must be up and doing, ay, each minute.
The grave gives time for rest when we are in it.
Cf. the Biblical language, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do. do it with thy might — for there is no work or device or
^Aisdom or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest."
68 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
be unbroken to the last, may go do^^^l into the
valley and shadow of death, strong, alive, con-
quering.
Was the spirit of Socrates broken when he met
the death to which he was condemned by his judges ?
Did he weep or sicken or retract or allow his
great strong life purpose to be overcome ? Really,
when we read his *' Apology'^ and the last scenes
of his life, as reported by Plato, the sense of
tragedy almost goes from us. There is of course
his death, and in a sense all death is tragic, but
never is Socrates more Socrates than in face of it.
And our own thought, as we read, is not of trage-
dy at all — we have rather a sense of victory and
of noble life. In an old English play, there is a
scene that gives the same feeling. There is a
Duke of a city who is captured; he will not ask
for his life. His captor is touched with the beauty
of his wife, and seeks to save him. All the same
he will not entreat. The execution of both hus-
band and wife is about to proceed, when the con-
queror addresses his victim: *'Dost know what
it is to die?^^ and receives the answer
Thou dost not, Martins,
And therefore, not what 'tis to Uve.
Thoii thyself must part
At last from all thy garlands, pleasures,
triumphs,
And prove thy fortitude, what then 'twill do.
The calm superiority to fortime which the answer
revealed touches the native nobility of the captor,
and he sets the prisoners free, saying to the exe-
cutioner.
THE TRAGIC AND HEROIC IN LIFE 69
This admirable Duke, Valerius,
With his disdain of fortune and of death,
Captived himself, has captivated me;
And though my arms hath ta'en his body here,
His soul hath subjugated Martins' soul.
No, from the highest point of view, there may
be no tragedy. And let me say this : The deepest
tragedy of all is not the loss of happiness, not
the loss of life, but the defeat of the spirit, the
failing of the purpose, the falling of that inmost
citadel of a man which we call his will. Always
a man may say, I mil try to be a man: if an acci-
dent befalls me, I will try to be a man: if I do
not attain my ambitions in life, I will yet be a
man ; if I am crossed and thwarted and outward-
ly defeated, I will still be a man ; if I am laid on
a bed of sickness, I will not moan nor fret, but
try to show the fortitude of a man; and if I
have to face death, I will try to have the com-
posure that becomes a man. When we are thus
strong, tragedy ceases to be a word that applies
to our life — in a new and deeper sense, death is
swallowed up in victory. A\Tien we know of such,
we do not wail when they pass away, nor simply
fold our hands and submit, but we have a sense
as of wings — we praise, lift up our heads and
rejoice.
Sometimes we console ourselves, or there are
those at least who seek to console us, mth the
thought that even if we are weak and defeated
in this life, in another life all will be different,
that all will go well. No : we must be strong here :
I do not say we must succeed in all that we do,
but we must be strong, strong in will and pur-
pose, keep ourselves well knit together. Strength
70 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
here may lead to greater strength hereafter, but
weakness, cowardice, loss of heart, lead to nothing
either here or hereafter.^
Undonbtedly in one sense, as we move toward
the end, our forces fail — our physical forces :
perhaps in a lesser degree and after a certain
point, our mental forces. But the forces of the
spirit, the strong will and purpose, that in us
which, if it had power as it has will, would still
remake the world — that need never fail. In old
age, the fires of the spirit may still burn. "We
may say with Emerson :
As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.
Or wdth Tennesson's Ulysses:
Though much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
IMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we
are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts.
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tf. IMatthew Arnold's lines,
"Foil'd by onr fellow men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way.
And, Patience : in another life, we say.
The world shall he thrust down, and tee nplornc.
And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn
Tlie world's poor routed leavings? or will they
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day
Support the fervors of the heavenly morn?'
No, no! The energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife.
From strength to strength advancing — only he,
PTis soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."
Distinctive Features of the
Ethical Movement
By ALFRED W. MARTIN".
IxTRODucTio^^ : Tpie Fundamental Religious
Cpiaracter of the Ethical Movement.
IT SURELY will not be inferred from the title
that my aim is anything so puerile and ungra-
cious as the glorification of the Ethical Movement
to the detriment of the historical religions. Let
it be said at once and emphatically that there is
but one motive worthy to warrant discussion of
the subject, viz. the cause of clarification and
.■justification. For, on the one hand, there exists
in many minds considerable vagueness — and not
a little positive error — as to what the Movement
stands for. On the other hand, there are those
who claim to be thoroughly conversant with its
principles and aims, yet regard it as passe, as de-
void of any genuine raison d' etre. Its intense de-
votion to morality, they say, has long since been
reproduced by "liberal'^ churches and '* reform*'
synagogues.
Obviously within the limits prescribed for this
volume, one cannot hope to deal with all the fea-
tures that are distinctive of the Ethical Move-
ment. It must suffice to select some of the more
important and then indicate, by a brief exposition
of each, the grounds on which the existence of the
72 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
Ethical Movement is justified and the consequent
impossibility of forming a merger — as has been
proposed — with '' liberal '^ Christianity or with
** reform'^ Judaism.
At its very inception the Ethical Movement
was a religious movement. The group of men
and women who met on that memorable Sunday
morning. May 15th, 1876, were in search of some-
thing Avherewith to consecrate their lives. They
were of one mind in the belief that the human
spirit is all starved and forlorn save as it comes
into vital contact with an ideal of holiness. They
were further persuaded that this spiritual de-
sideratum could not be derived from any tradi-
tional doctrines which, how^ever true and precious
to others, had ceased to hold any meaning for
them. Thus their prime concern was not with
any such scriptural and theological issues as ab-
sorbed contemporary liberalism ; not with any re-
futation of the dogmas of fundamentalism; not
with any negative, iconoclastic programme;
rather was their souls' cr>^ for something positive
and constructive wherewith to consecrate their
o\vn lives and still more, perhaps, the lives of their
children. Like him whom they called from his
chair in Cornell University, and who forthwith
became the founder of the Movement and Leader
of the first Society for Ethical Culture, they were
conscious of a deeply-felt need for a religion to
replace that which had failed to satisfy. In other
words. Professor Felix Adler and his hearers at
this initial meeting, half a century ago, found
themselves in the selfsame plight as were those
Palestinian Jews of the first century, referred to
in the Book of Acts as '* God-fearers, '^ — men
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 73
with a religious nature, but without a religious
home ; men dissatisfied with the religious institu-
tions and forms of their day and place, yet con-
scious of the need of coming into vital touch
with something transeendently holy. They went
from one organization to another, finding in each
much that appealed to their religious nature, but
more that offended it. From the Synagogue they
turned to the Meeting House of the Mithraists
and thence they moved on to the temple of the
Eoman state religion, but nowhere was what they
sought to be found. Eeligious wanderers they
were, seeking a religious home and finding none.
So was it with the *' God-fearers ' ' of 1876 in
New York. They, too, went forth in search of
a satisfying religious home and found none. For,
both the Jewish synagogues and the Christian
churches of that time were encrusted with dog-
matism, ecclesiasticism, formalism; woefully de-
ficient they were in vital and vitalizing religion.
Over against these institutions stood the ultra-
radicals — confirmed materialists, caring naught
for religion, so that affiliation with them was no
more possible for these seekers of a religious
home than with the dogmatists and formalists.
Thus these earnest dissatisfied people, who did
care for religion and who were eager to come
into vital communion Avith something supremely
holy, had no alternative but to organize a relig-
ious association of their own, one that would give
a conspicuous place to moral and social reform
and at the same time put its members in touch
with something transeendently holy, — an ideal
of ethical perfection with which indeed religion
has to do, — an ideal, which depends for its au-
74 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
thority not on something alien to itself, but on
its own sublime excellence when contemplated and
on the constraining influence it exerts upon the
will.
It should then be clearly understood that the
Ethical Movement originated not in the attempt
to find a substitute for religion in philanthropic
activities and moral reforms. On the contrary it
started with a great hope in the heart of Prof.
Adler and his followers — the hope of finding a
satisfying religion, i.e., one which would put its
people into vital touch with a transcendent good,
of infinite and eternal worth. Not in despair of
religion, not in opposition to religion, but in the
hope of finding a new and satisfying religion did
the Ethical Movement originate. Does any one
challenge the propriety of applying the adjective
''new" to this great religious adventure? It ivas
neiv because it approached religion from an ethi-
cal and practical as against a theological and
speculative standpoint; neiv because it did not
mean the adding of one more to the sects already
in existence, but a new departure in religious fel-
lowship, one which unites men, not on the ex-
plicit or tacit acceptance of a creed or creedlet,
but on the desire to live the moral life, to explore
the field of duty, to clarify their perception of
what is right and then incarnate the vision in
personal life and in social institutions, — regard-
less of theological or philosophical beliefs and
affinities.
Before proceeding, let me pause to put on
record my immeasurable intellectual indebted-
ness to Dr. Adler. Without the quickening in-
fluence of his original ideas neither this nor any
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 75
other paper of mine on an ethical subject could
have been produced. So true is this and so deep
the hold it has taken upon me that it would be
treason to my deep and constant obligation were
this Festschrift to be published without due ack-
nowledgment to him who has been — if I may
speak for my colleagues as well as for myself —
The fouutaiu-ligiit of all our day,
The master-Hght of all our seeing.
What, now, are some of the characteristics of
the Ethical Movement that warrant its existence,
that forbid its being merged either with '' liberal '^
Christianity or with '^ reform" Judaism and that
distinguish it from all other forms of religious
organization!
I. Supremacy of the Ethical End.
Foremost among the distinctive features of
the Ethical Movement is the supremacy it assigns
to the ethical end. It declares that there is a
sovereign end to be acknowledged, one to which
all the superior and inferior aims of men must be
subordinated; and that this supreme end can be
none other than the ethical. To it all other ends,
scientific, aesthetic, economic, social, must be made
tributary'. And by the ethical end is meant the
formation of right relations between personali-
ties. It is supreme because nothing under heaven
counts for so much as human personality with
its latent potentialities and the existence of right
relations among beings so endowed. He is most
entitled to be called ethically-minded who believes,
and acts on the belief, that nothing exceeds in im-
portance the establishment of right personal rela-
tions, as between husband and wife, parents and
i
76 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
children, the social classes, nation and nation.
Nor is this highest place assigned to the ethical
end because of the happiness that right relations,
when established, may bring in their train, for
that would be to make the ethical end a means to
something beyond itself. No, the creating of right
relations is valued above all else because such
spiritual activity is the very highest kind in which
a human being can engage. The supreme good of
life is to be found in the act of creating harmoni-
ous relations. And for the dissemination of this
view-point touching ethical-mindedness — i.e.,
recognition of the supremacy of the ethical end,
the formation of right relations between person-
alities— for this an Ethical Movement is indis-
pensable. T\Tiyl Because the opposite viewpoint so
widely obtains. Outside the Ethical Movement
morality is looked upon as a means to the secur-
ing of some non-ethical objective as the real end.
There are those who put scientific pursuits above
all else as being most worthy of human endeavor,
but in the estimation of the Ethical Movement
science is only a superior, not a supreme end. It
owes its worthwhileness chiefly to the fact that it
can increase the fund of knowledge wherewith
right personal relations may be established
Similarly, the creation of beautiful art-works is
only a superior, not the supreme human pursuit;
for art derives its highest value from the power
of the created harmonies to put the mind into at-
one-ment with the most entrancing harmony of
all, — the right interrelationship of personalities.*
Once more, there are persons for whom the real
*See Professor Adler's pamphlet "The Aim of the Ethical
Movement."
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 77
ultimate end is prosperity or social position, and
morality is made a means to the securing of these
non-ethical ends. But here again, the most that
can be claimed for them is that they are superior
ends, not the supreme end. The daily press has
just apprized us of a startling instance of defal-
cation on the part of a prominent member of a
Christian church. Evidently it is possible for a
man to be a Presbyterian and a defaulter, but it
is not possible for a man to be an ethical person
and a defaulter, because the two are mutually con-
tradictory. x\nd if the elders of the church reply
'*it is not possible for a man to be a good Pres-
byterian and a defaulter,'' they introduce an
ethical criterion and so admit the primacy of
ethics. AVe speak of some persons as being scienti-
fically-minded, of others as artistically-minded.
What we impl)^ by the designation is that for
these persons something other than the moral
end is esteemed of highest worth. They are not
ethically-minded in the strict usage of the term,
for to be ethically-minded means to believe and
to act on the belief that right personal relations
are the most important thing in the world, that
*'the distress caused by wrong, twisted relations
to other persons is more intolerable than any
other, far more poignant in the anguish it gives
rise to than want, or sickness, or any other kind
of suffering.''
A\Tien we consult the great historic religions
with reference to this first distinctive feature of
the Ethical Movement we find they all alike sub-
ordinate morality to one or another ulterior end.
In the Greek religion, for example, morality is
made subservient to an aesthetic end. The ideal
78 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
of personal life to Avliich the ancient Greeks
aspired was simply the harmonious development
of the pltysical and the intellectual self. The sum-
mum honum was the acquisition of mens sana in
cor pore sano, a sound mind in a sound body; the
end for which they strove above all else was an
aesthetic end; and all their architecture, sculp-
ture, painting, poetry, music, bear witness to the
fact. Even sin and virtue were interpreted by
Plato in terms of an aesthetic end. Sin, he said,
was to be avoided because it is ugly, because it
does violence to our aesthetic sensibilities ; virtue
is to be practiced because it insures the harmoni-
ous balanced order of those sensibilities. *'The
good is the beautiful." Again, in the Confucian
religion we see the ethical end subordinated to
order, itself one of the products of order. To
reproduce in human life the calm, unbroken order
of Nature — that, according to Confucius, is the
desideratum to be sought after more than aught
else. In the Christianity of the New Testament
the ethical end is clearly made subordinate to
*^faith," — the mystical *' putting on of the Lord
Jesus Christ," as expounded by the Apostle
Paul in his letters to the Romans and to the
Galatians. Even in Judaism, the most markedly
ethical of all the historical religions, morality is
not supreme; for everywhere in the Old Testa-
ment, we find morality subordinated to the will
of Yahweh, He being conceived as the determiner
of ethical standards and relations. But, so far
as morality is concerned, Infinite Will cannot
change one jot or tittle of the eternal Right. It
is prior to all else. God himself cannot be more
ultimate than the uncreated eternal Right. He
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 79
can be but its faultless mirror. To it both finite
and infinite will alike must bow. Thus in this
sense, also, morality is the supreme end, and it
is, therefore, no mark of irreverence to respond
to the mandate : ' ' Do this because I, Yahweh,
say so," with the words, ''No, not even though
thou be G od who speakest. ' ' But to the command,
"Do this because it is right," we give our whole-
hearted assent though it be uttered by the feeblest
child that ever lisped.
II. Deed and Creed.
In its reversal of the relation of creed to deed
as it has stood throughout the Christian centuries,
a second distinctive feature of the Ethical Move-
ment is revealed. The part played by belief in
the Christianity of Paul, — who created the new
religion as his substitute for Judaism — is famil-
iar to all readers of his Epistles, and will be
readily contrasted with the part played by char-
acter in the teaching of Jesus. The Ethical
Movement, sympathizing with the latter and en-
larging upon its content, holds that the value of
any creed consists above all in the relation it
bears to the moral life. Do you, for example,
believe in the doctrine of the Atonement because
it is ''in the Bible," or because it helps you to
make progress in the upper zones of your being?
Do you accept the doctrine of the Incarnation be-
cause you regard it as "a divinely revealed
truth" and therefore to be accepted, or because
through it you are helped to worthier manhood
or womanhood? In other words, the final test
of a doctrine's worth is not the Bible, but life;
not revelation, but moral growth. Prof. Adler
80 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
lias compared the moral life to a mansion of many
locked chambers and the creeds to a set of keys.
The Christian, the Mohammedan, the Hindu, the
Parsee, — each comes with his creed-key, claim-
ing that it and it only can open the doors. The
Ethical Movement allows the dispute over the keys
to go on, because it cares for the opening of the
doors. And this marks a far-reaching contrast
between the Ethical Movement and the historical
religions. For, while the latter have been con-
cerned about the hey, describing it, setting up
claims for it, securing converts to belief in its
fitness for the locks, the prime concern of the
Ethical Movement has been entrance to the cham-
bers. It has no dogmas to defend, no creed to
mend or amend ; it has the problem of the closed
doors and a spiritual passion for getting into the
unentered rooms of the moral life. The best creed
a man can have is that which character shapes
and which enlarges and deepens with his own
moral gro\\i;h. For the creed that issues from
deed, from moral experience, for that creed the
Ethical Movement cares most of all. And when
the three great missionary religions, with their
respective reachings out to Buddhist unity, Mo-
hammedan unity, Christian unity, shall have
learned to reverse the rank they all alike have
assigned to creed and deed, their dreams of
brotherhood will be realized. For the religious
rivalry and jealousy that obtain in each of the
sects of each of these great religions are funda-
mentally due to the precedence given to creed
over deed. Touch the sectarian sores and in-
stantly the sectarian nerves respond. When, for
example, we hear it claimed that Christianity is
FEATURES OP THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 81
'Hhe only true religion"; Protestantism, *Hhe
only true Christianity"; Episcopalianism (or any
other sect) *Hhe only true Protestantism"; the
"High" Church, "the only true. Episcopal,
Protestant, Christian religion," — we see sec-
tarianism doing its deadly work, we see creed
superseding deed and paralyzing all earnest effort
to make human brotherhood a reality in the
world. Hence the practical importance of a
movement which refuses to fall in line with the
traditional ranking of creed and deed, which re-
verses it and estimates the essential value of the
former solely in terms of the latter. In other
words, a man's moral worth does not depend upon
his theological beliefs, but the value of those be-
liefs depends on the degree to which they develop
moral worth in him.
III. Independence of Morality.
Without attempting to assign to the distinctive
features of the Ethical Movement an order of
relative importance, let the third feature for con-
sideration be the independence of morality as to
origin, sanction and binding force. We start with
the fact that man has moral experience, and that
the most awe-inspiring and commanding of all
his moral experiences is the authority with which
the moral law speaks, an authority inherent in
the moral law itself. The one most certain item
of our moral experience is this pressure of the
"ought" impelling us to acknowledge the higher
of two rival claims upon the will. Just as the
authority of reason is both real and binding in
relation to alternatives of truth and error, so the
authority of conscience is real and binding in re-
82 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
lation to alternatives of right and wrong. And
precisely as the law of reason forbids our ''think-
ing as we like," so the law of conscience prohibits
onr acting as we like. In other words, the in-
herent constitution of our personality as rational
and as moral beings constrains us to acknowledge
the law and make our choice. Morality is thus
independent of any external pressure upon us;
it has its basis in the very law of our nature as
moral beings, and needs no power beyond itself
to authenticate its claim upon us. It was this
very thesis that the Fundamentalists of the last
quarter of the nineteenth century so vehemently
attacked, forcing the leaders of the Movement
into protracted controversy on the possibility of
living the moral life without first accepting re-
ligious dogmas. Little did those Fundamentalists
realize the danger besetting their doctrine that
acceptance of religious dogmas concerning God,
the Bible, and retribution is an indispensable pre-
requisite for leading a moral life. For, if moral-
ity has no independent standing of its own, if
without fundamentalist theology morality is im-
possible, if moral truths have no vitality in them-
selves but depend for their validity and effective-
ness on theological beliefs such as Divine fiat, the
hope of heaven, the fear of hell — what must
happen when these beliefs become discredited,
when their foundation-stones begin to crumble, as
they already have to an alarming degree? No-
thing other than the very spectacle of moral de-
terioration in all walks of life that we are witness-
ing today. For the present moral debacle is ex-
plained in large measure by the fatal denial of the
FEATURES OP THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 83
fundamentalists that the moral law is aboriginal,
sovereign and inherently obligatory.
So far as the origin of morality is concerned,
it is clearly proved to have been independent of
theology. To the student of primitive culture
nothing is plainer than the separateness of origin
for theology and for morality. It is not true that
'*man first knew God and then from that knowl-
edge derived his sense of justice and of love.'^
No, man first knew, through experience, justice,
mercy, love, and then, out of that experience, he
fashioned the picture of a perfect embodiment of
these qualities and called it '*God," investing
it with ever finer attributes in proportion to his
ovm. moral growth. Man first knew an earthly
father's love and thereupon conceived of a
heavenly Father's love. In support of this point
we have the testimony of such authorities as
Tylor, Lubbock and Spencer. Even to-day there
exist tribes that illustrate the original separate-
ness of morality and theology, — witness the
Arafucas, inhabitants of islands in the southern
seas, who practice the brotherhood of man with-
out ever having heard of the fatherhood of God.
In the *'Eamayana," — that noble epic which
forms part of the Hindu sacred scriptures,
— we read : ^'Virtue is what a man owes to him-
self, and though there were no God to punish and
no Heaven to reward, virtue would nonetheless
be the binding law of life." So, too, thought
those Russian revolutionists of the nineties who
sacrificed rank, luxury and even life itself, in
their allegiance to the sovereignty of the moral
ideal as the ultimate spiritual reality. In the
fourth chapter of the first epistle of John we
84 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
read: **He that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath
not seen?*' Could one ask for a more explicit
acknowledgment of morality as independent of
theology?
Confucianism and Buddhism are rooted in the
same conviction. Both arose as moral reform
movements, and both left theological problems
severely alone. Not only were the founders of
both systems agnostic on all theological beliefs,
but they never even raised the question of the in-
dependence of morality. It would seem to have
been taken for granted. The Ethical ^Movement,
however, forced into controversy on the issue, took
a position quickly recognized as distinctive, hold-
ing to the complete independence of morality and
ascribing to it a threefold connotation. In the first
place, by the independence of morality is meant
that so far as Ethical Societies are concerned, the
question of the basis of ethics — scientific, phil-
osophic or whatever else, — is entirely an aside,
i.e., a matter upon which members are wholly free
to think as they choose, and when speaking on
the issue, bound to speak only for themselves,
never for the Society. Leaders, too, are free to
discuss the basis of ethics from the Sunday plat-
form, but hound to do so with scrupulous regard
for others' freedom as well as their own, avoid-
ing even the semblance of an attempt to commit
the Society to the Leader 's point of view. Truly
does the genius of the Ethical Movement and its
sole safety as a vital and progressive institution,
depend upon its refusing, and with adamantine
inflexibility, to stand committed to any one of
the rival bases of ethics put forth in the fields
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 85
of science, philosophy and theology. A second
signification attaching to the independence of
morality is that in itself morality has binding
force, be its alleged philosophical or theological
implications what they may. In other words, the
validity of the moral law is not, as was just now
intimated, contingent npon any theological sanc-
tion; because moral obligation belongs to **the
nature of things,'' by which we mean that totality
of necessary and universal relations without
which nothing could exist. Deeper than this no
plummet can sink. The moral obligation to be
just does not depend upon any decrees, divine or
human, but carries within itself its constraining in-
fluence. Precisely as there is an absolute con-
dition without conformity to which a square can-
not be drawn, so there is an absolute condition
without conformity to which no moral being can
exist in social relation. As the formation of the
square depends upon its diagonal dividing it into
two equal triangles, so the coming of two moral
beings into social relationship depends upon mu-
tual moral obligation. The two moral beings
might never have existed, in which case moral
obligation would have had only potential exist-
ence, as the predetermined law of social relation
for moral beings; but the moment that relation
became objective, the necessity of moral obliga-
tion was made manifest as part of *'the nature
of things." No alleged celestial origin ascribed
to a command can make it right, nor can ** Infinite
WilP' change, to even the slightest degree, the
eternal relation of right and wrong. If a divine
command be cruel or vindictive, as we find it in
some of the older books of the Bible, that com-
86 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
mand cannot be deemed right just because it is
''tlie word of God." In other words, there is an
ethical standard by which we have to judge even
the recorded *'word of God."
Thus in this second sense in which we speak
of the independence of morality there are im-
plied the mighty convictions (a) that man has,
as his most priceless possession, both that which
calls to duty and that which answers the call; (b)
that he is never permitted to go unpunished if he
disobey; (c) that the obligation to strive for the
good life is inherent in man as part of his nature
as a human being; (d) that the moral sense is an
organic part of his nature, a fundamental reality
in him, like the sense of sight or the gift of rea-
son; (e) that in proportion as one lives the moral
life deeply and intensely one gains spiritual in-
sight. Instead of viewing morality as deriva-
tive from theism, after the manner of the syna-
gogues and churches, the Ethical Movement re-
verses the point of view, holding that the highest
spiritual beliefs result from living the moral life.
"Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, *'for
they shall see God." First purity of heart and
then the beatific vision. Let it be clearly under-
stood that toward any and all philosophical and
theological bases for morality the Ethical Move-
ment takes a position of strict neutrality. But it
would be a sorry mistake to construe either its
specialization in morality apart from theolog^^ or
its refusal to stand committed to a theistic basis
for ethics, as tantamount to a confession of
atheism. So prevalent is the false notion that
Ethical Societies are atheistic, that one is war-
ranted in putting the reader on his guard against
FEATURES OP THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 87
it. Because these Societies do not require of
members belief in God as a condition of fellow-
ship, either explicitly, in a creed, or implicitly,
through participation in prayers and hymns that
are essentially theistic ; because Ethical Societies
are differentiated from "Free" synagogues that
retain a minimum of Hebrew ritual, and from
"Community" churches in which "central to all
activities is the Sunday morning service of wor-
ship," it does not follow that they are atheistic.
The truth is that Ethical Societies are neither
atheistic nor theistic, but of necessity neutral,
because the freedom of Ethical fellowship re-
quires it. "Were these Societies to commit them-
selves either to theism or to atheism, they would
automatically exclude from fellowship all those
persons who could not accept one position or the
other. It is just because of its strict neutrality
or non-committedness that it is possible for both
atheists and theists to be included in the fellowship
of the Movement. Among the members the great-
est diversity of belief exists and is encouraged.
"As individuals we have all sorts of creeds; as a
Society we have none." So spoke Dr. Adler in
response to an inquirer on the subject, succinctly
stating one of the cardinal and distinctive fea-
tures of the Ethical Movement, clearly differen-
tiating it from all kinds of existing synagogues
and churches which implicitly, if not explicitly,
commit their members to theism.
There remains a third meaning attaching to the
independence of morality that must be elucidated.
It will be understood best when seen in relation,
to the Pauline doctrine that supernatural grace
is an indispensable aid to fulfilment of the law of
88 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
righteousness. In that most remarkable of all
self -revelations in sacred literature — the seventh
chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans, he con-
fesses his utter inability to live the moral life by
his own unaided effort. He must fall back for
help upon Jesus Christ. Let me borrow, thought
Paul, of the superabundant righteousness that is
in Jesus the Christ, and I will then be enabled to
"do the good that I would." He believed him-
self morally impotent to rise from his dead self to
higher things; someone must lift him, someone
who has succeeded in fulfilling the **law of right-
eousness." In contradistinction to this Pauline
doctrine, the Ethical Movement holds, with Jesus,
that there are latent potentialities in every human
being, that there resides in even the lowest of our
kind a constant residuum of capacity for improve-
ment, no matter how many times they fail. How
else could Jesus have enjoined ^* Repent," **Be ye
perfect," '* Strive to enter in"? How meaning-
less these appeals apart from faith in man's
power to improve, apart from the conviction that
the morality in man is sufficient to make him in-
dependent of reliance on such help as was for
the Apostle an indispensable prerequisite for liv-
ing the moral life!
IV. Freedom of Fellowship.
Since morality is independent of theology and
since there is no theology on which all good men
agree, but only a morality upon which all are
agreed,^ it follows that it is possible to organize
a fellowship on the basis of that morality, leaving
men and women free to entertain any theology
iSee p. 107.
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 89
they choose, or none if they so prefer. And it is
here that we touch a foiirth distinctive feature
of the Ethical Movement — the freedom of its
fellowship. An illustration or two will make clear
the real distinctiveness of this feature. All the
way from the most orthodox of the Christian
Churches and Synagogues to the most liberal, we
find that there is required of anyone who would
identify himself therewith, assent either to a
creed, or to a creedlet ; a tacit, if not explicit, con-
fession of faith or form of worship. Even the
great religions themselves, — from which the
sects derive, — condition fellowship on accept-
ance of their respective Founders. Islam presents
its infallible Mohammed; Buddhism, its deified
Gotama ; Parsism, its inspired Zoroaster ; Christ-
ianity, its supernatural Jesus. The fellowship of
none is cosmopolitan and free. Mohammedan-
ism, for instance, seeks to unite all men in the
bonds of Mohammedan love; it does not aim to
unite Mohammedans, Jews, Christians, and the
rest in the bonds of human love. Christianity
admits to its fellowship all Christians on equal
terms, but all non-Christians on no terms. Not
one of the various Christian denominations ever
voted, as a body, to stand for a strictly free fel-
lowship with no theological terms whatever in its
constitution. But the Ethical Movement abso-
lutely refuses to break the bond of brotherhood
by imposing on applicants for membership any
such requirements. It leaves its individual mem-
bers entirely free to hold whatever religious be-
liefs they choose and to worship or not as they
choose, binding them only to that morality which
all men accept. And if brotherhood is ever to be
90 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
anything other than the grim caricature we see
in the rival sects Avith their conflicting creeds and
claims, then it is of the utmost importance that
there should exist at least one Movement which
exemplifies union on the only basis practicable
and universal, viz., devotion to **the ever-increas-
ing knowledge, love and practice of the right. '^
Nor should it be at all surprising that while we
of the Ethical Movement are not accepted as
brothers by any of the sects, Jewish or Christian,
we accept them as brothers, because we are not
a sect, but a fellowship. As its derivation (from
the Latin sectum) implies, a sect is a part of
humanity that has cut itself off from all the rest
in order to live for itself and to convert all the
rest into material for its own growth. But a
part of humanity that lives both for itself and for
the ivliole in one universal aim is not a sect at all,
hut a fellowship. Whether few or many, the part
is nonsectarian and universal if the end it lives
for be such. And so, while the vast Christian
Church is but a sect, the Ethical Movement is not
a sect at all, because it exists for no sectarian end
but rather to help the world to grow for itself
into its own ideal form, without presuming to dic-
tate what that form shall be. What a gratuitous
insult it would be to ask representatives of the
non-Christian religions, for example, Prince
Chung, the Confucian ; or Dharmapala, the Budd-
hist; or Swami Abhedananda, the Hindu; or
Eabbi de Sola, the orthodox Jew (all of whom
have been in this country), to accept the *' Apos-
tles' Creed" or the "Bible" or the ''Westminster
Confession" or "the religion of Jesus." Sure-
ly the only religion we can rightly ask them
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 91
to accept is the religion of universal Man,
the religion that pays due homage to Moses, to
Jesus, to the Buddha, to Confucius, according to
the amount of truth each has to teach and the in-
spiration we can derive from the record of his
life. Hence, every Ethical Society opens its doors
and says, in the language of the New Testament
Apocalypse: "Whosoever will, let him come'^;
whereas the Episcopalians say: "Whosoever
will accept the 'Apostles' Creed,' let him come";
the Unitarians say: "Whosoever will accept
Hhe religion of Jesus,' let him come"; the Con-
gregationalists say: "Whosoever will accept
'the Bible,' let him come"; the Free Synagogue
says: "AVhosoever will accept a minimum of He-
brew ritual and agree to worship on Sundays, let
him come"; the New York Community Church
says, "Whosoever will join in 'the Sunday wor-
ship central to all the activities' of the Church,
let him come." But the Ethical Movement, re-
jecting all these fellowship-restrictions and taking
its stand on the morality which al] good men ac-
cept, simply says: "Whosoever will, let him
come. ' '
Doubtless individual representatives of each of
these sects will repudiate the claim that the Ethi-
cal Movement is distinguished by this freedom of
its fellowship; but the fact remains that not one
of these sects, as a body, ever voted to adopt a
strict^ free basis of fellowship. A distinguished
Unitarian recently pointed with pride to the per-
sonnel of his church, including in its fellowship
Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists! "What
could be more free than such a fellowship ? " To
which we make answer that Unitarianism in
92 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
1894 took a definite position as a Protestant sect,
in terms so precise that any member who objects
to it for himself has no alternative but withdraw-
al. Many who are Unitarians in private belief are
admitted members of Episcopalian churches.
Does that make those churches any less Episco-
palian! So the admission of Jews, agnostics, etc.,
to Unitarian Societies does not make the latter
any less Unitarian, any less Protestant, any less
Christian. Such confusion is patent to every
thoughtful observer. The masquerading of Uni-
tarians as Episcopalians is not admirable, and
Unitarian preachers there are who have hotly de-
nounced it. But we have yet to hear them de-
nounce Jews, agnostics, etc., when they masquer-
ade as Unitarians. Is it not high time to have
manliness in religion and only one rule of honor
and sincerity for all men alike?
Toward worship, theism, prayer, Ethical Socie-
ties take an attitude of strict neutrality, in order
that the freedom of ethical fellowship may be
kept absolutely inviolate. Some of us are theists,
but none of us could ever be induced to join or to
lead a Society that made belief in God a condition
of membership. Freedom of thought has led some
thinkers in every community into theism, others
into agnosticism, and still others (fewer in num-
ber) into atheism. Yet all three classes of
thinkers may find themselves consistently at home
in the Ethical Fellowship, because in its bond of
union, or statement of purpose, there appears
nothing that commits its members to worship, or
to religion as a confession of faith in things super-
human. In the **bond of union'' of every Ethical
Society stands the statement that neither accept-
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 93
ance nor denial of any theological or philosophical
opinion precludes one from membership. There-
fore at the Sunday morning meetings of Ethical
Societies only that '* minimum of public observ-
ance" is adopted in which all the members, with
their divergent theological and philosophical
views, can consistently participate. And if it be
said of these Sunday *' services" that they are
' ' cold and barren, ' ' it must be conceded that they
have at least the grace of consistency, doing no
violence to the reason or conscience of members
by the intrusion of elements that nullify the pro-
fessed freedom of fellowship. Incidentally it may
be well to recall the fact that it took three hun-
dred years of Christianity for the beautiful pray-
ers of Chrysostom to crystallize. It ought not,
then, to surprise us that adequate substitutes for
such Christian sources of inspiration have not as
yet been created by Ethical Societies. Fifty years
ago the founder of the Ethical Movement foresaw
that its distinctive character would disappear
were its members committed to ''worship," or to
acceptance of theism and prayer. Therefore, to
insure the perfect freedom of the Movement, he
kept his ''statement of purpose" absolutely de-
void of these elements. Let theistic members, if
they will, organize within the Society a group for
the holding of theistic services, even as Socialistic,
Individualistic, Kantian, Hegelian and other
groups might be formed ; but never let the Move-
ment as a whole be committed to the position of
any group. In such wise did he safeguard th^
freedom of fellowship. He compared the Move-
ment and its groups to a cathedral with its chap-
els, the integrity of the Movement depending in-
94 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
exorably upon the persistent refusal to permit
the particular cult of any of the chapels to repre-
sent the cathedral.
Let It not be supposed that the Ethical Move-
ment aims to unite all men in its fellowship.
Eather does it seek to draw into fellowship all
those who would enjoy spiritual freedom and yet
feel themselves bound to the claims which the
moral ideal makes upon them. It aims to unite
all those who would live upward toward the su-
preme realities of life — truth, love, duty. Those
who deliberately prefer to live the downward life
of irreligion, it cannot gather into felloAvship
ivliile that choice persists, because morality ex-
cludes immorality by an irreconcilable antagon-
ism. Only weak and confused minds will flinch
from admitting this fact. We are bound to dis-
tingniish things that differ and not swamp all
sense and sanity by a refusal to recognize essen-
tial differences. But, let it be borne in mind,
and very clearly, that while we cannot hope to
unite all men in one fellowship, we can hope, and
ever more must hope, to rouse indifferentists to
warm interest in the ideal life, to redeem the de-
liberately immoral and win them over to morality ;
to rescue those who have chosen to live down-
ward, and so include them, at last, in the religious
fellowship. Remembering that in the best of
us is something bad and in the worst of us some-
thing good; remembering that the most immoral
man is not always immoral, but has his better
moments in which he looks down with shame and
horror on his life, we are bound to maintain
hope and to strive to help him rise and fit him to
FEATURES OP THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT U5
enter the fellowship of imperfect people whose
pole-star is the perfect.
V. Ethical Progress.
When the Ethical Movement was born it was
intended to be, and it still is, above all else a
forward-looking movement morally. And this
fact brings us to a fifth of its distinctive features,
its belief in the possibility and the imperative
need of ethical progress. But by this is not to be
understood the popular notion of more adequate
and more widespread practice of the moral pre-
cepts preserved in the Scriptures of the Jewish
and Christian faith. To insist on this desidera-
tum would not be distinctive of the Ethical Move-
ment. All synagogues and churches are agreed
on the necessity of moral progress in this sense.
What the Ethical Movement contemplates, and
what it means by its belief in moral progress, is
the acquisition of new ethical conceptions, in-
sights, new moral formulas, to supplement those
which have been found inadequate for many a
modern moral need ; the attainment of new ideals
of righteousness beyond those revealed by the
great moral teachers of the past, ideals, — mental
pictures of what it is supremely desirable to have
in the relations that subsist between personali-
ties. The distinctive feature of the Ethical Move-
ment is the conviction that the moral standards
set up by the illuminated seers of the past are not
sufficiently comprehensive to cover the new moral
situations that have been created by economic,
social and other conditions, unknown to the Great
Masters of antiquity. Over against this convic-
tion that we need more light on the moral life
96 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
than has been furnished by any of the historic
Guides, stands the conviction characteristic of
Jewish and Christian bodies alike, that within the
pages of their respective sacred scriptures all the
moral guidance man needs is to be found ; that in
the teaching transmitted by the prophets of their
respective faiths all necessary moral truth is en-
compassed, making superfluous anything beyond
the all-sufficing moral ''revelation" of their re-
ligion. It is precisely at this point that the dis-
tinctiveness of the Ethical Movement appears.
For, the very ''revelation" which to the devotees
of these faiths is a terminus ad quern, — a final
and complete statement of ethical truth, — is to
those of the Ethical Movement a terminus a quo,
a station from which new journeyings into the
realm of ethical insight are to be undertaken. By
the followers of the Old Masters in ethics their
message is deemed the last word that can be said
on the moral life, so that development is possible
only within the limits of the prophetic vision.
Thus, for example, the Christian, believing that
all the moral help man needs has been supplied
by the New Testament revelation, conceives of
development as confined within the circle of scrip-
tural teaching, whereas the Ethical Culturist,
holding that none of the ancient revelations shed
the needed light on peculiarly modern moral prob-
lems, construes development as reaching out for
new ethical conceptions and formulas, beyond the
general maxims and precepts of the great Bibles,
to new statements that will cover the moral re-
quirements of the new day. In short, the Ethical
Movement actively conceives of progress in the
ideals of righteousness beyond the highest hither-
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 9 7
to put forth. Does any one question its distinc-
tiveness in this respect?
In what synagogue is it unequivocally declared
that the limits of Old Testament ethics must be
transcended if we are to meet the moral needs of
the modern world in marriage, in business, in
politics, in international relations — to cite only
the more conspicuous fields in which existing con-
ditions betray the insufficiency of the ancient
codes? In none. What we hear instead is the
unqualified claim that the Hebrew prophets and
poets have given us all the moral guidance we
need, and for all time. And what we see is the
pathetic and painful spectacle of learned rabbis
straining the meaning of Old Testament texts to
make them teach something other than their
authors, plainly intended. Similarly, we ask, in
what Christian church is the contention clearly
and unf eignedly put forth that the ethics of Jesus,
notwithstanding all its undisputed and eternally
valid excellences, yet needs to be supplemented if
the moral problems confronting * ' a world morally
out of joint" are to be adequately solved? Again
the answer must be, in none. Any liberal Christ-
ian preacher who would dare to show forth the
insufficiency of the ethics of Jesus and illustrate
it by examples from the gospel record would be
in serious danger of losing his pulpit. Indeed two
such enforced resignations within the Unitarian
fellowship have been brought to notice within
recent years. I know no Christian who hesitates
to confess that Jesus is the complete, perfect, all-
sufficing Way, Truth, Life; that Christianity in-
cludes the whole of religion, needing nothing out-
side itself to make it any truer, higher, better.
yS ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
But whosoever attains a glimpse of Religion as
truer and holier than Christianity and dares to
give utterance to that insight and to confess his
allegiance to that higher faith, would, to say the
least, jeopardize his standing in any church, for
there would be those among the members who
recognize the solemn command laid upon him who
took the view of Religion as holier than Christian-
ity and yet sought to wear the Christian name and
hold a Christian pulpit. In our war with Ger-
man}^ a man might have worn the German uni-
form in Germany yet have remained at heart a
loyal American, yet it is difficult to see how any
man of conscience would ever consent to put in-
side and outside so at variance.
To synagogue and church alike is the idea in-
tolerable that their Bible does not contain all the
moral teaching the world needs or ever will need ;
and, as a consequence, the unethical practice pre-
vails of putting constructions upon texts which
were clearly not in the minds of their authors.
As among the rabbis so among the Christian
clergy we see the most astounding liberties taken
with scriptural words, phrases, sentences, in order
to make them vehicles of the best ethical thought
on moral problems for the solution of which the
record, fairly and unbiasedly interpreted, offers
no help. And the inevitable result of this pernici-
ous practice of crow^ding new meanings into an-
cient statements is a confusion of ideas and the
defeat of all efforts at clarification in ethical
thinking. Orthodox Christians argue that the
teaching of Jesus is complete and final because
he was God, and hence what he taught must be
sufficient for all time. And though Unitarians
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 99
and other liberal Christians disown this doctrine
of the deity of Jesus they nevertheless hold to
the inference which their orthodox brethren have
drawTi from it. Both the liberal synagogues and
the liberal churches have abandoned the theo-
logical element of the orthodox creeds because
it has been utterly discredited by modern research,
but neither sjTiagogue nor church has abandoned
the idea that the ethical element of the creeds is
fixed, complete and final. On the contrary, each
group sees in the ethical teaching of its scriptures,
the ultimate pronouncements of moral truth, valid
for all people and all time, progress being con-
fined to fresh application of the precepts enun-
ciated. Contrast with all this the position of the
Ethical Movement. It starts where the Jewish
and Christian communions stop, seeing in the
ethical precepts of the Old Testament and in those
of the New, stages in the evolution of moral stand-
ards beyond which we are now to advance. It
takes the ground that moral truth, like scientific
truth, is progressive, that in the development of
civilization new conditions have appeared, giving
rise to new and vexing problems for the solution
of which more help is needed than either the Old
or the New Testament has supplied, thus making
it imperative that the ethical element in the
Hebrew and in the Christian tradition, no less
than the theological, be advanced upon. Our
civilization is not that of ancient shepherds, liv-
ing a nomadic life in the wilderness; nor is it
that of settled farmers living in Judea two thou-
sand years ago. Ours is an industrial age, a
scientific, a democratic age ; an age of machinery
and factories and popular government. As a con-
100 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
sequence new problems have arisen of which
neither Moses nor Jesus ever dreamed, and for the
sohition of these new ethical concepts and formulas
must be furnished/ As against the position taken
by the sjoiagogues and the churches, the Ethical
Movement insists (and herein its distinctiveness
lies) that the same impulse which animated Jesus
to advance on the ethics of Moses must animate
us, to supplement the ethics of Jesus with new
light for guidance on the unsolved problems of the
modern world. Loyalty to the acknowledged pro-
gressiveness of moral truth requires us, even as
it required him, humbly to press on to new moral
concepts, while reverencing every great teacher
of the past for his contribution to the stock of
moral knowledge. Thus the Ethical Movement
is marked by its conviction that excellent and of
immortal worth as are the general maxims **love
one another," '* return good for evil," ** judge
not," etc., they are too general to serve our
modern need; that new ideals of righteousness
beyond those already revealed must be set up;
that never yet has the moral code been completel^^
revealed; that no one of the world's Bibles with
all its imperishable excellences is comprehensive
enough to embrace the total of moral require-
ments in modern society; that not merely better
moral behavior on the basis of what ethical teach-
ing we have is needed, but also new moral knowl-
edge to meet situations for which the historic
codes do not provide. When Matthew Arnold
'And I sometimes think that were Jesus to return to earth
and find himself amid an order of society so radically different
from that in which he taught, he would feel constrained to
modify much of his recorded teaching and supply Its inevitable
lacks.
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 101
declared '*we have all the moral knowledge we
need, our only difficulty is in applying what we
already possess," he uttered one of those com-
monplaces of modern thought against which we
need to he constantly on our guard. For, not only
is his statement incorrect but the exact opposite
is the grim truth that so often confronts us.
Everyone who has grappled with the pressing
problems characteristic of our time knows that
one reason why they are still with us is that we
are still without the needed moral light to shed
upon them. The world has not advanced beyond
the stage of elementary moral practice because
the teaching offered has not reached beyond ele-
mentary moral ideas. And both free synagogues
and free churches are vainly struggling to make
these do the work for which they are not fitted.
Both institutions remind us of the distinguished
Viceroy of China who in 1909 had become
thoroughly enamored of Western ways of thought
and life, yet sought to satisfy Oriental needs by
formulas taken from Confucian books written
twenty-four centuries ago ! So the liberal Christ-
ian churches, while increasingly alive to the neces-
sity of facing the social problems of our century,
yet rely exclusively on moral formularies drawn
from the New Testament. How often have we
heard Unitarian clergj^men urging the claim that
the *^ Golden Rule gives us all the help we need
if only we would apply it faithfully." But the
truth is that the Golden Rule permits of only
limited personal application. Situations there
are, in the industrial world for example, where
this **rule" cannot be effectively applied, as ex-
102 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
perience proves/ Most unfortunate it is that the
familiar maxim, ''Do unto others as you would
that they should do unto you,'' was ever called
the Golden Rule. For, strictly speaking, it is not
a rule at all. It does not tell us precisely what
to do in any given situation. It simply indicates
the spirit that should control and animate our
action, leaving it to us to find the appropriate
deed. Beware of the shallow notion that any re-
flection is cast upon the Bible or upon Moses,
Isaiah and Jesus because what they have be-
queathed to mankind of moral precept proves in-
sufficient for our time. They regarded it as no
part of their mission to legislate or prescribe for
the moral needs of centuries beyond their own
era ; nay more, they owed their success as teachers
of ethics to the very limitations they put upon
their work. Surely, then, it ought not to surprise
us if, in relation to those issues upon which just
now we are sorely in need of guidance, the ancient
codes fail us. To illustrate this fact, to make still
clearer the truth that more moral light is re-
quired than the historic guides supply, let us call
to mind some of the paramount moral needs of
our time, touching briefly upon each.
One is an ethicized conception of the State (and
its corollary, an ethics of citizenship). In vain
do we search for it in the Bible. Jesus did not
touch upon it for several reasons, but chiefly be-
cause it lay outside the sphere of his wisely-
limited mission as a teacher of personal ethics.
Said an Episcopalian professor of Oxford Uni-
versity in a recent issue of the Hihbert Journal :
iPee The S^tandard. March. 1923. pp. 237-8, for Professor
Artler's exposition of this point.
FEATURES OP THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 103
**Our Lord carefully refrained from expressing
an opinion on political and economic problems,
which were beyond the scope of his mission. His
concern was not with the State but with the indi-
vidual, not so much with Humanity as with Man. ' '
With the State he was not concerned because,
according to his belief and that of all of his
Jewish contemporaries, the State was a tempor-
ary institution, destined soon to be replaced by
the expected Kingdom of Heaven on earth. So
full of this great expectation was the apostle Paul
that he could advocate a doctrine of unrestricted
submission to the dictates of the State. *^The
powers that be are ordained of God'* was his
plea — a doctrine positively harmful for us who
believe in the persistence of this old world for
many an aeon yet, and who are fully persuaded
that ^Hhe powers that be*' in the State are too
often '* ordained *' by anything but a divine Power.
A second paramount moral need of our day is
an ethics of big-business, involving the relation
of employer to employees in unprecedented ways.
The problem of the right relationship between
these parties in industry is only a century and a
half old. It dates from the time when the ^*do-
msstic'* system of industry gave place to the
'^factory*' system, when machinery was substi-
tuted for tools, and when the old, close, personal
relation of master and workmen was replaced by
a cash nexus and the wagje-system. How, then,
should we find in any Biblical record the neces-
sary light on this dark problem? The most that
the ancient moral repositories can supply is a
group of general maxims, unquestionably true
104 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
and precious, yet as plainly insufficient to be of
direct help.
Another of our paramount moral needs is more
light on the spiritual significance and purpose of
marriage. Is it realized that there are only two
verses (and their parallels) in the Gospels that
touch the subject of marriage, and neither sets
forth its spiritual meaning! Moreover, Jesus ex-
emplified and exalted celibacy as against the
marriage relation — witness what we read in the
nineteenth chapter of the Grospel according to
Matthew, at the twelfth verse.^ The plain truth
is that Jesus left no direct teaching wherewith
to meet the marriage problem as we have it
among us to-day. And the apostle Paul, it will be
remembered, saw in wedlock only a concession
to human weakness. **It is good for a man not
to touch a woman, nevertheless to avoid fornica-
tion let each man have his own wife and each
woman her own husband." If they (the un-
married) '^cannot contain, let them marry; for
it is better to marry than to burn."* Further-
more, as against the spiritual conception of mutu-
ality, reciprocity, complementariness of influence
in the marriage relation, Paul taught the subordi-
nation of the woman to the man — due funda-
mentally to his inheritance of Hebrew tradition.
Still one other of the crying moral needs which
must not be overlooked is that of an international
morality, to supplement the man-to-man morality
which we find in the Old Testament and the New.
In neither book do we find any teaching on in-
iSee my book The Modern Ideal of Marriage for a detailed
discussion of these points.
'I Corinthians vi, 1, 2, 9, and I Corinthians xi, 3-9.
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 105
ternational morality, and for very excellent rea-
sons which cannot be here discussed. But the
point to be noted is that this lack has created
the need of more light to help solve the vexing
question of international amity and peace. We
need an ethicized nationalism to replace the nar-
row, nefarious, chauvinistic nationalism now ram-
pant throughout the world. But this ethicized
nationalism has to be worked out as part of a
code of international morality; we do not find
it furnished in any of the ancient scriptures. It
is essentially a modern concept, and it lay wholly
outside the range of Jesus' teaching, concerned
as he was with the ethics of personal life.
Here, then, is a group of great moral needs,
bound up with economic, social, national and in-
ternational problems. On all of them there exists
much difference of opinion. On none of them
have we as yet a consensus of moral judgment.
In vain do we look for light on them from the
moral repositories of the past. Even as to the
personal ideals that are held up as patterns
worthy of emulation an astonishing variety of
opinion obtains. One finds his ideal in the Christ-
ian saint ; another, in the Greek sage ; a third, in
the Gothic gentleman; a fourth, in the self-cen-
tered, strong, free Superman of Nietzsche. Hence
a literature of conflicting ethical ideals, a ^* chaos
of ethical convictions,'' but no consensus of
opinion upon personal ideals. Hence, too, the
conspicuous place given to moral education in
the Ethical Movement and the distinctiveness of
its belief in ethical progress. Precisely as the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science invites its members, while enjoying abso-
106 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
lute intellectual freedom, to explore the field of
Nature and make fresh discoveries there, so Ethi-
cal Societies bid their members go out into the
field of Duty, and with like intellectual freedom,
shed new light on the open, unsolved problems
of the moral life.
If, now, the further question be raised, how
is the needed new moral knowledge to be ac-
quired? the Ethical Movement answers in terms
equally distinctive, — by moral experience.
VT. Moral Experience vs. Revelation.
When Brunelleschi, the famous Florentine
architect, successfully competed for the construc-
tion of the dome of the cathedral, he closed his
series of specifications for the structure with the
following significant suggestion : When the dome
shall have reached the height of fifty-seven feet
(that is, just before it is to be closed in), let the
master-builders, then in charge of the work, de-
termine what the next step is to be. For, said
Brunelleschi, **la pratica insegna quello si ha da
seguire,'' — practice teaches what the next step
to be taken shall be. So in constructing the dome
for the cathedral of the moral life, inner ex-
perience is our teacher, practice in moral archi-
tecture our basis of decision as to how we shall
supplement the moral principles transmitted
from the past. Thus there is this very real sense
in which practice precedes theory. To know the
spiritual meaning of love one must live the life
of love. Only by ** doing the will'' does one
**know the doctrine.'' We of the Ethical Move-
ment take our stand with Brunelleschi. We be-
lieve that by striving to get into right relations
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL* MOVEMENT 107
with our fellowrmen we shall find just what these
relations ought to be : by working toward an ideal
of justice in social and in business life, we shall
learn what the true ideal really is; by experienc-
ing the deeper contents of the moral life we shall
approximate adequate statements of the moral
Ideal.
Beginning with reverential and grateful appre-
ciation of the immortal contributions made by the
Old Testament prophets and by Jesus toward the
upbuilding of the moral life, cherishing and
treasuring their teachings, making them an in-
tegral part of the moral instruction given to the
children and young people in its fellowship, every
Ethical Society proceeds to indicate the direc-
tions in which more light is needed and how it
is to be sought.
The Ethical Movement begins with the accepted
norms of human conduct, i.e., with those which
by "the consensus of civilized peoples*' have
long since been put beyond the pale of further
question. That we should be kind, just, honest,
grateful to our benefactors, sympathetic towards
the xmfortunate, — that honor, justice, love bind
us regardless of our explanation of them, or of
our fidelity to them, — these are moral beliefs
about which men generally agree. Here, then, is
common standing-ground. Here we can come to-
gether and work together, and push on thence into
new and unexplored fields of the moral life, no
matter what our theological and philosophical
opinions may be.
Vn. Taking Sides.
We are thus brought directly to a seventh dis-
108 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
tinctive feature of the Ethical Movement, — it re-
frains from taking sides on debatable moral
issues. Again and again have various religious
bodies committed their entire membership, — by
** resolutions " and similar collective pronounce-
ments, — to a particular standpoint on some vital
debated issue. Ethical Societies have ever been
marked by their refusal to stand committed to
any position on an "open" question, one on which
the conscience of civilized mankind has not yet
been made up. For, an Ethical Society cannot
take sides without instantly forfeiting the price-
less freedom of its fellowship. On the right of
the single standard to prevail over the double
standard in the relation of the sexes ; on the duty
of humaneness ; on the obligation to act honestly
and justly in business transactions; on all such
issues there is now general agreement everywhere
among civilized peoples, and it is therefore part
of the function of Ethical Societies to encourage
the ever wider application of these accepted
forms of right conduct. But on compulsory mili-
tary training in the public schools; on Socialism
or Communism ; on vivisection ; on all such issues
concerning the rightness of which the conscience
of mankind is not yet agreed, Ethical Societies,
as such, cannot take sides. Were they to do so
they would automatically shut out from their
membership all those who differed from the ma-
jority in their moral judgment on the given issue.
To Quote the published *' statement" of one of
the Societies: ^'We are convinced that any ex-
pression of opinion by the Society, as a Society,
not only tends to embarrass freedom of individu-
al thought, but is contrary to the spirit of our
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 109
organization ; and we beg further to submit, that
any attempt to embarrass, by resolution or other-
wise, the individual member or lecturer in the
enjoyment of his opinions on the great questions
of the day will prove detrimental, if not danger
ous, to the welfare of the Society. '^ Leaders of
Ethical Societies may and do express themselves
publicly on all sorts of mooted moral questions;
but they are pledged not to speak for any one
but themselves. In matters of practical admin-
istration or of expediency every Ethical Society
permits the majority to rule; but in all matters
of conviction as to what is right it pays absolute
respect to the view of even the smallest minority,
safeguarding its cherished freedom by refusing
to commit the Society as a whole to what a ma
jority believe to be right. Is, then, the Ethical
Movement a flabby, invertebrate institution be-
cause it refrains from taking sides on burning,
open issues of the day! So to believe would be
deplorably to misconceive the character and
function of the Movement. There is a higher,
more difficult and more august task devolving
upon the Ethical Movement than that of taking
sides. Let the churches and s>Tiagogues take
sideh' if they will; the Ethical Movement is dedi-
cated to a different sort of constructive mission
with reference to debatable questions. It is (a)
to surround the conflicting viewpoints and con-
troversialists with a serener atmosphere, (b) to
foster that ethical modesty which admits there
may be some wrong on one's owra side and some
right on the other, (c) to elucidate that measure
of right which is on the side of those whom the
majority think altogether wrong, (d) to use
110 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Socialism, Communism and all other proposed
solutions for the social problem as a means for
advancing our knowledge of the complete right,
(e) to encourage an attitude of friendliness among
those who differ; because each can learn some-
thing from the others, because no one has the
complete right, nor is the right ever wholly on
one side or the wrong wholly on the other. All
through the years of the Great War the ** paci-
fists'' were believed by the majority to be wholly
wrong, yet they had an element of right on their
side. They insisted that the fellowship of na-
tions must not be forgotten at a time when we
are at enmity with two of them, because the ulti-
mate object of the war — as President Wilson
had so nobly declared — was **the creation of a
comradeship of justice that shall include all na-
tions, even those with whom we are now at war."
Again, the erring pacifists were right in holding
that the end peace does not justify the means
war, a truth which the non-pacifists overlooked.
For no end whatsoever can justify war, though
it may necessitate war. There are some things
which seem to us necessary but which we are
humiliated in doing, and one of them is the manu-
facturing of thousands of tons of shells to be
hurled upon battalions composed of human beings
like ourselves. And we ought to have been
humiliated to the dust instead of glorying in
bayonet practice and other necessary military
performances. By as much, then, as our grasp
of the complete right is an ideal yet to be attained,
the Ethical Movement has for its task a worthier
object than that of taking sides — viz., striving
to bring to light knowledge of the complete Eight.
FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 111
Vin. Social Rbfoem.
It remains to touch upon still another distinc-
tive feature of the Ethical Movement, remember-
ing, indeed, that this eighth one does not exhaust
the total series, though the most important are in-
cluded in our survey. Note the outstanding
characteristic of the Ethical Movement that dif-
ferentiates it from contemporary social schemes
and "betterment" enterprises. It begins where
these leave off. They halt at securing to the
oppressed the material wherewithal of well-being ;
the Ethical Movement pushes beyond this to the
spiritual or true ends of these human lives, un-
willing to stop at shorter hours, higher wages,
sanitary conditions, etc., absolutely and obviously
necessary as aU these are. The Ethical Move-
ment, while recognizing the imperative need of
betterment plans, and ready to help them, de-
precates resting on the material and physical
plane which marks our socialistic literature and
platforms. Again, instead of declaring that in
the absence of improved social and industrial con-
ditions it is idle to press improvement of char-
acter, the Ethical Movement maintains that even
under existing conditions, bad as they are, we
must find out how the moral life can be lived.
We cannot wait for the advent of a social Utopia.
Personal morality presses for attention, and the
solving of its problems cannot be made contingent
on external social conditions. The various social
issues of our time concentrate attention on ex-
ternal readjustments and rearrangements of so-
ciety. The Ethical Movement focuses attention
on internal improvement, promoting better con-
112 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ditions of life and simultaneously seeking person-
al regeneration, assured that all social morality
rests at last on a basis of private morality, and
that beyond necessary concern for material wel-
fare lie the ultimate issues of our life. Thus the
Ethical Movement is devoted not so much to any
** betterment" as to the best. For there is of neces-
sity a loss of power in concentrating attention on
betterment. We need the vision of the best to
give inspiration. We need to look above and be-
yond the physical interests to the infinite worth
which we ascribe to each human soul by virtue
of the moral nature inhering in us all. Hence, at
bottom, the Ethical Movement is spiritual and
optimistic rather than material and melioristic.
Not to do the work of charity-organizations, but
to sustain and develop in the workers the spirit
behind all true charity work; not to stop child-
labor, but to inspire and quicken the sentiments
that shall control those devoted to the abolition
of child-labor, — such is the characteristic aim of
the Ethical Movement. To furnish inspiration
for social workers, to set the faces of men and
women steadfastly toward the Perfect, the Ideal
which forever flies before us however eagerly we
pursue ; to keep before men and women the spirit-
ual view of themselves — as possessors of a
spiritual nature having infinite worth, — this the
Ethical Movement seeks above all else to achieve.
Behind and within all the various philanthropic
and educational activities it conducts is this
spiritual conception of man, while above and be-
yond all its undertakings broods the supreme and
all inclusive aim — the ever-increasing knowledge,
love and practice of the right.
Ethical Experience as the
Basis of ReHgious Education
By HENRY NEUMANN. ^
SOME MEMBERS of Ethical Culture Societies
are apt to grow restive at seeing the word
' ' religious ' ' in connection with the educational ac-
tivities of their fellowship. They prefer to ac-
centuate, as against the belief of the churches,
the conviction that the best life is possible even
where no theological sanctions are accepted. To
such it is enough that men's minds be captured
by images of a world whence wrong and misery
have been banished, and where truth, goodness,
and joy abound in ampler measure than today's,
and that people therefore give themselves whole-
heartedly to personal charity, self-improvement,
civic betterment, and other quite secular duties.
But in others among us, there are needs which
these activities do not wholly satisfy. We de-
sire to see, as far as we can, life all of a piece.
We wish to unify the outgivings of moral energy,
to bring them under the guidance of a supreme,
all-embracing purpose, the highest we can con-
ceive. Under such a desire. Ethical Culture be-
comes religious experience whenever deeply
earnest living is felt to possess an infinite mean-
^Much of this article appeared in the columns of Religious
EduGation, to whose editors thanks are hereby acknowledged
for permission to reprint
114 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ing, or wlieii today's attempts at right living are
seen in their linkage with things eternal. What
this implies for the education of both young and
old in spiritual living will be clearer if we first
examine how religious insight is indebted to
ethical experience.
Let me illustrate this relation in terms of some
one duty. Take, for example, the *' service'' to
which people are everywhere exhorted to give
themselves today. To thoughtful minds, genuine
service is vastly more than a succession of kind
acts, whether little or big. So much more mean-
ingful is it that its implications become eminently
religious when we think what the persons are
who merit being served. They have their ideal
potentialities; and the gift is a tribute to these
higher selves. They may be unresponsive. His-
tory is full of instances where noble attempts at
human benefaction were thwarted. Few tales are
more common than those of the stoning of the
saviors. But it is also true that the saviors were
aware of an obligation to keep on. Why? Or how
can one be sincere in serving people whom one
dislikes? The reason for mentioning these prob-
lems is simply that if service is to mean more
than sporadic acts of giving, we need thorough-
going ideals. It is only partly true that deeds
of service are made admirable by being offered
freely. The readiness is indeed a sign of some-
thing good about the one who serves. But a fact
not always lifted to its due importance in our
thinking and conduct is the nature of the other
party to the relationship, namely the ideal self
(some would call it the divine self) in the person
to whom the service is rendered. The implica-
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 115
tion is that there is something, great about the
recipient which deserves the gift. ** Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me'* — for the
least of these bears the image of the Highest.
Fathers and mothers are especially fitted to
understand such an interpretation of the service
motive. Though their efforts to call forth the
best in a child may meet with failure, even with
rank ingratitude, they continue. Why should
they? All of us have received from our parents
more benefits than we can count. Did we de-
serve them because we were always as unfailing-
ly excellent as they wished? If the services they
proffered were merited by us for what we actually
are, there would perhaps be none too much that
we could call our due. But fathers and mothers
labor patiently with their children for the sake
of something better than the children actually
exhibit. They see above and beyond the present,
imperfect selves, lives more excellent; and they
spend themselves for the only object which de-
serves their devotion, this finer, truer and rarer
nature in their children.
Parents who have no vision of this potential
greatness are disheartened by the failures to
draw out the right response. Where the vision
is present, however, the very defects only in-
tensify the father's love of the nobler personage
he wants the child to become. Here is one ap-
proach to religious experience — in this deepened
seeing into the higher nature. The sense of an
ideal best, profoundly loved and deserving of
love's utmost, is a salient mark of every finely
religious life; and such a conviction is ethical in
116 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
its origin. Or suppose that the parent's service
succeeds. The higher his ideal for his child, the
more he will be spurred to help the child to
reach levels still further off. Every honest effort
to serve, or to perform any duty whatever, thus
opens up new vistas of the kind of life which
we know at heart is best.
Such experiences become religious when the
ideal self in the child or in the better society is
seen, not in such isolation as might be inferred
from this imperfect example, but in relation to
an infinite pattern. To those of us who accord
with Professor Felix Adler's thought upon this
subject (no such unanimity is required of our
members), the infinite pattern is the eternal com-
pany of perfect lives, or the spiritual common-
wealth wherein the highest in each life is evoked
in and through the process of setting free the
highest in all the others. The child, for example,
belongs to a family; the family is a member in
the community ; and beyond this are one 's country
and all the countries of the world. See these
united with the generations before and still to
come. Imagine over and beyond these genera-
tions a collective life for all mankind infinitely
more excellent than the eye can ever behold —
where people not merely refrain from hurt, but
exercise affirmatively the energizing effect men-
tioned a few sentences above. Picture each gen-
eration in its time and place turning its efforts
in the direction set by that lofty pattern, so that
what is most distinctly human in mankind may
be more human still, or if you please, more God-
like. The image will give some hint of how ethi-
cal experiences may lead to grasping the fact that
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 117
there is a spiritual universe sublime as that spec-
tacle of the starry skies which Arnold character-
ized as
A world above man's head to let him see
Kow boundless might his soul's horizons be.
Indeed there would seem to be a marked
tendency in modern theology to make the approach
to divinity precisely along this line of moral
reality/ Religious philosophy to-day proceeds
upon the assumption that over and iDeyond the
world of things which we can see and handle,
like stones, pieces of wood and metal, there is
also this other world, of noble heroisms, high
longings, endless outreachings toward exalted be-
haviors— a world which existed long before we
were bom, whose grandeur will be beheld even
more splendidly long after we have closed our
eyes, a world of which we are members now by
virtue of our highest capacities for excellent liv-
ing— not because of what we are empirically,
but because of what, at our ideal best, we have
it in us to be.
These truths are brought home in the experien-
ces both of moral defeat and of triumph. To the
religious nature, the defeat only heightens the
splendor of the reality which the failure has dis-
honored. Just as the parent sees a brighter
image of the good man he would have his son be-
come, so to the spiritually-minded person, the
rebuff to his ideals makes him behold in a new
way the glories of the life which does not fail. He
*If the criticism may be ventured at this point, theology is
Rtill too tied, however, to the idea of the unity in the Perfect
Life and insufficiently concerned about preserving the Irreduc-
ible integrity of the components.
118 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL. RELIGION
also realizes, even in the glow of success, that
the triumph is only partial. Necessary as it was
to emancipate the slaves in 1863, will anyone say
that the negro problem in America has been at all
settled? The best we ever succeed in making of
ourselves and of our world looks up always to a
better which lies beyond. No earthly society, no
matter what paradise of efficiency or better dis-
tribution of happiness it may succeed in establish-
ing, is ever likely to have no still grander aims
toward which the race is to press. We never
reach the goal; but all that makes us men and
women tells us that we ought not to cease mov-
ing in its direction. The reward of so moving
is a renewed sense of the worth or supreme ex-
cellence in people, and a firmer conviction of the
reality of the perfect life in which all people at
their highest are members. It is only by serving
this highest that we make ourselves better fit to
give it a service still better, and to see ever more
clearly how deserving it is of our deepest best.
Thus it is that experiences in human service
may lead to certain religious convictions. Such
outcome may be the fruit of many other kinds of
experience. For example, though some people
find it hard to get these images of the perfect
life from their contacts with those whose conduct
brings the pain of disillusionment, yet in other
ways they feel a freshened sense of certain su-
premely valid obligations. Even, for instance,
when earlier affections are bankrupt, when
things are at their worst, and when all life seems
to be but a vast and dead futility, such people
recall that there are certain rooted loyalties to
which they had pledged themselves in their
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 119
brighter hours and to which they must, because
they ought, be faithful. This living conviction
that there is an ideal Right, which though it slay
them, is yet to be trusted, surely makes of
ethical living something more than a succession
of praiseworthy deeds.
Such a devout loyalty sometimes opens up an-
other avenue of experience and insight, the one
described in the saying from the Sermon on the
Mount: *^ Blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled. ' ' The words * ^ hunger ' * and ' ^ thirst ' ^ mean
little to us who live in our modern world of com-
parative comfort and luxury. Thirst is now a
momentary craving which we can satisfy very
quickly. We can have our drink for the merest
asking, the turn of a faucet, the paying of a coin.
But in a land where the springs of water often
ran dry, where travel frequently meant .-journey-
ing over hot desert spaces, ^Hhirsf meant a
burning desire which repetition of the word now
can only faintly suggest. Yet it was such a
passionate yearning which the words connoted
when they spoke of hungering and thirsting after
righteousness. And what reward was mentioned
as the blessing upon those who did so crave!
Not power, not money, not good repute, but a
return endlessly more precious. The reward was
the freshened, ampler righteousness with which
they should be filled. People may differ in their
interpretation of the source from which this re-
plenishing proceeds; but the experience itself is
familiar enough.
Or to take another type of experience. As the
result of struggling to put down the baser in-
120 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
clinations in himself, a man may come to realize
that what is most truly himself is a free spirit
beyond the power of the lower propensities to
make him their own. Socrates in the prison at
Athens might have availed himself of the oppor-
tunities offered to escape to another country.
All his life, how^ever, he had taught his disciples
obedience to the state ; and now that acquiescence
was required on his part, he refused to be ex-
empted. One of the remarks which Plato at-
tributes to him illustrates beautifully the reality
of the higher nature: *'I am inclined to think
that these muscles and bones of mine would have
gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia ... if
they had been moved only by their own idea of
what was best, and if I had not chosen the better
part.^' In the ethical sense what constitutes a
person is not this body of flesh and bone which
we carry about with ns, but the veiled being
which calls itself by our name, which acts through
our hands and brains, and which can show itself,
although not always, to be sure, free to give forth
its best.
The illustration from the life of Socrates is
old; but the principle of a higher self — in re-
ligious terms, of the immanent God — is just
as true in our modem age. Note that it was an
ethical concern for his disciples which so helped
Socrates to assert the spiritual nature. Their
regard for what was greatest in him put them
upon their mettle ; and in turn his love for them
made him seek to be worthy of them. Men in
whose friendship there is a high respect, know
what this kind of interaction means, when what
is greatest in the soul of either inspires the essen-
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 121
tial self in the other. As Felix Adler summed up
the thought in his recent Hibbert Lectures : ' ' Seek
to elicit the best in others, and thereby you will
bring to light the best in yourself. . . . Seek to
educe in the other the consciousness of his mem-
bership in the infinite spiritual commonwealth,
and in so doing you will not save your soul but
achieve the unshakable conviction that you are
a soul or spirit.''
There are many such experiences to convince
us that what is best within us lives most truly
only as it is rightly related to this deepest life
in other persons. The best in me is the life which
quickens the highest in you and in all the others
whom it affects. So is the best in the dealings
of group with group, nation with nation. The
worthiest use of life is the effort to convert the
actual ties which bind us, such as the family life,
or community or national life, or co-partnership
in the vocations, into the recognition of this
spiritual relationship. Ethical religion asks us
to eternalize our casual contacts by making them
the occasions to lift up in one another the sense of
kinship in the City of the Light.
How does all this bear upon the problem of
education? Plainly two courses are indicated. If
education is to be inspired by the spiritual mo-
tive, it must provide for a series of developing
moral experiences; and second, it must offer an
interpretation of those experiences. Obviously,
with younger children, the more important of
these two functions will be the providing of the
experiences. **Life must be lived in order to be
known." Children learn what responsibility
122 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
means only by living out experiences in responsi-
bility. The same is true of service, gratitude,
loyalty, courage, and all the other traits that
enter into the making of excellent lives. If ever
our children are to reach the idea of a Being,
or of a Society of Beings, desiring that men be
perfect, such a belief must be born of their own
longings — and their o^vn endeavors — for better
living now.
To make the right beginnings, many ways are
open. The new Project Method is one — provided
we do not see its distinctive merit out of rela-
tion to other essentials. Practice must come first,
last, and always. But it must constantly be in-
terpreted and led on to still finer outcomes. Ee-
flection on moral principles must be encouraged
and enlightened. Certain basic skills must be
mastered; and fundamental contributions handed
on to the present from the past must be appre-
ciated. Here is a signal opportunity to bring
home something of the thought suggested in the
foregoing pages, that over-arching the lives of
individuals and generations, there is a best life
for all the race. The school turns to the past
in order that the present may make its better con-
tribution, if it can, to the future, so that the ages
ahead may in their turn serve the Highest more
ably. Through inspiring biography, vivid his-
torj^-teaching, pageants, festivals, dramatic cele-
brations of great moments in the life of the
race, children can be made to feel some sense of
linkage between their own lives and lives past
and to come, and something of the conviction
that *^life is good to the extent that it is given
to good causes.'' Gratitude, reverence, hero-
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 123
worship, joy in the triumph of exalted principles,
should all be fed through some such means as
these. Every subject or skill taught in the day-
school has its inspiring tradition. Literature and
the other arts should be pressed into service to
permit the children to identify themselves vicari-
ousty with the best moments of living that the
race has knoAvn or can hope.
Take the teaching of history as one such oppor-
tunity. While we may not agree with Mr. H. G.
AVells as an authority in this field or accord with
his hedonistic conception of the goal for human
society, he is doing an important service today
in reminding teachers to treat history as a record
of how the race has attempted certain great collec-
tive and uncompleted tasks. The sense of an
over-arching collective task for mankind has
never been more necessary than in this age of
disruptive nationalisms, egotistic racial prides,
and class-strife. History-teaching must breathe
life into that requirement. It must interpret the
task of mankind in terms of a moral struggle,
often defeated, partially successful — and even
then at bitter cost — and unending in its noble
possibilities. It must try to touch the pupils to
the shame of the great failures, i. e., those in-
stances where the excellence in man has been out-
raged (as in wars of conquest, persecution, slav-
er}', etc.). It must make them feel the joy of
those moments when the great task of the race
was advanced; and especially must it help to
quicken the eager, but always (in contrast with
fanaticism or with merely impulsive, unappre-
ciative revolt) the thoughtful and informed, de-
I
124 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
sire to push the unfinished task still further
ahead.
In carrying out such an educational program,
we must be mindful that it must cover the child's
entire life from infancy through old age, and that
at certain stages some items need a special
emphasis. For instance, in childhood heavier
stress will be laid on experiencing through right
filial relations the meaning of dependence, of
trust in a love w^hich sometimes inflicts pain but
which wants always what is best for its objects,
of faith in the triumph of the right here and now.
Initiative is of course highly essential even in
these early years. But the influence of parental
love and parental example must still remain well
toward the center.
As the child approaches adolescence, other ten-
dencies become more marked and should be
ethically cultivated. Such, for example, is the re-
bellious desire for independence, especially when
the shortcomings in parents, brothers and sisters
are now more apparent. The discovery of faults
in parents or other relatives more or less uncon-
genial, should be educated into a new sense that
there is a collective task uniting even those who
are disliked (e. g., the functions of the family
need the co-operation even of those inclined to
rebel), and that even in those who make love
difficult, there is a higher self to be respected and
to be worked with in the over-arching task.
Other special opportunities for this period are
the introductions to disinterested love in the
eager friendships so characteristic of youth, and
the promptings to warm humanitarian service.
A further difference between the earlier and
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 125
tiie later educational stages is the treatment of
evil. Little people need to see the unshadowed
and constant victory of right over wrong. * * From
the age of twelve on, though the children still
need to be encouraged by seeing how the good
wins, their confidence should be interpenetrated
with some sense of the immensity of the task.
At this stage they begin to be aware of the
shadows accompanying the brighter side of life's
pictures. They see the long roll of centuries it
took the world to rid itself of such evils as
slavery. They begin to realize that poetic justice
is not always done in life as it is in their litera-
ture, but that often good men and good women
suffer. Or they see how the excellence in life
is accompanied by its evils, how the liberties of
men, for example, have been purchased by the
crudest of bloody conflicts, how religion went
hand in hand with persecution perpetrated by
people who were not deliberately cruel but often
quite sincere in believing such conduct to be a
duty. Or they grow conscious of imperfection in
those whom they had once beheld in the light of
full-orbed hero-worship. In many ways this period
is full of questionings unfamiliar to the earlier
stage.
'*This is therefore the time to prepare for
appreciation of the supersensible character of
genuine ideals. Now that the young people begin
to realize that perfection is further off than they
had once supposed, they are better prepared to
understand how the ideal of the best always out-
runs the very best of achievement. When the
adolescent, unlike the child, realizes that there
are ills which cannot be cured by immediate acts
126 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
of charity, we can use tliis new understanding
to intensify what desires he has for a world of
progress. Not at all that youth is pessimistic
or ought to be. The normal adolescent, if he is
aware that things are wrong, is buoyantly confi-
dent that they can all be set right. His faith
needs to be fused with some perception of the
immensities of the problem and of the sublimity
of the ideal goals, once these are pitched as high
as the truth requires."^
The leading ideals for later stages have already
been partly suggested in the illustrations with
which these pages began. If space permitted, we
might consider the religious implications of
thorough-going ideals for the vocational life, for
marriage, and for citizenship. Keligious educa-
tion is a process which extends throughout the
whole of a person's years. It should be a matter
not of receiving once and forever certain ready-
made answers on the ultimate problems, but of
an ever richer, deepening and broadening sense
of individual worth as bound up with co-partner-
ship in a supreme world-task, and a firmer con-
viction of rooted obligation so to perform one's
share in that chief obligation and privilege as to
promote the worthy performance of their func-
tions by our fellow-spirits.
The beginnings of such growth will consist
mainly of two kinds of experience, the children's
own practices in the fundamental excellences, and
the partly vicarious experiences made possible by
tlie other business of the school. At every stage
from the school years on, both types of experience
iFrora the present writer's Educatio7i for Moral Growth.
(New York: xVppleton.)
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 127
need a spiritual interpretation. AVhether this in-
terpretation should be offered in the public
schools, or in homes and churches, raises a prob-
lem, however, the full discussion of which is not
within the scope of this paper. It is to be re-
gretted, we may however say in passing, that
those who are demanding religious instruction in
the schools do not see that the public schools,
where the unitary needs of our democracy should
receive the major stress, would therefore do
better to supply an effective moral training. This
need not in the least conflict with the religious
teachings in the home. On the contrary, it can
offer essential contributions to the right sort of
training in all the various religions. The value
of any religious teaching Avhatever is ultimately
a matter of its ethical depth and soundness.
There are noble conceptions of God; and there
are ignoble ones. The better a man's moral
training, the bigger and better, if he is religious
at all, will be his idea of religion. If at heart his
ethical ideals are mean and poverty-stricken, his
religion will do no more than make these mean
and povert^^-stricken ideals more intense and
hurtful, as it does for those people today to whom
religion is largely a bigoted spying-out and hunt-
ing-do-^Ti of practices which they dislike. A re-
ligion is as good or as bad as the ethics out of
which it springs. To the saint, religion means
saintliness; to the money-minded, religion means
divine sanction for the sharp teeth and claws.
The soldier does not pray for a heart to forgive
his enemy ; he prays for victory. When men pray
sincerely, they pray to get such things and to be-
come such persons as their ethical training and
128 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
their ethical instruction permit them to conceive
as ideal. *'He that loveth not his brother whom
he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath
not seen."
Therefore let the schools cultivate, among
other essentials, the love of the brother. Let
them, that is, develop the moral aptitudes which
people of all sects and beliefs can unite in honor-
ing. Though the Catholic is marked off from the
Protestant, the Jew and the Freethinker by his
religious beliefs, there are moral practices which
all honorable men and women, much as they may
differ in religion, are alike in respecting. Up-
right, conscientious, high-minded, truth-loving
doers of justice and mercy are found not in one
religious group alone but in all. Their practices
and ideals can be taught without setting up the
dividing lines of theological belief. These are
the only ones that deserve a pl^ce in schools
dedicated to making our democracy a unity.
With the love for the brother on earth taught
in the schools, let the home, if it is so minded,
carry the child on to the love of the heavenly
Father. Let the churches give their special re-
ligious interpretations to these moral experi-
ences. But the experiences come first in order of
time. They come first in point of importance.
Whether eventually we come or not to love the
Father in heaven, learn to love the brother on
earth and to act toward him as a brother should.
So of the other ideals that make the truly suc-
cessful life. They are the monopoly of no re-
ligious body. They are universal. They lay the
best foundation for whatever beliefs about man's
destiny the various groups may cherish.
ETHICAL EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION 129
The point of chief importance is simply that in
the experiences of the growing moral life are to
be found the most fruitful approaches to a life
of developing religious experience. The ulti-
mate proof is the moral quality of the fruitage.
This is the test which the Ethical Societies accept
for their experiment. Surely there is no better
measure by which any religion should be judged.
"All Men are Created Equal'
By GEORGE E. O'DELL.
I.
IN THE LITERATUEE of politics no docu-
ments conld well be more significant than Pla-
to's '^Republic'' and the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. However different in form, elaboration
and temper, both are the product of intense reac-
tions to bad statecraft ; they are, in fact, political
tracts. Plato served in Athens under the Thirty
and in the subsequent restored Democracy; in
Syracuse (like Goethe later in Weimar) he assisted
an autocrat to manage affairs of state, only pre-
sently to flee for his life, an innocent victim of a
palace intrigue. At some time in this career of
close but invariably disappointing political con-
tacts he composed the ** Republic, ' * with its
spirited argument for a form of government in
which only a caste of philosophic intellectuals, be-
cause of their detachment loath to rule and above
corruption, should be placed in control.
Equally was the Declaration, with its echoes
of French pre-revolutionary thought, as well as
of Milton and John Locke, written against a back-
ground of political breakdown, albeit one more
illuminated than were any of Plato's with vitalis-
ing hope.
Each document, again, depends for its argu-
182 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
uient on an opinion about human nature. But
here we must pass at once from likeness to un-
likeness. For in their unlikeness the ** Repub-
lic'' and the Declaration present what is surely
one of the most striking paradoxes in the history
of thought. Plato was a man passionately de-
voted to ideas, moving in preference among ab-
stractions, a visionary, intensely poetic, habitu-
ated to thinking of our world as but the shadow
of one more real. But, having set out to devise
an ideal political constitution, and looking out
upon the men who walked the streets of one or
another Greek city-state, in search of a funda-
mental human fact on which to base his system,
he selected the simplest and most immediate.
What was the most obvious circumstance about
human nature? That men are unequal. Judged
by any obvious factor, — physique, intelligence,
political insight, horse sense, — they are not
only dissimilar but of unequal social value.
Some, he has it, are golden, some of silver make,
some only of clay; the business of politics is to
get the golden natures on top and keep them
there — and to persuade those of inferior texture
to accept permanent, choiceless subordination
gladly.
On the other hand, the men who appended
their names to the Declaration of Independence
were for the most part neither philosophers nor
dreamers. They were lawyers, farmers, country
squires. Compared with the subtle and literary
Plato they were mostly as hard and as direct as
nails.
But these statesmen in their turn also needed
to envisage the common man and fix on some
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 133
essential characteristic, in order to have a cor-
ner-stone for the new political edifice they pro-
posed to build. Jefferson was no voice crjnng
in the wilderness; he was these men's interpre-
ter and pen. Stating that which they should
presently affirm, he fastened not on the super-
ficial showing of common sense, but on something
which lay so deep that its presence could only
be guessed. All men, so he wrote and they
signed, are created equal.
What they meant, and what America today
means, what she and any other such democracy
ought to mean now or in the future by this
postulated equality, may not be wholly the same
thing. But, however defined, it must involve a
fundamental emphasis that is the reverse of
Plato's. And the future trend of government in
the world, whether it be nominally democratic
or otherwise, will depend largely on the issue
between these two conceptions as to what matters
most in the natures of men. Advocates of rule
by a caste turn — with certain very grave dis-
comforts— to Plato. Believers in democracy
turn — also with uneasiness and reserves — to
the Declaration. Meanwhile, almost all the
world's peoples have begun to live, or to agi-
tate for living, in accordance with the equali-
tarian temper of the Declaration. Suppose that
it were, after all, meant only as a resounding box
on the cars for King George III? *'You, King
George, would have it that your Englishmen at
home are of some better quality than we, and are
entitled to govern us without our voice: but,
Your Majesty: All men are created equal!"
Yet it did resound, and the governance and cul-
134 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
tnre of the nations are being slowly changed
thereby. Because of it, even the Christianity of
most Christians, to some Puritan who had fallen
asleep in Massachusetts a mere century-and-a-
half ago and awoke today, would seem a religion
perplexingly different from that which he had
known.
n.
All men are created equal. To its early readers,
there was a possible dash of metaphysics in the
phrase. Neither the freedom with which the
equality was coupled, nor the * * inalienable rights ' *
which followed it, necessarily meant the same thing
as itself. It was so much bolder a word than they.
To call the equalitj^ ** created'^ appeared to raise
it, unlike the rest, to the plane of religion. For
all the increasing hesitancy as to just what it may
mean — as to whether indeed it may at bottom
mean anything, or only something preferably
forgotten^ — innumerable Americans during a
hundred and fifty years have felt that it was at
least a great slogan. It might signify merely
that everybody must have a fair start or a
square deal. Or in its obscurity might hide some
spiritual truth that must not be contemned. In
any case, it rang, and still rings, like a tocsin.
Let no one deny the saying! Let no one sneer!
This attitude may have been crude, but it has
been essentially a right attitude. All men may not
^Bpfore tne is an elaborate re-affirmation of the second para-
irrapti of tbe Declaration, in the form of a pledge, drawn up
by a committee of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce,
and "endorsed by business, fraternal and relifrious organizations
throu?:hout the United States," in which, while the "inalienable
ricrhts" are again asserted, the statement as to Inborn equality
is pointedly passed by.
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 135
live up to such a slogan, but some men do.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
Ood. Blessed are the meeh, for they shall in-
herit the earth. Blessed are they that mourn.
Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the
persecuted for righteousness' sake. Certainly,
it needed an authority no less than an archbishop
of the Anglican Church to hint at the awkward
truth — that this Sermon must not be taken very
seriously, for, if it were, human society would
not hold together for a day! Nevertheless, be-
cause these strange sayings were ostensibly of
genuine report, because they have been widely
lettered on church walls, because the young have
been taught to lisp them — by those who lacked the
winking archiepiscopal eye, — there have been in
a hundred generations countless men and women
who have therefore sought purity of heart, have
curbed their baser desires and won a larger life,
have been chastened by sorrow, or have suffered
every pain and ignominy in order that the truth
as they saw it should be established on the earth.
''Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite,'' was the slogan
which, as a young man on vacation, I read over
the doors of churches, schools, police posts, city
halls, in republican France, and at the sight of
which I aired a superior contempt. For it did
not appear that my own country, which set up
no such sentimental shibboleth (and had wallowed
in no such excesses of revolutionary blood)
allowed any less liberty, or was less brotherly,
or less ridden by oppression. But years and ac-
quaintance brought a humbler understanding.
France had suffered more bitter trials, had been
plunged more deeply in the Valley of the Shadow.
136 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
And now, if but once in a day some passing
youth, still building ideals for a life, should look
at his country ^s historic slogan and dedicate him-
self to live in the spirit of it, was not the battle-
cry with which poor France, her back to the wall,
once faced Europe, justified of its continued place
on the public lintels under the tri-colored flag?
So, too, with Jefferson's mystic and doubt-
less ill-worded assertion of equality. Sup-
pose it is true that the tissue of American
life is shot through with unjustifiable in-
equalities; that its discrepancies of wealth,
power, prestige, and culture are little less than
those to be found elsewhere; that corruption
plays a glaring part in its politics, and inhuman-
ity only slowly recedes in its industries. Yet the
slogan works. All men are created equal: with-
out question the equalitarian tendency enters
into the American spirit; it is a permeating in-
fluence, a constructive force. It liberalises social
intercourse, lessens the forbidding height of
social barriers, puts an unescapably new look
both of self-respect and of friendliness into the
American face. It even saps at the monarchical
character of conventional religious beliefs. Mrs.
Eddy, in a new venture of religion-making, sets
up, it is true, an autocracy to which the Sacred
College would seem a mere circumstance; only
God and she may speak on Sundays in her church.
Nevertheless, the spirit of equality is at Mrs.
Eddy's elbow; like George Fox, she challenges
the long centuries of masculine dominance in the
Christian communion, and essays to place woman
spiritually on a level with man. Or Mr. Sunday
electrifies his thousands, and crowds the sawdust
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 137
trail, by patting Jesus on the back and treating
God the Father as no more able to escape shaking
hands with him than the President of the United
States would be. But it is only a perverse and
vulgar vagary of the same equalitarian trend —
Mr. Sunday would level his God down. Else-
where in America, the stranger from Europe is
continually meeting mth an unexpected levelling
up of men, with a new gentility which in social
life shows a kindly general respect, and in re-
ligion no longer insists on the sectarian label as
a badge of propriety, or on the outer profession
of one's inner faith as a passport to friendship
and mutual spiritual help. Like yeast in the
bread-stuff, the slogan works.
Furthermore, although there are aristocracies
of one sort or another in America, there is a pro-
found difference between their position and that
of certain aristocracies abroad. They do not
exert the same kind of social **pull.'' The British
peerage, for example, is an aristocracy of families
which have lived in a greater or lesser degree
according to the principle of noblesse oblige;
their life has been bound up in the nation 's life ;
they have provided it with statesmen, viceroys,
ambassadors, bishops, warriors; in war time its
sons have marched always ahead of the common-
alty and have been the first and proportionately
the most numerous to be killed. And, at least
until recently, the British peerage has been taken
by the mass of the people at its own valuation.
Even now, since the clipping of the political
power of the House of Lords, and the subsequent
social levelling produced by the exisrency of com-
plete national service in the Great War, a peer is
138 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
certainly still a peer ; something of the hereditary
sanctity indubitably remains ; even a gathering of
British, anarchists (if there be any anarchists in
Britain of native birth!) would, I am sure, be
ill at ease were a duke to enter the room; they
Avould be canvassing the recesses of their minds
as to how a duke might properly expect them to
behave.
But who can imagine any such doubt arising
in the minds of an assembly of native-born Ameri-
cans, however lacking in worldly goods, were any
of the Four Hundred (or Four Thousand) an-
nounced as being in their midst I What full-
blooded American would be seriously embar-
rassed in the presence either of a Vanderbilt or
a Rockefeller? AVhat shirt-sleeves-to-shirt-
sleeves American hobo would have any awkward-
ness about shaking a Presidential hand? Now,
the amplified Four Hundred are one kind of
American aristocracy; Mr. Rockefeller belongs
to another variety; Mr. Taft, let us say, or Dr.
Nicholas Murray Butler, belongs to a third. The
ladies and gentlemen whose somewhat multitudin-
ous forefathers came over in the Mayflower con-
stitute a fourth — with sundry overlappings. And
there are others. But where in America is the
aristocracy either of birth, or brains, or wealth
or culture that, in so far as rightly or wrongly
it may set a high valuation on itself, is accepted
by the masses at its own figure?
In every city there is a group of families who
practise an undemocratic exclusiveness, on
grounds of birth or wealth or culture, or all
three; and usually with various cross-divisions
'^'ithin itself. A fringe of climbers may hanker
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 139
and angle to achieve membership in it. But the
most important psychic characteristic which dif-
ferentiates America, so far as it is democratic,
from Europe, so far as it is still feudal, is that
the mass of the people remains outside any actual
or would-be aristocracy in spirit as well as in
fact.
As the mass of the people does not value these
cliques or classes in the sacrosanct way in which
they may endeavor to value themselves — it may
even be largely oblivious of their existence — its
soul is untouched. It is not warped by subser-
viency, seared by humiliation, discouraged by the
fact or belief that it cannot achieve the socially
highest. The socialh' highest it may think of
mainly in terms of money, however gained. It
may crave money, but it assumes that money can
be got. And how far better it is that it should
adopt this attitude than that it should allow
itself to be browbeaten or discouraged by any
tradition that might be acce^Dted by it as to caste
superiorities that it cannot possibly attain. For
thus its spirit remains free — very crudely free,
but still free.
III.
Money, in fact, contrary to a common opinion,
is one of the great liberators of the human soul.
Hereditarj^ aristocracies live on property ; let the
property l3e mainly in land, and a people might
conceivably continue in servitude to its land-
ov\Tiers until the crack of doom. But let there
be a means of ready exchange which increases
rapidly in quantity, and a landed aristocracy is
socially doomed. Or it changes its character.
140 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
For the principle of class heredity cannot con-
tinue to stand against the pressure of money;
rather will the owners of money insist on their
right to stand before kings. Capacity, however
born, if it achieve wealth, is enabled to assert it-
self. The sovereign, at first grudgingly, then
with furtive acquisitiveness, will admit brains-
plus-money to ennoblement. Or a dominant
political party will do this. And to admit the
nouveau riche is to acknowledge the claim of
brains to be as good as the claim of heredity —
if not better, since aristocratic heredity would
prefer to see the claim of brains denied.
A middle class is a standing challenge to the
idea of hereditary aristocracy ; and a middle class
is made possible only as the depths of the earth
yield up their treasure of the means of exchange.
Gold is a social alchemist ; it is the great leveller.
Because America has more money per capita
than any other nation, she has the least care
for hereditary claims. And so far as there
is such a thing as an ' * Americanisation of Eu-
rope,'' it is chiefly a slow yielding to this crude
logic of gold.
Science is a second powerful factor making for
equality, wherever the main ideas of democracy
have taken root. Certainly science does not ig-
nore the obvious facts of inequality in personal
endowment, but it sees good heredity to trans-
cend all class barriers, and that apparently only
by an initial toeing of the line can the natural in-
equalities of men be tested out.
Nothing in this connection could w^ell be more
dramatic, and more unconsciously American, than
an utterance of Mr. Arthur James Balfour (now
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 141
Earl Balfour) made at a great London demon-
stration which paved the way for various
measures of social legislation that, in the early
mneteen-hundreds, gave to the British working
classes for the first time some measure of real
security against the harsher shocks of fate. At
this meeting the Liberal Party was represented
by Sir John Simon, the Labor party by Mr.
Ramsay MacDonald, and the Conservatives, the
party of landed gentility and cultural prestige, by
Mr. Balfour, who happens to be, as regards
temperament and family inheritance, easily the
most typical aristocrat in England. For a gen-
eration he has been the foremost champion of
his order; nevertheless it was he who at this
historic meeting made the one and only revolu-
tionary plea — and he made it in the name of
science. Modern science, he said (I repeat his
thought out of a very vivid recollection), tells
us that at the time of birth and for some consider-
able period afterivards, no expert could tell the
difference, if any, betiveen the child of the woman
ivho lives in a palace and the child of the ivoman
who lives in a slum. If there is a difference to
be detected it will probably, on the average, be
due to the fact that the poorer mother was under-
fed.
Shades of Independence Hall ! One could hear
the voice of Jefferson, see those grim signers
around the table, thrill again to the slogan: All
men are created equal!
The speaker proceeded to his moral. Perhaps
the great differences in society were due less to
class heredity, if at all, than to further matters
of food, sunshine, care, and all the stimuli im-
142 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
pinging on the young brain from without. How
could we know whence ability, even genius,
might not arise? Was it not, then, a national
calamity that children should be born in destitu-
tion? Was it not a national duty to prevent the
deeper tragedies of the poor, and to be solicitous
that every child should have its chance of food,
sunshine, air, education?
IV.
Doubtless the premises were not very good
science. Science, presiding at birth, merely con-
fesses a present ignorance of innate qualities,
and a refusal of certain reliance on blue blood.
Blue blood, indeed! It is open to any member
of the unprivileged classes to appeal also to
science, and to urge that the argument cannot
stop where Lord Balfour left it. AMiat about
natural selection, sexual selection, the survival
of the fit? Hereditary aristocracies do not sur-
vive, fit or not. Even in America, the only group
that can well be compared with the aristocracies
of Europe, the *Hrue Americans" who play pro-
portionately the largest part in the national
**Who^s AVho," have a low birth-rate that en-
sures their extinction. The new stocks sweep
ahead, and the future belongs to them. Further-
more, amongst hereditary aristocracies, nature's
promptings to selection are frequently thrust
aside. Men and women choose one another from
all sorts of extraneous considerations, including
the respective number of hereditary acres and the
length of family bank accounts. But amongst
the so-called ** lower orders, '^ young men, how-
ever crudely and even unwittingly, do tend to con-
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 143
sider character. Will the girl be a helpmeet, a
homemakerl More than equally, acting from
deeper biological motives, the girl tends to select
also for character, wanting the man who will be
a ''prop," will be industrious, will not drink or
gamble away his wages at the week's end. The
exceptions, doubtless, are legion. Nevertheless,
why may it not happen, we can imagine some
pert son of Labor to ask, that (since we are
talking science) the finer stock, finer because more
often selected for character, is being produced,
not by my lords and ladies, but by the common
folk who must toil for their daily bread?
Certainly it is a startling fact, if we will face
it, that America — save for that remnant of old
stocks, intellectually fine, but selfish as to repro-
ducing themselves — is a peasant nation. The
mass of the populace are off the land of the Old
World. They or their immigrant parents or
grandparents were no aristocrats; only rarely
were they middle class; they belonged mainly to
the common folk. Let us first note this, even
if it should incidentally humble someone's person-
al or national pride. Then let us envisage the
American people — its tumultuous vitality, its in-
domitable energy, its unmatched resourcefulness,
its record of individual initiative, the purple
strand of romance in its character, its strangely
mingled idealism and common sense. Of a truth,
the argument from science is a dangerous one —
for aristocrats. The pendulum may swing too far.
But for the purpose of democracy, in so far
as it is interpreted to mean the right of all to
an equal start, the indistinguishable infant may
be considered argument enough.
144 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
In SO far! . . . But here we reach the heart
of our subject, and the purpose of this discus-
sion; which is to urge that the true message of
democracy, above all in pioneer America, cannot
be mere equality of opportunity, but must more
and more become concerned with equality of an-
other sort.
There can he no such thing as equal oppor-
tunity. One measure of the New World's youth
and inexperience is to be found in the persistent
assumption that equality exists or is conceivable
under this head. The equality that can be thus
provided is external and mechanical; the reality
of opportunity is an inward and spiritual thing.
If the boy next me in school is clever and I am
dull, let the school be excellent, it still merely
mocks me with the pretence that my chance of
learning is the same. The chance is primarily in
me, or not in me, and only secondarily in the
school books or the teacher. Unless, indeed, I
have the fortune to be so dull that a special
mechanism of books and teachers is set in motion
to draw out whatever of capacity I may chance to
have; and even this can never equalise my
powers. The clever fellow will still forge ahead ;
and it is good that he should. ^* Equality of
opportunity" is as though a row of fine shoes
were placed before a rank of shoeless men, in
order that they might all have the same oppor-
tunity of being well shod; but one has a wooden
leg, and another has no feet at all. How, then,
shall they all toe the line together?
That ** equality of opportunity'' does mean
something; does, indeed, profoundly differenti-
ate democratic from undemocratic nations, is un-
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 145
deniable. But its meaning is five-sixths a negative
one. The hereditary class barriers, privileges,
handicaps, of the more firmly hierarchised na-
tions are sought to be removed, and the resources
of nature and civilisation are placed openly, at
least in theory, at the disposal of all, in order
that natural inequality may be given the fullest
chance to display itself, to its o^\ti and the gen-
eral advantage. Hence the deepest interest of
the American people is really not at all in equal-
ity; it is centred, passionately centred, in in-
equality. Let all toe the line at twenty : at forty-
five who will be first ? It is Europe over again —
with a difference ; the chance of achieving a splen-
did inequality is held out apparently to all.
^* Equality of opportunity'' is an interpretation
that does not interpret. If the politics of democ-
racy have been venal, is it not because equality
of opportunity has set every man and every cor-
poration after a fortuned Why trouble to check
the local grafters, when my time is money!
Suppose I am fleeced, may it not cost more in
time and money and brains to protest effectively
than to pay? If Labor and Capital distrust and
seek to thwart one another with untold bitterness,
equality of opportunity, by its breakdown, is
snrely a main source of the conflict. Is not Gol-
conda at stake for the one, and his vaunted Ameri-
can chance of prosperity for the other? If every
generation lands its little plutocracy high and
dry, where its sons may meet only their like in
some *' gentlemen 's ' ' school, and its daughters
need not stain their fingers with any dirt more
vulgar than the scant grime of a high-priced auto-
mobile— why not? Surely the value of equal
146 ASPECTS OB^ ETHICAL RELIGION
opportunity must lie in some chance of escape—'
from equality! Equality of opportunity means
aristocracy put up to auction and sold, unguaran-
teed as to quality, to the highest bidder.
If there has long been a steady reaction against
democracy amongst thinking people in America,
toeing-the-line equality is, I should say, the
fundamental cause. If Europe, however ridden
by the twin devils of hereditary caste and mili-
tarism, and all but broken by them, has long
looked and still looks askance at American gov-
ernment, politics, big business, labor wars, child
exploitation, art, music and religion ; and foreign
Tory wiseacres have shaken their supercilious
heads at America's unkinged but boss-ruled,
caucus-ruled, dollar-ruled polity, and warned
against the spread of Americanism abroad, let
us say again that toeing-the-line equality is the
true '*jinx.'' The equality is largely an illusion
to begin with, and it has the actual reverse of
itself as the supremely engrossing object which
by its use may be achieved.
V.
Meanwhile, the intelligent stranger who escapes
from a mere parlor-car outlook and gets into
close touch with the American people, cannot
well make the mistake of supposing it to be really
dollar-mad. The American's dollar is not loved
for its owai sake; it is not a hoarded dollar, it is
a dollar to be spent, a sign of capacity, a means
to power. It is an index of expended energy, and
energy is a factor in human worth.
The intelligent stranger will also meet many
times a day with that touch of man-to-man re-
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 147
spect and expectation which is at least as charac-
teristic of America as the desire to ' ' make good. ' '
For light on these very diverse tendencies, as well
as on the strain of high idealism w^hich runs
through American life, let us turn aside for a
moment and take a rapid glance at certain trends
in the nation's literature.
In his story, *'A Far Country,'' Mr. Winston
Churchill envisages America as the Prodigal Son
among the nations. He places his young Ameri-
can, for his beginnings, in a Puritan family. The
colorless rigor of its spiritual life drives him out
into the garish world, where he amasses w^ealth,
but in the end his ovm materialism shocks him,
and he passes to a finer, less self -centered mood.
America, Mr. Churchill would tell us, revolted
from Puritanism, and in the revolt lost its soul,
w^hich only a new idealism will give back to it.
But this is hardly an adequate account of the
matter. The revolt from Puritanism took a high
form as w^ell as a low one. Let us recall the
early annals of American life. The Pilgrims and
Puritans brought with them from Europe cer-
tain doctrines about the essential vileness of the
human soul, the vanity of our life in the world, and
the impossibility of salvation hereafter except
by means of vicarious atonement and grace.
These doctrines w^ere not very liable to proof or
disproof by experience in the comfortable rural
districts from which, for the most part, the fore-
fathers of the nation came. But the religious
emigres and their children and grandchildren
found themselves up against unaccustomed ele-
mental things of life. They had to outface the
icy -winters of New England, to fight the abori-
148 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
gine, to uproot and plant the wilderness, to pusli
after the setting sun. At hard grips with Nature,
over a course of generations the nation's pioneers
gained three first-hand revelations which by no
means accorded with the harsh doctrines of the
early settlers. Man, "wdth his capacity for hercu-
lean labor, his loyalty to comrades, his devotion
to loved ones, his pluck, endurance, inventive
skill, was no longer easily to be thought of as
merely vile. Life, the passionate life of conquest
and settlement, had too great a zest to be only
vanity ; it was worth w^hile. And salvation surely
depended as much upon an inner development of
character as on external means of grace. Mean-
while, along the Southern littoral similar lessons
were being learnt against a religious background
of a less stern character, and a political back-
ground that owed more perhaps to Magna Charta
and less to the Bible.
When the time was ripe, the new faith in man
made possible the Revolution. The Declaration
is an embodiment of it. And presently it took
further heroic shape in the production of Neo-
Puritan literature.
For Neo-Puritan it was. The great New Eng-
landers who first gave America an individual
poetry and philosophy were Puritans — with a
difference. Their spirit was bathed in the atmos-
phere of American experience; the conquest of
the wilderness spoke its message through them.
They had a passionate belief in this present
life. Certainly, if other-worldliness gave way in
their writings to a new worldliness, this was of
no sybaritic order. It was strenuous, and almost
austere. Yet nothing about it was more remark-
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 149
able than its insistence on the immediate worth
of life. Some Americans have said of America
that she is the Land of the Future, and the asser-
tion is true and thrilling. Yet it must be qualified
in the terms of what other Americans, or Ameri-
cans in another mood, have said. Longfellow, it
may be true, was not a poet's poet. But no verso
in the English tongue has so echoed around the
world, so electrified countless thousands of Eng-
lish-speaking youth, as this :
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant;
Let the dead past bury its dead ;
Act, act in the Jiving present,
Heart within, and God o'erhead !
that is, sure of your own intrinsic worth, and
that the eternal order of things is not against
you, but on your side. Or there was the Quaker
T\Tiittier :
The Present, the Present is all tlioii hast
For thy sure possessinf;^ ;
Like the patriarch's angel, hold it fast
Till it give its blessing.
These were deeply religious Americans, direct
heirs in time, place and moral spirit of the men
and women of Plymouth Rock. There is no alloy
of materialism in them, and no declension from
the Hebrew-Christian love of God. But what a
far cry from the Genevan gloom of Jonathan Ed-
wards ! And they were typical.
America had spent its forty days and nights
in the wilderness, struggling with bodily strength
as well as with power of soul; and when it had
well emerged these men spoke its new word.
Emerson spoke it. Emerson has been judged a
150 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
cold intellectualist — by those who have not felt
the white heat of the mystical experience that
tempered his soul to flashing steel. ''Trust thy-
seK!" he cried; and America and Europe rang
with it. To such of the old Puritanism as re-
mained (and still remains, dying hardty) it was
the bottom depth of blasphemy. Trust God,
rather! But for Emerson it was no other thing.
It was God lost in the skies and rediscovered in
the heart of man. He said ''whim''; but he did
not mean whim; he meant that man, seeking to
be true to his inmost self, was most sure thereby
to be true to the eternal order of things. The
"Divinity Address,'' "Nature," " Self -Reliance, "
scandalised the conventional religious world of
his day, as the sermons of Jesus scandalised
Nazareth. But their thought, at first or second
hand, has soaked into the fabric of religion and
philosophy and helped immeasurably to liberalise
and democratise it. Only because Americans are
ordinarily so blind to the worth of the interpre-
ters of their own spirit, and fasten their eyes on
the ends of the literary earth, do they fail to be
commonly aware that for fifty years, through
their Emerson and his New England confreres,
American spiritual experience has been a teacher
of the world. They read and love Maeterlinck
and do not realise that whatever is helpful in
him is but Emersonian gold — beaten out flat.
They delight in Shaw, and do not see that
"Fanny's First Play" is but a dramatisation
(and incidentally a vulgarisation) of the passage:
"Say to them, 0 father, 0 mother, 0 wife, 0
brother, 0 friend, I have lived with you after ap-
pearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 151
truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward
I obey no law less than the eternal law!'' Or they
read Nietzsche — can they find a nobler greatness
in the tortured spirit of the oppressed Pole, seek-
ing, however adventurously, mechanisms of com-
pensation and escape, than in the serene splendors
of the free American? Or Bergson, — have they
forgotten, or never read, that most thrilling pass-
age of all in the ^'Self-Reliance:'' '*And we are
now men, and not minors or invalids in a pro-
tected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolu-
tion, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obey-
ing the Almighty Eifort and advancing on Chaos
and the Dark"?
Advanchig on Chaos and the Dark! Now, there
may be much difference between Bergson 's plea
that we can dream pragmatic dreams and weave
the future out of them and Emerson's faith in an
immutable order that we may discover and em-
body. But the mood of emancipation from
fate, from predestination, the mood of proud con-
fidence in the worth of human intelligence and hu-
man love, is the mood of both. And if Bergson 's
denial of a foredoomed future is in revolt against
machine-science, and towards a new expression of
France's eternal youth, Emerson's valiant chal-
lenge of Chaos and the Dark vibrated with the
tones of eight generations of American pioneers.
VI.
Which brings us by an inevitable transition to
Whitman, and will enable our argument presently
to come full circle. * ' Pioneers, 0 Pioneers ! ' ' was
one great motif of his song. But there was an-
other. The slogan, All men are created equal,
152 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
made a new, more mystic and more passionate
appearance in Whitman's bursts of song.
Many a man who, like the present writer, has
come from a country whose best traditions of
thought and practice have had a great share in
the making of America, and who has faced the
challenge of a new citizenship, must have shrunk
hesitantly from the change. He might well feel
that he carried over with him from his older
loyalty much that was priceless in its human
worth; but must he not, to be content, find this
matched by something of at least equal worth in
the new tradition that adopted him as a son? Let
us suppose that he found to be gone the burden
of an hereditary aristocracy accepted according
to its own conceit by the plain people who could
never rise into it ; he might yet find himself ask-
ing, fairly or unfairly, Is American freedom, how-
ever exhilarating, only a negative thing — is
American equality no more, in the end, than the
equal right, and duty, to achieve if one can, in
one's own generation, a temporary aristocracy,
without the grace and even the remaining vestiges
of nohlesse oblige which characterised the old?
He might find himself reading, as I did, Mrs.
Wharton, Mrs. Canfield Fisher, Professor Her-
rick and Mr. Churchill, with their constant in-
sistence on the ** problem of the American marri-
age,'' and the soul-destroying effect both on
husbands and wives of the race for wealth, power
and social prestige. He might miss the fact that
these also were Neo-Puritans, representative not
of America exultant but of America protestant,
ashamed, craving to save her soul; as he might
miss it also if, reading the younger rebels of our
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 153
immediate day and jarred by their morbidities,
perversities and bitternesses, he did not get
shadowy glimpses of Plymouth Rock looming in
the national background of these as well. The
moral uncomf ortableness of the old Puritanism is
in them, if not its faith and hope.
But, let us hope, he would turn for relief to the
older literature. A nation's poets, visionaries,
historians, are interpreters of her soul. He
would go to Emerson, Thoreau, Parkman. Per-
haps the Parkman heroes would smack too much
for him of the Odyssey; perhaps even Emerson's
doctrine would seem to make too much for hero-
ism alone. True, he would find that Holmes had
written the most touching American song (is it
not?) of his time:
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers shimber, —
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And nois}' fame is proud to win them;
Alas, for those who never sing,
But die with all their music in them !
But he would find this sad, not tonic. And it
concerns the dead. Truly it is the voice of
democracy, but harping still on the string of
capacity — these dead men and women were
village Hampdens, mute inglorious Miltons, whom
opportunity, unequalised, had passed by. What
of those who have not sounded the depths of
tragedy, or burned with unexpressed poetic fire?
But let our neophyte turn, perhaps heartsick,
to the pagan pages of Whitman, hoping that
154 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
possibly the soul of America had found some
profounder depth for its abiding even in this un-
couth and sinful son of its loins. Indeed, he
would discover the American message more
passionately struggling for expression there :
Painters have painted their swarming groups,
and the center figure of all,
From the head of the center figiire spreading a
nimbus of gold-colored light.
Bnt I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head
T^'ithout its nimbus of gold-colored light.
From my hand, from the brain of every man and
woman it streams effulgently forever.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you,
that you be my poem.
I will leave all and come and make the hymns
of you.
Xone has understood you, but I understand you.
Xnne has done justice to yon, you have not done
justice to yourself.
N'one but has found you imperfect; T only find
no imperfection in you.
Xone but would subordinate you; I only am he
who will never consent to subordinate you.
I only am he who places over you no master,
owner, better, God, beyond what waits in-
trinsically in yourself.
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman,
but as good is in j-ou,
^To pluck, no endurance in others, but as good
is in you.
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God,
sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of
3'ou.^
*The lines are given as rearranged to be sung as a canticle,
In Social Worship, vol. 2. Edited by Stanton Colt and Charles
Kennedy Scott.
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 155
After Emerson, Whitman, Here is a poetic
voice even more racy of the American soil, and
of all the blood and tears fallen upon it. The
wilderness which yielded up to those who conquer-
ed it a new gospel of trust in man, gave also the
vision which, however crude and indefinite, flood-
ed Whitman's soul; the vision of the worth not
only of Man but of all men. He saw a halo sur-
rounding every head. Not because he fled the
crowd and merely dreamed about it; on the con-
trary, he loved the crowd; he delighted to rub
shoulders with the Manhattan hordes; he did a
nurse's chores in the hospital camps of the Civil
War. He knew men; yet he saw the nimbus.
Now, if the interpretation here essayed is right,
to be an American spiritually, to be an American
in a highly distinctive sense, should be to escape
from exclusiveness, from aristocratic pride of
\^irth or race, from social sets and cliques and re-
Jigious sectarianism, insofar as the "holier than
thou" spirit has possessed them, and to seek to
see the nimbus of gold-colored light surrounding
every head. Equality, the '^created" equality
of the Declaration, must finally be interpreted to
mean this, or there is nothing in it to save its
life; it is only another passing convention, an
illusion, a sham.
But what is this nimbus, and how shall we see
it? How shall we render it visible to the unsee-
ing of our day? For clearly no such sign can
satisfy if it is not so revealed that the fire of it
brands the merely birth-proud aristocrat, or the
upstart over-conscious of his superior mts, or the
exploiter of the sweat of other men's brows, the
battener on the toils of underpaid women and
156 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
children, the devourer of widows' houses, with or
without long prayers. To such a one the heart's
cry of Whitman, ' ' Whoever you are — ! " is but
sentimental blather. There is no Platonic com-
mon sense in it ; surely the man raves ?
The doctrine, obviously, has to be rationalised.
If it is to be so stated that it can be put tellingly
before the face of every class or caste that seeks
to raise its head, not into a realm of finer service,
where it might well be gladly acknowledged, but
into ostentation and exclusiveness, it must be
made so patent that it is difficult without shame
to deny it. Poetry alone will not do.
Now, the distinction of the revered and beloved
Leader in whose honor these essays have been
assembled lies first, surely, in the fact that
through him, and the Societies founded by him,
the voice of America has again spoken, with a
new and greater clarity and certainty. Out of the
heart of democracy has again come an interpreta-
tion, and a deeper one, of itself. What the Con-
tinental Congress declared by way of trouncing
Lord North and King George III, what Whitman
felt after with a mysticism to which he could give
only a vague and barely intelligible form (al-
though it thrills us), the founder of the first
Ethical Society saw with a sharpness and fulness
which his predecessors in the spiritual under-
standing of democracy had not attained. He
fastened on two immediate facts; — first, that
while equality does not and cannot exist intellectu-
ally, physically, aesthetically, and it would be ab-
surd to assume it, equality can be postulated and
ought to be postulated on the moral plane, which
every consideration relative to the past, present
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 157
or future of man confirms — if there be need of
such confirmation — as being the highest plane.*
And, secondly, that morality fully conscious of it-
self is expressed in a dynamic attitude towards
the web of human relations. Equality may not —
may never be — achieved morally in tliis our
world. But the will to righteousness cannot be
denied as a potential factor in any man, and to
postulate its potentiality in all and seek to elicit
it in all is the adventure of adventures, whether
for individuals, or social groups, or nations. Let
every man be respected first because he is an
actual or potential moral being; and only in the
second place let him be admired or appreciated
because of his heredity, his brains or his culture.
But let it be a dynamic respect, that challenges,
expects, educates, organises, and with endless
patience seeks to bring unawakened moral beings
to a spiritual birth.
vn.
Here, then, should be the key to rationalising
the American assertion of human equality, so that
it may become eternally potent, and be a means
to the spiritualising of democracy throughout the
world. On the moral plane we can postulate all
men as potentially equals.
^That, if we postulate the plane of moral ideals and purposes
as being the highest, this must in the end be justified meta-
physically, goes without saying. Professor Adler has, himself,
of course, made profoundly important contributions in this
respect. But my purpose here is simply to present the view
that the attitude of the Ethical Societies is in the line of the
American tradition, in their insistence on faith in Man, on the
supreme worth of moral personality, and on the dynamic call
of the modern conscience to further the knowledge, love and
practice of the right.
158 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
But let US at once seek to meet the objection
that flashes up at the sight of such a doctrine:
Surely inequality is as patent on the moral plane
as on any other, and as inevitable, and there is
such a thing as moral genius ?
But what, in terms of moral being, is morality!
Is it not the will to do disinterestedly what one
conceives to be the right thing in this or that
group of circumstances? It is, shall we say, the
will to tell the truth and shame the devil. It is
the will to keep one's hands out of one's neigh-
bor's pockets. It is the will to give a clean vote
at an election. It is the will to be a faithful hus-
band, wife, parent, worker, employer, friend. Cer-
tainly the code grows as civilisation advances,
and our relations become at once more complex
and more understood. But, at bottom, morality
is not a matter of intellectual capacity, or expert
knowledge, or even subtle intuitions ; it is a matter
of the disinterested bent of the will. Moral genius
is genius only in so far as to the good will may
be added exceptional intellectual capacity, sympa-
thy, imagination, education, experience of men
and affairs ; but these are not the good will itself.
And Immanuel Kant was so far right; there is
nothing higher than the good will. The man who
has refused a bribe, curbed a passion in order
that he may harm neither others nor himself,
told the truth at a cost because he disinterestedly
prefers the right rather than his own comfort or
profit, has achieved the highest. In the same cir-
cumstances, no God Almighty, in so far as he was
morally good, could or would have willed more
rightly than he.
The moral life, in the utter simplicity of its
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 169
essential disinterestedness, is one life. The
street-sweeper and the archbishop, in so far as
they attain unselfish devotion to their respective
spheres of duty, are one. The honest President
of the United States and the honest cobbler of
his shoes, if their honesty as President or cobbler
is not for some '^best policy ^s'* sake, but for its
ovm sake, are brothers in the highest. And only
when we have equally respected them for it,
recognising that it is and should be the highest
reverence Ave can pay them, are we justified in
according them any difference of regard based on
less important facts.
The door of the plane of honesty and unselfish-
ness is open to all. Furthermore, to the end of
a man's life, we have no right to say of him that
not by any concatenation of circumstances can he
be brought to will the good and not evil. All true
religion, after all, except in so far as it may
have fallen into the pit of predestinarianism, is
one or another way of asserting this very thing
— or there is no excuse for its propaganda. But
it is only too true that a man cannot save him-
self; the responsibility of salvation is upon us
all. Even though with all our education, our ex-
hortation, our pleading, our social betterment and
our personal helpfulness, we should not have
brought the liar to the point where he will turn
and tell the truth because it is the truth, nor per-
suaded the thief to cease to steal because it is
wrong to steal, nor caused the sweater or rack-
renter to blush mth shame, nor w^on the captain
of industry to see that his vocation must be not
only the making of steel rails or what not but
equally the making of men, — it is not that he is
160 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
proved incapable of the will to righteousness ; we
can rightly say only that, alas! we have not yet
discovered the avenue to his soul. The possibil-
ity of awakening him is somehow there ; perhaps
we have failed because we secretly doubted; we
did not see the nimbus. Besides, he was born into
a democracy that we have not spiritualised, a
democracy that puts intelligence, wit, shrewdness
lirst, giving to these lesser qualities the highest
rewards and considerations, and only as a matter
of supererogation respecting men as men ; that is
to say, as beings capable of moral purpose and
Vvdll. A democracy that will be spiritualised (and
therefore will never damn souls, but only save
them) will be one, progressively worked towards,
in which it will not be a matter of ^ treating all
men as equal in order to find out who are the
best," but in which, while inequality and dissimi-
larity are given the full play to which they are
entitled, and which is necessary to richness of
the general life, the highest aim will be progres-
sively to make actual, through a right education,
a right play of motives, a right reverence for
personality, the potential equality on the moral
plane which it has come to recognise as its true
foundation.
vm.
* ' There is no endowment in man or woman that
is not tallied in you. There is no virtue, no
beauty, in man or woman but as good is in you."
If it is not the true spirit of democracy which is
figured in these poetic terms, then has America
as yet no message. But how could democracy
more greatly express itself (whether or not we
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 161
take AVhitman to mean this by his triumphant
claim) than by seeing in every man and woman
the potentiality of admission into the realm of
the highest?
The democracy of opportunity to win monetary
reward and social prestige may unloose the ener-
gies of the strong ; but for the less gifted and the
self -disparaging its trumpet call has a merciless
sound. Whereas the democracy of the will-to-
righteousness, though it also can on occasion be
terrible, keeps its wrath rather for ruthless deal-
ing by the strong. To the humble it brings not
fear, but self-respect.
Is it some moral and physical starveling,
crushed by commonplaceness ? He hears the tale
of Lincoln, the ''Great Heart"; of his noble
statecraft, his wise solicitude both for White and
Negro, his tireless devotion to duty, his pity, his
sacrifice. Was not this wonderful personality in
a world apart? Could any but elect souls breathe
the same spiritual air? But the nobody has felt
the thrill of the story; his blood has danced at
the tale of Lincoln's moral strenuousness, his eyes
have moistened at the mention of the endless
mercies of the man! With every stirring of his
owTi better feelings he has shared in the hero's
life. Even in the humility that has overwhelmed
him at the thought of the greatness of Lincoln, he
has entered into Lincoln's ovm mood of abase-
ment in the presence of his ideals. He has entered
Lincoln's world, shared his will, achieved awhile
moral disinterestedness, has felt, had he heen
Lincoln, even thus and thus would he have done.
Could Lincoln but meet him and read his heart,
162 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
would he not in utter democratic fellowship grasp
his hand?
Or is it some poor little woman who grinds
out her days in a third-rate department store,
some worm that has never turned? She hears
of the great women of the world. There was
Susan Anthony, who stood night after night be-
fore rough and angry audiences to plead the cause
of the slave, while the sheriff sat beside her with
a gun across his knee. Or Florence Nightingale ;
she hears how the great Englishwoman may in-
deed, once in a while, have carried a lamp, and
have had her shadow kissed by some wounded
man as she passed by. But the real daily spirit
of this master w^oman, this consummate leader
and organizer (she is further told), was rather
that which animated her when the British Govern-
ment failed to send by the same boat the orders
to deliver to her the necessary stores, and rou-
tine-bound officers ordered her to await the next
ship. For then she drew up her nurses in mili-
tary array, sent for an axe, marched to the place
where the stores were held, and with her own
hands broke down the door. Here, surely, was
genius, moral genius? Does our department-
store slave feel but the more of a worm at the
tale of so valiant and wise a deed? Perhaps so.
But the feeling is illusory. She too has experien-
ced the thrill. She has wdlled the action, marched
with Florence Nightingale, grasped with her the
fateful axe and helped to strike the blow. She
has entered the same sphere, lived awhile on the
same plane. Such is the mystic oneness of the
spiritual life that for awhile she has been Florence
Nightingale herself. She may drop back to the
"ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL" 163
old heartbreaking world of nonentity, but that is
because, in our still so often inhuman social
economy, we provide her with no better en-
couragement. That she could be for the precious
moment filled with fire and tears at the brave
story proves her intrinsic sameness; proves that
the sacred moral personality, however imprisoned,
is there. She has neither Florence Nightingale's
brains, nor her peculiar culture, nor her money
and social position, nor her opportunities. But
she can enter into her will ; she too is human, and
to be human is to belong to the fundamental
democracy.
This essay began by indicating an antithesis
between Plato and the American Fathers. It
would be both foolish and unjust to close with-
out saying that the antithesis is, of course, only
in part real. Plato is right, and Jefferson is
right, in so far as we must recognise both Equal-
ity and Inequality as factors to be legislated for
in the constitution and organisation of a genuine-
ly righteous State. But Inequality has already
had a long and terrible day in the world ; it needs
no advocate. That all men belong in a common
brotherhood of the spirit may be expressed in
one or another halting form at one or another
religious altar ; but the idea has yet to enter into
the warp and woof of our life. When, if ever, it
does, then the superiorities of some men's men-
tal gifts will take their place, not primarily as a
means to escape from the multitude, but as a
means gladly used towards the quickening of the
lives of all.
Meanwhile, no man need wait for opportunity
164 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
to live in the light of the principle that the most
essential quality of humanity is in the moral will.
If he has the true spirit of democracy, he will
assume the potentiality of right willing no less
in others than in himself. He will pay everyone
the respect of untiring moral hope, expectation,
and demand. Hence, he will not enslave any,
nor despoil any, nor give himself birth-proud
or purse-proud airs towards any; and he will
seek less to be served than to serve.
For he will know that otherwise it may happen
on some day of humiliation that he shall see the
nimbus of gold-colored light about some despised
and rejected head, so that his eyes are cast down
because of the glory, and his face is mantled with
scarlet shame.
How Far is Art an Aid
to Religion?
By PERCIYAL CHUBB.
I.
PERHAPS THE THESIS of this paper may
best be introduced by an illustration. Tlie
youth of whom my story tells was a youth of
Quaker ancestry who developed a great love of
beauty which led him to the study and practice
of painting. Enabled at last to make a pilgrim-
age to Europe, he went straight to Venice by
way of Genoa. There he stood in the great
Piazza of crowded memories, facing the strange
Byzantine sanctuary of St. Mark. He entered,
wandered slowly about, submitting himself to
first impressions, felt overwhelmed by the wealth
of the treasure, and paused at the entrance for
a final glance at the whole: ^'This a place of
worship ! " he asked himself. ' ' No ! Impossible I
There is too much beauty here. Worship could
begin for me only when I closed my eyes to it.
Even then I should feel its disturbing presence.
Give me a simple cloister for worship: let me
stray here for beauty."
He came of a family of cultivated Quakers who
lived in an almost sumptuous home amid beauti-
ful surroundings of garden and woodland. His
father continued Simday morning attendance at
166 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
the old meeting-house; and the lad had often ac-
companied him — with what result he now began
to realize. Unconsciously there had gro^Mi in him
something of an esthetic feeling for the austere,
clean plainness of the raftered hall, in associa-
tion with the impressive and mysterious ritual of
silence. This ostentation of "beauty was like a
noise across that spiritual reticence.
Now he was confronted by a great historic fact
which plunged him into skeptical reflection, —
the fact of the intimate and long association of
religion with art, and the axiom implied in it,
that the more beauty in worship, the better. All
the great cathedrals he would see would carry the
same message ; they would all have the same dis-
quieting effect upon him. They would preach to
him a gospel of beauty. What had that to do
with religion, — a religion of inwardness, — of the
Inner Light illuminating the sanctuary of the
mind ?
He was thrown back upon the intimacies of his
Quaker nurture. After all, what connection was
there between all this pomp — all these intrica-
cies of symbol, these visualizations of dogma —
and the simplicities of the Gospel narratives upon
which he had been reared? Did not all this
spectacle mean distraction, dissipation, dilution?
Tt would for him. His mind took the offensive.
Perhaps here was the explanation of the impotence
of religion in the face of the Great War, — aye,
and of the Greater War on Social Wrong, — its
lack of ethical earnestness? It was too external,
too heavily embroidered. Eitual and the etiquette
of religion had usurped the place of righteous-
ness,— of love of one's neighbor, of justice and
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 167
mercy, of peace and goodwill. Worship had be-
come a form of sentimental and sensuous indul-
gence. He would keep the distinction clear. He
would exploit and absorb all this beauty, he would
treat it as best he could with a sympathetic rever-
ence and in its historical setting; but he would
not be deluded by the notion that it was an aid to
a religion of the spirit. Was he not right in
attributing a certain spiritual vulgarity to this
display? Eeligion was overdressed.
n.
We must break with our illustration; but not
without remarking that it does not cover the
larger issue we have to deal with. Suppose that
lad had entered St. Mark's during service; sup-
pose he had been musically sensitive and edu-
cated. His ears would have been wooed as weU
as his eyes. More than that, his sense of smell
would have been stirred by the incense; and his
dramatic interest appealed to by the ceremonial
of the Mass. His senses assailed thus, what
chance would the spirit have to be ** religious ** ?
Or is religion, is worship, this complexus of sense-
appeal? The answer here is to be, No; but this
negative must be carefully guarded against some
confusions and misunderstandings which may
easily lead us astray.
And the first step toward clearness is to warn
that we are not dealing with the place of beauty
in life. We are not putting beauty under sus-
picion as ministering to the nobler needs of living.
As to that, the postulate will hold, — the more,
the better. But as to its association with re-
ligion, so that religion may play its distinctive
168 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
part in energizing tlie spirit to maintain and de-
velop right relationships witli JMan and the cos-
mos,— that is another matter.
As an imderstanding of terms, especially of the
word ** religion,*' is essential, let me say that I
shall assume here that ** religion'* is primarily
the conquest of a Way of Life (^'I am the Way"),
— life in its totality. It is a clarification and a
synthesis of ways of behavior which begets loyal-
ty to principles of conduct. It is therefore at
bottom the discipline and formation of the char-
acter (ethos) which determines conduct. To **do"
right, one must *^be" right. To put it in an-
other way, — we face the ultimate energy of life in
the ethical personality. The handling of person-
ality so that an Art of Life may be conquered is
the business of religion ; and this Art will compre-
hend all the forces and factors involved in the
harmonious functioning of our hmnan powers in
relation to our total environment; the result to
be aimed at being a harmonious society of de-
veloping human personalities. In this endeavor
every human interest and endowment will count
and be co-operant, — our urge toward Truth and
Knowledge, Justice and Mercy, Beauty and Ex-
cellence, Order and Proportion.
The question before us, therefore, is as to the
role which beauty should play in the attempt to
accomplish this distinctively religious synthesis;
to achieve this spiritual wholeness; to effect this
integrity or integration of such diverse claims
and interests and activities. It is a work of the
mind, — this holding together and fusing of a
variety of elements in the light and warmth of
an ideal of human perfection. It is a task for the
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 169
social self, bent on a social salvation. Of course
there is no other self and no other kind of salva-
tion in a social world, — the individual being a
member of a society of selves whose common
rational nature involves a Common Good and the
realization of that '* Beloved Community'^ (to use
Royce's phrase) which shall satisfy the essential-
ly social nature of Man.
m.
With this brief intimation of the point of view
(raising many controversial points, which cannot
here be gone into), let us return to our thesis, and
to the assumption already referred to, namely,
that the wider and closer the association of beauty
with religion (not life), the better. *'Get all the
beauty possible into your churches and your ritu-
al, and thereby vitalize and heighten your wor-
ship,^'— such is the position I am going to
contest. It is the key-note of a recent volume
which brought my mind to boiling-point, and led
me to come again to close quarters with this prob-
lem as it concerns a new-born movement like the
Ethical Movement, which must reckon with the
powerful urge toward beauty in shaping its
course, — building its homes, planning its services,
educating its young.
The volume referred to is ^^Art and Religion,'*
by Von Ogden Vogt (Yale University Press) ;
a comely volume which it is a pleasure to handle,
written in a broad and liberal temper by the
pastor of a Congregational Church in Chicago who
welcomes the many signs of a renascence of
beauty in the Protestant churches, some of which
signs are cited in a dozen or more striking illus-
170 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
trations. Mr. Vogt would speed the new age of
recovered beauty in worship; but frankly and
finely says at the outset (p. 3), *'We cannot enter
the new age until the old churches give up their
concepts of an authoritative faith *once delivered
to the saints,' and freely accept the spirit of
modernism.''
For this author ''the art of worship is the all-
comprehending art" (p. 4) ; it is *Hhe combination
of all the arts; the experience of worship is the
consummation of all experience, whether of
beauty or of goodness or of truth" (p. 6.). The
appeal is to history. Religion and Art were one
originally: ''Religion has been historically the
great fountain source of art, and the art of
worship the mother of all arts" (p. 18). Basing
religion "upon a definite intellectual faith in the
oneness of reality" (p. 24), he describes it as "joy
and exuberant abundance of life. It is that ex-
jjerience beyond thinking and doing which en-
gages all the faculties in the highest spiritual ad-
venture" (p. 25). Or again, "Religion says. Be
a lover of Life as a whole, God 's Life ; love God.
There is a profound identity of attitude between
these two," — that is. Art and Religion (p. 27).
This is as thorough-going a statement of the
position I would combat as could be asked for the
purposes of this discussion. I must not pretend to
conduct it altogether impersonally. I am going to
speak out of a life-long experience, and not mere-
ly out of an intellectual conclusion. My own nur-
ture in the Church of England (which brought
me very close in an impressionable boyhood to
the very heart of its temperate estheticism by
three memorable years as a chorister in a beauti-
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 171
ful London church) should enable me to deal with
this attitude understandingly. I was bred in it;
but I have slowly growTi away from it until I
have become almost Quaker-minded; — not as a
matter of logic or theory under the influence of
modern ethics and esthetics (which I shall con-
sider presently), but as a much deeper matter of
personal experience and development. However,
this is to be no argumentum ad hominem. I have
come to see, I think, the disastrous fallacies, histor-
ical and psychological, which underlie the atti-
tude: and, I should add, the disastrous conse-
quences of it. My contention will be that this
vague blending of all values in religion, as ex-
pressed in the foregoing quotations, is neither
historically justified nor psychologically sound.
It lands us in a mysticism of misty sentimental-
ity which saps the intellectual vigor and practical
effectiveness of religion and puts ethical values in
shadow, — delicate values as well as robust ones.
I append these words because I have no sympathy
mth the sledge-hammer moralism which many
critics seem to confuse with a religion of ethics.
IV.
First of all, the historical generalization is too
facile and undiscriminating. It takes a leap over
the greatest religious inheritance of Christendom,
the Hebraic. Strange oversight! For the re-
ligiously-gifted Hebrew race there decidedly was
not **a profound identity of attitude,'^ but an
antagonism between the two attitudes. We must
forget our Plato for a while, and turn to our
Amos, and later to our Paul.
Let the historian of Art, Elie Faure, speak to
172 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
US on this point. With the Hebraic contribution
to history in mind, he postulates a rivalry rather
than a fundamental harmony in our human make-
up, based on our dual nature, — body and soul,
sense and spirit; and he traces the alternating
ascendency of one and the other in history. This
friction drives at the very core of the religious
problem. Matthew Arnold saw that problem in
the difficulty of harmonizing what he called the
Hebraic and the Hellenic sides of human nature ;
and Faure also sees it from this general angle.
For him, too, the solution lies in harmonizing
**our animality," w^hich, he says, "is sacred,"
with "our reason, which is also sacred." Now
this harmony was jarred w^hen the first great
ethical religions appeared. (He is loose and
sweeping in his language, surely, — speaking as
if there were really a primal or pre-existing
"harmony"; but let that pass now.) Thus He-
braism brought into the very different occidental
world of a materialized and idolatrous civilization
the imposing and sterile spirit of the desert soli-
tudes. It feared and fought the "animality" of
Babylonian, Canaanite and Egyptian ritualism.
The Hebrews hated and condemned form, — the
graven image and all encouragements to idolatry.
Art played little part in their life. The^' and
their religion survive. Egypt survives in her
shells of sepulchral magnificence. Life is more
than raiment, however splendid. And righteous-
ness is more than ritual.
According to Faure, in order that this tri-
umphant Hebraic austerity might be changed,
there was needed a contact with a sunnier, blither
world, — Europe, with its bays, mountains, fertile
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 173
plains and vivifying air. It took ten centuries oi
struggle before the peoples of Europe tore them-
selves free from the powerful embrace of the
Semitic idea (I use largely the language of the
translation of **The History of Art"). And
then the pendulum swings : the day of tlie sway of
external beauty arrives, and we reach the pagan
Renaissance, — and the corruption of excess.
There is no harmony; there is inevitable battle.
The Reformation had to come — or ruin. And
battle there continues to be today between, at the
one extreme, a flabby sentimentalism of estheti-
cism — and at the other a coarse insensitiveness
to beauty; or, avoiding extremes, between the
vanity of an external monumentalism, based on an
infatuation for size, which will build ' ^ the biggest
and costliest cathedral yet," — in New York, in
Washington, — and the cry for an inwardness
which demands a transforming movement of sym-
pathy, of justice, of fineness and nobility mani-
fested in business, politics and social affairs.
Buddhism illustrates, in Faure's view, a similar
conflict and alternation. The Buddha and his
teaching stand in the same relation to reassertive
Brahmanism as the Christ and his teaching stand
in relation to ecclesiastical Christianity; only in
the former instance it took but seven or eight
centuries for the pendulum to swing. The great
Emperor Asoka, yielding to the long-suppressed
demand for art or the sensuous element in re-
ligion, caused or allowed some eighty thousand
temples- to be built in commemoration of a man
who had never spoken of the gods ! Astounding
paradox! Hear this: **From the depths of the
Indian nature rose the materialistic mysticism to
174 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
stifle all the desires for humanity aroused by
Buddhism." The two could not live together —
would not harmonize. As well try to harmonize
the simple gospel of Jesus and the sophisticated
creeds of the Councils ; the outdoor preaching of
the Nazarene on the hillside of Galilee and all this
elaborate, theatricised ceremonial of '' divine
worship" under Peter's dome!
It is this aspect of history which is lost sight
of by Mr. Vogt, as it is more conspicuously by
the estheticians, — sjTnbolists and ritualists like
Mr. Cram, who are lost in the mere upholstering
and vestmenting of religion. The ethical soul
of religion, the ** beauty of holiness," languishes;
the beauty unbeheld — ''seen only mth the eyes
of the mind" — is submerged. We have a milli-
nercd masqiierade instead of an earnest, illumin-
ated iuAvardness which inspires men to active
righteousness and urges them to build a social
world whose beauty is the sign of spiritual health,
of truth and justice and kindness in daily life.
Yes, we palter with externalism, show and per-
fumery, when we should be heeding the voice,
''Wash you, make you clean! — the inside of the
cup, — cleansed homes and shops and factories
and marts and mines — cleansed politics and
business!" No! we prefer to be busy with our
toileting !
What we need is more beauty in life, not in
the sanctuary; not more cathedrals, but more
people's homes and dwellings; not more Sunday
retreats from the world, but more week-day
centers of a dignified and gracious community life,
in ample parks, noble civic centers and such
agencies. Ten times ten millions for that !
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 175
Let me leave this outbreak of feeling as it
stands, even though it interrupt the course of the
argument. Just two more sentences from Faure
should be added, in closing this reaction to Mr.
Vogt's reading of history, which shows that re-
ligion has meant not the alliance of art and
etliics, but rather the renewed conflict of these, —
the difficulty of achieving a proper union, the
danger of the eclipse of a real religiou of the
spirit by an appeal to the senses. As Faure puts
it, when the image of Sakyamuni himself ap-
peared in the temples, his teaching was forgotten,
and an instinctive sensualism overcame the moral
needs. *'What did it matter? The hosts of India
needed forms to love."
There we have it; in India, as in Europe, re-
version to *' forms, '^ to the religion of ritualism
and sacerdotalism, — eye-mindedness, and, with
it, magic and miracle, priestcraft and authority;
and a materialistic as opposed to a poetic and
imaginative mysticism. Let it be reiterated that
we are not here antagonizing the love of ' ' forms * '
as such; we are not antagonizing the love of
beauty in any of its manifestations. What is
in dispute is the character and extent of the
alliance of this hunger for beauty in life and in
all the arts and crafts, with religion conceived
of as the conquest of the most difficult of all
arts, the art of living together, with its funda-
mental ethical tasks, — its girding of the loins
to bring the spirit and the technic of truth and
justice and kindness, the spirit of reverence for
man and his social life, into all the relations of
human beings. Nor is the argument here that
there should be no association of beauty with
176 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
religion. The question is as to how far the ad-
mixture can go without weakening the spiritual
and ethical dominion of religion and its one clear
call to rightness of living in all the relations of
life, industrial, political and social, as well as
domestic and personal.
V.
And now, postponing some further deductions
from the conclusions to be dra^n from history,
let us proceed to the second half of the argument,
that which has to do with what we may call the
psychology of synthesis.
When we try to grapple with the synthesis of
impressions which pour in upon one as one wor-
ships in a beautiful and ornate church, the ques-
tion arises as to how many streams of impres-
sion the mind can attend to and fuse. There are
bits of music, — say, stretches in Beethoven *s
seventh symphony — which of themselves fill the
cup of receptivity to the brim. So are there in
a more complex work of art, like Wagner's
**Meistersinger.'' As one listens to the all-
absorbing Prelude with full attention, it is as if
one were being distracted when the curtain rises
and one's attention is asked for other almost
equally fascinating impressions. The ear must
now divide with the eye; and soon the dramatic
action and the crowding historical memories of
the Nuremberg of Sachs and Diirer's time press
also for inclusion. I, for one, am undone. I
cannot compass this range of appeal. I cannot
s^Tithesize the impressions. They must be dulled
down to a blur before there can be any totality
of effect. I may rebel, close my eyes, choose the
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 177
music, and let the rest fall away. And this em-
barrassment is felt in proportion to one's sensi-
tiveness to each art-medium and one's education
in each of the arts involved.
The same is true of elaborate worship in a
church. *' Listen!" cries the anthem; and if you
are versed in church music, you will be absorbed.
But ''Look!" says a rose-window, a rood-screen,
a fresco, a madonna (I think of Notre Dame), —
and so much else; and if visible beauty speaks
commandingly to you, your focus of attention
will be shifted. Is all this ''religion"? What
would Buddha, Jesus, Epictetus, — even A Kem-
pis — have said? Milton welcomed the sym-
phony of effects ; it " dissolved him into ecstasies,
and brought all heaven before his eyes." But
that expression clouds all. Besides, we have
to proceed to ask as to the effect of all this on a
man's ethical nature when he returns to earth.
After being caught up into the seventh heaven
of ecstasy, how is the experience going to register
in his world of human relations! Does it connect?
Or is it just an "esthetic experience"? "Yes;
that's it! that is all!" say the theorists.
It is at this point, then, that we make connec-
tion with the modern estheticians. Mr. Vogt
enters this field, and quotes, among others, Mr.
Eoger Fry. Very well; Mr. Fry's "Vision and
Design" is a stimulating book, and offers a
theory pat to our purpose. For in effect Mr.
Fry's view is antithetical to the position taken
by Mr. Vogt ; it amounts to saying that the more
beauty there is, and the greater the response to
it, the less religion can there be. Beauty is a
jealous mistress: she demands "intense disin-
178 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
terested contemplation"; and ''a complete de-
tachment from any of the meanings and implica-
tions of appearances. ' '
Let me interpose that I am not saying ' ' Amen ' *
to Mr. Fry's affirmations; but merely using his
contentions to get an extreme and antithetical
theory into the field of discussion. I think his
assumption of a ''complete detachment from
meanings" in a work of art is unthinkable; be-
cause the esthetic part of a man cannot wrench
itself loose from the whole man. Mr. Fry is
really back in the old ''faculty psychology"
which sections a man's mentality departmentally.
It is because he and others (like Mr. Clive Bell)
try to do this that they speak as fractions of
men. A work of art sets the whole man vibrat-
ing, and liberates a complex of associations ; and
therefore when Mr. Fry asserts
Those who indulge in this [esthetic] vision
are entirely absorbed in apprehending the rela-
tion of forms and colors to one another, as they
cohere within the object,
he is maintaining the impossible, and is headed
for esthetic monomania. If there is such a
momentary absorption, it cannot last; the be-
holder will "come to himself," his total self, and
will no longer be the fool of his eyes only. For
this reason an entire indifference to the subject-
matter of a work of art implies a contorted mind
and a dismembered personality. Accordingly in
a church an altar-piece of a madonna and child
which necessarily touches the stops of deep
human feeling in us, cannot be in the same class
with a lily or a piece of pure imaginative design ;
which means (for its bearing on our argument)
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 179
that the distracting power of such works in a
church is greater than Mr. Fry would make out,
and not less. Mr. Vogt agrees to that. The
spell of the formal beauty is there, the magic of
the design and the color and the treatment
generally; but this spell inevitably coalesces with
the feelings evoked by the subject-matter of the
work. Hence we must dissent from the esthetic
abstractionism which implies that the beauty wo
onjoy in a cathedral cuts us loose from all other
significance than the purely esthetic. When
Raphael was admonished that he must not paint
such beautiful madonnas, his critics implied that
such human beauty, — and not merely so much
engaging line and color, light and shade, mass,
space, rhythm — was too distracting and disturb-
ing to them in their devotions. Hence our pro-
test against such a position as that which is ex-
pressed thus: —
. . . The greatest object of art becomes of no
more significance than any casual piece of
matter; a man's head is no more and no less
important than a pumpkin. For [he adds] it
is the habitual practice of the artist to be on the
look-out for these pecuHar arrangements of
objects that arouse the creative vision and be-
come material for creative contemplation,
in which Mr. Fry is assuming that we can forget
the difference between a face and a vegetable.
This is an extreme of reaction from the oppo-
site and exclusive absorption of the insensitive
beholder in the subject, the purely literary read-
ing of a work of art. It will land one in the
esthetic attitudinizing of Mr. Clive Bell.
This excursus into esthetic theory seems to be
180 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
carrying us far from the point with which we
started ; but I have used this theoretic extremism
to throw a sidelight on my thesis that it is not
possible to synthesize the multiplicity of impres-
sions which pour in upon us in an elaborate
service of worship ; not possible to fuse or co-ordi-
nate them under the general concept of religion
or worship. The element of truth in Mr. Fry's
magnification and isolation of the esthetic ex-
perience serves to strengthen the view that the
more appreciative we are of beauty, including the
formal element, — be it the beauty of the music,
pattern and all, or the beauty of the vision, — the
more difficult is it to find room for that attentive
and contemplative work of the mind, with its
ethical and spiritual preoccupations, which is the
verj^ heart of the religious experience.
Mr. Fry does concede in one place that under
certain conditions *'the rhythms of life and of art
may coincide''; but he forthwith adds that **in
the main the two rh5i:hms are distinct, and as
often as not play against each other. ' ' Obviously,
they will do so in proportion to a man's esthetic
sensitiveness. The more he has of such sensitive-
ness, the less chance will religion have to get in
its word. And the more this sensitiveness is
appealed to, the fainter becomes the religious
appeal. And this conclusion is driven home when
Mr. Fry comes to speak specifically of the rela-
tion of art to morality and religion. Thus : —
Morality appreciates emotion by the standard
of resultant action. Art appreciates emotion in
and for itself. [There is no bridge. 1
Art is an expression and a stimulus of the
imaginative life which is separated from actual
HOW PAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 181
life by the absence of responsive action. N"ow
this responsive action implies in actual life moral
responsibility. In art we have no such moral
responsibility — it presents a life freed from the
binding necessities of our actual existence.
. . . Here comes in the question of religion;
for religion is also an affair of the imaginative
life; and, though it claims to have a direct
effect upon conduct, I do not suppose that the
religious person, if he were wise, would justify
religion entirely by its effect on morality, since
that, historically speaking, has not been by any
means uniformly advantageous. [Much virtue in
"advantageous"!]
Exactly! Religion, divorced from morality, sets
up a sort of mysticism of its own which disdains
the application or intermixture of ethical values
and considerations. Joy, life, ecstasy, — the delir-
ium of the spinning dervish or the hashish-eater
or what not, — let religion be that I Once cut loose
from all association with the central ethical con-
cern of religion, and we are adrift without any
moorings to life, without any compass for a way
of life, without any basis for an art of living in
which beauty in its various modes becomes one of
the elements to be synthesized by the reflective
intelligence.
I referred before to Plato; but how different
from the ethical estheticism of Plato is this mod-
ernism! In the souPs ascent to the Absolute
Beauty, as we have it described in the ** Sym-
posium,'* we carry our ethical vision and urge
with us as we near the top of the mount of vision.
Beginning with the love of earthly things for the
sake of their loveliness, we rise **from fair forms
to fair conduct, from fair conduct to fair prin-
182 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ciples, until from fair principles we finally arrive
at the ultimate principle of all, and learn what
absolute beauty is."
To bring this discussion to a head, we may say
that the crucial word being * ' synthesis, ' ' we have
to be clear as to the kind of synthesis which reli-
gion involves. I have been contending that it is
not a synthesis of sense-impressions; not a syn-
thesis of the utmost fulness of art in worship with
a religious intentness on seeing life whole. That
richness of sense-impressions will simply over-
whelm the spirit; and the powerful appeal of
audible and visible beauty will distract the atten-
tion,— aye, absorb the attention, — in proportion
to one's responsiveness to that beauty.
And now, after this consideration of the posi-
tion that the more Art in religion and worship,
the better, from the historical and the psychologi-
cal and esthetic points of view, we may in conclu-
sion press toward a more positive presentation of
what is sound and hopeful doctrine.
VI.
The practical situation toward which the modern
spirit has long been moving is the disengagement
of religion from social functions and cultural
interests and entanglements which it is no longer
fitted to represent, and which (as I contend here)
obscure and weaken its power, and especially its
appeal through worship. For reasons not to be
traversed here (the lust of power, foremost)
priesthoods and the church have functioned in law,
medicine, education, charity, and have had to re-
sign these functions to secular agencies. Similar-
ly, the arts which formerly had their home together
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 183
in the churcli now live their independent life out-
side the church. The nmsic-lover will go to a sym-
phony concert for the adequate gratification of his
musical nature. He will find himself in an audi-
torium which does not attempt to ravish his eyes ;
and he will yield himself to a symphony which
asks and gets his undivided attention. So with
pictures, sculptures and other forms of art in the
museum ; so with drama in the theatre. All these
are signs that we moderns care for beauty not
less, but more, than aforetime. We do not starve
of beauty because we do not get it or seek it in
the church — in which it should be only a mild
auxiliary. That is no longer what the church is for.
Religion is purified and liberated for its own
true office. Esthetic satisfaction is no longer the
object — even the secondary object — of worship.
No longer encumbered by adjuncts of beauty,
religion concentrates upon its true task, — the
supreme and the most difficult of all tasks. So
freed, it may exercise a quite unprecedented
power.
But this, I must reiterate, does not mean the
total exclusion of beauty from religious edifices
and meetings — or " services ' ' or ' * communions, ^ ^
— whatever we may call this fellowship of souls.
By no means. Windows will be opened for
glimpses of fair prospects. There will be a reti-
cent use of sj^mbols perhaps ; and there will be a
simple and quiet beauty of design and line and
color, in the place of assembl}^ Just as a concert
hall with its distinctive use will have a becoming
beauty of its own, which will mildly blend with the
auditory beauty of the music which is the focus
of attention ; so there will be a becoming marginal
184 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
beaut}^ or pleasantness in a religious meeting-
place ; and in the ' * service of worship ' ' there will
he a simple suggestive heightening of emotional
tone by well-proportioned aid from music. But
the religious focus of attention will be dominant
and steady, and these other things auxiliary and
subordinate.
In fine, then, if we say that the purpose of reli-
gious gatherings — or ''worship,'^ if the old
meaning of paying tribute to worth be preserved
— is to make us think and feel deeply and imagin-
atively about the soul and the destiny of Man
and his relations to his fellows and to the cosmos,
then we shall avoid diverting or overtaxing the
mind by forms of stimulation which it can enjoy
better in other ways. Religion, understood as I
have described it, has its own specific and proper
emotions; and these gather round ethical ideas.
Are these ideas thin without the enrichment of art I
The love of man for man, — sympathy, compas-
sion, pity, mercy, — is there anything more self-
sufficing than that? Enfolded in these ideas and
emotions are the deepest affections and exper-
iences in a man's life. The vision of the ideal of
a just and harmonious society, where Truth and
Virtue and Beauty come by their own, — is any
vision more quickening than that? And as all
emotion tends to become lyrical and poetic, so
these constraints of perfected love and a per-
fected society will naturally press for certain
simple forms of collective expression; — but al-
ways simple!
Given the right atmosphere in a gathering,
ethical emotion will kindle to a flame by the
simpler kinds of ethical provocation. The reading
HOW FAR IS ART AN AID TO RELIGION? 185
of a noble passage or poem will communicate a
glow, generate a warmth. A simple strain of
music or a song or hymn, if it is good enough,
will evoke deep emotion, the deepest we are
capable of.
What is implied is a distinction and discrimina-
tion of the emotions according to the objects to
which they attach themselves. The emotion which
attaches to a beautiful picture is not the same as
that which attaches itself to an act of heroism or
a potent personality. People who complain of
bareness and plainness in our places of Sunday
meeting are, one ventures to say, lacking in sensi-
tiveness to other spiritual values. The Quakers
deliberately seek plainness as an aid to the reli-
gious mood. It is from a Quaker I shall take a
closing illustration, as I began with the instance
of a Quaker-bred youth.
My witness shall be William Penn. In conclud-
ing a preface to George Fox's Journal, he takes
leave of the gentle reader by signing himself as
One to whom the way of Truth is more lovely
and precious than ever; and who knowing the
beauty and benefit of it above all worldly
treasure, has chosen it for his chiefest joy; and
tliereforo recommends it to thy love and choice,
because he is, with great sincerity and affection,
thy soul's friend, — William Penn.
What a gracious and affecting simplicity! We
are reminded of Emerson's lines, — *^Why need
I volumes, if one word suffice?" — which contain
the whole philosophy of all deep culture. We
may allow for the mind's expansion in the
presence of grandeur or an extraordinary opu-
lence of effect; but it is not by any agitation —
186 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
largely of the nerves — springing either from size
or sumptuousness, that the depths of the mind —
the contemplative mind, — the actively contempla-
tive mind of Aristotle — are reached. ''There is
greatstillnessinthecourtsof heaven" : in that still-
ness the ''one word suffices." The mind, instead
of ranging over mde surfaces, gazes into clear
depths, and a genuine spiritual wonder replaces
a bewildered astonishment of the senses. Words-
Avorth's mind was stirred to its depths not only
by the light of setting suns but by the meanest
flower that blows.
We come finally, then, to a discrimination of the
essentially "religious" experience from the esthe-
tic experience ; and to a realization that the intru-
sion of powerful sense-appeals diverts and stam-
pedes the mind from its concentration upon
spiritual and ethical values. The mind is not so
compartmented, not so cabined and confined, that
its emotionalized thinking, its energetic contem-
plation, does not take on color and radiance. The
mind is its ovm. place; and a light, a fire, burns
there. Visitations of visible and audible beauty
may help the fire to draw and the flame to grow ;
but no more. Too many of these visitings will
check the glow and dim the light. "The fire that
in the heart resides" is not to be kindled by
piling high the brushwood of the senses. Art
must be the meek and modest servant of an un-
disputed master, religion.
Evolution & the Unique-
ness of Man.
By HORACE J. BEI.DGES.
<^I — Science versus Dogma : Present State of the
Case.
THE PRESENT revival of the so-called ^'con
flict between science and religion, ' ' which has
made theological and scientific debates acceptable
''copy" for newspapers and periodicals, is alto-
gether welcome. The whole-hearted advocate of
any system of thought will prefer the recognition
of antagonism to the chilling politeness of neglect,
and would rather have his views die — if die they
must — on the battlefield of controversy than in
the peaceful isolation of indifference and oblivion.
All who are interested in the progress or retro-
gression of civilization are given opportunity by
these noisy discussions to estimate, on the one
hand, the relation of our American culture-stage
to that attained in other lands, and, on the other,
the general position of thought and morals in the
world to-day as compared with former periods.
In the smoke and dust of the conflict between
our ' ' Fundamentalists ' ^ and the motley congeries
of their opponents — w^ho are united only in
opposition — it is none too easy to survey the
battlefield as a whole ; and, as in other struggles.
188 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
there is room for much uncertainty as to the
precise casus belli and the identity of the aggres-
sor. Each side disclaims the latter impeach-
ment. The Evolutionists declare that their dog-
matic opponents are but repeating the secular
aggression of theology against science. They
entertain us with detailed parallels between the
Dayton trial and the condemnation of Galileo.
The Fundamentalists harp on the difference
between *'true" science and the kind that is
"falsely so called"; meaning by the former the
knowledge that the churches have been compelled
to accept as verified, and so have managed either
to square it with their dogmas or to forget its
conflict with them; and, by the latter, the facts
and hypotheses which they imagine themselves
still to have a fighting chance of discrediting,
whether by argument or force.
The resort to coercion, in the form of laws to
prohibit the teaching of certain phases of
evolution, is — let us not forget — a confession
of defeat and of despair. The late Mr. Bryan
combined amazing ignorance with remarkable
shrewdness in catching by intuition the trend of
the times. He would never, we may be sure, have
resorted to the Tennessee method had he felt that
there was the remotest chance of a reversal of
the consensus of scientific conviction in favour
of the truth of evolution. He knew that whoso-
ever studies the evidence for this hypothesis, in
any one of a score of sciences, becomes convinced
of its truth; and this although he may retain
those dogmas of the orthodox faith, Catholic or
Protestant, which Mr. Bryan felt to be incom-
patible with it. Had he thought for a moment
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 189
that there could be a movement of scientific
men against evolution, — had he supposed that
further pursuit of the secrets of nature could
lead the experts to unsay what they have beien
unanimously saying for so many years, — his poli-
tical expertness would have led him to trust to
this. He would far rather have induced the schools
to use text-books in which real authorities could
be cited against the hated theory, if such were ob-
tainable, than have resorted to the ostrich policy
of trying to keep from the knowledge of the ris-
ing generation a doctrine which, though false (as
he believed), has yet this peculiar power to con-
vince the ablest and fairest-minded students of
its truth.
When, therefore, we try to descry the out-
lines of the situation as a whole, it seems evident
that science, whether or not the aggressor, is the
victor. Times have changed since the seventeenth
century, when the Papacy, by punishing Galileo
and burning Bruno, could indirectly silence Des-
cartes and hold back, for a time, in Catholic
countries, the rising tide of knowledge. They
have changed since the early nineteenth century,
when theology was able at least to thrust stumb-
ling-blocks in the path of the geologists. Our
contemporary Fundamentalists seem to lack the
resourcefulness of their predecessors, who got
over their terror of the conflict between Genesis
and geology by blandly discovering a meaning in
the Hebrew word for 'May'' which nobody, He-
braist or other, had ever dreamed of before. By
that notable invention, it proved possible to
offer the geologists all the time they wanted for
the process of creation, without offence to Moses
190 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
(who was then still, but is not now, the author
of the Pentateuch). Later, taking heart of grace
from Origen and other respectable ancients, some
theologians boldly declared the whole account of
creation an allegorj^ The suggestion that it had
a heavenly and spiritual significance has recon-
ciled and still reconciles many to the evident fact
that it has no earthly meaning; at least, no cor-
respondence with the ascertainable facts of earth-
ly history.
The change of policy by the Fundamentalists,
from the effort to reinterpret the Bible and recon-
cile its words with scientific discovery, to the
method of the Inquisition, is thus evidently a con-
fession of defeat. They have decided that the
infallibility of the Bible must be identified with
the plain meaning of certain of its words. It
must not be like that of the Papacy, — a kind of
fact at the end of the rainbow, to be believed
in by its devotees on the strict condition that it
never commits itself to any decision on any
matter of fact wdthin the possible reach of human
verification or disproof. The Pope can keep his
reputation for infallibility by offering only oracles
on matters where God alone knows. But the Bible
is in harder case, since it pronounces on matters
that man can investigate.
When, therefore. Genesis says that God made
man out of the dust of tlie ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, so that man
became a living soul, this is to be taken — so our
Fundamentalists valiantly decide — as the de-
scription of a fact that occurred at a definite
moment in time. Fundamentalism stakes its
case upon it. Christians may not be permitted
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 191
to explain its real meaning to be that, by a process
graduated through thousands or millions of years,
the brain and nervous system of an anthropoid
ape became organic to the distinctive powers
which constitute the essential human nature. And
if men of science persist in declaring that the
latter is what really happened, and the former is
only a myth, or at best an allegory, they are to
be prohibited by law from allowing their words
to reach and sully the pure minds of the sons and
daughters of Main Street in Main Street's
educational institutions. If the facts accessible
to investigation fit wholly with the evolutionary
hypothesis, and flatly antagonize the story of
Genesis, so much the worse for the facts. The
Fundamentalists know that the Bible is infallible,
by the same means as Catholics know the Pope is,
and Mohammedans that the Koran is. That is,
their belief is a matter not of reason but of will :
the kind of will against which no conviction can
prevail. Force of argument against it is merely
converted into heat; and the stronger the argu-
ments, the greater the heat.
Unfortunately, the Fundamentalists' state of
mind, however satisfactory it may be to them-
selves, is not well adapted for producing convic-
tion in the minds of others. For that purpose,
facts and arguments are necessary ; and there are
no facts to prove the infallibility of the Bible.
Nor is it easy to persuade those children of Main
Street, whose intelligence quotient is above C
minus, that when Fundamentalism speaks they
are to abandon the otherwise commanded use of
their reason and swallow the oracle with blind
faith. And the net result of these conditions is the
192 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
evident fact of the victory of science. The hun-
dred-years' struggle was long of doubtful issue;
but now the issue is no longer doubtful. The
proportion of church members to our total popu-
lation, even if we take without discount the
statistics of the churches themselves, is smaller
than ever before; and, what is worse, a tremend-
ous fraction of the enrolled adherents are under
conviction of the sin of Modernism. Messrs. Bryan,
Machen and Straton, following the example
set by the Pope when dealing with the army
headed by Loisy, Tyrrell and Fogazzaro, call them
apostates, and deny that they are Christians ; for
they do not believe in those essential dogmas
without which, as Fundamentalism declares, there
is neither salvation nor Christianity. They are
of the school of Dr. Fosdick and Dean Shailer
Mathews. They take the creeds in a Pickwick-
ian sense, and limit the '' revelation " in the Bible
to those elements of its teaching which chance to
commend themselves to their independent reason
and moral judgment. Their predecessors taught
them that the word *'day" in Genesis may mean
a thousand or a million years, or what you will.
The3^ have bettered the instruction. They extend
a similar latitude of interpretation to any other
words of the Bible which, in their plain and literal
sense, are repugnant to their highly-civilized,
scientific perception and moral discrimination.
They are quite ready to adopt in earnest the ex-
quisite thought at which Sir Thomas Browne
shuddered, that the water of Elijah's miracle
may have been naphtha.^
'"Our endeavours are not only to combat with doubts, but
always to dispute with the Devil . . . Having seen some
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 193
If, then, there are now sixty per cent, of the
population outside the churches, and of the forty
per cent, within, one-half or two-thirds have no
business there, but are traitors within the camp
(as Fundamentalism declares), what is this but a
victory for science of the most complete and
crushing character? And since it is evident, ac-
cording to the statistics which so horrified Mr.
Bryan, that the process of dogmatic disintegra-
tion shows no signs of arrest, but proceeds ever
farther and faster, we are surely guilty of no ex-
aggeration in describing the present position in
America by the curt phrase: Dogmatic religion
defeated; dogmatic science triumphant.
§11 — How THE MiiXD OF Main Street Works.
But now I must explain what I mean by using
the adjective ''dogmatic'' to describe the science
which has triumphed.
He would be not only an optimist but a fool
who could believe that there has been a victory
of science in the sense that its marvellous method,
its high and exacting standards of accuracy, and
the advanced mentality necessary to employ that
method and observe those standards, have become
the possession of the masses of mankind, the com-
mon property of Main Street, in America or else-
Avhere. To suppose that the unchurched sixty
per cent, of our population are so because they
have become scientific in the sense in which Dar-
experiments with bitumen, and having read far more of
naphtha, he whispered to my curiosity the fire of the altar
might be natural, and bade me mistrust a miracle in Elias
(sic), when he entrenched the altar round with water: for
that inflammable substance yields not easily unto water, but
flames in the arms of its antagonist." — "Religio Medici."
194 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Avin or Steinmetz was scientific, would be to sup-
pose a miracle compared with Avhicli any in the
Bible Avould be but a conjurer's trick. The mass
of mankind live, as Stevenson said, not by bread
alone, but principally by catch-words. They are
the predestinate adherents of authority. That is
why the authoritarian religions are always the
popularly successful ones, and the history of the
conflicts of sects and creeds is the record of
struggles between rival claimants to authoritj*.
That is also why the history of politics can be
Avritten only in terms of the ascendency of suc-
cessive personalities.
The general rule, — subject, of course, to a
standing qualification of exceptis excipiendis, —
is that conversion from one religious creed to an-
other, from one political theory to another, or
from dogmatic theology to what is ironically
called free thought, means only that the convert
has been englamoured by the extra-rational,
psychical allurement of some new leader, whose
ideas, themselves a sjnithesis of current sub-con-
scious tendencies or desires, become effective, not
through the appeal they make to reason, but
through their being steeped in the attractiveness
of his or her personality. It is as Whitman, with
the clairvoyance of poetic genius, declared:
Surely, ^^•hoeve^ speaks to me in the right voice,
him or her I shall follow,
As the M'aters follow the moon, silently, with
fluid steps, everywhere around the globe.
Nor do I say this ironically or censoriously.
It may indeed sound like irony even to state a
fact which makes nonsense of nine-tenths of our
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 195
political pretences; but when what one states is
a fact, it is the plain dictate of intelligence to
recognize it and abandon the illusions it destroys.
And the simple fact is that the mass of men,
apart from the pedestrian daily activities of self-
preservation, are and always have been incapable
of self -direction, of independent thought and rea-
son ; incapable of mastering the immense areas of
fact and law which yield only to their masters
those quintessential perceptions and convictions
of which sciences and philosophies are compact.
Whether Mr. Bryan's God directly and of set
purpose made Mr. Babbitt what he is, or whether
Mr. Babbitt represents but a momentary stage in
the ascending effort of those forces whose trail
we call evolution, the fact remains that he is born
a follower and not a leader, a pupil and not a
teacher, a routineer and not an initiator. Mr.
Babbitt is in no wise to blame for this. Blame is
due rather to those politicians and religious
teachers who pretend to think him what he is not,
in order that they may flatter and beguile him into
supposing that they are doing his will, when all
the time he is being manipulated into doing theirs.
It follows that, when Main Street is converted
from ** religion'' to '* science," what happens is
the substitution of a new set of dogmas for an
old; the new being received, precisely as the old
were, upon faith. This is the case, quite irrespec-
tive of the truth or falsehood of the rejected or
accepted beliefs. What Main Street knew of its
old religion was not that it was true, but that
somebody had told it that somebody had testified
that somebody w^ho could not err had declared it
true. And what Main Street knows of its new
196 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
science is, likewise, not that it is true, but that
somebody has told it that somebody who is com-
petent has endorsed the discoveries that some-
bod}^ has made. The prophecy of Huxley is ful-
filled; a generation educated under the influence
of the *' Origin of Species ^^ is accepting its doc-
trines with as little reason, and therefore with as
little justification, as so many of its contempor-
aries rejected them.
It would be idle to complain of this fact. If by
the nature of things the bulk of men cannot think
for themselves, so as to arrive independently at
the possession of ideas, they must receive them
from others as they can. But this fact is the
conclusive justification for a perpetual vigilant
scrutiny of the ideas that are set floating in the
air of Main Street. Ideas imbibed from that
atmosphere by the dwellers in the Street will
work for good if they are sound and true, for
harm if they are false. "We proceed, then, to in-
quire just what body of beliefs is covered by the
term Evolution in the Main Street mind.
§IIT — What Main Street Makes of Darwin.
As extracted from the writings of Mr. Bryan
and other trustworthy reflectors of the sub-popu-
lar intelligence, these beliefs are in the main as
follows : —
First, that Evolution is a theory originated by
Darwin.
Second, that Evolution is the name of a force
or cause.
Third, that it is a substitute for creation, in the
sense that if the world w^as not created it must
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OP MAN 197
have been evolved, and if it evolved or is evolv-
ing it cannot have been created.
Fourth, that man is the descendant of a monkey.
Fifth, that therefore he has no nature or powers
different in kind from those of his monkey ances-
tor, but only the ancestral powers raised to a
higher degree of com]3lexity.
That of these five beliefs the first three are
m>i:hological nonsense and the fourth a mis-
understood half-truth, is so patent to any in-
structed thinker that I shall dispense myself from
the labour of restating their confutation. Even
if it were possible to set Main Street right about
them (which it evidently is not, since the refuta-
tion of these errors has been made a hundred
times in the last fifty years, and yet they were all
in full bloom in Mr. Bryan's mind to the moment
of his death), I should not wish to make it my
own particular task. One must choose one's task
according to one's sense of the comparative im-
portance of things, as well as with reference to
one's own particular relative competence. I
assume that my readers laiow as well as I that
the general conception of evolution is at least as
old as Thales of Miletus ; that Darwin offered only
a theory of the cause of evolution in one particu-
lar province of reality; that one may largely dis-
agree with Darwin's theory, and yet be a
thorough-going evolutionist; that, as John Mor-
ley said fifty years ago, evolution is neither a
force nor a cause, but merely a process or law —
that is, a summary description of all that has hap-
pened and is happening in the world, the accep-
tance of which commits one to no special view as
198 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
to the forces causing the liappenings ; that, there-
fore, evolution may perfectly well be a method
of creation, there being no opposition whatsoever
between the two ideas; and that the true evolu-
tionary theory of man's pedigree is that both he
and the existing anthropoids are the descendants
of a common ancestor, now extinct. In all the
sciences concerned, the dictum of Professor
J. Arthur Thomson holds good, — that the com-
petent specialists are more sure than ever about
the fact of evolution, but perhaps more doubtful
than ever as to its factors. For the purpose of
my present investigation I must let it go at that,
because I wish to direct attention to the fifth of
Main Street 's evolutionary beliefs : namely, its
notion that man, if he be of animal descent, can
have no nature or powers essentially new, and
different in kind from those of his apelike pro-
genitor.
There is the best of excuses for Main Street's
entertaining this queer delusion. For this, unlike
the others listed, is not the mass-mind's perver-
sion of a belief presented in more accurate and
rational form by the men of science; it is an
erroneous inference drawn by some of the greatest
of those men of science themselves. Darwin him-
self, having unfortunately little turn for philo-
sophical analysis, found in the supposed limita-
tion of man's mind to powers developed from
those of the ape, ground for believing that it
could not be trusted to speculate on such problems
as that of theism. Thus he wrote in his Auto-
biography :
But then arises the doubt, can the mind of
man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 199
from a mind as low as that possessed by the low-
est animals, be trusted when it draws such grand
conclusions ?
And he repeats this with added stress in a
letter written in the last year of his life :
But then with me the horrid doubt always
arises whether the convictions of man's mind,
which has been developed from the mind of the
lower animals, are of any value or at all trust-
worthy. Would any one trust in the convictions
of a monlcey's mind, if there are any convictions
in such a mind?
This doubt has more consequences than Darwin
realized. Some of them we shall have to notice.
For the moment, I must point out that the most
successful of Darwin's German popularisers,
Ernst Haeckel, was completely infatuated with
the belief that mind is a product of the brain.
He was even ready to point out the particular
areas in the brain which, as he said, ^^ produce
thought and consciousness.*' True, he never
doubted the possibility that a mind so conditioned
could solve the riddles of the universe; his once
popular volume, **Die Weltratsel,'' being, in
effect, a proclamation that they had been solved
by 1899. Needless to say, his ^ ^ solutions ' ' are a
tissue of baseless dogmatizings and self-contra-
dictions.^ But this in no wise hindered — rather
it helped — the popular acceptance of his book,
which was circulated by hundreds of thousands
throughout Europe and America. Nothing helps
a pseudo-philosophical treatise like utter super-
'I may be permitted to refer to a detailed analysis of
Haeckel's chief philosophical dicta in my "Criticisms of Life."
(Houghton Mifflin, 1915.)
200 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ficiality and dogmatic assertiveness ; and of these
Haeckel's volume is full.
An immeasurably greater man than Haeckel,
and one who, as a philosophical thinker, was far
ahead of Darwin, was Huxley. He had the merit
of seeing and clearly stating that consciousness
cannot without the maddest paradoxes be re-
garded as a mode of force or matter, ''or any
possible combination of either." In the plainest
language he rejected materialism — though this is
often forgotten by people who take his name in
vain — and declared that if the choice between
it and idealism were compulsory, he should decide
for the latter. But the natural predilection of the
popular mind for the obvious, the rarity of the
gift for metaphysical analysis, and the shyness
of Huxley himself about working out the logical
implications of his own admissions, have con-
spired to rob this side of his teaching of its
proper influence and effect.
There are, to be sure, many writers of high
scientific competence who have protested against
Darwin's limitation of man's mental powers to
mere complications of those possessed by animals.
In another book^ I have cited at length what
seems to me the conclusive statement of St.
George Mivart on this point ; and Mivart was one
of the earliest, as well as one of the best, of those
critics who, gratefully accepting from Darwin the
general conception of Evolution as the master
key to the history of life, have yet differed from
him, both by thinking that natural selection alone
does not suffice to account for the origin of all
*"The Ood of Fundamentalism, and Other Studies," p. 159 fif.
(Chicago, Pascal Covici, 1925.)
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 201
species and all animal and plant organs, and by
holding that Evolution permits of the appearance
of organs and powers altogether new, in the sense
that not even a prophetic rudiment of them may
be present in a creature's ancestors.
Not only has there been manifold testimony to
this effect from many writers of authority in the
sciences, but every competent philosopher who
has dealt with the matter has seen, on the one
hand, that Darwin was wrong in his limitation of
man's possibilities and in the reason he assigned
for it; and, on the other, that the recognition of
powers in man that are unique to him, is in no
sense inconsistent with the utmost conviction that
man is physically descended from an apelike an-
cestor. To cite but one from a great multitude,
I may refer to the Essays of Thomas Hill Green
on Spencer and Lewes, which show — irrefutably,
to my mind — that our human equipment cannot
rationally be resolved into a mere general growth
and complication of the powers to which the
animal brain was organic. Unless that brain,
through the process by which it became human,
had become organic to mental powers of an order
entirely unprecedented, the subsequent evolution
of our race from savagery to civilization would
have been impossible ; as impossible as it has re-
mained for all animals except man. The powers
possessed by animals might have continued to
evolve on their own lines to a further indefinite
extent; but unless the new capacities had struck
in, there could never have been speech, or that
self -distinction of the subject of experience from
its object-matter which, by rendering a connected
experience possible, has gradually built up the
202 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
fact-world of reason on the one hand, and the
value-world of conscience on the other.
But all this, as I have said, has passed over
Main Street's head. And what is the result? To
put it briefly, the result is that man is regarded
not only as an animal (which he most undoubted-
ly is), but as nothing else than an animal. The
everlasting reiteration, by the followers of Haec-
kel, that man differs from other animals **only
in degree and not in kind,'' has become an un-
questioned article of faith wdth Main Street's
evolutionist population. The statement is chanted
as a kind of creed among those select companies
who have accepted what they call free thought on
faith. You may hear it anywhere in America or
Britain, or on the Continent of Europe.
^lY — What Then of Mai^t's Moral Nature?
Now, it has always been rationally evident to
students of ethical philosophy, and intuitively
perceived even by unphilosophical adherents of
the old religions, that this superficially plausible
doctrine leaves unexplained, and indeed renders
inexplicable, one thing about man that is a mani-
fest fact. This fact is his moral nature. Accord-
ingly, the most strenuous efforts have been made
by evolutionists of the Haeckelian orthodoxy to
explain it away. They seek to resolve it into a
mere complication of the play of instinct. We
are referred to instances of the *' gregarious bias"
among herding animals, and of the self-sacrificing
maternal instinct among many creatures, especial-
ly the higher apes. Nobody, of course, can deny,
or wishes to deny, that these things are facts.
Among dogs and apes we often see action which,
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 2 0'i
if taken by human beings, would attest a very
high moral development. And so the argument
is, ^'How can you pretend that analogous action
among men bears witness to a different nature,
responding to different springs of action?"
On this point careful discrimination is neces-
sary. We begin by admitting that the instinctive
nature is common to man and the animals most
nearly related to him. Qua animal, man doubt-
less has the same "consciousness of kind" that
produces a quasi-social life among his closest
congeners; the same imperious instinct of self-
preservation, the same reproductive urge, philo
progenitiveness and maternal affection, as they.
Out of these, if he were to be deprived of his
distinctive type of consciousness, there would as-
suredly arise much action identical wdth that
which he now performs. Causes which in other
animals are adequate to the production of such
effects, would naturally be adequate to their pro-
duction among men, if, remaining what they are
in all merely physical respects, men should cease
to be w^hat they distinctively are in the matter of
their self-consciousness and reasoning powers.
The first wrong turning to be passed by in the
scientific study of ethics is the attaching of
ethical labels to conduct which is sufficiently ac-
counted for by the blind, sub-rational prompting
of the impulsions of instinct. But, without for a
moment forgetting or seeking to minimize this
consideration, we must yet proceed to indicate
other facts which are necessary to place it in the
right perspective.
The first is this: that the same act takes
wholly different ranl^, when estimated from the
204 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ethical standpoint, according as it is voluntary or
involuntary. Whenever we are assured that an
act resulted from compulsion, and arose in the
absence of any alternative possibility, we cease to
classify it as moral or immoral. This distinc-
tion, which is universally accepted, is at the
present moment causing great practical difficulty,
because of the specious use now frequently made
of the plea of insanity or irresponsibility in
murder cases. That plea naturally supposes that
any act committed irresponsibly, by a person
whose nervous and mental condition was such
that he could not judge it as right or wrong and
could do no other than he did, is thereby lifted
out of the category of deeds and into that of
meaningless accidents. This plea on behalf of
murderers is often made by advocates who profess
to think that all human acts are irresponsible, and
express only the blind necessitation of the world's
sub-personal forces. Yet the very urging of it
necessarily implies that those to whom it is ad-
dressed are responsible, and free either to accept
or reject it. This may indeed convict such advo-
cates of preposterous self-contradiction. Still,
it none the less testifies to the universal admis-
sion, by the normal mind, of the principle of moral
judgment upon which I am insisting. That an
act may be classed as right or good, we must be
assured that he who did it had first reflected upon
its nature and foreseen and intended its conse-
quences. We must also be assured that at the
moment of doing the act he was free to refrain
from it, or to do another of a different character.
And, before any act can be classed as wrong, we
must possess the like assurances.
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 205
From this radical fact it logically follows that
the race-regarding and self-abnegating activities
of animals can be invested with' a properly ethical
character only as the result of a fallacious as-
sumption: the assumption, namely, that they
possess the same powers of self-distinction, of
foresight and of choice that men possess. If
they do not, their acts are no more moral or
immoral than those of a somnambulist or a luna-
tic. Now, although we cannot emancipate our-
selves from the wise agnosticism of Cardinal
Ne"wman as to the question of what the conscious-
ness of animals is for them,^ we yet inevitably
assume that it differs from our own precisely by
the absence of these human powers. "VVe assume
this because, for one thing, we constantly see the
animal obeying its instinctive impulsion under
conditions in which it is entirely useless. The
beaver in captivity will build its dams across the
floor. The chimpanzee will make a nest, or part
of a nest, and sit contentedly in it, inside his cage.
The dog on your hearthrug will turn himself
around before lying down, thus performing an
action necessary in the environment of his wood-
land ancestors, but meaningless in your drawing-
iCan anytliin?: be moro marvelous or startling, unless we
were used to it. than that we should have a race of beings
about us whom we do see, and as little know their state, or can
describe their interests or their destiny, as we can tell of the
inhabitants of the sun and moon? It is, indeed, a very over-
powering thought, when we get to fix our minds on it, that
we periodically use — I may say hold intercourse with — crea-
tures who are as much strangers to us, as mysterious, as if
they were the fabulous unearthly beings, more powerful than
man, and yet his slaves, which Eastern superstitions have in-
vented."— From a sermon of Newman's quoted by R, H. Huttou,
"Modern Guides to English Thought in Matters of Faith," 1891,
p. 62.
206 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
room. In other words, the actions of animals,
however amazingly skilful, are teleological only
from the point of view of the rational onlooker.
By the animal they are performed without in-
sight into present conditions or foresight of those
future conditions for which they nevertheless pre-
pare. And it cannot logically be disputed that
this is true also of the prevenient care of birds
and animals for their young, and even of their
occasional self-sacrifices for the sake of the herd.
To make the point clearer, I would ask whether
it occurs to anybody to censure an animal for the
non-performance of any such act, in the same
way as — whatever his theory — he would un-
doubtedly censure a human being who omitted a
commonly recognized duty. When a cat or a sow
neglects its young, we may feel that there is
something abnormal about the creature, but it
never occurs to us to pass a ?noral condemnation.
If we hear a child reproaching an animal under
such circumstances, we smile at the naive anthro-
pomorphism which the reproach betrays, and we
tell the child that the cat or sow is not to be
blamed, because it knows not what it does.
Obviously, then, in spite of the warmest affec-
tion for animals, we cannot rationally permit our-
selves to ascribe moral praise, even tacitly, to
those fulfilments of instinctive impulsions which
are sometimes praiseworthy in man; any more
than we can seriously bestow blame on animals
for irregularities of behaviour which in men
would be culpable. And this establishes my con-
tention, that the very same act in a human being,
notwithstanding its original prompting by the
urge of the same instinct that drives the animal.
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OP MAN 20 7
may rightly be the occasion of moral appraisal.
For where the animal acts without insight and
foresight, man acts with both; where it is som-
nambiilising, man walks awake; where it has no
alternative, man confronts an indefinite range of
possible courses,
§V — Some Eesults of Darwin's Inference.
Thus far, then, our position is as follows : We
accept the evidence which links man phylogenetic-
ally with the animal world. Existing types of
apes are his cousins, but were not his ancestors.
The blood-test proves the closest possible con-
sanguinity between him and them ; in his embryo-
logical development man, as it has been said,
''climbs up his own genealogical tree,'' recapitu-
lating the entire development of life from the uni-
cellular stage onwards ; and the fossils, bones and
tools of manlike apes and apelike men prove be-
yond question that there have been many forms
in man's ancestry that were intermediate physic-
ally— and, doubtless, mentally and psychically
also — between present humanity and the ape
world. The evidence is so complete and conclu-
sive that in relation to any other creature than
man nobody would for a moment dream of disput-
ing it. Xor can the utmost energy inspired by
human vanity, or the stubborn determination to
maintain special creation for theological reasons,
avail to shake the evidence or weaken the convic-
tion it irresistibly produces. Mr. Bryan's asser-
tion that ' 'there is not a single fact in the uni-
verse that can be cited to prove that man is
descended from the lower animals" was a mere
forensic audacity. In all he wrote about evolu-
208 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tion, he never mentions the evidence. He makes
no allusion to the remains of the Java pithecan-
thropus, the Heidelberg, Neanderthal and Pilt-
down bones, or the artifacts which testify to the
former wide distribution of such intermediate
types. One strives to retain one's belief in Mr.
Bryan's sincerity, but in view of the virtual im-
possibility of his having failed to hear of these
universally familiar facts, it is very difficult to
reconcile it with such a statement as the one
quoted.
Now, according to the facts of evolution, when
new departures take place, all the materials and
powers associated with previous forms continue
to occur, being recombined and further compli-
cated, and made contributory either to higher
modes of the former functions or to new ones.
Thus, it is certain that man's life includes all
the manifestations of life that characterize the
lower animals Avith which he is physicall}'
connected. Like them, man is endowed with in-
stmct. In him as in them, instinct expresses it-
self in spontaneous desires, antipathies and senti-
ments. And he shares with them four modes of
psychic or mental activity: the reflex action of
the nervous system, sensation, sensible percep-
tion, and the association of sensible perceptions.
It is from these facts that Main Street's article
of faith, * * Man differs from other animals only in
degree and not in kind," is derived. Here, as
we have seen, Main Street can cite in its support
the weighty testimony of the great Darwin. It
can also appeal to Herbert Spencer, whose evolu-
tionism is an attempt to explain the gradual ac-
quisition by experience of those ideas of space.
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 209
time and causality which now seem like inborn
intuitions. That w^hich now truly is innate in the
individual, according to Spencer, was neverthe-
less acquired by the race. We are descended
from ancestors who did not bring this rational
framework with them to the encountering of their
environment, but gained it by slow degrees in
their struggle with the world.
On the same basis of fact and inference rests
Haeckel's expression of the gospel according to
Materialism: ** Humanity is but a transitory
phase in the development of the eternal substance,
a particular phenomenal form of matter and
energy, the nothingness (Nichtigkeit) of which we
perceive when we place it in contrast with
boundless space and endless time." That is the
gist of Haeckel's '^Weltratsel": a statement so
unwelcome even to some of his adoring follow-
ers that in the English translation of the book
it was carefully doctored and toned down. And
among us in America to-day, my friend Mr.
Clarence Darrow is preaching a doctrine of
mechanism which is but a variant of Haeckel's,
and making it the basis for a system of complete,
pitch-black pessimism. Man, according to Mr.
Darrow, is the puppet of blind necessity : and his
consciousness, while it leaves him utterly helpless,
serves only to make him aware of his misery.
Now all this turns, not on the facts foreseen by
Darwin and confirmed by his successors, but on
the soundness of Darwin's inference from the
facts. If that inference be sound, we must of
course accept it. None but a fool would wish to
dwell in the fools' paradise of an illusion; no-
210 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
body can do so, once the illusion is recognized
as such. Yet also, none but a fool would accept
such a view of man's nature, powers and destiny
on anything short of the most complete and com-
pulsive proof. I have never been able to con-
vince myself of the logical validity of Darwin's
inference ; and accordingly I proceed to set forth
my main grounds for doubting it.
§W — Eeasons for Doubting the Darwinian
Estimate of Man.
1. The first of these is the obtrusive fact
already hinted at, that it proves far too much.
Let us recall the argument: Can the mind of
man, being developed from one as low as that
of the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws
**such grand conclusions" {sc, the theistic be-
lief)? Are its conclusions '*of any value, or at
all trustworthy"?
Not only will this consideration, if it is of force
at all, upset the doctrine of theism, against which
Darwin invokes it, but, obviously, it will over-
throw the whole of science as well. For it re-
moves all ground of distinction between reality
and illusion. If, because of the source of his
mind, man's convictions are of no value, then
among the convictions thus discredited must fall
those of Haeckel, Darrow and Darwin, as much as
those of Plato, Jesus and the theologians. The
possibility of science, and equally of the common-
sense knowledge of which science is the ordered
development, depends on the sure validity, the ab-
solute trustworthiness, of certain mental appre-
hensions intrinsically impossible to any ape, or
to any creature possessing only a higher degree
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 211
of the selfsame powers of mind which apes mani-
fest. If, then, the result of the Darwinian argu-
ment is conclusively to limit man to these powers,
we shall be landed in a universal scepticism,
which must extend to the Darwinian argument as
well as every other.
Darwin, of course, is by no means the only
thinker who has fallen into this intellectual booby-
trap. Much of our current psychology and
pseudo-philosophy is a standing exhibition of the
same paralogism. I offer Mr. James Harvey
Robinson 's popular treatise on * * The Mind in the
Making'* as a lurid current instance.^ It would
be amusing, if it were not tragic, to watch the
spokesmen of science serenely sawing through the
branches of the tree of knowledge on which they
sit. They use powers no ape possesses to prove
man's non-possession of those powers. Every
argument they urge against the reality of the
capacities in question presupposes it. And if
they could avoid assuming that which they deny
(which is impossible), then with their success
would collapse the validity of every syllable of
their own reasoning.
Per contra, if science is possible — or, rather,
since it is possible : for nobody can do more than
pretend to doubt the reality of knowledge — it
must be because there are in the nature of man
powers higher in kind, as well as more complex
in degree, than anythins: in the nature of the
ape. The followers of Haeckel and Darwin can
have it whichever way they like, but they cannot
*A critinue of Profe5?sor Robinson's book may be seen in an
essay entitled "Are We Wiser or Better Tlian Onr Fathers?"
in mv volume, "As I Was Saying" (Boston : Marshall .Tones.
1923).
212 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
have it both ways. Either there is something
new in man's mentality, different in kind from
that which is in the animal, or else their own
science is a bundle of illusions, and stands on
exactly the same footing as dreams and old wives '
tales.
The first great thinker in modern times who
took the stand followed by Darwin in this matter
was Hume. Without affirming the animal origin
of man's intelligence (a position which in his day
could have found no scientific basis), he yet
declared that the whole mental life of man was re-
ducible to *' impressions'* and *4deas," — mean-
ing by the former sense-impressions, and by the
latter the fainter copies of sense-impressions
which survive them in memory. Nothing could he
an element of hnoivledge tvJiich had not originated
as a sensation.
This is the philosophic counterpart of the Dar-
winian inference. But Hume was acute enough
to perceive, and candid enough to admit, that
his theory destroyed science, since it reduced
what we call natural laws to the level of fictions
(engendered by our *' propensity to feign"), and
took all the certainty out of mathematics. The
inevitability of this conclusion is obvious. For
natural laws are relations, excogitated by the
mind, and inserted by it between and around the
data provided by the senses. Mathematical figures
as such (sc, in distinction from the sense-data
which are their mere raw material), and the
axioms they illustrate, and the theorems formu-
lated in terms of the axioms, are neither sensa-
tions nor memories of sensations. If, then, the
title of knowledge is to be reserved to sense-im-
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 213
pressions and surviving ideas of them, mathe-
matics and science of nature are impossible. Now,
the science of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries has been very largely based on the sensa-
tionalistic idealism of Hume, whereas its profes-
sors ignore the awkward conclusion — i.e. the fic-
titiousness of their own fundamental conceptions
— to which, by the confession of its author, that
system unavoidably leads.
2. I pass now to my second ground for doubt-
ing the Darwinian inference : namely, the scientific
work recently done in investigating the actual
mentality of apes. We are told that we possess
only a higher measure of the ape's powers. Very
well. Go to the ape, thou sluggard; consider its
ways, and be instructed.
Four years of laborious and highly compe-
tent effort were devoted to this investigation
in the island of Teneriffe by Professor Kohler
of Berlin, a man of the highest qualifications
in psychology and of admirable skill and powers
of logical discrimination. The result is a scien-
tific demonstration that the mentality of the
very sharpest ape is incredibly lower than one
had supposed possible a priori. It never rises
beyond the most elementary adaptation of means
to ends in a present concrete case, after much
clumsy trial and error, and the concrete memory
of the creature's own prior performances
awakened by the renewed presence of the same
stimuli. Leave out (and be most discriminating
in doing so) all that is clearly due to the inherited
tendency of the animal to act in specific ways
upon its environment, — leave out all that can be
done and is done in the somnambulism of instinct.
214 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
— confine attention to what can only be the re-
sult of elementary thought. That result proves
to be so absurdly trifling that to speak of the
thought involved as a lower degree of human en-
doMTuent, or of man's intellect as a mere higher
degree of the ape's, is to play with language in
an utterly deceptive fashion.^
The truth is, most of our popular belief in ape-
mentality is due to the illicit reading of our own
mental operations into the ape's mind. Critics
of theology, with entire justice, are always warn-
ing us against the fallacious absurdity of suppos-
ing that the ultimate reality of the universe is of
the same nature and mode of operation as man.
** Anthropomorphism" is admittedly a delusion
and a snare in theology. But it is no less so in rela-
tion to our imaginative constructions of animal
psychology. Even when the ape does what we
should do in a given situation, we have no ground
for assuming him to have thought it out as we
should.
But here arises another consideration which to
me seems weighty, though I cannot recall having
ever seen it introduced into this argument. (How-
ever, this may be due, and probably is, to the
limitations of my reading on the subject.) It
*In a recent newspaper article, Mr. H. L. Mencken declared
that the mentality of higher apes is equal to that required for
many classes of unskilled human labor, and that gorillas, for
Instance, if only they knew a few words of English, could well
do the work, say, of street-car conductors. Omitting the other
absurdities of this statement, I point out only the delicious
ignoratio eletichi of the proviso about the vocabulary. Mr.
Mencken cannot see that the utter inability of the ape to learn
one word of English or any other language is itself the proof
of that unbridgeable gulf between apes and men, the existence
of which — solely in the Interest of a preconceived theory —
he and many other contemporary writers so eagerly deny.
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 215
is this : The anthropoid apes, including the chim-
panzees, are descended, says science, from the
same hypothetical ancestor as man. We and they
represent divergent stems from a common branch.
So be it ; but this means that they are racially as
old as man. Yet in half a million years man has
developed from that half-brute in Java to the
spiritual and mental peaks called Socrates, Aris-
totle, Jesus, Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein.
Meanwhile, the chimpanzee has stood still. There
is, I believe, no shadow of evidence that the
anthropoid apes are any more or less advanced,
or in any wise different mentally and psychically,
from what they were five thousand centuries ago.
Now, we are asked to believe that at the point
of divergence from the common stem, the crea-
tures that have remained apes were to all in-
tents indistinguishable from those that became
men. The difference between them was one of
degree only; and, at that stage, of a degree so
slight that to any rational onlooker it would have
been indiscernible.
How, then, if man has only the same mental
equipment, so far as kind is concerned, can we
understand the colossal difference in the sequel
of the two stories? Why the miraculous expan-
sion '*in degree'^ on the one side and the utter
stagnation on the other?
Moreover, Main Street's creed overlooks an-
other quite important consideration. Main Street
is sure that our minds are not different in kind
from those of apes, but contends that they are
gigantically different in degree. To me, from
what I have been able to learn and observe of
animal psychology, the affirmation in this state-
216 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
raent seems as groundless as the denial. I sub-
mit that in all those departments of mental and
psychic life which we share with the higher
animals, so far from there being evidence that the
degree of our participation in them is any higher
than theirs, the actual evidence is largely the
other way. Where is the reason for believing
that our emotions are any more intense, our
reflex responses to stimulus any more sensitive,
our sense-perceptions any more acute, our power
of automatically associating impressions any
surer, than those of the anthropoid apes? For
lack of analysis, we commonly forget that every
one of these powers can be possessed in full de-
velopment, without ever exfoliating into the two
distinctive powers of man : self -consciousness, and
rational thought determined by mental relations.
Sensation is not thought, nor would any amount
of sensation ever produce the first rudiment of
thought or of the conditions that render thought
possible. And, as St. George Mivart well pointed
out half a century ago, the two kinds of powers —
those common to man and animals, and those
special to man — tend to increase in inverse ra-
tio: which also seems conclusive against their
being '* identical in kind and only different in de-
gree.''
3. And now for my third ground of dissent
from Darwin's dictum and from the Spencerian
evolutionism. Darwin's inference requires, and
Spencer's reasoning supposes, that those powers
in man upon which depends the possibility of his
acquiring any experience, have been produced by
the experience which depends on them. How
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 217
could this be so? How could experience begin
until the preconditions essential to it were there?
In the folklore story of Genesis, anybody can
without difficulty perceive that the character of
Adam is an anachronistic fiction. For Adam, the
first of men, is depicted as a civilized man, en-
dowed with developed speech; that is to say, the
late and mature product of ages of social evolu-
tion is placed before the beginning of the social
evolution Avhich alone could produce him. He pre-
cedes his only possible preconditions. Now, the
Spencerian account of human evolution rests
upon an anachronism of an opposite kind. It
does not, indeed, date the mature result of a
social process before that process could have be-
gun; but it represents the prior conditions, with-
out which that process never could have begun,
as gradually arising in and through the process
itself. It is an elaborate attempt to account for
the indispensable original acorn as a by-product
of the groAvth of the oak that springs from it.^
Here, surely, we reach the fundamental and
crucial point. The human child can grow mental-
ly, where the chimpanzee and the gorilla cannot,
because the child possesses an endowment of liv-
ing and growing powers sui generis which the
anthropoids have not. Experience, in its proper
human sense, could never begin for the child un-
less it possessed these powers: the intuitions of
time, space and causality, the ability for inference
and induction, the consciousness of itself as think-
ing, and the power of distinguishing itself from
*For a full and, as it seems to me, an unanswerable exposure
of this fallacy I refer my readers to the Essays, already men-
tioned, by Thomas Hill Green, on Spencer and on Lewes, and
to the first ninety pages of Green's "Prolegomena to Ethics."
218 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
the objects of its thought. And what is true of
the child is true of the race. The attempt to ex-
plain these powers, without which experience
could not start, as gradual products of the ex-
perience they alone make possible, is a hysteron
proteron; it is, literally, preposterous. Spencer
and his followers mistake the gradual accumula-
tion of the results of exercising these poAvers for
the gradual acquisition of the powers themselves.
The truth of this conclusion is in no wise in-
validated by the fact that the child or the savage
cannot analyze and define the powers he uses.
One can have cancer without knowing what one
has; and a patient has it just the same, though
he be one to whom the physician's diagnosis is
utterly unintelligible. The logician can discrim-
inate and name the reasoning processes which do
actually regulate the thinking of people who have
never heard of logic. The grammarian can illus-
trate the laws of his science from the speech of
well-bred children who cannot tell a noun from a
verb. So this truth about man 's mental make-up,
which is not overthrown by any particular man's
self-ignorance, is established by the fact that the
trained mind cannot otherwise account for what
is done by the child and the savage as well as by
the master in science or philosophy.
A student accustomed to this kind of analysis,
who cares for nothing but truth, and gladly recog-
nizes that most men of science are equally dis-
interested, may sometimes find himself puzzled
by the stubborn resistance of scientific men to the
recognition of new and unique powers in man.
Why are they so unwilling to admit what seems
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 219
SO certain! Why do they resist the only possible
explanation of the fact that they are men of
science, whereas the apes are not scientific, and
never can be unless they cease to be apes? I
suppose the answer is the apparent impossibility
of accounting for these powers by the ordinary
procedure of evolutionary science. Not only is
there nothing in the traceable antecedents into
which these powers can be resolved back, but the
very idea of resolving them into anything other
than themselves — the very notion of describing
their origin without presupposing them — in-
volves a self-contradiction. Add to this the un-
fortunate rarity of discipline in philosophical and
metaphysical thinking among experts in the
physical sciences, and their very frequent anti-
pathy to it, and the seeming puzzle is solved. Even
the great Darmn talked on these matters like a
child ; and Haeckel, for all his admirable scientific
skill, like a parrot.
Yet it would be the height of absurdity to make
our inability to account for a fact a reason for
denying the fact. We never think of doing this
in connection, let us say, with the ideas of matter
and of motion. Both matter and motion can only
be apprehended under conceptions that are shot
full of self-contradiction. Neither the origin nor
the unoriginated perpetuity of either of them is
rationally conceivable. From the days of the
Eleatic paradox to those of Einstein, motion has
been the standing puzzle of every man who could
and did think about it. As to matter, all we really
know of it is that it is the hypothetical negation
of consciousness, the mere name for an assumed
but unknown cause of our states of consciousness.
220 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Science itself in our time, thanks to the recent
progress of physics, has analyzed it into some-
thing that cannot really be called matter at all,
and has re-discovered and re-vindicated the great
truth announced ages ago by philosophical ideal-
ism, but hitherto generally ridiculed by science.^
Yet our blank and total failure to understand
these constant data of experience never leads us
to deny their proximate and partial reality.
"We are equally unable to understand life, or to
account either for its origin or its perpetual ex-
istence. I say this without forgetting the admir-
able and masterly work of researchers like the
late Professor Jacques Loeb, but rather remem-
bering that the labours of such investigators
really consist not in finding what life is, but in
describing certain of the conditions of its mani-
festation. Whether science finds itself con-
strained to stick to the doctrine of biogenesis, or
discovers reason to suppose that abiogenesis once
took place in a world previously lifeless, we shall
still know only the fact, and have no glimmer of
insight into the real inner nature of life.
But evolution, surely, has never meant that
there cannot appear in the world things radically
new. On the contrary, it is an attempt to explain
the factors that have conditioned the manifesta-
tion of novelties : the word * * explain ' ' being taken
in the only proper scientific sense, of telling Jioiv
and not ivhy. Why things happen, science has
never presumed to tell. Its explanations are only
descriptions, and its work is done when for any
^This, as much as the Einsteinian revolution in the ideas of
space and motion, is what underlies the admission of J. B. S.
Haldant', in "Daedalus," that henceforth men of science will
have to build on the basis of Kantian idealism.
I
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 221
phenomenon it has furnished a complete, and com-
pletely accurate, description of its conditions.
§VII — Conclusion : A Step Towards Reconcilia-
tion.
Self-consciousness and reflective rational
thought, then, we say, are limited to man among
animals. It is no answer to this to say that the
ludiments of them are found in other creatures.
// they are, in so far as they are, this would raise
those creatures above what we properly under-
stand as the animal level ; it would not reduce man
to it. Yet, even as to rational thought, what is
found in the apes is an incredibly exiguous and
stunted rudiment, which remains, in the highest
animal below man, as petty and jejune now as it
was a million years ago. Eeflective rational
thought, properly considered, is precisely a ca-
pacity for growth; consequently, the application
of its name to the few, rare, discontinuous flashes
that at far-sundered moments illumine the dark-
ness of the anthropoid ape, is erroneous. And, as
to self -consciousness, the awareness of a self-dis-
tinguishing subject, there could in the nature of
the case be no manifestation of its operation ex-
cept by such communication as is normally medi-
ated through speech.
In other words, when we attribute to lower
animals some degree of man's distinctive powers,
what we really do is to infer from the actions of
dogs or chimpanzees or elephants a rudimentary
process of thought. I do not say the inference is
totally false; my contention is that, if true, it
cannot be certainly verified. Nor is there any
222 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
warrant for the inference that the animal, if it
thinks, is conscious of itself as thinking.
Where knowledge is impossible, but yet we can-
not refrain from guessing, we are practically
compelled to choose between two guesses (or
hypotheses, to be more polite) in regard to the
new powers manifested in man :
a. A variation in brain-capacity, which we
loosely speak of as a ** chance" or '* spontaneous ' *
variation, by way of confessing that its cause is
unknown to us, produces thought and conscious-
ness by some mysterious natural transubstantia-
tion of the matter of the brain. Thus, for in-
stance, Haeckel in *^Die Weltratsel" speaks of
'Hhe four great thought-centres, or centres of
association, which . . . produce thought and con-
sciousness."
6. Consciousness and the power of reflective
rational thought are potential everywhere, and
pressing for channels of manifestation upon the
world of ''matter"; and at that particular point
of matter which we call the human brain, they
find a vehicle, an instrument organic to them.
The former is the materialistic account. To
many of us it seems fundamentally irrational, be-
cause it undertakes what Schopenhauer called
the absurd enterprise of ''deriving the subject
from the object." It makes that consciousness of
events as a related series, which must be equally
present to all the events it embraces, a product
of some one or more of a series of events of which,
ex vi termini, there had been no consciousness.
But this latter conception is a contradiction in
terms. And it attributes to a moment in time
the origination of that consciousness of which
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 223
time is the mode of working. In short, it sup-
poses the world of our experience, which is
what it is solely in virtue of the apparatus of
sense-perception and reason with which we are
endowed, to have been what these things make it
when these things were not ; and it supposes these
things, which make the world what it is for us, to
be effects of their own effects. It is the Spencer-
ian anachronism in another form.
The alternative supposition, which looks upon
consciousness as everywhere potential and seek-
ing channels of manifestation, is at least a ration-
ally coherent hypothesis. I make no pretence that
it is more than an hypothesis ; that is, an attempt
to imagine how a given fact may have arisen, in
the absence of any verifiable knowledge as to how
it did arise. It at least accords with the facts
which provoke the inquiry. It enables us to
accept, without doubt, the truth that man is phy-
sically of animal origin, yet also to perceive that
the essence of him is not animal, but that syn-
thesis of the rational, moral and volitional which
in its totality, for want of a better word, we call
spiritual. Man consists truly not of his bodily
organism, but of those powers to which his body
is organic.
This view also will consistently cover any
glimmering of mentality we may detect in apes,
dogs, or other creatures. If ** mind-stuff," or
*' consciousness-in-general,'* is everywhere press-
ing for organs, and finds a fragmentary organ
in the animal brain, naturally it will appear
there; as electricity finds many conductors, yet
only flashes into light when a special kind of con-
ductor encounters a special sort of obstacle.
224 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Now if the line of reasoning I have attempted
to pursue in these pages is sound, it yields a
conclusion which should help towards putting an
end to the wearisome and disheartening contro-
versy between evolutionists and *' Fundamental-
ists'' to which I referred at the outset. For
what the Fundamentalists (the intelligent ones
among them) really want to vindicate is the
dignity and uniqueness of man. They put them-
selves in an impossible position by tying this up
Avith the myths of Genesis, which from beginning
to end are incredible to-day, and would be no less
so even if evolution had never been heard of.
And they also make their case hopeless by identi-
fying it with root-and-branch opposition to the
doctrine of evolution, which for every instructed
man is noAV, as Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn
says, ''as Avell and as soundly established as the
eternal hills. It has long since ceased to be a
theory; it is a law of Nature as universal in
living things as is the law of gravitation in mater-
ial things and in the motions of the heavenly
spheres.''^ It is surely an imprudent and a
dangerous course to annex ethical and spiritual
values to affirmations that have no basis of evi-
dence and denials that affront the knowledge and
intelligence of all who are acquainted Avith the
proven facts of science.
In this paper, I have sought to show that the
nature of man remains as distinct and unique
when the evolutionary evidence is fully accepted
and properly interpreted as it could possibly be
if man w^ere regarded as a special and miraculous
exception to the general process of creation.
^"The Earth Speaks to Bryan, ' p. 4.
EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN 225
On the other hand, while nothing can excuse
the temper and methods of our current Funda-
mentalism, it is fair to remind ourselves that evo-
lutionists, by insisting upon what (as I maintain)
is a false inference from their established facts,
have given some cause for the misunderstanding,
dislike and repugnance which their doctrine has
encountered. By saying, ''Man is no more than
an animal; he has only a higher degree of the
animal's powers; and it is nothing but your
vanity that makes you want to think otherwise,"
tliey have put themselves as much in the wrong,
and conmiitted themselves to as untenable a posi-
tion, as the P\mdamentalists who desire to ram
Genesis down our throats. It is no vanity, but the
strictly intellectual necessity of doing justice to
palpable facts, which leads us to reject their
dogma, to re-examine the evidence from which
they have extracted it, and thus to find that they
had misinterpreted the testimony of the facts.
The
Spiritual Outlook on Life,
By HENRY J. GOLDING.
EVERY EXPERIENCE of greatness seeks to
impart itself. A noble work of art, an instance
of heroism or of sublime self-sacrifice, the illumin-
ation of a new scientific concept, make heralds and
propagandists of us. "We desire others to share
in this glory. At a more familiar level, the wor-
ship of the athlete, perhaps the oldest and still
the most popular of cults, unites men in a dis-
interested admiration which is never reticent. He
vindicates their native pride in humanity and
incarnates life triumphant. Of the higher
achievements and aims, and particularly of the
ideal aspirations enshrined in religion, it is true
that they reveal themselves as no man's private
possession. Only as he communicates them to
others will they come to fullness of life in him.
And, notoriously, the contagion of their power is
spread less by words than by the attitude and
conduct they irradiate.
Those in whose lives religion has established
its mastery realize most clearly and strongly the
irrelevance of the dogmas to which men have
sought to bind it. Dogmas perish of their irrele-
vance rather than of their incredibility. Probab-
ly never before has the study of religion engaged
so many minds at once trained, unbiased, and re-
228 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
verent ; never before has the traditional theology
appeared so remote and unreal, its cosmology so
false, and its dramatization of human history so
naive ; yet never before, certainly, has the sublime
insight of Jesus been so spontaneously acclaimed.
Compared with the whole range of the spiritual
life of humanity, every theology has been provin-
cial, its language a dialect. The Roman Church
strove for a synthesis of reason and faith within
the compass of its horizon, limited, as Loisy puts
it, by ''a formula of the universe" Avhich it pro-
claimed as divinely revealed, definitive and immu-
table. It imposed its supeniaturalist reading of
the faith by which men live, and sought by its
symbols to interpret and exalt their sense of
aAve and love, their reverence for something
greater than themselves ; and by a coercive disci-
pline to habituate them to respect the Christian
virtues. Our civilization bears the impress of
the Christian tradition. The historic beliefs in
which Western humanity voiced what it felt and
thought on the greatest of all themes command
a respect that need not be purblind. To-day it
is evident that to chain morality to unverifiable
dogma was to imperil it. And the claim of the
Church to be the sole repository of revealed
truth has resulted in a spiritual tyranny that
exalts obedience above inquiry, and places credal
orthodoxy on a level with right conduct, if not
above it.
Whereas, said Kant, **the proof of religion is
not in historical facts, miracles, revelations, and
so forth, but in the moral law, that will in our-
selves which is bent on achieving the supreme
good.*' Moved by this truth, discerning theo-
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 229
logians sock to disencumber religion of the in-
credible and meaningless, and thereby to accredit
its appeal. They have dismantled, if not de-
molished, the traditional theolog\\ The doctrines
of the creation, the fall, original sin, the virgin
birth, the atonement, the last judgment, heaven
and hell, are either shed completely or attenu-
ated to wraiths. Moral goodness is declared to
be the greatest thing in the world. God is inter-
preted as the power needed to ensure that the
good shall prevail. By striving to mould our
lives in accordance with our moral ideals, we shall
come to realize that God exists and attain to
communion with him. We cannot find him by any
otlier path.^
Religion has ever to establish its place and
function in a larger world. If it is really alive,
and has not dwindled into spiritless ritual and
code, the challenge of denial brings it out of the
shadows of institutionalism, to find its o"wti vital-
ity in the shock of crisis. It must take account
of needs that have changed their aspect with the
new conceptions of the universe. Obviously a
man^s religious aspirations are conditioned by his
view of the world. The courage that faces all
facts, however disquieting, a scale of thought and
feeling that welcomes truth from whatever quar-
ter, are required of religion if it is not to be the
travesty of its own ideals. Not only without
miserable reservations, but with joy, it must ad-
mit to its mind the ampler, though still in-
sufficient, light in which science reveals man's
origins and history. Without a passion for truth,
to which the thought of duplicity and accommoda-
'Sop McGiffert's The Rise of Modern Religions Ideas.
230 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tion is vile, religion sinks. The light fades out
of it. The flush and glow of its inspiration die.
It can no longer inflame the heroic in man, bear the
standard of great causes, and command the atten-
tion of men, even the unwilling attention of its
foes, as enthroning, above all else, the ideals of
truth and righteousness.
For essential religion has been well defined by
Mr. Lowes Dickinson as *'a conviction of the
supreme importance of our highest ideals, and of
their place in the structure of reality. " It is an
impassioned affirmation of what irresistibly de-
clares itself to us to be sacred, against all that
would deny it; it is an undying effort to realize
these ideals, and in their light to transform our
lives.
Religion gathers power in an agony of soul.
It has the strength of transcended despair, and
the nobility of suffering overcome. It sees be-
yond pessimism, not by overlooking it, but be-
cause it has felt in their full force the facts at
which pessimism halts, and has found what can
surpass them. No theodicy, but experience alone,
3delds the assurance of its faith. The suffering
that raises religion to mastery over all lesser
interests in the soul has a twofold source. On
the one hand, our belief in the supreme signifi-
cance of our ideals seems, as Dr. Adler says, to
be mocked by the cosmical relations of man — by
the apparent belittling of humanity. On the
other hand, we are afflicted by the constant spec-
tacle of the profaning and outraging of what is
holiest to us, human personality; that in which
the life of the spirit is manifested.
Year by year science opens ever vaster perspec-
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 231
tives, vertiginous distances in space and time.
We have learned, if one may instance a fact of
common knowledge, that in order to traverse the
abyss that separates us from the furthest stars
of the Milky Way, a ray of light must travel for
more than two hundred thousand years; and be-
yond these outposts of the system to which we
belong — several times more remote — are the
spiral nebulae, galaxies in all respects compar-
able to the Milky Way. While this more vividly
felt immensity of the physical universe appears
to reduce to insignificance our place in it, the
individuaPs span of time in the life of the world
is little more impressive. Evolving humanity has
left its traces through hundreds of thousands of
years. Its recorded history testifies to the ** herit-
age of the brute.** Cannibalism, war, massacre,
disease, crime, vice, and oppression rebuke any
shallow optimism, and forbid light dismissal of
the blunt dictum of a powerful writer,* that
**from the first breath to the last, life is in essence
cruel. There is nothing that lives but lives on
the life of something else.*' Life, however, has
itself given birth to that judgment, and to the
moral consciousness, which demands that in hn-
man life cruelty shall have no place.
A tenable outlook on the world cannot ignore
or evade these facts. Without the glamour of
m3i;h it must attempt to establish human dignity,
to discover what constitutes man's worth.
Of all beings we know, man alone awakens to
the unimaginable adventure of life, atmosphered
by infinite space and time, and surrounded with
a splendour that no poet could have dreamed. He
»Mr. Stephen Ward, in "The Ways of Life."
232 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
finds in him that which can thrill with awe to the
over-whelming grandeur of it all. It is given to
him for a while to know himself a part, however
infinitesimal, of this magnificence, to feel an en-
chanted wonder before the revelation of infinite
power, and to feel pride also in the tireless quest
of knowledge which has helped humanity to this
vision. No slighting and derogatory view of
mankind can leave out of account its power of
response to the infinite. The modern thinker
feels none of PascaPs terror before the eternal
silences of space; he is elated rather than de-
pressed by every new revelation of the vastness
of the cosmos, and a return to the traditional view
of the human episode, seen, as it were, in a crys-
tal, with the Cross central and all-significant,
would be mentally suffocating. He has made his
peace, as most men have not, with the Copernican
revolution, grasps its significance, and learns its
lesson. He is reconciled, for he sees that the
greatness of man^s environment does not dwarf,
but exalts his soul; he feels a pure joy in sub-
limity, which owes nothing to the struggle for
existence and lifts him above his self-centred
affections into a sense of participation. The
world is not all alien to us. Man is a pulse of 'Hhe
infinite and eternal energy from which all things
proceed. ' ' In him * ^ glows the fire that burns at the
heart of the world.'' Because he roots in the life
of the universe he can pierce its immensities, un-
veil some of its secrets, analyze, measure, and
predict, and can unconsciously carry something
of this larger vision into his daily life. Mere size
is not greatness. It is not alone the scale of the
cosmos that enchains man's reverence, but its felt
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 233
mystery, and the unfathomable spiritual poten-
tialities he divines in it. In his own life he has
had a glimpse of these, as of a far-flashing splen-
dour. His soul can kindle to their challenging
greatness. The search for truth, '*with truth as
its sole reward"; the heroism of self -forgetting
love, and the rapt delight in '* beauty visible and
invisible," — these are realities, which are not
trivialized by our discovery that the cosmos is
without conceivable limit.
And progress is real, even if it be not assured.
How real, we may grasp if we envisage humanity,
not as striving to regain a lost perfection, but as
winning its way, at its furthest point, from the
jungle to Atliens, from the ape to Plato and
Shakespeare — through what difficulties, and sus-
tained by what indomitable courage and tenacity,
we cannot even imagine. Does it not enlarge our
idea of the riches of the human spirit to realize
that without special revelation mankind has mani-
fested the power to write its Bibles and develop
its faiths? The human mind and heart are as
rich, as instinct with creativeness, as ever. Man^s
powers and ideals are what they are, whether
they were the result of a separate creative act or
have been unfolded through a long and toilsome
evolution. It is transparently fallacious to as-
sume that because man's faith in special creation
and revelation ivanes, some glory has passed from
the world. All the great faiths have flowered in
the soul of man. Men have projected their own
ideals and worshipped them. These ideals have
ever to be incarnated afresh, not in the figures
of myth and legend, but in our own lives. It is a
blasphemy of man to attribute his good to his
234 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
gods, and only his evil to himself; to regard his
sin as original and his virtue as vicarious. Ethi-
cal religion proclaims that the element termed
divine is in all men. It sees in every human
being a potential centre of sjnritual energy which,
though hidden and repressed, might yet be set
free.
What most fatefully distinguishes man from
even the highest of the lower animals is manifest-
ly the fact of self -consciousness, and all that self-
consciousness involves. In him, life surveys its
course, looks before and after, and strives to seize,
in their* marvellous complexity, the laws of its
own being. Man marks a crisis in the evolution-
ary process. He urges his way from **is" to
** ought,*' from brute fact to truth, from brute
force to right; and he attempts so to relate him-
self to the world as to give fullest scope to his
distinctive nature. What is great in him speaks
in his quests. Not in his origin, but in his ideals
we must look for the evidence of his intrinsic
worth. All origins are lowly, all beginnings
humble. Not by its root^ but by its fruits, as
William James emphasized, is the tree known.
Man, then, finds inwrought with his being the
faculty of conceiving ideals of compelling majesty,
and the impulse, the felt obligation, to endeavour
to realize these as in experience they define them-
selves more and more clearly. They at once
challenge and defy achievement. Because they
are unattainable, they raise man^s stature.
Through all halfness and imperfection they shine
completingly, and they find their response in his
insatiable craving for the perfect. That he can
take upon himself the burden of a task never to
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 235
be fully accomplished is his patent of nobility,
and the core of all faith and hope is man's power
to devote himself, in disregard of lesser goods,
to the work of raising life to an ideal. It is to
those who have thus overcome the world that
mankind pays the tribute of worshipping love.
They speak, in different tongues, the same great
language. They had faith in humanity; they be-
lieved that men can be touched to finer issues, and
they witnessed to the reality of the spiritual life
incarnate in them.
More and more, as man judges the world of
fact in the light of his ideals, he confesses his
responsibility for so transforming his institu-
tions as to express these. A growing mastery of
his environment, through knowledge and control
of the great natural forces, lessens his subjection
to such untoward exhibitions of nature's indiffer-
ence as drought, flood, famine and pestilence.
The caprices and inequalities of nature intervene,
like adverse gods, between desert and reward.
Social justice enlists the collective power in an
attempt to safeguard the individual life against
the full effects of these, and to place it above the
uncertainties of chance and unreason. As moral-
ity discloses its implications, the first narrow
kinship widens into a recognition of the brother-
hood of man — the patriotism of humanity affirm-
ing itself and its ideals contra mundum.
In a well-known phrase, Huxley announced
that **the ethical process consists, not in con-
forming to the cosmic process, still less in running
away from it, but in combating it.'* His philoso-
phical lapse was patent. New departures are, of
course, part of the cosmic process. A fact, which
236 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Huxley's vigour over-stated, is that evolution is
not only compatible with breaches of precedent,
but depends upon them. Ethics, with its basic
thought of the interdependence of men, demands
that in human relationships co-operation shall re-
place strife. It throws its arm about all mankind.
It seeks that every human being shall achieve the
undeflected growth of his spirit.
Of the conditions governing the more effective
emergence of that ideal, not the least important
is man's increased command over nature. A
main concern of the social reformer is not only
to point out the respects in which civilization fails
to keep abreast of mechanical progress, but to
show that the evils he indicates are avoidable.
Whenever any social inferiority becomes unneces-
sary it becomes, at the same moment, an injustice.
In democracies, statesmanship tends to found on
the principle of equality. The adoption of that
principle is not simply an expedient to furnish
statesmen under challenge with a popularly de-
fensible theory of practice; nor does it merely
reflect the distribution of political power. It
answers, also, to a dawning sense of the stifled
possibilities in the mass of men. The true spirit
of equality is an impatience, not of excellence,
but of inferiority, and implies an assertion of
human dignity.
Ethics more explicitly affirms ' ' the moral equiva-
lence of men." Is this assertion a sheer dogma,
incapable of proof and enounced in the teeth of
appearances ; or is it based on some quality that
strikes through all the diversity of men's endow-
ment, and proclaims them, in the supreme regard.
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIB^E 237
as intrinsically precious, unique, and incom-
mensurable ?
In approaching the question, one notes first
the commonplaces. Knowledge widens sympathy,
and checks the native tendency to stigmatize as
inferior those of other classes, nations, or races.
A moment's reflection shows us the contingency
of many of the distinctions on which men are apt
to plume themselves. The notion that our social
inequalities reflect with sufficient accuracy the de-
grees of ability and virtue cannot survive inquiry
— or a sense of humour. Humour, too, contrasts
all pride and vainglory with the trifles that can
overthrow even the most pompous. In his lucid
moments a man faces the truth that he did not
v/holly make himself, and that he owes most of
what he is and has to the effort of countless gen-
erations. Even genius is not self-begotten, and
can fulfil itself only in and through society.
A consciousness of our own failures and short-
comings saps the arrogance that denies worth to
other men, and opens a way for the truth that
their personality is as important to them as ours
is to us. They incarnate the same mystery as do
we. In them as in ourselves there are depths
below depths, and potentialities beyond imagin-
ing. They are ** sacred vessels of experience," in-
conceivably complex and transcending our crude
valuations. The realization of this marks the
dethroning of the egocentric attitude, and the
problem of equality assumes for us a more in-
timate aspect. Not ^ * Must I treat all men as equal
to one another?" but **Must I treat all men as
equal to me ? " becomes the cardinal question ; and
to that there can be but one answer. Only the
238 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
mean soul insists on its opined superiorities. To
a generous mind, to be feared is the last humilia-
tion. It desires to see men grow to their full
stature. Everything that stunts and enslaves
man, from without or from within, is the enemy;
whether it be ignorance, fear, animalism, or the
tyranny of circumstance. Man should be dwarfed
by his ideals, not by the oppression of force.
We resent as humiliating the compulsion of non-
moral power; it is an anachronism, and affronts
our dignity as human beings. And, as moral out-
look derives ultimately from moral insight, it is
in virtue of what we find to be supreme in our
own nature that we affirm human personality to
be sacred. The spiritual progress of mankind is
reflected in a substitution of *4deals which attract
for force which drives" as the determinant of
human action.
Morality involves a claim to inner sovereignty.
Before we can be accounted moral beings we must
accept the moral law as our own. It is a truism
in ethics that whatever be the end proposed to us
as supreme, whether it be obedience to the divine
will, the raising of the human type, the release
of spiritual energy in all men, the greatest happi-
ness, or any other, our conscience must first pro-
nounce it to be highest. And in conscience the
individual recognizes the authority of a greater
life which includes and transcends his o\sti, and
summons him to share in the upward effort of
humanity. Only as we freely identify ourselves
with it can the moral ideal draw to itself our full
loyalty and unite in its service all our powers.
Therein lies the deepest ground of our respect
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 239
for men. We feel that in every human being
there is the possibility, obscured as it may be, of a
birth into moral freedom.
Illuminating these bases of our reverence for
human personality is a larger truth, to which
Dr. Adler has given original expression; the
truth that to hold men cheap is spiritual death,
and that our own salvation is bound up with
our recognition of their intrinsic worth. We
live in and through others. We find ourselves in
them and we reveal them to themselves ; our own
soul's best is achieved only as we kindle into
flame the distinctive life in them.
The full import of this law of give-and-take
comes into the mind with a flooding realization
that may change the course of a man's existence.
It mounts in him to an overmastering sense of
obligation. He feels with new power the links
that bind him to others. His reverence deepens;
it suffuses him with a new humility and clothes
the world with a fresh wonder. Suddenly the
earth is peopled with souls for him. His supreme
privilege would be to divine what is of surpassing
worth in them, and, by divining, help it to ex-
pression. With the central change in his life,
the sight of souls trodden in mire inflicts a more
poignant suffering. He sees men and women held
cheap, not only by others but by themselves, de-
nied their growth, and blind to their inheritance.
Our own part in evil becomes intolerable as we
realize with an intenser conviction that our rela-
tions to others outweigh all else. We feel that
without communion with other souls our own soul
starves. What we know, with a certainty beyond
240 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
the reach of scepticism, to be the height of reali-
zation— a scale and plane of being attained in
the rare men and women whom the world in its
heart acknowledges to be its greatest — is so to
live that a man's life should be a radiance and an
evocation. It should be the free imparting of
whatever gifts he has to bestow, the inspiring of
hope, courage, strength, joy, and self-respect, a
rejoicing in the varied wealth of human endow-
ment, and a sense of the majesty of the spiritual
life which speaks in our ideals and gives nobility
to human existence. Instead, the shadow of fu-
tility seems to rest upon us. We fail here in
insight, there in active helpfulness ; we are timor-
ous, slack and unresponsive. The gulf between
ourselves as we are and as we feel we ought to
be widens as our ideals take firmer hold upon
us and claim a larger place in our lives. This
disharmony leads to a revaluation of the custom-
ary aims.
For good or evil, the conventional ideal visibly
determines the outlook of most men and women,
and decides their course through life. Pecuniary
success as the blazon of efficient effort and as the
guarantee of security, the acceptance of current
standards in social usage, in economic enterprise
and in religious observance, — these are its high
lights. It makes proximate ends supreme. This
social idolatry helps to obscure for the mass of
men the question of the meaning and value of life.
The awakened man cannot resign himself to its
dyarchy of custom and fashion. Not what is
correct but what is right is the chief concern of
religion, and in the moral life it is more import-
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 241
ant to take thought than to save it by a mindless
drift. Success in his vocation has neither satis-
fied nor stilled his deeper cravings, and the dis-
tance his success puts between him and the less
fortunate creates uneasiness in a sensitive nature.
The sharper conflict of the opposing strains gives
rise to a haunting anxiety. When he resolves on
the finer choice, and decides that henceforth he
will place first the exalting of life in others, this
tension disappears, and yields to a fresh illumina-
tion and joy that irradiate his being. He gains
the assurance that he has found his way.
The man who has attained to the spiritual out-
look on life increasingly entrusts himself to the
magnanimous and creative impulses to which it
gives fresh urgency. He sees danger and goes to
meet it. ' ' To risk all for nothing, not even for the
flattery of history,'^ said Kierkegaard, "that is
the heroism of ethics.*' He may come to know
the exaltation that lifts the heart, not indeed
above all fear, but beyond the fear bred of con-
cern for his career, or happiness, or even safety.
Explain it how we may, surrender to his ideals
unseals the fountains of his life and brings the
sense of release. There is quickening in the
thought that he can in some degree serve to
enhance life, and lesser interests are made sub-
servient to this end, which transfigures the com-
mon life for him. Gro'\\i:h in the moral life im-
plies a wider range of perception and appeal, and
a more perfect attuning of the soul to the inner
life of others.
Seldom, if ever, is this development a steadily
continuous unfolding; rather it goes from stage
?42 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
to stage through conflict and crisis. The benumb-
ing shock of realized evil drives a man back
upon himself. The spiritual law he has violated
defines itself with an accusing clearness; he
knows as he has never before known its authorita-
tive power, he sees himself as he is, and resolves
in an agony of self-condemnation never again to
transgress. Gradually the inner waves, which
threatened to overwhelm him, subside. An un-
hoped-for calm gathers out of the tumult, and he
feels that whatever may await him, he has known
a worse bitterness than death. He faces life again
with a profounder humility and tenderness.
The religious life appears in its full grandeur
when it lays aside the extraneous and the out-
worn. It ministers to man's need of that which
will enlist all his powers and justify his utmost
allegiance. For the ideal is no illusion. As a
man attempts to express it in his life, he gains
the assurance of a supreme reality, revealing it-
self in ever more majestic vistas. Ideals are the
challenge of the infinite in the finite, raising it to
a higher power. They alone can satisfy our crav-
ing for a perfection that is ever beyond achieve-
ment, yet constrains us to its quest. They declare
the existence of a spiritual order whose design is
implicit in us; their authority is self -avouching,
for their power derives from their consonance
with what is most real in ourselves, with the very
law of our being.
It is at least certain that a life devoted to
ideals becomes fraught with a fuller meaning. So
to live is the practical answer to the riddle of
existence. A man wins his moral certitudes not
THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE 243
by reflection, but by living in a certain way. As
he finds self-fulfilment in seeking and communi-
cating truth, in the love of beauty, in the appre-
ciation of the gifts of others, and in realizing
the links that bind him to mankind, he finds also
that he has risen above the plane of self-love,
where, it has been said, most of our wounds are
received He feels most deeply the blow when
the great cause is wounded, and justice seems to
be overborne by force. He has attained in his
degree to the attitude that alone makes possible
great art, and science, and is the secret of all
noble morality. We perceive the beauty of the
world when we see it out of relation to our utili-
tarian ends. The scientist achieves most greatly
when he loses sight of the immediate profit of
his search and is possessed by the passion for
truth; morality shines with its own light when
we rejoice in the good of others and seek to give
to all their part in the heritage of mankind.
Humanity *s distinctive achievement is to have
entered a ** realm of ends,** wherein every soul
shall count, and whereto our control of nature
shall be made instrumental. The aim of religion is
to ' ^ forge personality out of mere individuality, * * to
spiritualize the raw material of passion, impulse,
desire, affection, so that these shall subserve the
exaltation of life in all. It builds upon man's
power of self-transcendence. It appeals to that
in virtue of which he can despise his own base-
ness as a betrayal of what he knows to be sa-
cred, and can start up afresh from every failure.
It calls to the hero in him. It summons him
to the hard and the dangerous, and gives him a
244 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
task that can never be dulled by the satiety of
complete achievement. It liberates creative
energy. Freedom is of the essence of the spirit-
ual life, for to enlist mind, heart and will in the
service of ideals is liberty. It is, in Loisy's words,
**a realization of real freedom, of sanctity in hu-
man conduct; it is at once an exaltation and a
beatification of man in his devotion to humanity."
The Ethics of
Abu'l 'Ala al Ma'Arri
By NATHANIEL SCHMIDT (Cornell University).
MANY POETS, prophets, and philosophers
have rebelled against the religious ideas and
practices current in their environment. The reac-
tion has expressed itself in different ways, accord-
ing to temperament, mental habits, and force
of character. Sometimes it has taken the form of
loud protest, scathing criticism, and biting sar-
casm; sometimes, of quiet disapproval, unbiased
investigation, and genial reconstruction of the
world of thought and the manner of life. Now and
then, the humorist *s laughter has mingled with the
poet's insight, the prophet's earnestness, and the
philosopher's mature reflection. Among the dis-
senters there are pathfinders exploring fresh
realms of religious and moral experience, destroy-
ers clearing the road from harmful obstructions,
and builders erecting new structures. If a few are
mentioned here out of the large number whose
spiritual independence and moral enthusiasm en-
title them to grateful remembrance in this con-
nection, the purpose is chiefly to point out the
variety of type and the importance of some whose
work is often discounted as in the main negative
and destructive.
246 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
There is no danger that the names of Amos and
Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus and Paul will
be forgotten ; but there is a danger that their em-
phasis on ethics and their radical attitude toward
tradition may be overlooked or minimized. Mod-
em readers are becoming aware of the deep signi-
ficance of the Book of Job, now widely recognized
as one of the masterpieces of the world's litera-
ture. But how many recalled during the World
War, on either side, the important message of
the Book of Jonah, that delicious satire on pro-
phethood by a true prophet possessing a rare
sense of humor t The great philosophers of
ancient Greece will continue through the genera-
tions to command the attention of serious think-
ers. But the playful wit and brilliant satire of
Lucian sometimes obscure his remarkable insight
and genuine moral concern, just as the rhetoric
and allegoresis of Dio Chrj^sostomus tend to cause
forgetfulness of his manly struggle against slav-
ery and other evils, and the close scientific rea-
soning of Lucretius, as he scales the flammantia
nwenia mundi, and his impassioned battling with
the irrational fears of man, only occasionally open
the portals to a new world, as they did to Victor
Hugo in the cottage at Romorantin. Why should
not Plotinus be as carefully studied as Origen;
and Arnobius, the disciple of Hypatia, as Augus-
tine? Abelard and Francis of Assisi, so different
one from the other, are as worthy of considera-
tion as Thomas Aquinas and other scholas-
tics. From an ethical standpoint, Ibn Gabirol, in-
sisting on the autonomy of morality, is not less
important than Ibn Ezra and Maimonides. All
honor to Luther and Zwingli; yet if Erasmus is
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 247
coming into his own, the prejudices of the refor-
mation period should not prevent us from seeing
in Hans Denck, the radical hounded to death by
Protestants and Catholics alike, one of the no-
blest and most far-seeing spirits of that age. Spin-
oza's position is now secure, and there can be no
question that Kant was in a very real sense a
precursor of the Ethical Movement. There are
many, however, who look askance at such men as
Montaigne, Moliere, and Voltaire, failing to per-
ceive the unmistakable moral urge and the ethical
significance of a generous measure of scepticism
and of what George Meredith called ^*the comic
spirit. ' ' Pascal is rightly admired ; another Port
Royalist, Pierre Nicole, left a little book on ''How
to Live in Peace with Men'' which should be pon-
dered by all thoughtful persons. The moral and
intellectual significance of Quietism, as repre-
sented by Fox and Penn, has perhaps never been
more clearly set forth, against a broad historic
background, than by Bruno Bauer, himself a vic-
tim of theological intolerance. The scientific build-
ers of a new conception of the universe, men like
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Lamarck,
Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, and Spencer, have also
paved the way for a new conception of the moral
law as something to be sought for and discovered
by man, and then loyally applied to his conduct
of life. Nor would it be just to omit such men as
Karl Marx and Henry George, who, from different
points of view, with their insight and moral en-
thusiasm helped to create a fresh hope among
the masses of men for a nobler social order. While
homage is paid to Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Theodore Parker, it is also fair to remember
248 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
Thomas Paine, so unjustly described by Theodore
Roosevelt as **that dirty little infidel''; Robert
Ingersoll, so persistently vilified in his day; and
Samuel Clemens, the humorist, with his prophetic
aennneiation of shams, wrongdoing in high places,
and barbarous institutions like war.
In the Oriental world, Kung-fu-tze's tremen-
dous emphasis upon morality, albeit of a conven-
tional type, to the well nigh complete exclusion of
religious speculation, is generally recognized. The
profounder thought of Lao-tze still waits for an
adequate appreciation, partly because of the ob-
scurity of his language. Gautama, the Buddha,
the greatest thinker of India, is often accorded
less serious consideration than he deserves be-
cause of his pessimism, and there is a hesitancy,
no longer quite creditable, to acclaim the mighty
deed of this founder of the religion of pity in
sweeping the heavens clear of gods and the earth
of altars and genuflections, while pointing the road
to deliverance through moral effort affecting
every element of man's nature. Other Indians
deserve to be mentioned: Mahavira Jina, whose
aMmsa doctrine again stirs the world through
Gandhi ; Sankara ; and Keshub Chunder Sen, with
his resolute endeavor to break the shackles of tra-
dition, accept the truth wherever it may be found,
and abolish social customs standing in the way of
moral progress. Among the Muslims there have
also been prophets and philosophers characterized
by spiritual freedom and actuated by high moral
motives. Because of his many obvious limitations,
the services rendered by Muhammad himself to
the moral advance of his own people and the mil-
lions that came under the influence of Islam has
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 240
seldom been estimated fairly. There is no room
for questioning his essential sincerity, nor his
fearless attack upon degrading customs, nor his
insistence upon what appeared to him the duties
of man, nor the growth of morality due to his
teaching, however impeded by admixture of
coarser elements. Radical views were held by the
Mu'tazila, the Zindiks, the Ikhwan al Safa, or
** Brethren of Purity. '' The intellectual indepen-
dence and ethical insight of such men as Ibn Sina
and Ibn Rushd have long been acknowledged.
But the social teachings of Farabi should be more
widely known than they are, and the real signifi-
cance of Ghazali 's revolt against the philosophical
systems of the schools more clearly perceived.
There is nothing prophetic in Umar Khayyam;
but from the hope of heaven and the fear of hell
he called men back to the present, with its prob-
lems and duties, its joys and sorrows, in accents
that have a universal appeal. There are flashes of
moral insight in Mutanabbi, the most popular of
Arab poets, and a more serious rebellion against
unsatisfying orthodoxy in Abu'l Atahiya. Even
Ibn Khaldun, greatest of Arab historians, and
one of the greatest philosophers of history of all
time, clever diplomat as he was and cautious not
to offend religious sensibilities, clearly hints that
religion is a product of social development, and
incidentally gives expression to very high moral
ideals, notably in the reasons he assigns for con-
demning slavery and war. His friend Al Khatib
lisan al din had the sad fate of being lynched by
a mob for his religious heresies. None, however,
seems to such a degree to represent at once utter
abandonment of external authority, implicit con-
250 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
fidence in reason and the sense of right, recogni-
tion of the ahsohite supremacy of ethics, and
loyalty in thought and deed to the dictates of con-
science, as the blind poet of Ma*arrah. This lonely
figure looms up large, not only challenging our
attention, but also eliciting our admiration, what-
ever we may rightly deem the defects in his phil-
osophy of life and in his character. One may,
indeed, sympathize with the rebuke administered
by that quaint old poet Thomas Lynch to those
"who use the light that shines upon the prophet's
face to count the wrinkles on his brow.'* Yet we,
of course, owe it to those who lived that we might
think more clearly and act more nobly, as well as
to ourselves, to cultivate the gift of spiritual dis-
cernment, to learn the art of observing, in modesty
and without censorious judgment, what may ap-
pear their errors, faults, and failures, while re-
joicing, with gratitude and reverence, in what
seem to us their forAvard steps, fine traits, and
true achievements.
Ahmad ibn Sulaiman Abu'l 'Ala al Ma'arri was
born in 973. His native place was the little town
of Ma*arrat al Nu'man, a short distance south of
Aleppo. He belonged to the tribe of Tanukh,
which seems to have settled in this region already
before the Muslim conquest. This tribe was fa-
mous for its poets, vying in this respect with the
better known tribe of Hudhail. His grandfather
was a judge at Ma'arrah. His father was a poet
of some distinction, yet a very modest man, of
whom his son said that **he would avoid the
crush on the judgment day." There had also been
men of eminence in his mother's family. In his
fourth year he was attacked by smallpox. As a
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARUAII 251
consequence he lost completely the sight of one
eye, and his face was marked by pocks. Not long
after this he lost the sight of the other eye. Only
in his early childhood was he able to see the world
of men and things he so graphically described in
his poems. In spite of this serious handicap, he
found it possible to acquire an education. He was
first taught by his father and other scholars in
Ma'arrah. Then he went to Aleppo. Under the
enlightened rulers of the Hamdanid dynasty this
city had become a great centre of Muslim learn-
ing, poetry, and art. Here Mutanabbi had flour-
ished just before the time of Abul *Ala, and the
young poet became fascinated by the music of his
lyric strains. It is quite possible that caravans
from Persia and far-off India brought with tiieui
to this city strange ideas and customs that came
to the knowledge of the curious seeker after truth
and left a permanent impression on his mind. If
some of Abu'l *Ala^s peculiar thoughts and prac-
tices developed to some extent under such foreign
influence, as seems likely, it is not necessary to
assume that it could only have reached him during
his sojourn in Baghdad. He became a vegetarian
in his thirtieth year, long before his journey to the
Abbasid capital. For some time he continued his
studies at Antioch, then belonging to the Byzan-
tine Empire. According to a tradition, he was
greatly affected by the teaching and life of a
Christian monk, and though some similar s lories
about other Muslims may well be questioned, it is
not altogether improbable in his case. He also
studied at Tripoli. A marvelously retentive mem-
ory enabled him to store up an amazing fund of
information. Particularly rich was his knowledge
252 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
of Arabic poetry. If it was not always accurate, as
the eye could not verify what the ear had heard,
an astonishing measure of exactness was pre-
served by the acuter sense of hearing that must
perforce compensate for the loss of sight. With
this there also developed a delicate sense of
rhythm and rhyme, of grammatical form, of
shades of meaning and beauty of expression.
It is natural that Abul 'Ala should have cher-
ished the ambition of becoming a professional
poet. But there was one serious obstacle in the
way. Not his blindness, for blind poets had some-
times met with marked success ; but his conscience.
Enormous sums of money were paid by princes
and rich men to the clever eulogist; his was a
lucrative career. Abu'l *Ala, however, could not
purchase patronage by insincere flattery. It is
not quite clear whether the threatened with-
drawal of a small stipend he enjoyed led him to
try his luck in Baghdad. With his eagerness to
learn, he naturally wished to visit the great city,
to browse in its large libraries, to come into con-
tact with its distinguished scholars and poets, to
recite his poems in its salons, to feel the pulse of
its stirring life. In 1008 he left for Baghdad, and
he remained there until 1010. If there were dis-
enchantments, there were also real gains ; and he
occasionally referred in later years with some-
thing like regret to the year and a half he spent
in the capital. How epoch-making for his spirit-
ual development his stay in Baghdad may have
been is difficult to say. There were no doubt
ampler opportunities here than in Aleppo to be-
come familiar with the various winds of learning
that blew through the Muslim w^orld. Chance and
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 253
determined search may have brought him into
tonch with thinkers who knew something, not only
of Zoroastrianism, but also of Indian philosophy.
He may never have learned that there were
Buddhists who looked for Nirvana, and Jainists
who refused to eat honey. Yet ideas travel with-
out passport far and wide, too fast for the record-
er *s pen to note down all their devious ways,
and they find a lodging where there is a hospitable
mind, ^liy Abu*l *Ala left Baghdad is not cer-
tain. The cause may have been a reported instance
of too bold and outspoken criticism on his part,
or anxiety about his mother's health. He was
deeply attached to her; she died in 1010, and we
possess a touching tribute by him to her worth.
After his return to Syria, he settled at Ma^ar-
rah, and remained in this little town for almost
half a century until his death in 1057. Here he
lived his simple life of integrity, self-denial, and
independence. *^The doubly imprisoned" he cal-
led himself; he was blind and shut out from the
world. Capable of tender affection, often beauti-
fully expressed, he was without family ties, for
he never thought it right to marry. Filled with
sympathy for all living beings to the point of un-
willingness that they be slain to furnish susten-
ance for him, he was unable to see, except in ima-
gination, the life he held too sacred to be touched.
Most of his slender resources, derived from a
pitiful pension of thirty dinars a year, went to
the servant who took care of him. His own per-
sonal wants were reduced to a minimum. He lived
on vegetables and water, and the water of Ma'-
arrah was not good. As old age advanced, he
became a cripple, unable to raise himself from his
254 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
seat, and suffered from illness. But he was in-
wardly a free man, tree from passions, prejudices,
Bupprstitions, in control of his appetites and
master oi ms soul, in tliis sequestered nook of
nature he wrestled incessantly with the great
problems of existence ; he listened to the music of
his people's songs before the Prophet came and
after this event, and to the strident notes of
spiritual dissent, with unmistakable fellow-feel-
ing ; he gave his fancy wings to fly through realms
that had no reality to him, and let his subtle irony
and mordant wit play with chUdish hopes and
groundless fears he did not share; he freely
voiced his criticism of the current religious ideas
among Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Magians,
and urged reliance upon reason and obedience to
the dictates of conscience. And to his little town
the world from which he w^as shut out came : re-
nowned scholars to hear him discourse on the
literary treasures of the past, their age, their
form, their meaning; young men to listen to his
recital of inspiring lines; ambitious poetasters
to learn the road to success; timid or reckless
seekers for esoteric wisdom; suspicious heresy-
hunters on the scent of fresh evidences of infidel-
ity; earnest souls anxious about the pilgrimage,
the food they ate, the wine they sipped, the infalli-
bility of the Kur'an, predestination, the houris of
paradise. Wliom went they forth to see? Not a
man clothed in fine linen and purple, faring sump-
tuously each day, but a blind old seer, broken in
health, living in poverty, with no favors to bestow
and no influence with earth's mighty ones ; a fana-
tic who might have had luxury and preferred
squalor, who insisted upon being more merciful and
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARHAH 255
just than the Creator ; a whimsical fellow who might
have sold waters from his rich well of pure and
undefiled Arabic at the highest market price, but
chose to pour out for naught, in verses curiously
shaped, his doubts and questions, his denials and
assertions, his guesses and convictions ; a radical
laying his axe at the tree of superstition, laughing
at heaven and hell and condemning the present
order of things, yet commending virtue and valu-
ing above all reason and righteousness. This, too,
was attractive, and each went away with what he
could carry. There were friends who defended him
against the charges of heresy on the ground of his
asceticism. How could a man be a saint, lead a life
untouched by the breath of scandal, true to prin-
ciple, unselfish, and scornful of the good things so
eagerly sought by others, if he were indeed an
infidel "? There were enemies also, hit by his shafts
of irony and sarcasm, his innuendo and denuncia-
tion of shams, who thought it sufficient to point
to his incriminating utterances, and knew that
morality, at best a secondary matter, or the semb-
lance of it, could well exist even where the all
important thing, the saving faith, was absent.
And if good morals were insisted upon, for what
loose ways were not these freethinkers respon-
sible, even though they managed themselves to be
respectable? Disciples coming from distant lands
no doubt left behind substantial tokens of appre-
ciation. Hence the story that he was surrounded by
wealth. A Persian traveler who visited Ma^ arrah,
but did not see Abu'l *Ala, heard from the towm
gossips that he was a very rich man, although he
spent next to nothing on himself, and likewise
that he was a very wicked man who had written a
256 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
burlesque on the Ku'raii, which he thought would
be as good as the original '^when it had been
licked by four generations of believers.'* The
aged poet died in 1057, his eighty-fifth year. His
tomb was visited by pilgrims, like that of Umar
Khayyam at Nishapur. Commentaries were writ-
ten on his poems. Treatises were published in
defence or refutation of his views. Fantastic tales
were told concerning his feats of memory, his
thaumaturgical powers, his acquaintance with
black magic, his choice of death rather than ac-
ceptance of Islam, his martyrdom (dated eleven
years before his quiet departure), his real journey
to the hell whose existence he had denied.
Abu'l 'Ala is said to have written some fifty-
five, or even sixty works. As Muslim civilization
declined, most of these ceased to be preserved and
copied. Only a handful are known to us today, and
a few more by their titles. His youthful poems,
of which he did not think much himself, retained
their popularity and became to some extent known
in Europe before the nineteenth century. Some of
his daring sentences were quoted by Abu'l fida as
horrible examples and aroused a limited curiosity
when the chronicles of the Syrian historiographer
were rendered into Latin. It was Hammer-Purg-
stall, the discoverer of Ibn Khaldun's real signifi-
cance, who also first proclaimed Ma'arri as a
great poet and philosopher (Litteraturgeschiclite
der Araher, 1850-56). Charles Rieu had already
published, in 1843, De Ahulalae Vita et Carmini-
hus, a biography taken from Ibn Khallikan, and
an account of the earliest poems entitled Saht al
Zand, ** Sparks from the Fire-Stick," the only
collection known to him. A passage from Luzumi-
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 257
yat was quoted by R. Dozy (Het Islamisme, 1863,
p. 227). But it was through A. von Kremer that a
more adequate knowledge of this work came. In
the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenldndischen
Gesellschaft (xxix-xxxi, 1876-77; xxxviii, 1884)
and in the Sitzungsherichte der Akademie der
Wissenscliaften (Wien, 1889) this scholar pub-
lished most of the Arabic text, with a masterly
German translation, imitating the difficult metre
and rh}Tne from which it derives its title, Luzum
ma la yalzam, or Luzumiyat, illuminating notes
and generous appraisal. In 1898, D. S. Margo-
liouth made known *'The Letters of Abu'l 'Ala*^
in the Anecdota Oxoniensia, in Arabic text and
English translation, and gave a fuller biblio-
graphy based on the new material that had come
to light. It was a great surprise to students of
Ma*arri when R. A. Nicholson briefly described
in the Journal of the Boyal Asiatic Society, 1899,
a manuscript in his possession of the Risalat al
gliufran, or ''Letter of the Forgiven.'^ In 1900,
he presented, in the same journal, an outline of
this remarkable production, excerpts from the
text of the first part, translations of some sections
and summaries sufficient to indicate its general
character ; and in 1902 the text of the second part
dealing with zandaka, or free thought, and trans-
lations of many sections. In the form of a letter,
probably addressed to Abu'l Hasan Ibn Mansur,
of Aleppo, a poet who had recently, though ad-
vanced in years, taken to himself a young wife, he
describes this sheikh's \dsit to heaven and hell.
So far as the scenery is concerned, he finds, of
course, in paradise the marvelous things with
which Muslim imagination usually decorated that
258 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
place, and many more; but the company he en-
counters is chiefly made up of 'Hhe forgiven/' i.e.,
the heathen poets who lived in the days of ignor-
ance before the Prophet. They have been for-
given, they are in bliss, but their minds are still
moving in the old grooves, their interests are the
same as they were on earth. Heaven is a glorified
salon, where these literary Bohemians are assem-
bled to discuss the weighty matters that occupied
them in the flesh; and the sheikh questions them
as regards the integrity of the textus recephis,
errors of transmission, interpolations, grammar
and prosody, historical allusions, deeds ascribed
to them. A great theologian is said to have re-
pented on his death-bed of the early date he had
persistently assigned to a Hebrew document.
Would the Christian heaven solve this problem
for him? No one can be so naive as to suppose
that Abu'l 'Ala was describing his ideal of a
future life. He approached the subject not with
the faith of a Dante, but in the comic spirit of an
Aristophanes or a Lucian, yet with the earnest
purpose of a Lucretius. Nor should the ejacula-
tions of horror at the sentences of some zindiks, or
freethinkers in Islam, in the second part, be taken
at their face value. When his only comment on a
really fundamental heresy is that a rhyme is
faulty or a verb wrongly used, while the punish-
ments of a hell in which he did not believe are
invoked on the perpetrator of a less obnoxious
sentiment, there is little excuse for the modern
interpreter who fails to perceive the vein of irony
that runs through it all. Some scholars are per-
turbed by his apparent condemnation of Ibn al
Eawandi for having written his imitation of the
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 259
Ku'ran, in view of the circumstance that he had
himself in his youth produced a similar work,
the Fusid al gliayat, or ** Sections of the Founda-
tion. ' ' In this case his indignation may have been
genuine, for he had heard that Ibn al Eawandi
made pretensions to divinity. A man who wrote
**The Letter of the Forgiven^' in his sixtieth year
may very well have taken up Muhammad's chal-
lenge thirty years before ; and what he later said
about the Ku'ran, assuming that the text is sound,
may represent his maturer judgment. In 1902,
Margoliouth published from a MS of Yakut's
** Dictionary of Literary Men" in the Bodleian
Library a ** Correspondence concerning the Ab-
stinence from Meat" between Hibat Allah Ibn
Musa and Abu '1 ^ Ala, in the Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society. Hibat Allah held a high position
at Cairo. As Chief Caller to the Faith, Instructor
of Converts and Head of the Shi'ite Academy, he
was next in authority to the Grand Kadi and en-
titled to the same kind of robe. Without revealing
his identity, he wrote to Abu'l *Ala as one ailing
in understanding, seeking medicine for the ills of
his soul, and particularly in need of the hidden
wisdom that lay behind the curious practice of
vegetarianism. The poet found out who his cor-
respondent was, addressed him with his proper
titles, and thereby greatly annoyed him, showed
no eagerness to have his world-view passed by
the Fatimid Board of Censors, claimed the right
and necessity of a poor blind man to practise self-
denial beyond what was permitted by the law and
the duty of considering the sufferings inflicted on
animals for the pleasure of men, and pointed with
deprecating gestures to the deeper problems
260 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
hinted at by some irreverent singers. Hibat Allah
was willing to argue the matter from the stand-
point of natural law, if the Ku'ran did not count,
maintained that man need not be more just and
merciful than his Creator, promised the pat-
ronage of a wealthy man who would furnish him
with the luxuries of life, expecting nothing in re-
turn, thought it strange that Abu'l *Ala should
quote so freely, and with such apparent gusto,
from sources tainted with heterodoxy, and closed
with expressions of disappointment but also
of regard and good will. This distinguished
ecclesiastic reveals himself as a thoughtful per-
son, a clever controversialist, a man of the
world, probably at heart a tolerant and good-na-
tured latitudinarian, incapable of appreciating a
deep-seated conviction that calls for self-abnega-
tion. In 1904, a French scholar, Georges Salmon,
published Un precurseur d'Omar Khayyam. Le
poete aveugle. Extraits des poemes et des lettres
d^Ahou^l 'Ala Al Ma'arri. Introduction et traduc-
tion; and Ameen F. Eihani Ahu'l 'Ala. Quatrains
selected from his ''Lozum-ma-la-yalzam*^ and
"Sact-uz-zind** and now first rendered into Eng-
lish. Excellent sketches of the poet and his works
by Nicholson are also found in A Literary History
of the Arabs, 1907, and in Enzyhlopaedie des
Islam, 1908. Abu*l 'Ala collected his writings
with utmost care, and wrote comments on some of
his poems. He expressed his confidence that,
though he himself would not endure, his word
would. His youthful lyrics were produced before
1008. To the same period, no doubt, belongs his
imitation of the Ku'ran, of which a sura has been
preserved by Bakharzi (cp. Ignaz Goldziher, in
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 261
Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenldndischen Ge-
sellschaft, 1876, p. 640). The ** Letters'' come
from various times after his return to Ma'arrah
in 1010. The collection known as Luzumiyat was
known to Hibat Allah in Egypt before 1046, and
may have been produced in the course of twenty
or thirty years. The "Letter of the Forgiven*'
was written in 1032, and an historic allusion
clearly assigns the "Correspondence on the Ab-
stinence from Meat" to the year 1046.
It is justly held that, if a poet has gone to extra-
ordinary trouble to cast his ideas and fancies in
the mould of exquisite verse, he has a right to
expect of his translator not to make prose of his
poetry, but to some extent at least endeavor to
imitate his rhythm, metre, and rhyme. For the
fuller enjoyment of the form, the renderings of
Kremer, Nicholson, Rihani, and Salmon should be
consulted. Here we must dispense A\T.th any such
attempt and occupy ourselves with the substance
of Ma'arri's thought, and even that less in detail
than would be desirable.
The leading ideas of Abu'l *Ala stand out in
bold relief. There is no possibility of mistaking
their true import. He absolutely rejects all ex-
ternal authority in matters of religion and moral-
ity. There was a time perchance when he hesi-
tated between Islam and Christianity. A passage
from one of his works quoted by Mustafa Effendi
Sbai to Goldziher (I.e.) reads as follows:
In Jerusalem arose a noise between Ahmad and
the Messiah;
The latter beat the bell, the former called alond
to prayer.
Each raises np his own religion. 0 ! could T know
Which of the two is in the ri^ht !
262 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
But even this is doubtful. He persistently affirms
that neither in the Torah nor the Gospels, neither
in the Ku'ran nor the Avesta, can he find a divine
revelation.
Muslims are stumbling, Christians all astray,
Jews 'wildered, Magians far on error's way;
We mortals are composed of two great schools —
Enlightened knaves, or else religious fools.
Religion is a human product, born of man's fears
and aspirations, his helpless search and guesses
at the riddle, and maintained by the force of habit,
the unquestioning regard for tradition, and also
the love of power and of pelf. The rules of con-
duct laid down in the sacred books are of the same
human origin. On fundamental points there is no
discrimination in favor of Islam.
Of all the goodly doctrine that I from the pulpit
heard
My heart has never accepted so much as a single
word.
Is it then indifferent what a man thinks, or how
he lives? Is he without a means of discovering
the truth, without a guide in picking out the path
he should pursue? By no means. It is of utmost
importance that the truth be fearlessly and
eagerly sought, that life be purified from every
form of unrighteousness and filled with justice
and mercy. And there are faculties mthin on
which reliance may be placed.
Take Reason for thy guide, and do what she
Approves, the best of counsellors in sooth.
Accept no law the Pentateuch lays down ;
Not there is what thou seekest — the plain truth.
There is no heaven and there is no hell. These are
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 26S
groundless fables, furnishing false motives for
a righteous conduct. There is no resurrection
from the dead, no return to life after death.
**Take the mirror of the astronomer and search
the heavens ; it will make the taste of the sweetest
honey bitter ; for they point without doubt to dis-
solution, but they give no hint of resurrection.*'
' ' Death is a long sleep without an awakening, and
sleep is a short death quickly followed by an
awakening." ''Were it true what Aristotle
taught the masses, and the dead were to awake,
the heavens would be too narrow for them." **If
the inhabitants of the tombs should arise from
their sleep, there would be no room for the
living." All things are subject to the cosmic
order. When Abu'l 'Ala speaks of Allah, he ob-
viously has in mind this universal law, this ines-
capable destiny, this irreversible sequence of
cause and effect, not a personality fashioned in
the image of man, making and destroying things,
interfering in the course of nature by miracles
and special providences, picking out his favorites,
fighting for them and crushing their enemies, pun-
ishing and rewarding them, listening to their
requests and affectionate praise, telling them
about himself and his plans, and watching with
pleasure their gestures of submission and adula-
tion, their pilgrimages, prostrations and ritual
performances. Such current Muslim notions he
rejects.
Praise God and pray,
Walk seventy times, not seven, the Temple
round —
And impious remain !
Devout is he alone who when he may
264 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
Feast his desires, is found
With courage to abstain.
The world seems dark to the blind bard. It is a
sorry scheme. Its transitoriness gives pain.
Wistfully, like Job, he contemplates the passing
of things so beautiful and curiously wrought ; but,
like him, he resolutely brushes aside all tempting
illusions. Things are what they are. One star
shines in the darkness : the light of reason point-
ing the way. One foundation is sure: the moral
law which man may discover for himself and is
bound to obey. This, too, means struggle, resigna-
tion, control of passions, sacrifice ; but also human
dignity and self-respect, freedom from fear, inde-
pendence, a sense of being *'on the right guid-
ance,'' and a consciousness of service to mankind.
The just man must protest against wrong, cannot
be a silent spectator. Abu'l *Ala raised his voice
against all manner of social evil : iniquity in high
places, arbitrary government, oppression of the
poor, luxury and self-indulgence, killing of men in
war, slavery, polygamy, cowardice and knavery,
dishonesty in trade, injustice in the guise of law,
ignorance and superstition winked at and fostered
by the learned, the 'Ulema. The inhumanity of
man towards his fellow-creatures in the animal
world aroused his indignation. He became con-
vinced that they should not be slain for food, or
robbed of what they needed. With him this could
not remain an academic opinion. He abstained
from meat of all kinds ; and his logic carried him
to abstinence as well from milk, and eggs, and
honey. The dominant motive, in each case, was
consideration of v/hat these helpless fellow-beings
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 265
were in need of for themselves. So Abul *Ala
reasoned, and so he lived.
Obviously, this interpretation of life cannot be
accepted in toto, and this attitude toward its prob-
lems cannot be approved without important reser-
vations. However strongly we may sympathize
with Abu'l 'Ala^s negative conclusions, we have
learned to approach the various religions of the
world in a different spirit. It is natural that, in
earlier times, the reaction against what seemed
irrational conceptions should take a crude form of
denial and assertion, emphasizing intentional de-
ception, pious fraud, bold imposture, and arrogant
priestcraft, and failing in sympathy, discrimina-
tion, and just appreciation. With a broader out-
look upon history, a more comprehensive knowl-
edge of religious phenomena, and a more scientific
method of evaluation, we understand to-day some-
what better the way of the human spirit, and are
prepared to appraise more adequately the value
of its products. This applies, not only to meta-
physical ideas, myths and creeds, but also to rites
and ceremonies, mystic devotion, and hierarchical
organization. With a truer conception of the
course of nature, and a deepened insight into the
spiritual universe, life has been clothed with new
significance and glory, and a chastened joy is
taking the place of disillusionment and Stoic
resignation. A sense of potential and realizable
worth in man has also affected the estimate of
whatever tends to bring it out.
Asceticism makes a strong appeal. To men
wrapped up in the life of the senses, happy when
they can satisfy every appetite, taste every
pleasure, enjoy their prosperity without interrup-
266 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
tion or restraint, one who persistently denies him-
self the good things they so highly value, lives in
poverty when wealth could be had, abstains from
what to them has become a necessity, is a person
to be marveled at, a saint whose conduct makes
them uneasy in the midst of their indulgence, a
being from another world than theirs. AVhy does
he throw himself away I If he does it for a reward
after death, it is intelligible; if only to perfect
himself before he ceases to be, why seek for seK-
development at such a heavy cost? Is this the
Avay all men should live? As perfection seems to
lie in this direction, it is worthy of homage. Per-
chance it is required only of an esoteric circle, and
may redound to the benefit of those who cannot,
and need not, follow the example. To earnest
souls admiration is not sufficient; there must be
emulation. Hence the long procession of ascetics,
hermits, fasters, vegetarians, total abstainers,
celibates, self-castigators. The noblest motive is
the ahimsa doctrine : that no living thing should be
injured. Abu'l 'Ala maintained that no animal,
beast, bird or fish should be killed to provide food
for man, no milk be drunk, no Oig^ eaten, no honey
tasted, since these were intended by nature for
the maintenance of animal life. Had he possessed
our knowledge, his logic would have prevented
him from eating lentils and beans, drinking from
Ma'arrah's well, and even breathing the Syrian
air. An Indian botanist has registered by a sensi-
tive scientific instrument the death-spasm in the
plant; millions of animalculae are taken into the
body with every drop of water and inhaled with
every breath we draw. Suicide by voluntary
starvation would be the universal moral law for
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 267
man. Is it so important that animal life be pre-
served and infinitely multiplied, that malarial
districts be perpetuated, epidemics spread, and
wild beasts increase to tear to pieces the remnant
of mankind? And is the human race alone un-
worthy of consideration! Abu'l 'Ala was not a
misanthrope; he did not hate humanity. But he
preferred to contemplate its destruction rather
than its continuance in what he deemed wrong-
doing. He commended monogamy, but placed
above it celibacy. He is said to have composed
the following epitaph for his grave :
This wrong was by my father done
To me, but ne'er by me to one.
To us the preservation of the human race may
well seem worth the while, its maintenance
through such supplies as nature furnishes legiti-
mate, and its gradual improvement a rational
hope. Plenty for all, a full dinner pail, material
prosperity, leisure and amusement can never be
a satisfactory ideal ; but neither does the recogni-
tion of moral integrity as the supreme law point
to a life of universal misery, poverty, disease and
abnegation, ending in voluntary self-destruction.
Nevertheless, there are many aspects of the ques-
tion which deserve most careful consideration.
Our treatment of the life by which we are sur-
rounded, whatever its character, reflects the moral
progress that we make.
Abu'l A* la at times appears to use ambiguous
language, intended to conceal rather than to re-
veal his real thought. It is an art cultivated by
many in every age, especially when plain speaking
is likely to have disagreeable consequences, affect-
ing livelihood, position, influence and a good name
268 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
among men. How far is it justifiable? Is it im-
perative to open to every stranger the innermost
chambers of the heart I Should the heresy-hunter
be furnished with all available material to assist
him in his nefarious trade ? From the standpoint
of pedagogy, is it wise to offer even ripe fruits
of long reflection to those unprepared to derive
nourishment from them? Clearly, lying is not
permissible; there must never be a conscious in-
tent to deceive ; and in the long run it is better to
pour the new wine into new bottles, to speak the
truth as it is seen with courtesy and kindness, in
simple and straightforward language. This, how-
ever, is sometimes rendered difficult by the exer-
cise of natural gifts which in themselves are not
without great value. Abu'l *Ala was a master of
subtle irony, keen wit, and sharp-edged sarcasm.
Such weapons are effective and have their place
in the struggle with superstitions, absurdities, and
false pretensions; but they are dangerous to
handle. One trouble with irony is that some can-
not understand it at all, while others understand
it only too well. Failure to perceive it is, e. g.y
responsible for the curious notion that Abu'l *Ala
approved of the jihad y the Holy War, so utterly
foreign to his way of thinking. Humor delights
to play with words, gambol with turns of expres-
sion, fill shop-worn phrases with new meaning,
upset the perspective, and mystify the unwary.
On the other hand, those who follow the real drift
may resent the spear-thrusts or the pin-pricks
directed against cherished beliefs as personal at-
tacks. They may prefer that serious things be
dealt with in a serious way, that notions gener-
ally held, however antiquated and repugnant to
ETHICS OF ABU'L ALA AL MA'ARRAH 269
reason, be treated with respect or at least be
passed over in silence. Should a man allow him-
self to be so inconsiderate of sensitive consciences
as to poke fun at the Muslim heaven, smile at
the blessed doctrine of eternal damnation, and
speak irreverently of the Prophet's substitute in
Baghdad or Cairo ? It cannot be denied that there
is occasionally in Abul 'Ala's satire, as in Vol-
taire's, the bitterness of gall, if not the poison of
malice ; and here the line must certainly be drawn.
Yet how unbearably solemn and dreadfully mo-
notonous this world of ours would be were there
no good-natured laughter in it and no hmnorist
cracking his whip at the ridiculous ! Abu '1 ' Ala
was in his o^vn time now and then accused of a
vain and ostentatious parade of learning. While
we have every reason to be grateful to him for
enriching our knowledge of early Arab poetry, of
conditions in the Muslim world, and of the cur-
rents of free thought in Islam, if vanity w^as the
prevailing motive, it certainly reflects unfavorably
on his character. Some things, however, deserve
to be considered. His love of poetry was genuine ;
his eagerness to acquire knowledge was sincere;
his passion for a critical evaluation of whatever
came within his purview was intense; and his
willingness to communicate from his vast fund,
freely and without hope of reward, was immistak-
able. It may be that w^hat seems unnecessary dis-
play was made in self-defense. Where there is
much erudition, many sins of heterodoxy may be
forgiven. To be able to cite numerous precedents
removes the sense and to some extent the stigma
of unpardonable innovation. How many a higher
critic makes it a point to quote predecessors with-
270 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
in his own ecclesiastical fold ! And at times, when
the faucet is opened, the w^ater will flow copiously
without any special intent.
WTiatever exceptions may be taken to his views
and practices, it must be recognized that Abu'l
'Ala al Ma'arri is a challenging and fascinating
personality, a remarkable poet, an eminent
scholar, an independent thinker, a man of noble
character, strong convictions and unflinching loy-
alty to what he deemed the right, a precursor, not
only of Umar Khayyam and his spiritual kin, and
of the modern students of the science of religion,
but also, in his way, of the leader to whom this
volume is dedicated, who during the last fifty
years has urged the supreme importance of moral-
ity and commended an ethical philosophy of life.
Life's Unused Moral Force
By HAERY SNELL, M.P. (London)
"We have also a more sure word of prophecy; where-
unto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that
shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the
day-star arise in your hearts/' (II. Peter i. 19.)
IN THE HISTORY of human thought concerning
moral problems, the precise relation of moral
theory to moral practice has not been settled. It
may be that, in the present state of our knowl-
edge, it cannot be settled. The difficulties are in
any case so great as to make it unwise, if not also
dangerous, to lay down dogmatic rules upon it.
We do not yet know what is the absolute good,
nor whether all the good that we now perceive
is transient or permanent; but the fact that
men fail to realise in practice their own concep-
tion of right is not a wilful denial of the light tbey
see, for man's individual power over the facts of
life is so limited and uncertain that achievement
must of necessity lag behind perception. If, how-
ever, we take heed of the ideal **as unto a ligM
that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn,
and the day-star arise in our hearts,*' the separa-
tion that appears to exist between that part of the
moral life that rests upon ideals, and that which
rests upon practice, will not assume too serious
an aspect.
272 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Matthew Arnold once declared that ''conduct
is really, however men may overlay it with
philosophical disquisitions, the simplest thing in
the world so far as understanding is concerned;
as regards doing, it is the hardest thing in the
world*'; and few are the men who cannot bear
witness to the general truth so expressed. The
right that we often see so clearly we find it diffi-
cult to practise, and experience of frequent and
tragic failure to do what we know to be right,
so bites into our souls that we give up the fight
and allow ourselves to accept lower standards of
conduct than, with hopeful and sustained disci-
pline, we might actually achieve. It is not, how-
ever, the extent of the victory over temptation
or difficulty that is the true measure of character,
but rather the unshaken loyalty which we give
to the moral ideal as the desirable goal of en-
deavour.
When we reflect upon the vice and ugliness that
surrounds our lives, on the organised power of
evil and the harsh discipline of failure which we
are called upon to endure, the spirit droops and
the heart grows sick; but if we take a longer
view of life, and compare man as he is with what
he was when *' dragons of the prime, that tare each
other in their slime, were mellow music matched
with him,*' despair gives place to hope and doubt
to assurance. Had life been plain and simple and
a mere swine-trough happiness the end of striv-
ing, its history would not have been worth re-
cording. It is the patient effort to weave the
garment of his own manhood that makes the
human story so precious and inspiring. Man,
after all, has something to his credit. He has
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 273
made himself at home in the world. He has
created for himself an artificial climate in which
to live; he has harnesseO the lightning to his
service; he has tamed the beasts of the field and
made the ocean his highway ; but his achievement
of power over the forces outside himself is but a
small part of his task. To be able to make
engines and to build ships is fine; but it is small
in comparison with the task of the remaking of
himself. He is now faced with a competitor who
will in the end subdue him — that other man, the
man who is to be. For all his looms and buildings,
his inventions and his monuments, his crowning
work, always silently proceeding, is the creation
of a new brain and heart, the sketching of that
vaster human structure which his children will
surely build. '* Man's capabilities have never
been measured; nor are we to judge of what he
can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.
Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, be not
afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee
what thou hast left undone? '^ (Thoreau.)
The greatest spiritual need of our time is the
destruction of the death-in-life fatalism which
is holding captive man's creative powers, and the
awakening in him of a new faith in his own power
to make the world a better place. Evil is toler-
ated because it is falsely believed to be inevitable,
and it is the rightful business of religious enter-
prise to restore to man a living faith in his own
creative power.
This was one of the main purposes for which
the Ethical Movement was founded fifty years
ago, and for which it now exists. In comparison
with older religious organisations, its teaching
274 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
has been forward-looking, challenging and revolu-
tionary; for whereas they taught that the whole
duty of man was to fear God and to prepare him-
self for death, the Ethical Movement has insisted
that his chief obligation was the culture and
discipline of his o^vn powers, not that he might
the more comfortably fit himself into an inherited
environment, or qualify himself for rewards
after death, but that he might employ them in
service which would ennoble his fellows and help
to shape his surroundings to the pattern of the
ideal which was in his heart. An Ethical Society
is therefore a new religious enterprise, a centre
of moral renewal and a Court of Appeal for the
conscience that is perplexed and the spirit that
is weak.
That the soul needs stimulation and encourage-
ment is beyond question. The human brain is
prone to follow the ready-made or easily formed
tracks, and systematic training to new functions
and powers is required to prevent it from falling
back into the old ruts. A certain depravation
of the mind is indeed almost certain when the
higher qualities of life are stunted, or perverted
through over-elaborate attention to, and concen-
tration upon, the purely physical or material, and
this want of harmony between the individual and
his social medium sometimes goes so far as to
reveal a definite lack of mental or moral balance.
There is therefore placed upon every man the
moral obligation to develop to their fullest extent
the spiritual qualities which are nascent in his
being, and so to discipline his physical appetites
and powers that they too may serve spiritual
ends.
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 275
It is as easy for the individual as for the race
to lose what it has taken ages to wdn, and the
delicate fabric of the moral life may be injured
and deteriorated far more quickly than it was
constructed. A few generations of unarrested de-
generation might very well throw civilisation
back for a thousand years.
It is therefore as necessary that we should
guard against moral as against physical sick-
ness or fatigue, for the spirit no less than the
body requires the stuff of renewal. AVastage
and weariness of the body we repair by food,
sleep and recreation; we restore it to health by
medicine, fresh air, careful nursing and change
of scene; but moral fatigue, more insidious but
not less important, we ignore, often with quite
disastrous results both to body and mind, to the
individual and to society.
This lack of healthy balance in the mind ex-
presses itself in impatience, irritation concern-
ing little things, in indolence and sometimes in
derision of ideals which we know are right and
helpful. We allow ourselves to drift, to weaken
in resolve, to ignore obvious duties and to con-
tent ourselves with a tardy or partial fulfillment
of our recognised obligations. The man who by
diligent exercise has disciplined all his faculties,
is like a country that is protected against in-
vasion by its enemies ; in him the invader is met,
not with hospitality or indifference, but by the
quick resolute resistance which has been bred
and nurtured by past effort.
The law of life appears to be that to prevent
actual deterioration, there must be actual prog-
ress. The spirit of man is not static ; it advances
276 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
or it recedes. It cannot be neglected under the
assumption that what it is it will remain. It
will retreat or march forward; but it does not
merely mark time. *^ Wrong thoughts and feel-
ings there will always be from inadequate atten-
tion, bad reasoning, passion, prejudice, tradition,
custom, and other causes of error, to be corrected
by better information, sounder reasoning and
more wholesome social sympathy.'' (Henry
Maudsley.)
The culture of the moral life also demands the
recognition of the fact that, although a man may
be on guard and armed against the major crimes
and weaknesses against ourselves or against
society, he may be weak in defense against the
average temptations of the day. Thus, if he
does not actually bear false witness against his
neighbour or invent and publish the mean lie
which will injure him, he may preserve an even
meaner silence when others do these things in
his presence, because to speak out on behalf of
truth involves courage and inconvenience.
It is well to remember, too, that the deteriora-
tion that manifests itself so suddenly and dram-
atically in a human life is rarely immediate in
its origin, but has been preceded by a slow, per-
haps unconscious, slackening in moral discipline
and descent to lower standards of conduct.
*'Our deeds pursue us from afar, and what we
have been makes us what we are.'' Thus, the un-
expected follies that we exhibit and that are fre-
quently so tragic in their consequences are just
so many incarnations of error and wrong tenden-
cies.
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 277
The bough that went, when green, awry.
Will not come straight when old and dry.
On the other hand, whenever we conqner temp-
tation and master a wrong impulse, our strength
is increased and the forces working for evil with-
in ns are correspondingly weakened. Every time
that we refrain from an unworthy action we have
made each succeeding resistance easier. Thus,
when the Queen says, *^0 Hamlet, thou hast cleft
my heart in twain !'^ Shakespeare makes the
Prince reply :
Oh, throw away the worser part of it.
And live the purer with the other half.
. . Refrain to-night,
And that will lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy:
For use almost can change the stamp of nature.
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
When the spirit droops and vigilance ceases,
the zealous man may become listless, the abstemi-
ous man may acquire the habit of indulgence or
show lack of self-control, and there is a gradual,
subtle change of outlook towards life and duty,
which alters his whole attitude towards his fellow
men and destroys his capacity for service. This
danger Avas well described in an article in the
London Times on March 4th, 1925. ** Refusal to
discharge a duty because it is irksome, failure to
follow an ideal through love of money or fear
for reputation, or compromise with conscience, at
once easy and damaging, combine to blur a man*s
vision of the ideal and destroy his spiritual de-
sires. He who refuses to follow the light must
walk in darkness, and those who will not move
278 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
forward on the path of life surely enter the way
of death. And because when a man so deterior-
ates he not only ceases to feel the glow of spirit-
ual attraction in himself, but comes to disbelieve
in the possibility of spiritual life for others, the
reality of moral distinctions becomes unreal, and
the world appears a chill and gloomy prison,
where guilty men live in mutual suspicion, or
a battle-field where they are at constant war with
each other. ' '
Who has not known the man of fine quality
of mind and character, the tried and trusted
friend, the reliable business man, who, as a result
of domestic or other troubles, goes morally to
pieces, and falls back upon alcoholic stimulants
to an extent which appears to make him the
helpless slave of appetite ! And how many homes
have been robbed of the chance of permanent
well-being because the foundations on which they
were built were selfish, and therefore immoral.
Two young people set out together on the journey
of life mth every desire to promote each other's
happiness and welfare. They are both clean, up-
right, fine-grained persons, and the bargain that
they make with each other is the expression of an
almost fierce mutual love. The man undertakes
to work for such business success as will secure
and sustain a comfortable if not luxurious home;
the woman will devote her life to the task of
making it sweet and attractive. It is to be their
whole world; everything outside its walls —
duties, pleasures, opportunities of service — is to
be ignored; they will live only for each other.
Their mutual surrender of personal liberty is
equal and complete. Yet such marriages seldom
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 279
give the happiness so ardently bespoken and de-
sired. They are unable to withstand the trials and
cares of daily life; the first attractions of the
beautiful home begin to pall, the physical allure-
ments count for less and less, and instead of hap-
piness there is sorrow and disappointment, and in
the place of desire there is antipathy. They fail
because they are built not on mutual love but on
mutual selfishness.
And who has not heard of the energetic and
ambitious youth who started his business career
with a healthy desire to succeed, to win wealth,
to make a name in his profession, and who, im-
patient of the results achieved by diligence and
steady loyalty to the highest standards of his
calling, sought to reach his goal quickly by the
method of the smart device, the questionable bar-
gain and the sometimes dishonourable gamble
which destroyed his reputation among his fellows,
and brought upon him both ruin and disgrace?
These are merely dramatic illustrations of a
danger which confronts us all — viz., the irregular
or even perverted development of our faculties,
to an extent which, unless arrested, may become
actual deformity. The sensuous nature of man
is not the whole of his being; it is but a part.
Complete self-development requires that a man^s
life should be built up in harmonious proportions
and its various elements shaped and disciplined
for the good of the whole.
What is a man,
If the chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more.
Every man may therefore rightly ask himself
this question: **Am I exerting my spiritual
280 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
powers to their full capacity, and thereby acquir-
ing a finer sensibility to all that is pure and
beautiful in myself and in the world; or am I
weakening in my powers of defence against the
forces of evil that are in me and about me?*'
Most men fall below their own highest levels,
but the average man accepts life as he finds it
and obtains satisfaction in a languid conformity
to the conventional standards of his time. It is,
moreover, the recognition of these standards as
sufficient unto personal and public salvation that
is at the bottom of our failure to make the world
a more desirable place. Why is it that, notwith-
standing the almost universal desire for human
happiness, mankind is unable to abolish the
poverty, civic ugliness and disease that are born
and bred in our present social system? Why, in
spite of man's greatly increased powers to satisfy
his wants, do hunger and privation persist?
There is no lack of material goods in the world.
Science is continually fashioning new and won-
derful tools for our use; the magicians of the
laboratories are constantly enlarging our minds
and increasing the returns on our labour. Nature
gives in abundance to her children; where our
fathers produced two ears of corn we are able to
produce ten. Yet with all this enhanced produc-
tive power at our disposal there are as many
poverty-stricken people in the world as before
steam and electrical power were invented. Wealth
is gathered into the hands of a few, while the
many remain poor and are deprived of the train-
ing and environment in which human souls can
develop to healthy moral stature. Why does
human effort to bridge this gulf between oppor-
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 281
timity and achievement fail so miserably? There
is a general desire for better social arrangements,
and few men are satisfied with the conditions
that prevail. The world is full of societies,
leagues, nnions, local, national and international,
yet chaos and misapprehension persist; class
struggles against class, nation against nation, and
the City of God cannot be reached. Why is it?
The Ethical Movement has its own answer to
these great questions. It affirms that in the
hurry and the complexity of modern life, some
essential guiding principle which might have
saved us has been missed, and that until we find
and apply it there is no deliverance from our
captivity. It further asserts that the help we
seek is to be found in the unused moral force
that resides in a rationalised and humanised re-
ligious enthusiasm. What else is left to us? The
soldier has tried to carve out a better world with
the edge of his sword; the doctor has sought to
ease its pain and heal its wounds with his drugs
and hygienic surgery; the statesmen have tried
to save it by their laws and social devices; the
priest has offered to it the consolations of a
postponed felicity. Man has given to the puzzle
the best powers of his brain, but his prayers are
unanswered and his problems remain unsolved.
The Ethical Movement believes that our failure
to obtain individual and social well-being is due
to our neglect of the great principle of moral
idealism. We have regarded our human prob-
lem as beino' mainly political or economic, where-
as, in a quite unrealised degree, it is moral and
spiritual. *'The mind of England,'' said the
Archbishop of Canterbury a few years ago, '4s
282 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
becoming increasingly convinced that the ques-
tion of industrial unrest is not solely, or even
mainly, an economic question, but that it concerns
spirit and character, and our whole attitude as
men towards a problem which affects us all'*;
and Mr. W. L. Hichens, one of England's greatest
captains of industry, has asked whether it might
not be that in seeking "to solve the problem pri-
marily by legislative measures and mechanical
devices, or by precise adjustments of relations
based on force or self-restraint, we are putting
the cart before the horse. ... It may be that
the solution of this industrial problem, which is
the greatest we are called upon to meet, lies be-
yond legal formulae, beyond all economic laws and
doctrines, and depends on our attitude towards
social existence — in plain words, on our moral
code."
The central belief of the Ethical Movement,
that before we can bring peace either to our-
selves as individuals or to mankind we shall be
compelled to draw upon the vast unused moral
forces of the world, is thus admitted by the head
of the English Church and by one of its leading
industrial magnates. If we desire to secure good-
will and co-operation in industry, we must recog-
nise the man behind the workman. The economist
has thought of the worker as a productive unit,
the politician has regarded him as a voting unit ;
he awaits his call as a creative, living soul.
In claiming that the wonderful economic power
which man has acquired should be increasingly
associated with a recognition of and a sane
reverence for the spiritual quality of man him-
self, we do not deny the beneficence of that
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 283
power, nor do we withhold gratitude from those
whose lives are devoted to wealth-creating occu-
pations. Far from it. But we believe that the
benefits which we derive from their labours would
be increased if the worth as well as the wealth of
man was recognized.
The Ethical Movement acknowledges with pride
and thankfulness the fact that millions of our
fellow men do actually live a Monday-to-Satur-
day religion, and that they do indeed erect their
altars wherever their duties call them. When we
travel to other lands we fearlessly entrust our
lives to the humble, fearless men who go down
to the sea in ships and have business with the
mighty waters, who do actually reach the highest
levels of service. They represent a knightly
chivalry of the sea which rarely fails, and in their
watchful care, *' rocked in the cradle of the
deep,*' we are, so far as human skill and de-
votion may prevail, as safe as though we were
sleeping in our o^\ti beds.
In the end everything depends upon the will
and the character of those who do the work of
the world. The legislature may pass beneficent
laws, but unless those who administer them are
both efficient and incorruptible, they will fail to
achieve their purpose. The law, it is true, may
punish those who, by flagrant and wilful negli-
gence, betray their trust ; the community can also
address to them suitable admonitions, and in
other ways associate dereliction of duty with
unpleasant consequences. Such safeguards are,
however, purely negative, and do not enlist that
positive enthusiasm for honourable and effective
service without which the State is deprived of the
284 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
protection which its laws were designed to give.
The legislator, perhaps more than other men,
needs constant contact with the sources of spirit-
ual power, for his chance of giving effective
service depends in no small degree upon his own
character and his attitude towards the universe
and his neighbours. **Woe unto them that decree
unrighteous decrees'' was the warning given to
the politician who betrayed his vocation and
pandered to the forces of evil. The legislator is
daily driven to ask himself what he conceives
to be the end and purpose of government, and
what he wishes his own part in it to be. He also
sees the seamy side of life as few others see it,
and he requires a stronger defence against the
temptation to covenant with evil than is common-
ly recognised. The suggestion that morals have
any meaning for the legislator may appear gro-
tesque to the cynic, but for no duty which man
has to perform are moral fervor, probity and
steadfastness more needed.
Lord Morley once complained to Professor J.
H. Morgan that ** people are always talking as
if a politician ought to be so much better than
men in other professions ' ' ; but so, in a very real
sense, he ought. He has chosen a vocation in
which great moral issues are involved, and his
personal character cannot be separated from his
fitness to pursue it. The avera^'e man who goes
into business does so for reasons which are more
or less selfish, and the most that he undertakes is
to conform to the prevailing conventional stand-
ards. But the politician is the professed guard-
ian of the common interests; he is the people's
shield against oppression, and a fairly high
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 285
standard of personal character is rightly expected
of him. He is frequently called upon to advise
in the material and moral perplexities of his in-
dividual constituents, and far oftener than is
realised by the general public, his work is of a
definitely spiritual nature.
What greater moral responsibility can rest
upon any man than that which the legislator has
to bear when, for instance, he is called upon to
decide as to the quality and kind of the education
that shall be given to the children of his country?
The incapable man in a carpenter's work-shop
may do bad work and the result is — wasted
wood : but waste in the school is seen, not in shav-
ings, but in human lives. ''The public man is
then on safe ground when he boldly applies the
simple ideas of right and wTong to the affairs
of nations. He may easily be mistaken in his
judgment of what is right and wrong, but if
he denies that there is a right and wrong above
expediency and self-interest, he has no other
foothold. The public life becomes meaningless
and statesmanship a vain thing, unless it is boldly
assumed that man is in some sort master of his
fate, and can control events to ends that may be
called righteous." (J. A. Spender, ''The Public
Life,'' p. 155.)
The affairs with which the legislator is called
upon to deal cannot be reduced to the simple
code with which we seek to guide our own indi-
vidual lives, for into these historical, racial,
scientific and religious influences do not conscious-
ly enter ; but these influences do affect the policy
of nations, domestic and international. The in-
dividual, submissive to his rulers, industrious.
286 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
courageous, is self-sacrificing to the extent of
his life for any cause which touches his heart,
and, as Mr. Spender further points out, *Hhe
statesman is in the service of this high, chival-
rous, religious being, and unless he can conceive
himself as on the side of good against evil, and
right against wrong, he is as much out of place
as the unbeliever in the sanctuary.'^
"VVe can rightly urge that both individual and
public responsibility must conform to some
standard of right and wrong, without thereby in-
sisting that the public man should refuse to accept
the possible good for the sake of the impossible
better; for men have to live and work in the
world as they find it, and
The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's,
Is — not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be — but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means ; a very different thing !
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws.
But one, a man, who is a man, and nothing more.
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool's Paradise.
Our fathers sought to secure the fulfilment of
moral obligations by methods which are no longer
effective. Their church-going habits brought
them into regular contact with the moral teaching
of their age, which, although it was associated
with the inducement of reward after death and
fear of everlasting punishment for e\'il-doing,
did nevertheless continuously remind the wor-
shipper that moral issues were important and
that they could not safely be ignored. The church
and the synagogue kept the problem of life and
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 287
destiny before the greater part of the nation, and
the habit of weekly worship supported by daily
family prayer had a powerful and persistent in-
fluence upon men's lives. The teaching given may
have been based upon false assumptions; but
the golf and motoring enthusiasm of our owti day
is no adequate substitute for the moral training
with which it was associated.
To admit this is not to contend that there has
been no advance in man's sense of responsibility
as a result of the growth of the scientific spirit.
We doubtless see more clearly than our fathers
saw; but we are less heedful of what we see, and
it is doubtful whether, with all our increased
Inowledge, we are nearer to mastering the prob-
lems of our day than they were those of their
own.
It would be foolish to assert that church-going,
or attendance at religious exercises of any kind,
is an indispensable adjunct of the moral life.
Thousands of men who never associate them-
selves with religious organizations or attend any
form of public worship frequently attain to a
level of character and service which is a chal-
lenge to us all. They are independent both of the
priest and the preacher. They are disciples of
young Jotham, who was ^Hwenty and five years
old when he began to reign . . . and he did that
which was right in the sight of the Lord . . .
howbeit he entered not into the temple of the
Lord." They claim to get their strength from
the open fields and the running brooks in the
presence of which they are lifted up and strength-
ened. And why not! It is only for our conven-
ience that we reserve particular times and places
288 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
as appropriate to religious meditation ; but funda-
mentally, Sundays and churches are no more
sacred 'than are week-days and mountain-tops.
The altar of the ideal may be erected anywhere
where useful work is to be done, and men may as
rightfully present themselves before it in one
place as in another.
It is not with robust souls of this kind that
we are concerned, but with those who give them-
selves no systematic moral training, and to whom
the primrose by the river's brim is just a prim-
rose and nothing more; for, as Maudsley has
pointed out, ** virtue is not safely lodged until
it is so grounded inward in the nature that it
is a habit and its exercise a pleasure." Satisfied
with his inherited stock of moral energy, the
average man imagines that it possesses a radium-
like indestructibility, or that, like the widow's
cruse of oil, it will be automatically renewed
v/ithout his personal thought or effort. Such a
philosophy does not stand the test of time and
trouble very well, and the man who has become
its dupe is notoriously less able to meet and
master the slings and arrows of outrageous for-
tune than he who by will and conscious effort
has trained himself to be the master of his own
soul. And there is a world of difference between
a man who is just negatively correct in his rela-
tionships and him who by will and conscious dis-
cipline sweats the ape and tiger out of his blood.
The mere absence of sin does not of itself prove
the presence of virtue, for **when a man leaves
his sin he is invigorated by the victory ; but when
his sin leaves him, it leaves him debilitated. ' '
LIFE'S UNUSED MORAL FORCE 289
We see an aeroplane riding proudly in the sky,
perfect in its balance and its beauty. The pilot sits
serenely in his place. Lord of the air, his mastery
over his instrument appears to be complete. But
even as we look there is a sudden change; first
there is an ominous quivering of its wings, and
then a headlong descent to lower levels. The pilot
has unexpectedly entered an ''air pocket" which
will not bear its burden, and the machine passes
out of his control until at a lower level he reaches
an atmosphere of the required density. We who
have to meet unexpected dangers as we walk with
our feet upon the earth should, like the pilot, be
prepared to overcome them.
The Ethical Movement believes that the re-
ligious aspect of a man's life is exhibited in his
work quite as much as in his prayers, and that
if he sets an example of righteousness anywhere
it should be in the way that he does his appointed
task. It aims to promote the religion of the com-
mon day ; it is a new spiritual home in which the
soul of man may find itself and also find rest.
The moral obligation that it imposes upon the
man who enters into its fellowship is one that
strengthens him in his defence against evil and
helps him to endow his service with the highest
qualities of his own life. What more can man
desire or religion give! ''All the grand sources
of human suffering are in a great degree, many
of them almost entirely, conquerable by human
care and effort; and though their removal is
grievously slow — though a long succession of
generations will perish in the breach before the
conquest is completed, and this world becomes all
that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it
290 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
might easily be made — yet every mind sufficiently
intelligent and generous to bear a part, however
small and inconspicuous, in the endeavor, will
draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself,
which he would not for any bribe in the form of
self-indulgence consent to be without.'' (John
Stuart Mill.)
Is the Ideal Real?
By GEORGE A. SMITH (London).
THE QUESTION I have asked in the title of
this paper may be as futile and unanswerable
as the question whether there is an end to space or
a limit to time. We can conceive neither an ex-
tension which goes on without limit nor an ex-
tension which stops in any direction anywhere,
we can imagine neither time without end nor time
that ceases. In the same way, as we are all
evolutionists, we cannot conceive a cessation of
change, the final arrival at a state of perfection,
the end of all the travail of the evolutionary pro-
cess; nor can we, as I think, imagine that the
change and the striving are not towards an ideal,
a perfection, an end which in itself is real and
established in the scheme of things. The attain-
ment and cessation are unthinkable, but the aim
at perfection, the purpose underlying all the
change throughout the whole evolutionary pro-
cess, seems, to me at least, to be a necessity of
thought. We feel it to be the purpose continually
present in our own efforts and strivings. Dare
we, who are ourselves the product of the evolu-
tionary process, attribute to nature a similar
tendency? Is there a movement towards perfec-
tion along all the evolutionary lines, or is the very
notion of perfection a chimera, a confession of
our weakness, an admission that we cannot con-
292 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ceive perpetual never-ending change save towards
an end, and that end the perfect ?
The question, though unanswerable, has at-
tracted thinking men throughout the ages, and
must probably always challenge us and divide us.
The Stoics accepted things as they were without
question, with all their limitations and imper-
fections, submitting to the will of whatever Gods
there were, but holding fast to the life of virtue,
honour and courage. The Platonists held also to
the life of virtue and justice, but saw the end be-
yond, the ultimate goal of attainment, the perfect
forms toward which all things of the spiritual
and material universe should tend. To them
these were the only realities. The whole of the
stages towards this perfect attainment were fleet-
ing, were unreal. The end of attainment was
real, fixed, static, with nothing beyond. Perfec-
tion of every growing thing in nature, of every
material thing of human construction, of every
desire or thought of man, of beauty and harmony
in all the arts and in all the universe, was stored
up in the mind of God, was a real existence now,
and had been through all time. In Buddhism we
have the doctrine of perfect attainment, and of
cessation from all striving and all the evils of
existence, in the state of Nirvana, a state which
could have no attraction for men of the more ro-
bust Western world, who rejoice in difficulty and
opposition, and in the effort to overcome them.
Latterly, there has grown up a school of
thouaht, the teaching of which is neither Stoic
nor Platonist, but which regards God as himself
growing and developing, as a sort of Elder
Brother to man, — a few stages ahead, yet not so
IS THE IDEAL REAL? 293
far ahead as to be able to do without our co-opera-
tion, and as all the time helping man forward.
This school is well represented by Dr. Alexander
of Manchester in his **Time, Space and God/*
and, in a more popular manner, by Mr. Wells in
his ''God, the Invisible King.'' In this concep-
tion there is no end to the process, whether it be
called evolutionary or creative. God is always
** becoming," always the next step beyond. There
is no ''perfection," for perfection means the end
of the process, cessation from change, seeing that
any change forward or backward must be to the
less perfect. There is, therefore, no particular
end or purpose in the change beyond the change
itself, the ever-renewing experience, the one-
thing-after-another of the aimless life. This
view need not be condemned by us as unworthy
of our respect. Change itself is a good thing, if
it is from one state of beauty to another. Varia-
tion is itself a worthy end. There need be no
numerical limit to the states which are altogether
desirable and honourable.
But with such a philosophy we must give up
talking of steps or stages, must cease to think
of a process towards an end, and must think only
of renewal of experience. Dr. Alexander, how-
ever, thinks of God as the "next stage beyond,"
and so does think of the process; and if of the
process, it must be towards something, and can-
not be a mere aimless wandering through ex-
periences. If a process be admitted, a "next
stage beyond," I do not see how we can stop
short of a goal. It would seem to be a necessity
of thought. And with the goal we get back to
Platonism and idealism, attainment and perfec-
294 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tion. I do not see how we can harbour both views
in our mind at once. If God is ** becoming," and
man also is ** becoming, '* though at a few stages
behind, there must also be a ** become," and the
** becoming" God is not God at all.
Is there an ^* orthodox" ethical view on this
question? The Ethical Movement is entirely
rationalistic, but so, also, is every philosophical
system; for every philosophy is of human con-
struction, the result of human investigation and
reasoning. Theologies are not philosophies. To
say that our Movement is rationalistic, therefore,
does not end the matter. We still have to reason
and to appeal to the reason of others. But we
are limited to the universe, the region of phe-
nomena, and can recognise nothing as valid which
is supposed to act upon the universe from out-
side. If we have a God, therefore, he is no
Creator God. He must be within the Universe
and not standing without. That is something
gained, and must carry us a good way together.
But the universe is wide enough for our investiga-
tion, and there is room within its limits to keep
us busy till the end of our existence on the planet,
and to lend a savour to all our investigations by
showing how we can continue to differ and form
opposing views.
We are ourselves of the universe, our thinking
and feeling and willing part as well as our bodily
part, and are proper subjects for investigation.
We have evolved through the ages from the star-
dust. Somewhen and somehow life entered into
the dust and made of it self-contained organisms
with power to sustain themselves and to repro-
duce themselves in other similar living forms;
IS THE IDEAL REAL? 295
also to change themselves by combination with
other living forms and to add to their structure
new capacities. And so the evolutionary process
continued until in time consciousness arose in the
living forms and the approach to man began. At
last man stood erect upon the planet, conscious of
himself and his environment, dimly aware of his
latent powers over his own personality and over
the things of the earth, and with a curiosity, the
parent of science and invention, as to himself and
the things around him. With a curiosity also
as to the origin of these things and their meaning;
and so religion and philosophy began.
The Ethical Movement, as I understand it, does
not attempt to satisfy this curiosity of man as to
the origin and meaning of life. It is rationalistic,
but its rationalism does not preclude a theistic
interpretation of phenomena. It is not either
atheistic or agnostic. It denies neither the ex-
istence of a God nor the possibility of ultimate
knowledge. Its concern is solely with the way
of life. But the way of life has to be found. It
is not revealed. There is no guidance save from
our own experience and searching. We are put
down in a universe filled with everything that we
can ever want, and there left to look after our-
selves. We have life and the desire for life ; also
we have a sense of obligation to do what is right ;
but we are not told the use of anything, or how
we must sustain life, or how we can ascertain
what is the right. All has to be found out by ex-
perience ; often painful experience, but more often
joyous and radiant experience. For there are few
greater joys than the conquest of difficulty, the
triumph over opposition. And though men may
296 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
have railed at siicli a universe where pain and
sorrow are ever present, we know in our hearts
that the true stature of manhood can be reached
only through effort and suffering and the over-
coming of obstacles, that all that is to go into
the fabric of man and become his very own must
be acquired by him in this way. A i easy universe
would not be our universe, and would produce a
being inferior in essential respects to man. A
perfect scheme of life laid do"v^m for us would not
be an ethical scheme, would not be a human
scheme. Under it we should be automata and not
men. We are for ever at war with evil and ob-
stacle and difficulty; but we know that we could
not attain to our stature as men without them,
and we know that the only authority we can ever
respect is the authority that man has himself
acquired by experience and research.
And yet this authority is itself conditioned. It
is not an authority which roams at large, and
settles where it will. Man is not free to act as
he will and call it good, nor to think as he will
and call it true, nor to construct as he will and
call it beautiful. There is upon him this certi-
tude, that in his spiritual universe there is al-
ready for him a destiny, to act in a certain way
and to think in a certain way and to construct in
a certain way, if ever he is to act rightly, or to
think truly, or to construct beautifully. The
obligation is certainly real, even though the way
in each of these cases is not clear before him, but
has to be found by him laboriously, and with no
assurance even that it tvill be found by him in his
own lifetime, or by his successors in theirs. We
know, as by an intuition, that if an act is not right
IS THE IDEAL REAL? 297
we cannot make it right, that if a thought or
statement is not true we eanniot make it true, and
that if a work of art is not beautiful we cannot
by willing make it beautiful. These qualities are
theirs or not theirs just in proportion as they ac-
cord with and express, or do not accord with and
express, the eternal and unchangeable aspects of
goodness, truth and beauty; and these were not
made by man. These are the constituent elements
in the spiritual universe in which we are placed,
and they have to be found by us, just as the laws
operating in the material universe, and its con-
stituent elements, have to be discovered by us.
These are the conditions within which we can
gain authority, and surely we do continually en-
large our authority within them. We have not
lived for nothing all these thousands of years
upon the planet. We have achieved something in
all the spheres set out by Plato as the ultimate
realities of our being. We know something of
the divine in human form, and can see something
of the ideal actually realised in human exper-
ience. The example of Christ will go down
through all the ages as the life of perfect love
and sacrifice. We cannot go beyond it. We can-
not conceive a greater literature than that of
Shakespeare. Surely the ideal is visible in both
these instances. And in a hundred other lives of
great men and women, the Buddha, St. Francis,
Plato, Newton, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Beethoven,
the divine shines through, the human material has
become translucent. But does it not radiate also
from the lives of humbler people known only to
their immediate neighbours? In every mean
street love abounds, pure and unselfish; not only
298 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
mother-love and father-love, and love of the
young man for his sweetheart — there may be
selfish interest to some extent there — but in the
help and care generously given by one neighbour
to another where no self-interest enters in. The
ideal proves itself to be real in all such action, and
it is manifest ever^^^here. Is it not to be found
also in the hundreds of agencies which have sprung
up in recent times for the betterment of the lives
of the people, societies whose workers give their
time and money voluntarily, without thought of
reward ? And in the many State institutions which
have been established in this generation? Though
it may be argued that all these agencies and insti-
tutions are an adverse comment on the evils which
are fostered in the present state of society, they
yet are an evidence of the recognition of these
evils and of the necessity under the law of love
of hastening forward with some remedy for them.
They are to that extent indubitable evidence that
the ideal is real.
The achievements of science are evidence of
the reality of the ideal of truth. There can be
no suspicion of any ulterior motive actuating the
research student. It is the truth and nothing
but the truth which he seeks. And in that spirit
the advancement of our knowledge of the universe
is continually hastening its pace. Is it possible
to assign any limit to the achievement which may
yet be ours?
And so too with beauty. Surely the ideal has
been made manifest in the Greek temples, in the
Moonlight Sonata, in many mediaeval Gothic
cathedrals, in the Venus of Milo, in Keats 's Hy-
IS THE IDEAL REAL? 299
perion, in the Lord's Prayer and in many pas-
sages of Isaiah. We know what beauty is,
whether or not we can define it. And we know
what ugliness is, and how much there is of it
which sliould be eradicated. And Beauty which
we have not made, but can take into our being,
beauty of the cloud and the flower and the land-
scape, beauty that runs riot throughout nature, is
ours if we have eyes to see, though we can never
say what it is that makes it beauty.
But if it can be said with some degree of
truth that we know our ideals, and have in part
at least realised them, how much more true it be-
comes that there is an endless road to traverse
before we have completely realised them. The
realisation of what we have accomplished makes
all the more clear the work that is yet before us.
The great ones whose lustre shines down the ages
are so few, and humanity is so many. The end
cannot be attained till all are great and good. We
cannot rest satisfied so long as there are any
ill-nurtured, uneducated, or evil-disposed people
in the human family from end to end of the earth.
If we have any faith in an ideal of manhood, we
must believe that that ideal is open to all, and
that every obstacle to its realisation should be
removed from the path of every one of us. It
may be a long road strewn with obstacles which
appear at present impassable, but we know that
it is the road we have yet to traverse, and it is
as well to set that further ideal clearly before
us. It is not sufficient for the race to throw up
men and women of genius, or of saint-like char-
acter, once or twice, or twenty times in a genera-
aOO ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tion, and to have hundreds of millions dull of in-
tellect and harassed with cares that warp and
twist their natures, natures which are capable of
saintliness, and intellects which might — for all
we know — if trained aright from their early
years, have produced works of genius and beauty.
For there is no logical reason why perfect health
should not be the lot of every one, and unfailing
happiness; why any item of knowledge, or any
skill of performance, or appreciation of truth or
beauty, or excellence of character, or enjoyment
of the amenities of social life and order, should be
denied to anyone ; nor can any reason be assigned
why these excellent virtues and capacities should
not continue to enlarge with the years beyond any
dream that we can at present form of them. We
know the ideal in part and have in part attained to
it ; but the end we do not know, and we still have
to grope our way, though with ever increasing
light upon it, through group reform and nation re-
form and world reform. And as we find it step by
step, the divinity which is in every man will be
more and more liberated. For the divine is our
true nature. There can be no doubt about it. Those
Platonic ideals are the ideals which appeal to
every man, well-born, well-educated and properly
nurtured. It is only adverse circumstance and
accident Avhich can prevent them from finally be-
coming the possession of every one.
But does it really matter Avhether we have this
faith in an ideal of manhood sot up, as it were,
in the very nature of things? Does it make any
practical difference? Is it necessary for us to
look more than a few steps ahead? Can we not
IS THE IDEAL REAL? 301
guide our wagon on the earth just as well as, or
perhaps a little better than, if we hitch it to a
star? Is there really a set path to be found, or
can we go along any one of a large number of
paths, picking our w^ay without regard to any
ultimate goal? Seeing that we cannot determine
the goal, is not any ideal which we may formulate
just our own imagining and idealising, and as
likely to be right or Avrong as any other ideal
which anyone else may formulate ? Can we not dis-
pense with the notion of an ideal altogether, as
being an unknown quantity which cannot affect
any of our calculations ? Is not *' betterment*^ quite
sufficient to go on with? I cannot deny this for
those who think so. It is really a matter of
personal temperament. Many of the best workers
in the Ethical Moyement move and act as men and
women inspired, thinking no more of ultimate
ideals than they do of a personal God. I can only
bring my own testimony to the fact that these
compulsions which I experience, and rejoice in,
of a right to be found and brought into action, of
a truth to be sought and boldly stated, of a beauty
to be expressed in every construction, compulsions
which seem to me to come out from the very heart
of nature, do help me and fortify me. It is as if the
universe was really on my side, as if righteous-
ness and truth and beauty were as truly laws of
reality as is gravitation itself. And I am sure
that this has been the experience of the religious
teachers and the prophets of all time. ''Under-
neath are the everlasting arms.*' Fidelity, lov-
ing-kindness, justice : If these are what we seek,
the whole order of things is with us ; and I think
302 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
it must strengthen our hands in the work we have
to do to hold such a faith. The ideal is the real,
the eternal, established in the very fabric of
things, the God within us seeking ever for libera-
tion, and we have to bring it into actualisation in
our own lives personally and in the life of hu-
manity as a world-wide brotherhood.
Some Ethical Tendencies
in the Professions
By KOBEKT D. KOHN.
IT IS DIFFICULT to judge of the actual re-
sult of any educational movement upon the
whole body of citizens who are supposed to be
affected by it. If an industry or a business adopts
a Code of Ethics it is impossible to say how
many of those engaged in that industry really
live up to it; indeed, to estimate how many even
know that such a thing exists. In the same way
it is almost impossible to judge of the effect of the
present tendency towards the wider ** socializa-
tion** of the professions upon the whole body of
professional men. There is such a movement in
each profession. The group of forward-looking,
socially minded practitioners in each field is
searching for wider opportunities for service.
There is also an easily discernible (and much
larger) group in each profession which had no
interest in change except it be to gain greater
recognition for the service rendered, and, inci-
dentally, greater reward for it.
It is obviously of value that the social import-
ance of the professions should be recognized and
that they be more adequately rewarded. As com-
pared to industry they have always been handi-
capped in these directions. Particularly since
the war these and all other ** white-collar'* jobs
304 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
have suffered economically. But within the liEuits
of this brief review we must ignore this element
of the problem, since in its ethical implications it
does not differ materially from those of other
vocations. Neither the reward nor the recogni-
tion accorded any vocation is ever based on a
system whereby there is a just appraisal of the
relative value of the service rendered to society.
And even were such an appraisal possible, we
should, of course, still be far from a truly ethical
scheme of compensation.
At the very outset of our discussion it is im-
portant to distinguish between those movements
within the professions which tend to enlarge the
sphere of their usefulness and those few move-
ments in the professions which are really new ex-
periments towards a more democratic organiza-
tion of function. The former are indeed merely
enlargements upon that spirit of helpfulness
which has always been a concomitant of profes-
sional practice in its best manifestations. But in
recent times there have been interesting exten-
sions of this principle. The practice of the pro-
fession of the doctor has for centuries been
honored by its notable work for the relief of
suffering. It is the most obvious example of a
profession working for the perfection of a
service independently of the monetary return.
In this field the great extensions of preventive
methods, the elaboration of research work, and
the cleaning up of the infection-spots, even
into remote corners of the earth, are all
elements of the wdder '* socialization " of the
Doctor's function. In this same direction we
have, since the war, the allied societies of Engi-
ETHICAL TENDENCIES IN THE PROFESSIONS 30u
iieers trying to bring their expert knowledge to
bear more largely upon the governmental problem
of construction and the industry problems of pro-
duction, efficiency and organization; of the Law-
yers, to assume a larger responsibility for the
doing away with the delays, complications and ex-
pense of securing justice for the poor; of the
Architects, to help the poor to better homes ; and
the efforts of a profession hardly recognized as
yet, that of the Community Planner, to bring
order out of that world-wide chaos of city growth
which has been caused by our unrestrained indi-
vidualism.
Medicine, law, engineering and architecture
have thus sho"\^^l in recent years evidences of an
ever-grovring realization of their responsibility
for the extension of their respective services over
a much larger share of the public. The Webbs,
in their surveys of the professions made under
the auspices of the Fabian Society in 1910, spoke
of the absence in all of the professions of an
appreciation of this responsibility for the full
extent of their respective services which the public
had a right to expect. They referred also to the
fact that the professions in their most competent
exponents have ahvays been attached to wealth;
that is to say, the highest quality of each service
was generally available only to those who could
largely reward it. But this, fortunately, is no
longer entirely true. vSome of our most competent
medical men are engaged in the preventive work
of the Public Health Service, in the reduction of
the tuberculosis evil, and in the fights for pure
food legislation; some of our most able technical
men are in the educational work to prevent acci-
306 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
dents, and in national and local fire-prevention
campaigns. The same spirit is also evident in
the alliances between engineering societies and
architects to do away with **pork barrel" legisla-
tion in Government as affecting our public works
programmes; and housing betterment is being
advanced by co-operation between the leading
Architects of the country whose individual serv-
ices the poor could never previously have com-
manded.
But the movements for change within the pro-
fessions which have the greatest interest for us
are those few, as yet only in their beginnings,
which seek to develop a clearer idea of the func-
tional relation of any professional service to the
whole process of which it is a part. That such
efforts are of ethical import cannot be doubted,
for the lack of understanding of the function of
the individual as related to the functions of all the
others in the democracy, and the inter-dependence
of the function of one with the others, is one of
our most serious problems, and causes most of
our difficulties.
In this direction, while the signs of progress
are only faint, there are none the less very definite
tendencies worth recognising because of their
potentialities. Such are the inter-professional
organizations of the Middle West, the movements
towards greater inclusiveness in the membership
of various professional organizations, and the
single example of an experiment in all inclusive-
ness— the building industry organization known
as the *' Building Congress." Perhaps the
attempts at co-operation which cut across voca-
tional lines during the war were as much respon-
ETHICAL TENDENCIES IN THE PROFESSIONS 307
sible as anjiihing else for the breakdown in caste
which these various moveme.nts indicate. Not
that the separatist sentiment was a character-
istic of the old-time professional organization
alone. The American labor nnions suffer from
the caste spirit as much as the professions or
the bankers' organizations.
It would be absurd to fail to realize that there
is a field of valuable study of inter-relations
between persons of the same vocation; but the
ethical codes, the customs and even the techniques
that are thus developed have always suffered
from the lack of those correctives that can only
be brought to bear upon them by persons engaged
in other but related vocations. It is that test
which has always heretofore been lacking. It was
not only the soldier who during the war period
found it necessary to subordinate and to co-relate
his efforts to and with those of his comrades.
In civil life any particular line of conduct was
instantly subjected to the test of judgment as to
whether it was or was not likely to advance what
was for the moment considered the supreme com-
mon good. In that procedure the foundation of
many vocational conventions was considerably
shaken, and we see the result today in certain
liberalizing tendencies, particularly in the pro-
fessions.
It may be well to note in passing that there are
elements within each vocation which must be kept
distinct; a craftsmanship of the vocation, which
can only suffer if it is vaguely to be mixed up
with other techniques. In any effort to clarify
functional relationships it is important to pre-
serve intact those elements of a distinctive char-
308 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
aeter in each function which are in part the cause
of, and a just excuse for, an exclusiveness within
certain limits. It could not be a forward step
towards a democracy of function to wipe out dis-
tinctions between functions. The value to be
discovered in the professional tendencies that we
are considering lies in the fact that though the
distinctions be kept clear, the inter-relations and
the thereby resulting interdependence of different
functions are to be more clearly appreciated.
Eeference has been made to certain inter-pro-
fessional conferences as being the first of the note-
worthy signs of the times. Although an attempt
was made in 1919 to organize such a movement
nationally, it was unsuccessful, because the main
impulse came from the East. There, in the larger
cities, it was particularly difficult to bring together
diversified groups of the different professions in
centers where each profession was separately well
organized. The movement, Avhich had been in-
spired by Dr. Felix Adler took hold (from the
original impulse given hj the Detroit meeting)
in the cities of the Middle West, and there are
now a number of ** Inter-professional Clubs" or
*' Inter-professional Groups" in Minnesota, Iowa,
and Nebraska. In each of these there is sub-
stantially the same programme; monthly confer-
ences on civic topics of common professional
interest and discussions on the Ethical Codes of
the different professions. There is every indica-
tion that in many of these groups a mutual under-
standing of function is being developed that is of
great educational value to the participants.
The second move to which reference has been
made is that general tendencj'^ of the various pro-
ETHICAL TENDENCIES IN THE PROFESSIONS 309
fessional groups to be less exclusive, or rather to
be more inclusive. A number of the leading
national organizations in the professions have
taken steps indicating that they Avished to include
in membership and consider the problems of all
of tliosc practitioners who are trying to live up to
the ethical standards set by their more prominent
fellows, even though their work lies in those modest
fields of endeavor which make them neither rich
nor distinguished. This tendency has naturally
met Avith the opposition of those who have con-
sidered election to a professional organization as
a rcAvard for distinguished achievement. It has
receive the support of those who see in the con-
tacts made possible in a more democratic pro-
fessional organization a most effective education-
al force for raising the standards of the totality
of the profession, extending the service and
comprehending the function as a whole.
The third movement to which reference has
been made, and which is on a distinctly higher
plane, is the experiment of the Building Con-
gress— a movement started by professional men,
and at their invitation joined by all other ele-
ments connected with the industry. As yet only
in its beginnings, there are already evidences
that this type of organization is able to draw
effectively into co-operation the most economical-
ly antagonistic elements of an industry, because
of three basic principles. Firstly, it prohibits
any action by majorities only; every element of
the industry, acting as a unit through its repre-
sentatives, must agree that any proposed action
is desirable, otherwise no action can be taken.
The second is that it includes in its field of action
310 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
only such subjects as all elements represented
agree to be for the advancement of the service
which the industry may properly be expected to
render. It excludes contentious subjects ; accord-
ingly, the subjects of unionism or open shop and
that of pay-rate are rigidly excluded. The third
is that in its membership is included the technique
of the building process, and hence it breaks down,
to the advantage of the professional man as well
as to labor and the employer, some of the barriers
within this service which have always stood in
the way of progress. The English war-time ex-
periment of the ''Parliament of the Building In-
dustry^' was apparently never intended to in-
clude (or, at any rate, did not include) the techni-
cal men. We have already learned that their
presence in this American movement for the
functional organization of an industry is abso-
lutely essential, else no part of its educational
programme could be advanced. As a rule the
technical men of the organization are asked to
assume leadership by choice of all the other ele-
ments. The resulting education of the profes-
sional man is by no means less important than
that of labor, employers, manufacturers, or the
financial interests in the industry, which are also
included in the conferences. The reports of the
"Building Congresses** in half-a-dozen cities in-
dicate that prejudices are breaking down on all
sides and new understandings are being de-
veloped.
It is unquestionably a step forward in the
ethics of a profession to expand its horizon from
the limited field of the interests of those who em-
ploy it to the wider interests of all who partici-
ETHICAL TENDENCIES IN THE PROFESSIONS 311
pate in the function. Particularly is this neces-
sary in the relation of the professional man to
labor. And the converse is of course also true.
The manual worker feels himself much closer to
the professional technique of his industry (be-
cause it is merely another kind of craftsman-
ship) than he does to the series of management
and finance elements that stand between.
Thus, then, a beginning which has great poten-
tialities has been made in this field. In reality
it is a form of adult education, though as yet
hardly recognized as such even by those leaders
who are directing its course. It is not to be
doubted that it will profoundly affect, and for the
better, several of the professions. If it does so,
other professions and other industries will follow
the example set.
On the Art of Living
By WILHELM BOERNEE (Vienna).
IT IS ONE of life's most common and also its
most trustworthy experiences, that the aspira-
tions of man are toward the things he lacks, the
gifts that have been denied him. The sick have
an intense longing for health, the poor for riches,
the weak for strength, the ill-favored for beauty.
The wishes, hopes and ideals of the race reflect
actualities, but A\dth the conditions reversed. In
the ideal, we place that into the foreground, which
is lacking in reality. That with which we are
endowed by nature is lost sight of in the ideal,
the objective of our desires.
In this sense all Utopias, air-castles and visions
of a life beyond are but reflections of actualities.
And this explains why most people long for that
which is almost universally lacking, namely, the
''Art of Living."
Experience teaches us that among the many
thousand bunglers and amateurs of life, we find
scarcel}^ one artist. How do we account for this
scarcity? First let us try to conceive what this
art of living is. Naturally, like all other arts,
it is the forming, shaping, and we might almost
say humanizing of a certain medium. Taking the
word art in the narrower and more usual sense.
314 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
these materials are language in poetry, sounds in
music, lines and color in painting, stone in archi-
tecture and in statuary, metal in sculpture, and
bodily movements in the dance. But the material
for the art of living is found in our aptitudes, our
physical and moral powers, and our abilities; in
the experiences and events of our lives, i. e., that
which, in its widest sense, stripped of all mysti-
cism, is called our destiny. So the art of living
demands our thoughts, our emotions, our convic-
tions, and our actions.
The problem of the art of living lies in giving
to this manifold, varied and complicated material
a unity, a system, in short a definite form. But
this problem can be solved only under certain
conditions.
The first condition is a knowledge of the ma-
terial to be formed. Only he who knows himself,
knows, that is, his own strength, his limitations,
his shortcomings, his faults; only he who has at
his command a wide knowledge of human nature,
and to whom life 's industrial whirl is not a closed
book — only he can arrive at the true art of living.
It will always require a certain vastness of mental
horizon. A narrow-minded, cloistered, inexperi-
enced person can never be an artist in this sense,
can never acquire the art of living. For this
reason, all training, all thorough education, must
consist in opening the eyes of even our children
to the facts of life ; and not only to its external
aspects, but to its inner, spiritual, social and
moral phases. We must point out and make clear
to children, the relations of cause and effect in
human behavior. We must show what motives
are the standard for certain actions and what
ON THE ART OP LIVING 315
effect our actions have on our fellow men, on the
actors themselves, and on the community as a
whole.
Educational trips and outings should be made
to industrial plants and to cultural and human-
itarian institutions. Older children and young
people should be taken to visit schools for the
blind, for deaf mutes, for the feeble-minded; to
hospitals, asylums and penal institutions ; in order
to show life at its best and its worst ; in order to
give them an insight into the beauty and ugliness
of life. Everybody knows the story of Marie
Antoinette, who, while out driving with her lady-
in-waiting, came to a large gathering of people.
She heard loud cries of ''Hunger! hunger!
hunger ! ' ^ The Queen asked her companion what
the shouting meant. She answered: ''They cry
'Hunger,' because they are so poor they have no
bread.'' Whereupon Marie Antoinette suggested:
"\Vhy don't they eat cake, then!"
Whoever faces life so ignorantly, so childishly,
can never become a master of the art of living.
We frequently hear the remark that we must
not rob the child of his paradise, or even the
grown man of his illusions. Our answer is that a
paradise, a state of happiness, built on illusion,
on lies and deceit, has no value for us, because it
can have no solidity and no permanence. Pre-
cisely here lies the difference which distinguishes
the art of living from every other art. Every
other, by its very nature, deals with some appear-
ance ; but the art of living deals with reality itself.
The second prerequisite to an understanding
of the material for the art of living is largeness
of heart. He who cannot free himself from his
316 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
"dear ego," who, instead of having a conception
of the world and of life, has but a conception of
self ; he who reacts to all things in a uniform man-
ner; who has a single, definite, one-sided view of
the world ; who looks upon life either as a torture
or as a mere May-time frolic ; who, in other words,
considers man as an angel or as a devil, — he can
never be one of life's artists. He is the victim
and the slave of his one-sidedness ; either he will
hate and despise life or he will trifle with it ; but
his life will never be a harmonious whole. And
precisely in the harmonious development of life
lies the essence of the *'art of living."
The third factor in the art of living is the prog-
ress made, the distance gained, in the tussle with
opposing forces.
There are those whom life emaciates; who are
carried along by its stream, floating without con-
scious thought; those who are swallowed up by
life, who never find time to ponder either over its
social problems or the meaning of their own
existence. They are the ''also rans" in life's
race, as it were. One is tempted to say : ' ' Such
people do not live, their lives are lived for them ;
their connection with life is not active, but pas-
sive merely."
That surely is one of man's most difficult prob-
lems: not to stand aside like a bored aesthete,
and yet not to be engulfed by life ; to lend a hand
in the whirl of community affairs, and yet not
lose one's identity; to prove oneself in carrying
forward the day's work, and yet, in so doing, not
to lose sight of the main trends and conscious
goals of the personal life.
It is certainly true, that only as co-workers in
ON THE ART OF LIVING 317
the community, only as participators in the com-
mon lot, only ivith men, alongside men, and among
men, can we become real men. As soon as we
withdraw from the life of the community, we sur-
render life 's most precious gift ; but it is not less
true that in order most nearly to approach per-
fection, we must take with us into our own per-
sonal lives, an aim, a purpose, and an inclination.
For this reason, a perspective of life is indis-
pensable.
The fourth condition for the art of living is a
graded scale of life's values. There are transi-
tory, fleeting values and lasting goods; purely
individual and social values; materialistic and
idealistic values. He who faces all these without
a standard, without criticism, thoughtlessly; he
Avho sees no gradation in all this; who does not
choose, discriminate, and then create a cosmos out
of this cJiaos of values — he cannot possibly be
one of life *s artists.
And finally, the fifth prerequisite for the art of
living is a strong will. Man must evolve a power
to transform into action' and realize in practice
that which he has recognized as socially necessary
and ethically good. Here the art of living means
control and mastery of life, according to a defi-
nite, fixed plan. But this requires strength, en-
durance and courage.
Looking over these conditions for the art of
living, we can readily see why there are so few
masters of the art, why such people are so ex-
tremely rare; for the simple reason that there
are so few people on whom the prerequisites for
the art of living have been bestowed.
Knowledge of life, in its varied forms; large-
318 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ness of heart; perspective; a rational gradation
of life's values, and will-power — how easily
these requirements are counted off on the fingers,
yet how immeasurably difficult of realization!
Indeed, because the art of living is so extremely
difficult to acquire and hence so rare, for this very
reason it is so highly prized and so ardently
desired.
No doubt it must be clear that this valuation
and longing strikes root deep, deep in the soul
of man. The art of living seems not an end, but
a means to an end.
We wish to exercise control over the art of
living, not for the sake of the art itself, but
because this art grants us that which has always
been and always will be denied to the bunglers
and amateurs of life: — inner satisfaction, con-
tentment and happiness. And this longed-for
inner satisfaction, the will to be happy, is, in the
last analysis, the main spring of every human en-
deavor; be it a slight unconscious movement of
the finger, or a far-flung social demonstration of
the masses.
Man's pursuit of happiness assumes the most
varied forms, masks and disguises ; but it is ever
present, ever at work, never resting. This never-
ending search for happiness, functioning as a
spiritual foundation and as the real cause of our
longing for the artistry of life, is universally
recognized.
Even by pessimists it is recognized. For they
base their doctrine of the badness of the world
upon this very fact ; asserting that since this long-
ing for happiness is active in all men and yet
can never be actually realized, this world must
ON THE ART OF LIVING 319
be the worst of all worlds. It is easy to prove
that the philosophy of pessimism is one-sided and
that it never can justify its stand in the face of
complete, actual facts. But here another ques-
tion is worthy of discussion.
We could take the view that ''world-sadness"
is a diseased state of mind, that pessimism, as a
philosophy of life, is without foundation and that
it cannot hold its own. Nevertheless, it must be
affirmed, that while there is such unspeakable
misery as at present, no human being is justified
in being happy, contented and at ease. It should
be considered unethical; one has no right to use
the art of living to strive after personal happi-
ness under such conditions. Let us not close our
eyes to the terrible tragedies which are enacted
all over the world, year in year out, in the haunts
of the poor, in hospitals, in insane asylums and
in prisons. Who could be happy and content in
the face of such infinite misery? Do not the
sufferings of the sick, the pain of a cancer patient,
the grief of an orphan, the despair of a freezing,
starving, homeless man, suffice to banish the
slightest sense of contentment and satisfaction
and to nip in the bud all joy of living! No
doubt, such questions have a certain justification.
Unless one is just marking time, unless one is
stupid and superficial, one must sooner or later
face the question: Has man to-day a right to
happiness ?
Before answering this question, another fact
must first be considered. No matter how un-
justifiable pessimism may be; no matter how
firmly we may believe in social and ethical prog-
ress, and no matter how convinced w^e are of
320 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
man's ability to mitigate the sorrow, misery and
wretchedness in the world, we cannot for one
moment hope that we shall ever be able to wipe
out all life's wretchedness completely.
We can eliminate only the wretchedness which
man himself has caused. But all the evil arising
from causes in nature beyond human control, must
and will continue to exist as long as the world is
constituted as at present, or until human nature
undergoes an essential change. Under this head
come all the ills caused by natural phenomena.
This group includes the perishability of material
forms; old age; death; the monotonous flow of
time; the separation of human beings in space;
the fact that past events cannot be recalled ; the
fact that every human being is an integral part
of the age in which he lives; and finally, that
external nature has no regard for man, and pays
little or no attention to him.
In the face of such ills, we shall ever be help-
less and impotent. Thus envisaging the misery
and wretchedness to be found in the world, the
objection might be sustained for all time that
man has no right to be contented and happy.
If such an objection is justifiable now, it must
be justified hereafter; and if at some later date
it shall prove unjustified, then it cannot be really
justified even now.
This too must be considered: as has already
been said, the pursuit of happiness is the basic
foundation of all human endeavor. To deny or
doubt this would be to contradict all experience
and fly in the face of the most certain facts. If
there were no pursuit of happiness there would
be no will to do, no motion, no action, no develop-
ON THE ART OF LIVING 3 21
ment, no progress in humanity. That would be
equivalent to the suspension of all life. Or, one
may express the matter thus : the affirmation of
life and the quest of happiness are one and the
same. The question as to why this interdepend-
ence exists, is as idle as it is futile. Here we
are brought face to face with one of the funda-
mental facts of nature, and the question '^Whyf "
can only lead us into metaphysics and the bound-
less. If we acknowledge the right to live, we
must accept also the pursuit of happiness as
justified.
To be sure, this does not solve the problem.
We seem to observe a kind of contradiction in
nature. We notice a quest for happiness, necessi-
ties and desires among countless people, which do
not promote life, but on the contrary retard it.
Man possesses qualities, the exercise of which
does not serve life but impairs it. All these cases
point to an imperfect adaptation of our instinc-
tive and emotional life to reality, to nature; and
this disharmony can be observed from two
aspects: from the standpoint of the individual
and from that of the race. In this respect animals
are better adapted to their environment than man-
kind. In the animal kingdom, instinct effects the
harmonisation between natural conditions and the
13ursuit of happiness. Instinct, that unconscious
urge, guarantees to animals the correct and
proper adaptability.
These securely-working instincts, however,
man possesses in no such measure. Yet to com-
pensate him for this loss he has something in-
comparably more distinctive, and of higher worth.
He has reason, the capacity for insight into the
322 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
relations of cause and effect among human ac-
tions; and he has self -control, the capacity to
regulate and master his will, his impulses and
inclinations.
These two capacities raise the entire sense-life
of humanity to a higher plane. Not only are the
passing impressions and conceptions of human
beings associated with pleasure or pain, but so,
too, are the most complicated thoughts and the
most remote objectives of the will. Then, too,
man finds contentment and joy in exercising his
powers of reason and imagination, and in foster-
ing ethical principles. Thus the pursuit of happi-
ness is of the greatest significance, not only for
life in general, but especially for the development
of man's mental powers, for the promotion and
development of technical skill, of science, art and
morals.
It is self-evident that not every sort of pur-
suit of happiness can be considered justified, but
only those can be counted right which enhance the
life of the individual and of the race by contribut-
ing to the completion and the harmonisation of
the general well-being. AVhen a conflict arises
between the life of the race and the life of the
individual, the former is invariably to be placed
first. And when we take into consideration that
in judging and estimating happiness, the criterion
is a two-fold standard — namely, the duration and
strength of the condition of happiness, and also
its extent, i.e., the number of people benefited by
it — then a scale of values for the blessings of life
is established.
One of the most important tasks of all ethical
culture, and of the art of living, consists in the
ON THE ART OF LIVING 323
gradation of values: that is, in the right apprai-
sal of the materials of happiness.
Now, if it has been proven that our striving
for contentment and happiness is unceasing and
inevitable, that we cannot renounce it, then the
necessity for the feeling of happiness becomes
self-evident. If human beings never reached the
stage of feeling themselves genuinely happy, the
pursuit of happiness would be abandoned in
despair, because they would have learned to
recognize it as an illusion.
We must have some experience of happiness,
even in order to recognize and properly to esti-
mate pain and misery. Pleasure and displeasure,
gladness and sadness, are interdependent and
imply each other. Sorrow as such could not come
into our consciousness were it not thrown into
relief against gladness. But since the experience
of happiness is so vitally important, we must be
able, at least transiently, to forget all sadness;
both that which is avoidable and that which is
not.
Thus we actually have a genuine right to be
happy and feel contented, in spite of all the un-
speakable misery here on earth. Were we to
be continually thinking of the sorrow, the black-
ness, and the misery of life, we should eventually
become not only grief-stricken, but inwardly
maimed and shattered. We must be able to for-
get sorrow and devote ourselves to feelings of
joy, because otherwise we could not be active,
toiling, social human beings. Happiness has a
strong, unifying, binding, socializing effect on
men — it imparts vigor and energy.
He onlv can fullv understand sorrow who
324 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
knows the feeling of joyousness. He who can be
supremely happy, will sympathize deeply with the
afflicted and feel himself powerfully constrained
to help the suffering. Not until we have ex-
perienced great joy, can we realize what it means
to be miserable.
Therefore, we maintain, that man has not only
a right to happiness but a duty of happiness.
This sounds like a paradox, because often, in
fact as a rule, w^e assume an antagonism be-
tween duty and inclination. We can hardly bring
ourselves to recognize as a duty that toward
which our inclinations and wishes are directed.
This conception, however, is not correct ; and we
shall later try to show, in how far one may
rightly speak of an ethical **duty" of happiness.
Most people fall into the great error of look-
ing upon happiness as something objective; they
believe the gods, the divine Providence, or nature
bestow joy or sorrow upon man. That is a child-
like, a naive conception. Happiness is always
essentially human, subjective, personal. Nature
as such, i.e.y viewed apart from thinking, feeling
and appraising conscious beings, holds in itself
as little of joy or sorrow as it does of wisdom
or foolishness, of beauty or ugliness, of good or of
evil.
Of course, nature has no such attributes; we
but invest her with them, by virtue of our
thoughts and comparisons; by virtue of our
wishes, our hopes, and purposes. Nature exhibits
only relations, changes, incidents, processes.
These all lie outside such states of consciousness
as gladness and sadness, truth and falsehood,
beauty and ugliness, good and evil. The thought
ON THE ART OF LIVING 325
and feeling of man create these categories.
There are certain connections given between
man and the surrounding world of nature. Nothing
else! Even as these connections are reflected in
his consciousness, in his intellect, in his feelings,
even so is he made happy or unhappy. The same
things, the same occurrence, may be reflected in
one person as painful, in another as indifferent,
and in a third as joyous. Nevertheless, in spite
of these differences and variations, there is an
orderly and constant connection between man's
experiences and his feelings of joy or sorrow.
If this relation of causal connectedness did not
exist, there could be no laws of hygiene, no
sense of right, no moral standard. Because
there is a broad similarity between most men's
spiritual and physical natures, they are approxi-
mately unanimous as to what is joyous or sad,
beautiful or ugly, good or evil. Thus, the belief
in an ''objective" happiness has a certain justi-
fication; or, more correctly, an excuse, an ex-
planation. Every opportunity to be happy may
be spoken of as a happiness. Goethe's well-
knoAvn lines express this thought:
Gliick haben ist Schickalsgunst,
Crliick haben ist Schicksalsgimst,
(''Good fortune is a gift of the gods; to be
ever joyous is the real art of living.")
In the same sense is to be understood the
epitaph which the German poet, Franz Dingel-
stedt, wrote for his own tombstone: "There was
much good fortune in his life, yet he was never
happy." ("Er hat im Leben viel Gliick gehabt,
und ist doch niemals gliicklich gewesen.")
326 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
AVhat he meant was that the external condi-
tions and relations of life, which as a rule make
for happiness in man, were present, but their
joy-bringing effect was absent. This state of
things is not seldom to be met with in life. There
are many more conditions conducive to happiness
in the world than we generally suppose. Pre-
cisely here lies the duty of happiness, — that we
exhaust all these possibilities, with an eye to the
utmost possible enhancement of life. We are
justified in speaking of it as a duty, because the
sense of happiness has such great social and ethi-
cal value.
One of the principal considerations in the art
of living must be: **What should be our attitude
toward life, in order to obtain the maximum of
happiness f Our most commanding duty lies in
not looking at life through the eyes of the pessi-
mist, because his is a one-sided view. A world
which could give birth to such a poem as ** Faust,"
to a Ninth Symphony and a Venus de Milo, is
not wholly degraded; a world which has pro-
duced Plato, Kant, Mozart, Shakespeare, Michael
Angelo, Copernicus, Edison and Darwin, is not
altogether stupid; a world which possesses a
Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Lincoln and Tolstoi,
is not entirely evil and wicked; a world which
embraces the starry firmament, the Alps, the
ocean and the plains, is surely more than ugly!
It is a falsification of reality to forget the ex-
alted and beautiful, while gazing on stupid, com-
mon and ugly things. It is a *Hendency-view";
in other words, a blind prejudice.
A further duty in this art of living is an accu-
rate valuation of all the positive goods of life.
ON THE ART OF LIVING 327
AVe overlook so many things in our judgment of
the world. The general attitude is this: If a
thing be good, pleasant, normal, we accept it as
a matter of course ; if it be improper or bad, we
are indignant. Our attitude toward health shows
this very plainly. A\Tiat well person ever duly
and properly prizes health? Who, for example,
ever stops to think what a never-ending source
of happiness we have in vision? The same may
be said of the intellect, of a happy family life,
of faithful friends, of success in one's affairs.
He who possesses these blessings, bears himself
as though they existed by necessity. Yet there
is no necessity, no matter of course, about it.
Not otherwise is it mth the loyalty and re-
sponsibility of our fellowmen. When we fail to
come across them — when a business man breaks
his promise, a waiter is inattentive, a street-car
conductor is discourteous, a servant forgets some-
thing, a telephone operator gives us a wrong
connection, a letter is lost — then we are highly
excited and disgusted. No doubt, we have a right
to be provoked at every neglected duty. Yet,
why not rate the endless number of positive
accomplishments of man correspondingly?
We condemn people unmercifully when they
fail to act in accordance Avith our wishes. Yet,
for the most part, we overlook it and express no
thanks when our orders are correctly carried out
and things are done well. This again shows a
thoroughly distorted, one-sided, and unjust con-
ception of the world.
Then, too, most people will always compare
themselves with those who are in some way their
superiors; as, for instance, with such as are
328 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
better equipped, in better health, more intelligent,
more successful, or better situated than they.
Why do we not just as often form comparisons
in the opposite, the downward direction? This
one-sidedness must again, of necessity, lead to a
false estimate of life.
It must further be reckoned among the duties
of the art of living, that one should rejoice in
the so-called ** little things^' life has to offer. We
have reason to take pleasure in every kind word,
every friendly glance, every good deed, no matter
hoAV small. This open-mindedness, this receptiv-
ity for life's gifts is what we find so beautiful,
so precious, in childhood. In this sense everyone
should retain throughout life this art of being
like unto little children. Here the moralist Bar-
tholomaeus Carneri maj^ serve as a worthy ex-
ample to us. This artist of life was a cripple,
and for many years sick and blind. But all his
life he was cheerful and happy, because he was
truly grateful for all the actual gifts which life
afforded him.
Yet another duty lies in the suppression and
control of our fits of temper, peevishness, anger
and discontent. For from these comes suffering,
both for the uncontrolled man himself and for his
neighbors. As a rule, these moods spring from
an over-estimation of outward things, or an
under-estimation of the self. The more petty
and mentally poverty-stricken a person is, the
greater the danger that he will succumb to fits of
temper. Hence such disturbances are always a
sign of limitation of mind and spiritual penury.
The noble-minded and open-hearted individual
ON THE ART OF LIVING 329
vnll never let trifles embitter his life's happiness,
nor let them interfere with the joy of living.
Finally, then, it is also a part of the art of
living and of the duty of happiness that we may
not pursue happiness for ourselves alone; i.e.,
we should not make our personal happiness the
chief aim in life. He who is guilty of such con-
duct, will never quite realize true happiness; he
will miss the opportunities; like the egotistical
Peer Gynt, he will always be traveling along on
the edge, and will just miss the realization of
happiness.
He who madly pursues happiness for himself
alone, has lost the race at the start. So the
supremely important duty in the art of living'
consists in being filled with great social and
humane ideals and purposes. So equipped, many
things will be seen in a new and different light;
then new perspectives will open up to us, and the
pursuit of happiness will for the first time take
on its real meaning.
Following the unalterable laws of his psychic
nature, man covets a state of happiness. But yet,
this desired state of consciousness must reach out
ever farther beyond the purely personal sphere,
and take on an ever more social, general and all-
embracing character.
In other words : The supreme goal of the art
of living consists in recognizing and finding oui
personal happiness in universal happiness, i.e.,
in the social welfare of all.
No one person may consider himself really and
truly happy until he has contributed his share
of strength, of labor, of love to the general happi-
ness of all.
330 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Let every man seek happiness thus, and he will
surely find it.
Because the pursuit of happiness must neces-
sarily follow a social trend, the ^'artist of life''
must be a person who sincerely thinks and feels
in terms of the common good of all.
He who would be an ** artist of life'' in the ethi-
cal sense, must experience within himself the frat-
ernizing effect of a real state of happiness. And he
will be life's master-artist who is most purely,
most deeply and most practically possessed and
inspired by the sentiment to which Schiller has
given expression:
Seid umschhingen, Millionen !
Diesen Kiiss der ganzen Welt !
(** Embrace, ye multitudes, and give to all the
world the salute of love!")
The Relation of the Ethical
Ideal to Social Reform
Bj JOHN LOVEJOY ELLIOTT (Xew York).
IN MY RECOLLECTION of the ceremonies that
marked the Twentieth Anniversary of the
Ethical Movement, one expression of Dr. Adler's
stands out vividly: ** Thank God for the idea
which has used me.''
When the word idea is used as it is in this
sentence, it is a term not easy to define; nor
would a brief description be adequate. One way
of learning its meaning would be to trace the idea
in its effects, but that would require writing the
history of the Ethical Movement. The purpose of
this paper is much more limited. It is to sketch
only one phase of the record, — that which the
Ethical Societies have made in the field of social
work. AVhile the purpose of these activities has
been in part to relieve suffering and to aid in
philanthropic enterprises, even more the ultimate
purpose has been to express some phase of our
Ethical Ideal, and to reach out and establish
better ways of living among men.
When Dr. Adler returned to America after his
student years, he had already become deeply in-
terested in labor problems, and one of his first
undertakings was the establishment of a co-opera-
332 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tive printing shop. This enterprise had a con-
siderable degree of prosperity, but the plan had
to be abandoned because many of the workmen
preferred the greater material benefits to be de-
rived from a return to the competitive system.
A friend said to the young reformer, ''If you
wish to make a success of co-operation, you will
have to begin in a school where it is taught.''
This was the origin of the Ethical Culture School.
While the chief practical work of the Ethical
Society has been its educational activities, many
other achievements stand to its credit. The build-
ing of the first model tenement houses in New
York City was promoted by Dr. Adler. District
nurses were placed in the free dispensaries in
1878, and since that time not a year has passed
without leaving the record either of some new
social enterprise begun in the Ethical Movement,
or an enlargement of those already founded.
Economic conditions have been affected in a
number of ways, chiefly perhaps when Dr. Adler
and other of the Ethical leaders have acted as
arbitrators and impartial chairmen in the matter
of labor disputes and crises caused by threatened
strikes. In the matter of political reform changes
have also been brought about. At one time an
appeal came from the young men of the tene-
ments presenting the situation of those self-re-
specting parents whose neighborhoods and houses
were being invaded by prostitution, and the re-
sponse made by Dr. Adler led to the formation
of the Committee of Fifteen, which created a sub-
stantial and permanent reform in the City's life
as well as the election of a great educator as
Mayor. But the greatest effect which the Ethical
RELATION OF ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 333
Society of New York lias had on the City's life
has not been exerted through any one specialized
activity, but rather through the influence of the
Sunday platform, where there have been dis-
cussed from the Ethical standpoint the para-
mount political and economic problems of the day.
That the connection of the Ethical Movement
with social undertakings is not an accident nor
due to the interest of a single man is proven by
the fact that every Ethical Society in this country
and every leader has been active in tliis field.
Dr. Coit established the first social settlement
in America. In St. Louis Mr. Walter Sheldon
built up Self Culture Halls in various parts of
the city, where for years they were among the
outstanding features of educational progress and
marked out in a clear way what has since been
called the Workers' Education Movement. Mr.
Chubb in later years has developed the method
of expressing communal life through festivals
and pageants, and he has repeatedly spoken on
matters like that of municipal ownership.
Chicago never had a more useful member of
its municipality than Mr. William Salter in the
days of the great Chicago strike, when he went
from workingmen's organization to employer and
finally induced the conflicting parties to discuss
the cause of their bitter and dangerous struggle
in the open and before the public. Henry Booth
House was founded and has been supported by the
Chicago Society for years, and Mr. Bridges is to-
day proving himself an effective and helpful friend
of the colored people.
The Sunday platform of the Society in Phila-
delphia plays in part the role of a great forum
o34 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
for the discussion of social as well as religious
and ethical questions, and Southwark House is a
product of the strength and vigor of the Ethical
Society. After taking part in many courageous
and helpful social and political activities in
Brooklyn, Dr. and Mrs. Neumann have recently
led the way in the founding of the second Ethical
Culture School in this country.
Meanwhile the social work in New York has
been constantly growing. Settlements like those
of Madison House and Hudson Guild have been
in existence for years. Fresh-air homes and
camps and a co-operatively managed farm have
been built up. In the larger fields, too, the Ethical
Movement has made its effort. The first Inter-
national Moral Education Conference was as-
sembled by Dr. Adler, and shortly before the
War a great Eaces Congress was held in London
under his leadership.
There is a difference between the work done
by the Society immediately under its own aus-
pices, such as the education and Sunday Schools,
and the attempts made in these larger fields of
social and political reform. The activities under-
taken in the wider fields have been carried on in
conjunction with others, and express not only
the particular point of Yiew of those in the Ethi-
cal Societj', but represent the interests and faith
of other people as well. What has been accomp-
lished in these ways has been done not only under
the inspiration of the idea which founded the
Ethical Societies but with the impetus which we
share with others that comes from the ideas that
are moving groups, classes and nations. Every
organization has behind it some motivating idea
RELATION OF ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 335
or power, and very often we find that those who
are furthering the interests of some other organ-
ization than that of the Ethical Society are also
helping to express ethical ideas and ways of liv-
ing with which our own activities are funda-
mentally in accord.
To give an example of this unity from the
practical w^ork with which I am best acquainted,
the Hudson Guild has not infrequently been
called a peculiarly American institution. If this
is true, it cannot be because we lay claim to being
counted with those who represent ^*one hundred
per cent. Americanism," or because we have al-
ways chosen the popular side. If the statement
is a just one, and with a great deal of devout-
ness w^e hope that it is, it can only be because
the Hudson Guild has attempted to found itself
on democratic principles and methods. It is my
firm conviction that between the ideals of de-
mocracy and the ideals of ethics there is a close
connection, and that social organization acting
under the inspiration of the Ethical Ideal has the
responsibility and opportunity of developing and
attempting to realize essentially the democratic
point of view.
TMiile I have no desire to be party to the poor
and pathetic attempt made by many to exalt the
achievements of the time in which w^e live, it is
perhaps not too much to claim that the spirit of
our age has its owti great and distinctive message,
and that our seers and prophets and statesmen
have created that which is not only new but of
permanent worth. The high tides of thought and
intellectual power, of artistic genius and spiritual
insight of other periods have left their eternal
336 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
marks. For those who seek knowledge and wis-
dom and beauty, the records of the Greeks are
a permanent possession. "WTien men strive to rea-
lize or embody the fact of life's significance in
moral or spiritual terms, there is the history and
thought and experience of the Hebrews that will
always be their guide. A new kind of law and
world order began with the Komans. But it may
not be too much to claim that our own age has
not only a worth-while but a distinctive insight
into life, and one which is different from any
other. The fathers of America who met at Phil-
adelphia to form a new nation were trying to
embody a new purpose.
Statesmen and reformers have received from
many sources the impulses which guided them.
The men and Avomen of our time who have been
most influential in shaping human life have most
often been moved by a faith which had its origin
in a deep and passionate belief in human beings ;
not only in those human beings who were fortu-
nate and gifted, but their faith is one which takes
in all mankind. It is Lincoln who, better than
anyone else perhaps, has stated the case for the
common man, and it is characteristic that the first
great impulse, which dominated his whole life,
came to him when he was standing by a slave-pen
and an auction-block.
Miss Jane Addams has often been called the
First Lady of the Land, and she has told us in
'* Twenty Years at Hull House'' of some of the
earlier experiences which led her into the paths
which she has since followed. Vivid among them
is the picture of the poorest people in the City of
London bidding for decayed and discarded vege-
KELATION OF ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 33 7
tables in Covent Garden, with a hunger and want
which led them to act almost like animals as they
devoured this food. Probably everyone who has
devoted himself to social reform carries through
life memories of a time when he witnessed the
degradation of human beings. Jacob Eiis stirred
city-dwellers by his pictures of ''How the Other
Half Lives," and most especially with his de-
scription of children who were in want.
There is no experience connected with the
memory of the war more vivid for me than the
day spent in Vienna not long after the signing
of the Armistice, when I was an onlooker in the
feeding-stations and hospitals established for the
starving and sick children. At one place there
were gathered many hundreds suffering from
rachitis, consumption and malnutrition. As I
watched them in the wards and marching by in
the playgrounds with their twisted limbs, their
dwarfed and misshapen bodies, deformities so
great in some cases that it hardly seemed as
though they could belong to the human family,
I thought of the words of the Founder of Christ-
ianity, ''Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it unto me." And walking up and down the room
in the hotel that night, I had the experience of
realizing that those poor little creatures were
really kin of mine. They were my poor relatives,
and I was their poor relative. It was little
enough, almost nothing, that I could do for them.
They surely could be of no service to me, and
yet I knew that somehow we had one fate, and in
their suffering the whole race was degraded. As
338 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL KELIGION
in Christ men have seen vicarious suffering, so I
saw in them vicarious degradation.
The case for democracy has seldom been put
better than by Dr. Adler when he said that de-
mocracy rests on the faith that there is an un-
common good in every common man; and this
statement also puts clearly the case of ethics.
Both democracy and ethics rest on a common
basis. It is not the capacity for suffering as a
source of intellectual, economic or artistic power
in every common man, but that he is the embodi-
ment of an inalienable worth.
The institutions of democracy, like the instru-
ments of all governments, have to be made practi-
cally effective ; and in the attempt to make them
effective and permanent, there is always the
danger that they may become alienated from their
original purpose and depart from the ways in
which they can achieve their sole purpose. It is
peculiarly the function of ethics to point out the
aim of democracy; and at this time, when our
own country has achieved such enormous growth,
and when the formation of a League of Nations
has turned men's thoughts in the direction of
even greater control from central powers than
has ever been kno-v^Ti, it is indeed an opportune
moment for the statement of those propositions
on which the Ethical Societies have based them-
selves. While in our Movement there can be no
authoritative statement of the terms of our faith
by one person for another, I believe it would be
safe to say that there are three conceptions on
which most of us will agree, which have a direct
bearing on social organization, and which well
RELATION OF ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 339
may guide the ideas of social change and better-
ment.
There is first the idea of the sacredness of the
individual. Governments indeed have been based
on the fundamental principle of vesting the final
authority in majorities and giving to one man one
vote. Religion has declared the brotherhood of
man and the worth of the individual soul. But
it has been left for the Ethical Movement, parti-
cularly in the writings of Dr. Adler, to point out
that there should be recognized in social organiza-
tion the differences as well as the similarities of
men, that the differences are just as important
to the individual as the similarities. And in
social organizations these differences are con-
stantly being overlooked in the interests of mass
action; and in the desire for simplification there
is always the tendency to treat people not only
as units, but as perfectly similar units. I be-
lieve it is the failure to recognize this innateness
of difference that hampers the work of many of
our social institutions. We are beginning to
recognize that it has to be taken account of in
education, but we have not yet seen its significance
in our political and economic associations. We
have stressed similarity at the expense of dif-
ference; and I believe it is a message of eternal
truth, and one which the Ethical Movement ought
more and more clearly to state and attempt to
exemplify, that the fundamental social principles
must be based on unity and difference.
It is true that often the rights of the individual
have been stated and often individualism has run
rampant in thought and sometimes in action. So
the second principle which T believe is largely
340 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
snared among members of Ethical Societies is
that the worth of a human life is to be measured
by the effect which it has upon other lives, and
it is only possible through the family unity,
through the social and political institutions which
unite men in common activities, that the indi-
vidual can find his use or the meaning of his life.
Not in anti-social but in social activities are even
the individual satisfactions to be found. The
ethical life is essentially that which is dynamic,
outgoing and positive, which draws people into
association with each other, not merely for the
sake of association but for that of achievement.
The third fundamental social conception is that
there is an over-arching task for mankind; that,
as the individuals are not separated in their pur-
pose, neither are the groups, classes, nations or
races; that in the establishment of a better life
each has his contribution to make, and without
the contribution of every distinctive element there
can be no establishment of permanent good,
neither lasting peace nor real progress.
While the statement of these aims, or principles,
has been somewhat abstract, they are, I believe,
the real, although perhaps vaguely held, ideas,
not only of the majority of those who belong to
Ethical Societies but of those who earnestly have
attempted to work for social change. It is true
that we may be moved by the memories of actual
instances where human beings have been mis-
treated, or by the example of some great man or
woman; but the social reformer is always mov-
ing out into the future and attempting to create
new ways of living which embody new principles.
We want law courts that establish justice; a
RELATION OP ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 341
fairer distribution of wealth that will not only
give new opportunities but will beget finer ways
of living ; better ways of dealing among the clash-
ing, struggling and contending people that will
lead to the establishment of better understanding.
And unless the social reforms are guided by a
clear conception of ends and principles they are
likely to lose their way in the maze of practical
affairs.
If I have not over-stated the case, and the social
reformer really is animated by such fine purposes,
why is it that social work and social reform have
often had such a hard road to travel! Why does
one so often hear the expression, ''I hate a social
uplifter"? There are probably many reasons;
and some of them at least are inevitable, and not
derogatory to one who works for social change. It
is natural that those who are in power and have
more than their share of opportunity and wealth
should not wish to be disturbed. *'Lass mich
schlafen,'^ says Fafner as he lies on his heap of
gold. '* Leave me alone,'' says Alberich as he
applies the whip to the backs of the dwarfs.
*' Leave us alone," say the dwarfs themselves,
*'and let each one of us get as much as he can."
**What do you know about government?" say
many of the elder statesmen. *' There have al-
ways been secret diplomacy, war, and destruc-
tion of the backward races."
So great are the obstacles that meet those who
attempt to achieve the great reforms in govern-
ment and industrial systems that these reforms
can be accomplished only by those who are ex-
ceptionally endowed; and even they, indeed, are
successful only when favored by rare circumstan-
342 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ces. But there are today a great number of men
and women who can make no claim to unusual
gifts, who nevertheless are interested in attempt-
ing to create in practice new ways of living and
working, new forms of social life. Many thou-
sands of college students have been attracted to
this field. So many today are entering the ranks
of social workers that it might be said that our
time is witnessing the creation of a new pro-
fession, a profession whose aim is clear enough,
but in which the methods and standards have not
yet been definitely determined and fixed.
It is a matter of primary importance for the
future life of our communities and states that
these methods and standards should be in con-
formity with the best that these young workers
are capable of conceiving and achieving. And
there is real danger that the difficulties in the way
of making alterations in the habits of men, whether
they be individual or social customs, and that the
ambition for immediate and personal success,
may change those who would really be social
reformers so that in the end they become nothing
but social conformers. Not only the ideal and
hope for a better society must be clear, but the
ethical principles which affect methods and im-
mediate human relations must be achieved.
The pressure to make all activities conform to
present-day industrial standards is almost irre-
sistible. It is true that methods of social work
should be made efficient, but if they only conform
to the standards of efficiency their cause is lost.
It is indeed a real struggle into which the social
worker has entered, and unless he is aware of the
nature of that struggle, unless he senses the
RELATION OF ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 343
worth and preciousness of the life of the indi-
vidual and the group, which under our present
system is being degraded, he will never have the
courage and the force to hold on and go on.
It is only natural that those who strive for
better ways of living should be subject to all the
ills that other flesh is heir to, — the impatience
with delay, the desire for personal success, the
weariness and discouragement that come to them
as well as to all other human beings. The ability
to secure funds to carry on an organization is
dependent on being able to show immediate and
altogether *' practical'^ results. The desire of a
w^orker to stand first, or at least to be considered
among the first, is natural. The eagerness for
power and place and distinction probably is to be
found in all groups of men; but it appears most
unfortunately when the purpose of an undertak-
ing is the achievement of an ideal ; and it is par-
ticularly obnoxious when, as in the case of social
work, success depends on co-operation and unit-
ing individual efforts into a great and common
undertaking.
In some of the larger cities community chests
have been formed, and for the sake of being re-
lieved of the unpleasant task of collecting money
the different social agencies have combined in a
certain form of co-operation. In a number of
communities there are welfare councils to prevent
duplication of effort, but very rarely do we find
groups of social workers xmiting in any cause
or in any wa}^ that is worthy of the finest aspects
of their vocation, combining in a real fraternity
whose purpose is joint action for a better civic,
social and human life.
344 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Community workers representing charitable
txnd pliilantliropic enterprises are conscientious
and hard-working people, but rarely does one find
that their faces and words and actions carry with
them the sense of the greatness of their calling.
It is indeed a difficult thing to deal with poverty
and crime and sicloiess and not become infected
with depression. It is a hard task to be held to
the rigorous standards of efficiency and not be
satisfied with just being efficient. Many who
have long been in the field and have known its
life might well join with the colored people of
the South as they sing their refrain, '*I didn't
know the battle was so hard."
But if those who seek to change society in its
very structure, who are not satisfied only to im-
prove and heal small injuries, to cure the lesser
troubles, but who long in their hearts to see
human beings living better lives, lose their faith
in the best and finest possibilities of man, where
shall we turn for hope ? If the very vocation which
seeks to improve all vocations has not its close
touch with the finest life, how wdll it be possible
to affect other occupations and professions?
The great leaders of democracy have had their
vision. It was stated by Lincoln in his address
at Independence Hall in Philadelphia when he
said, ''The Declaration of Independence was not
merely the severance of the connection with the
mother country, it was the expression of the hope
that in due course of time, the burden should be
lifted from the shoulders of all men, and all men
should have an equal chance.'*
If all men are to have an equal chance, not
little but great changes will have to take place;
RELATION OF ETHICAL IDEAL TO REFORM 345
and it is in this direction that social work and
social reform must always tend. The true object
of social reform has been stated by Dr. Adler.
''Social reform is the reformation of all the social
institutions in such a way that they may become
successive phases through which the individual
shall advance towards the acquisition of an ethi-
cal personality.'^
It is to this appeal that the younger people
from the colleges and universities have responded.
It is this faith which many of the older workers
through the years of their service have tried to
keep. It is this ethical or spiritual element which
is the living force of democracy, and which, de-
spite all the failures and wars and frustrated at-
tempts, still lives, perhaps a more widely spread
hope now than ever before, in the hearts of old
and young.
A new word is being spoken, or perhaps it
would be better to say that an old message is
finding a new response. For thousands of years
the Hebrews have said in their temples, **Hear,
0 Israel, the Lord Thy God is one God.'* Through
social work and through social reform at its best,
that message is both being carried out and broad-
ened. The call is not to one nation or one people,
but rather to all men: **Hear, 0 People of the
Earth, your life is one life.'* It is this message
which ethics attempts to express in thought and
words, and which social work is striving in practi-
cal ways to realize.
Concerning Tolerance
By EOY FKANKLIN DEWEY (Chicago).
44nnHE HEEETIC of today becomes the arch-
A snemy of all dissenters of tomorrow." In
his sprightly, colorful work ** Tolerance," Mr.
Hendrik Willem Van Loon thus pithily sets
forth a rather melancholy conclusion which must
inevitably be confirmed by anyone who studies
the history of man's struggle for freedom of
thought and expression. That courageous figures
in all ages, with a love for truth and a fiery desire
to promote it, should have suffered and bled in
devotion to their ideals is intelligible enough.
But that many of these same men should later
have donned the vestments of tyranny and oppres-
sion, playing the very roles against which they
had vociferously protested in the name of liberty,
seems, at first glance, a little strange. Neverthe-
less, it is a serious historical fact that not a few
individuals and groups who clamored most for
toleration were anything but eager to practice it
when the opportunity was given them.
Witness the implacable Calvin, who, taking up
the cause of the Reformation against the intol-
erance and other iniquities of Rome, became ob-
sessed with the will to discover and propagate the
divine message of the Scriptures, and was soon
engrossed in the amiable art of heresy-hunting.
Directing his attention, for example, to the anti-
34S ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
trinitarian blasphemies of Servetus, he succeeded
in trapping this itinerant, conscientious Spaniard
with the insatiable mind, and burned him at the
stake. Consider, too, the case of the Puritans,
who, harassed by the unyielding authorities of the
Church of England, which they had tried to re-
form, migrated to America, only to employ here
even worse tactics against the indomitable Eoger
Williams and the defenseless Quakers. In fact, the
Christian Church as a whole derived singularly
little benefit from the lesson of toleration which
it should have learned during its persecution by
the emperor Diocletian and his predecessors.
Obviously, the limits of this essay do not per-
mit an extensive catalog of similar disfiguring
incidents, with which the story of humanity is
replete. Let it suffice to say, however, that the
intolerant volte face was not confined to the
Church, as one is reminded by turning to that
ghastly welter known as the French Revolution,
which, despite the slogan, ** Liberty, equality,
fraternity,'^ was marked by the tireless activities
of Robespierre and the guillotine.
How shall we explain such distressing changes
from an attitude of loud insistence against per-
secution to one of despotism and abuse ? We must
begin by recognizing that the desire for self -pro-
tection, fear for the safety of one's own opinions
or other interests, is invariably the root of intol-
erance, and that this unruly instinct, by virtue of
its power, may easily become dominant in those
who have been freed from oppression, as well as
in those who have never known it. But does not
this mean that, in all cases, the persecutors who
have but recently been champions of sufferance
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 349
deliberately abandon their mercifulness for sheer
malice or unalloyed self-interest? Certainly not.
To reply in the affirmative would be a temptingly
easy, but unfair, disposition of the problem. Such
men may simply be unconscious of the fact that
they are guilty of the same kind of reprehensible
practices as they had condemned before.
"While the unique thing in man is his self -con-
sciousness, his ability to conceive of himself as
both the subject and object of experience and to
think in terms of relations, this power is merely
incipient at birth, and developes only through ex-
perience. Moreover, during the entire period of
life, it is exercised largely on those matters in
which we are immediately interested, or toward
which our attention is especially directed.
Now, tyranny is likely to inspire tolerance in
men who are denied the right to think and to act
as reason dictates, by forcing them to see them-
selves clearly in relation to their oppressors.
Their own pitiful powerlessness is contrasted
sharply with the overwhelming advantage of their
persecutors, and they realize then that only
through toleration can they follow the urgent
gleam of the inner light. If we would behold how
crystal-like the spirit of religious liberty may be
formulated imder such conditions, we have but to
observe the credo drawn by the followers of Soci-
nius, near the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury: ''Let each one be free to judge of his own
religion, for that is the rule set forth by the New
Testament and by the earliest Church. Who are
we, miserable people, that we would smother and
extinguish in others the divine spirit which God
has kindled in themT*
350 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Such ennobling indulgence, however, may be
short-lived ; for, when the down-trodden have been
able to shake off coercion, and have the whip-
hand themselves, it is possible for them to go
their way without considering others, whose
rights and needs are then merely ignored. In
brief, those formerly persecuted lose the perspec-
tive which gave birth to their tolerance.
This limited, canalized self-consciousness, this
failure to apprehend ourselves completely in rela-
tion to our fellows and to the events in which we
figure, is revealed on all hands. Nowhere is it
more piquantly recognized than by John Stuart
Mill in his essay *^0n Liberty,'' when he says that
*Svhile everyone knows himself to be fallible,
few think it necessary to take any precautions
against their own fallibility, or admit the sup-
position that any opinion, of which they feel very
certain, may be one of the examples of error to
which they e<jknowledge themselves to be liable.*'
The poor day-laborer, struggling, hardly able
to secure the meagre necessities for maintaining
his family decently and for educating his children,
denounces the luxury and extravagance of his
wealthy neighbor, who is oblivious to the priva-
tions of the poverty-stricken. But if, or when, this
disgruntled, discouraged toiler becomes affluent,
does he bestow a tithe upon those whose circum-
stances he once shared? Probably not. He falls a
victim to a profitably unserviceable memory.
Here, too, is an adolescent who bewails the
parental misunderstanding of his needs and am-
bition, and vows that he will approach the prob-
lems of his own children with truly helpful, pa-
ternal solicitude. Will he later keep vividly in
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 351
mind the anguish of his childhood and put himself
in the position of his sensitive son I
The point is, that although men may, and do,
tyrannize over others, knowing full well what they
are about, many are actually unconscious of their
own intolerant tendencies, or have never analyzed
toleration. So they readil}^ extol it in the abstract,
but think of its opposite in terms of the Inquisi-
tion, or of a variety of events separated from
themselves by time, by ** psychic distance." Be-
lieving in the principles of religious liberty, and
separation of Church and State, they yet agitate
vigorously for Sabbatarian legislation; proud of
the Declaration of Independence, they are still
ardent supporters of the Ku Klux Klan ; branding
the treatment of Galileo as an incomparable piece
of folly and infamy, they nevertheless seek to
prevent the teaching of evolution in the schools
of their own land.
Among the classical pleas for freedom of
thought and worship, one is especially noteworthy,
because it contains an allegory, sometimes cited
by muddle-headed preachers of tolerance. I refer
to Lessing's drama *' Nathan the Wise,'* in which
he has recourse to a story invented by Boccaccio.
A Mohammedan prince, desiring an excuse for
depriving a poor Jewish subject of his property,
shrewdly hits upon the device of asking the fellow
which of the three great religions, Jewish, Moham-
medan and Christian, he considers best. The Jew,
having an enviable gift for parable, answers mth
the story of the wealthy man who owned a costly
ring, and provided in his will that the son who, at
his death, possessed the ring, should inherit his
estates. In this way the ring passed from genera-
352 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
tion to generation. Finally, the owner, unable to
decide which of his three sons to favor with the
treasure, ordered two other rings, exactly like the
first, and gave one to each. After the death of the
father, a quarrel ensued over his property, each
son holding a ring which was indistinguishable
from the others, and each claiming to have the
one valuable ring.
Without pausing to assay the paternal love
which could express itself through this conven-
iently evasive scheme, let us admit that the narra-
tive constitutes a graphic argument for sympathy
with men of sincere, but divergent, convictions. To
contend, however, that truth is imbedded in all
great religious systems, and that each has some
value for its adherents, is one thing; to argue
that no one of them represents a clearer appre-
hension of the truth than any other is quite differ-
ent. Insofar as the Boccaccio tale implies that
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are practically
as much alike as the three rings, it probably has
led astray more than one earnest seeker for a
solution to the problem of tolerance. Can we be
tolerant only when we refuse to recognize a scale
of values or to consider one body of doctrine as
more worthy of acceptance than another? Even
the thoroughgoing pragmatist, one imagines,
would look with suspicion upon such reasoning.
No wonder, then, that alert, progressive-minded
people, alarmed over the reactionary, prohibitory
movements of the day, which are initiated and
maintained by those who hold passionately to
their opinions and purposes, should protest
against the spineless attitude of declining, in the
name of tolerance, to combat error and oppres-
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 353
sion, even by the appeal to reason. Nor is it
difficult to understand why men, carelessly assum-
ing that tolerance demands such negativism,
should brand it as enervating rather than elevat-
ing.
Probably nothing has become more trite than
reference to our deplorable habit of employing
words and phrases mechanically, ignoring their
implications, the result of which is confusion of
thought, controversy and a variegated assortment
of half-baked theories. But, since the word 'tol-
erance" is rapidly achieving a place in our list
of perversions, we cannot do better than to re-
member the devious paths followed by misguided
interpreters of such doctrines as **the equality of
all men.''
The impelling necessity, consequently, for a re-
examination of the whole problem of toleration is
by now apparent. Only when we realize dis-
tinctly what tolerance signifies and requires can
we hope to escape from the woful inconsistency
between profession and practice. Only then shall
we be able to determine how far, and in what way,
to tolerate intolerance, which, as the eloquent
Phillips Brooks once suggested, is the acid test
of clear thinking on the subject.
Before considering some implications of the
tolerant attitude, let us get down to definitions.
"What does the word ** toleration" mean, as com-
monly used? When we tolerate an opinion or an
act, we permit it to be held or to be performed
without prohibition or prevention; we put up
with it, although it is something which we dis-
like, or from which we dissent. And tolerance
may be defined as the disposition to allow others
354 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
to believe or do what we ourselves do not believe
or do.
Can we, then, be imbued with this spirit only
when we have no positive convictions ; or, holding
them, only when we refrain from giving them
utterance? Nothing could be more absurd. The
differences which we endure in others often are
definitely formulated opinions or conduct spring-
ing from them. Surely no labored argument is
required to prove that it is both possible and con-
sistent to permit others to hold fast to their
beliefs while we adhere firmly to our own. As
one who is not aware of any compulsive evidence
for immortality, I may express to another, w^ho
believes there is proof of it, the grounds of my
doubt, without denying him the right to cherish
Avhatever fanciful theory he may choose. What
is more, I may wish, even urge, him to think as
he does until reason induces him to change.
There are Jews, Mohammedans and Christians,
of course, who subscribe to their respective creeds
simply because they have blindly inherited the
traditions and faith of their fathers. At least
some, nevertheless, have rationally embraced one
religion rather than another, believing that it
was nearer the truth and better able to meet
their needs, not because they fatuously considered
all religions on a par.
Positive convictions are indispensable guides
to a well-ordered life, and may go with an open
mind, ready to alter its viewpoint with the intro-
duction of new, incontrovertible facts. As moral
creatures we must act, and are continually con-
fronted with situations in which we unavoidably
have to determine whether love is nobler than
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 355
hatred, or truth more sublime than falsehood.
Perceiving clearly the true ideal of human con-
duct in living so as to enhance the lives of
others, one can still recognize that the experience
of mankind will necessitate marginal changes in
that ideal. For Plato and Aristotle the goal of
life was the perfection of humanity, but it did not
mean to them precisely what it implies to us now.
Perfectible humanity, in enlightened democratic
thought today, includes all men, not only the
select classes of the ancient Greeks. Again, cer-
tain that the expression of our belief in the sanc-
tity of human life will necessarily alter with ex-
panding knowledge, we may still hold firmly to the
conviction that we can never repudiate that doc-
trine itself without proving recreant to our
rational and moral nature.
As the lives of martyrs and the immortal voices
of men like Locke, Milton and Jeremy Taylor
have testified, the progress of civilization has
ever been stimulated by the staunch faith of in-
dividuals who stood out unflinchingly against the
opposition and persecution of their fellows. The
resolute, lucid vision of Jesus eventuated in the
Christian religion; Luther's in the Reformation;
that of Copernicus, in the heliocentric astronomy.
Recall the words of Mill: **The peculiar evil of
silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it
is robbing the human race; posterity as well as
the existing generation; those who dissent from
the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If
the opinion is right, they are deprived of the
opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if
wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a bene-
356 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
fit, the clearer perception and livelier impression
of truth, produced by its collision with error. ' ^
Let us remind those who vigorously contend
that tolerance and certainty cannot go hand in
hand, that we frequently are most tolerant when
we have rational, demonstrably true convictions.
It is when we have no reasons for our positions
to marshal against those differing from us that
we blindly and passionately seek to overthrow by
force the objects of our fear and dislike. We
look rather indulgently upon the poor fellow who
refuses to admit that the earth is round, that the
whole is greater than any of its parts, or that
a cause is bound to be followed by an effect.
These scientific facts are readily verifiable, we
know, and are in no danger from the attacks of
the incompetent. When Mr. Voliva, therefore,
vouchsafes the information that our well-known
planet is disk-shaped, we smile and go about our
business. So much the worse for him, if he
wishes to live in a fairyland.
Phillips Brooks once made the comment that,
significantly enough, we are often more tolerant
of those who differ from us by a wide gap than
of men whose view varies but slightly from ours ;
and Seeley wittily remarks that the mortal extreme
of intolerance can be observed amon^ men who do
not differ at all, but have adopted different words
to express the same thing. Where the divergence
is great, the reasons for it are likely to be more
apparent. Fundamentalist Christians who have
clearly thought out their position may be more
compassionate toward Mohammedans, whose re-
ligion proceeds from radically different premises,
than toward their modernistic brethren, with
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 357
whom they have much in common. What could
be more repugnant to a devout Catholic than the
apostate liberalism of a George Tyrrell!
All this, obviously, is not to say that adherence
to definite beliefs may not be accompanied by
repressive or coercive measures, as the atrocities
of the witch-hunters and similar persecutors
abundantly demonstrate. They undoubtedly had
what to them seemed a reasonable, sound Welt-
anshchauung , hut they resorted to quite unedifying
methods in their attempt to impose it on others.
The point of the argument thus far is merely that
man, as a rational being, inevitably holds and
expresses definite ideas about the world he lives
in and about his relation to it, and that only by
so doing can he develope or contribute to the com-
mon task of the race. Also, that, while invoking
the reason of others for the confirmation or ac-
ceptance of his beliefs, he can tolerate theirs,
refusing to put them down by any kind of compul-
sion.
But to proceed. Tolerance having been defined
as the attitude of mind impelling us to endure
opinions or practices at variance with our own,
how can we be considered tolerant, accurately
speaking, when we try to get rid of them by argu-
ment, if in no other way? Further explication
of the word is imperative. Tolerance implies not
only positive convictions of our own, but a spirit
of kindliness and helpfulness toward those who
differ. And this demands that, at times, we re-
frain from expressing our convictions, preferen-
ces or aversions. While endeavoring to change
the beliefs of others through a challenge of their
reason, we may be sympathetic and genuinely
358 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
helpful ; but, per contra, we usually betray a lack
of that spirit when we attack, if only by logic,
everything which has no place in our own lives.
Therefore we justifiably fasten the label of intol-
erance upon the man who incessantly and gra-
tuitously criticises the viewpoint, dress or man-
nerisms of another. Insistently proclaiming,
for example, his religious outlook, in season and
out, he fails to see that it cannot mean to others,
at the moment, precisely what it does to him, and
that consequently he may be far more destructive
than inspiring. Tolerance, then, is not only a dis-
position, but an art.
If someone inquires your opinions on Bud-
dliism or the Prohibition Amendment, you may
tell him as unmistakably as you can; but you de-
sire him to become, or to continue to be, a
Buddhist or a disciple of Mr. Volstead, according
to his own judgment. Or you may voice your
beliefs on these or any other subjects, to a group
of people, who, by their very presence and atti-
tude, unquestionably indicate their desire to know
them. Again, I may protest against the establish-
ment of a state church, whether the advocates of
so retrogressive a movement want to hear from
me or not, simply because I am sure that, under
such a scheme, I should probably not be able to
express my religious nature in my own way. All
of which, consistent with a feeling of serviceable
sympathy, is quite different from the egocentric
obsession displayed in the effort to batter down,
in every passer-by, the convictions or customs
which he considers sacred and sound.
In the final accounting, the sine qua non of tol-
erance is respect for man qua man, regardless
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 359
of color, creed or temperament. Firm, clear-cut
convictions, while compatible with, and usually
concomitants of, tolerance, are not indispensable
to it. That is to say, we may permit others to pro-
mulgate the doctrines of Henry George or Karl
Marx, and still be mentally amorphous ourselves
on the questions of the single tax or the economic
interpretation of history. But without sympathy
and reverence for those who differ from us we
cannot be truly tolerant.
The plea for freedom of thought and expres-
sion on the narrow utilitarian ground that it is
necessary for the advancement of mankind in the
sciences and arts is feeble indeed. If, let us say,
the search for scientific truth and the creation of
works of art were our sole or chief concern, perse-
cution and tyranny might at times be justifiable.
We espouse the cause of freedom, however, pre-
cisely because, as moral creatures, we believe that
hum^n life is sacred, personality inviolable, and
that every one possesses a potential best which it
is our common duty to evoke. So we protest
against the law of the jungle in the relations
between human beings, reject the doctrine that
might is right, and denounce the artist or scientist
who places his professional interests above the
sanctity of personality.
We must not forget, then, the two fundamental
elements of tolerance: respect for man, and firm
convictions which result from unbending devotion
to truth. To rule out either of them, or to see
them in false perspective, inevitably leads to per-
secution or stagnation. Considering the security
of the Church of primary importance, the authori-
ties of the Inquisition snuffed out the lives of
360 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
innumerable saintly men and women. And over
against such myopic fanaticism we must set the
devitalizing, obscurantist influence of those con-
fused individuals of our own period who thinlv
that tolerance or respect for man excludes posi-
tive beliefs and determined purpose.
Having analyzed the spirit of tolerance we need
not scrutinize at length the transparent counter-
feits which parade under its name. But we may
recall the fitting remark of Lord Morley: *'Let
us be quite sure that we are not mistaking for
tolerance what is really nothing more creditable
than indifference.'' Furthermore, let us not con-
found with that virtue those snakes in the grass,
impotency and expediency. While multitudes of
sincere Catholics are no doubt tolerant individu-
ally, w© are still awaiting the day when Cath-
olicism as an institution shall clear itself of the
dark suspicion that its frequently alleged toler-
ance is merely its present powerlessness to coerce
others in America, its belief that the time is not
ripe for vigorous action.
Now, having concluded that we may endure the
opinions and acts of others without being genu-
inely tolerant in disposition, we still must grapple
with another question of profound importance.
Are the persons who profess tolerance never
justified in opposing the objects of their disagree-
ment by anything but moral suasion? Do love
of truth, and reverence and affection for our
fellows, forbid us to resort, at any time, to legal
restraint or compulsion? Bearing in mind the
palpable necessity for such laws as those inter-
dicting murder or theft, all of us, no doubt, would
promptly answer in the negative. A moment's
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 361
reflection, however, will indicate that here we are
touching the crux of the problem of tolerance, the
difficult question of the limits of an individual's
freedom insofar as he is part of an organized
group.
Probably we can best come to grips with this
phase of the problem by discussing a situation
which almost invariably provokes distasteful con-
troversy. A man holds office in a long-established
church, representing a definite body of doctrine
which is presumably known to all its members.
Grownng radically away from the historical posi-
tion of his church, which is still, at least tacitly,
subscribed to by the majority of communicants,
he yet refuses to resign his function. Should he
be allowed, in the name of tolerance, to continue
to exercise it, when in so doing he misrepresents
the institution 's viewpoint and purpose 1
The authorities of the Episcopal Church in
America apparently were confronted with this un-
pleasant dilemma when they ejected from the
episcopate the Rev. William Montgomery Brown,
who, according to the charge, was publicly plac-
ing an heretical interpretation on the creed and
liturgy of the church. If the indictment was cor-
rect, what else could these poor churchmen have
done? The argument that the venerable, kindly
and high-minded cleric, having devoted long
years to the service of his church, should have
been indulged, is not without its tender appeal.
But remember that the organization had been
founded, and is maintained, not as a refuge for
men of his latitudinarian views, but for avowed
adherents of a specific faith.
We in the Ethical Movement may well regret
362 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
that it should be deemed necessary or prudent to
demand unequivocal assent to a narrow, hide-
bound creed; but when men do form a religious
fellowship on that basis we cannot deny them
the right to exclude and to send elsewhere one
who does not accept it. To insist otherwise would
be to say that a society established to promote
the interests of engineers should not bar lawyers,
or request the resignation of a member who had
turned to the practice of medicine. Suppose that
a leader of our movement should require of
applicants for membership in his society the re-
pudiation of belief in the efficacy of prayer; or,
becoming enamored of the high Anglican liturgy,
should arbitrarily incorporate part of it in the
Sunday service. Ought the members, under our
non-credal, non-sectarian bond of union, to tol-
erate such aberrances? I admit that this is an
exceedingly grotesque supposition, but it illus-
trates the point.
The problem of the liberty of the individual
in his relation to the state is also undeniably
intricate, and cannot, unfortunately, be solved by
any thought-saving rule of thumb, as innumerable
well-meaning reformers have discovered to their
sorrow and chagrin. It would be mere presump-
tion, therefore, to pretend that the subject could
be readily disposed of here. All we can hope to
do is to indicate roughly the direction which, it
seems, our future efforts for freedom should take,
in line with the foregoing argument for tolerance.
Standing out unmistakably above the ludicrous-
ly puerile agitation of ** loyalists" and of pseudo-
historians for the teaching of **one hundred per
cent. American" history, is the fact, now known
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 363
to every school child, that our colonial fathers
availed themselves, in 1776, of the opportunity to
try a new experiment in popular government.
The keystone of the structure of these United
States being equality, each citizen to have the
same kind and amount of liberty as is enjoyed by
others, the question is. What are the boundaries
of this freedom? Broadly and negatively, the
answer is, of course, that no one is free to com-
mit, and the state cannot permit, acts which are
inimical to the reign of law and order forming
the very foundation of the Republic, or which
ignore the personal rights clearly specified in its
Constitution. No one, in brief, can be accorded
liberty to disregard or violate the essential pur-
pose of our organization as a democratic govern-
ment. But the growing social needs of our
complex national life render it ever more impera-
tive that we determine to what extent the state
may justifiably augment its list of prohibitions
and undertake constructive tasks necessary to the
general welfare, thereby imposing upon its citi-
zens responsibilities which many do not wish to
assume.
Here we come abruptly upon the conflict be-
tween the adherents of the laissez faire doctrine
and the advocates of an enlarged sphere of gov-
prnment. As early as 1735, the Marquis d'Argen-
son insisted that non-interference was the only
safe and sound political slogan: **To govern
better it is necessary to govern less.'* And it
was Wilhelm von Humboldt who maintained, with
a commendably zealous concern for freedom, that
'*the state is to abstain from all solicitude for
the positive welfare of its citizens, and not to
364 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
proceed a step further than is necessary for their
mutual security and protection against foreign
enemies; for with no other object should it im-
pose restrictions on freedom.'*
The fear of these early political individualists,
that the state, in attempting what can adequately
be done by individuals, would become paternalis-
tic and tyrannical, was not without foundation,
and has fo^nd its confirmation even under the
democratic method of government. For it has
become increasingly evident that the majority of
citizens, which in a democracy constitutes the
sovereign power, may be just as intolerant and
oppressive as any other sovereign.
Nevertheless, the miserable weakness and flag-
rant negativism of the laissez faire theory cannot
be denied. He who is dominated by it is apt to
see his relationship to his fellow-citizens only
when he actually harms them; at other times,
to conceive of himself as an atomistic individual.
When you tell a man that he may do what he
wants to do, provided he does not prevent others
from doing as they please, you appeal largely to
a narrow self-interest, and foster a complacent
apathy toward the social initiation of measures
indubitably requisite to the improvement and en-
richment of the common life. And, unless we do
undertake these things collectively, when no in-
dividual is able or willing to do so, how are they
to be accomplished? Think how deplorably lack-
ing we should be in such beneficent institutions
as schools, libraries, parks and playgrounds, if
their establishment had been left entirely, or
primarily, to private effort.
Can we rest with the old, negative conception
CONCERNING TOLERANCE 365
of freedom, which supposes that a man is free
simply because he has the privilege to vote and
to stand on a legal parity with everyone else in
a court of justice ? Fortunately, the implications
of freedom are forcing themselves upon us with
ever greater insistence, and we are beginning to
perceive that disease, filth, ignorance and extreme
poverty are momentous obstacles to liberty in the
fullest sense — obstacles which may be broken
dowii or reduced by the united, persistent attacks
of all of us. The ideal of freedom, therefore,
must be reconstructed, so that it will mean free-
dom to do what we ought to do as members of a
society of like beings : to call forth in others, and
in ourselves, the unique potentialities of mind,
heart and will which are indispensable to the
highest life of the community.
Vigilance will always be the price of liberty,
and to accept this ideal of freedom is not at all
to simplify our task or to relieve ourselves of
the necessity for carefully scrutinizing all pro-
posed compulsive of prohibitory legislation.
Guided by it, however, we shall be better able to
guard, on the one hand, against paternalism and
tyranny, which paralyze the initiative and will of
men; on the other, against stark atomism, with
its cold indifference or frank hostility toward a
better social order. For this ideal, based as it
is upon love of- truth, passion for growth and
reverence for the personality of every individual,
is opposed to paternalism, tyranny and atomism
alike. And it exposes the nonsense of tolerating
the destructive forces of life, which, after all,
are intolerable.
i
Ethical Culture in Ger-
many After the War
By RUDOLPH PENZIG (Berlin).
(Written in 1915.^)
IF THE MOVEMENT for Ethical Culture were
that which many enemies of the term accuse
it of being, namely a purely philosophical, in-
tellectual sport indulged in by certain social
circles, we could well ask for the meaning of the
designations *' before'^ and ** after'* the war in
this connection. For a philosophy is right or
wrong the day after to-morrow as well as to-day,
and its truth is never influenced by occurrences in
^Editoe's Note. — The condition of Dr. Penzig's liealtli uu-
fortunately rendered it impossible for him to write a special
contribution to this volume. Rather than let this book appear
without any message from so old and respected a coUeague, I
availed myself of his suggestion that we should translate a
paper published by him in 1915, which could not, under war
conditions, be made accessible to readers of English, and indeed
has never before now appeared in our language. Lapse of time
has rendered some portions of this essay obsolete, and consid-
erations of space have necessitated some abridgment ; but what
is here printed, apart from its permanent intrinsic value, has
the special charm of demonstrating how magnificently the
humane and catholic temper of the Ethical Movement was
maintained by our German colleague during the most tryin?
years of the war. The reader should bear in mind that every
word here reproduced, including the kindly and courteous
references to the then enemy countries, was written by a
German in Berlin in 1915, solely for a German audience, and
with no expectation that it would ever reach the outside world.
368 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
practical life, no matter how important they may
be. ^
Entirely different is a social, ethical, political
or economic movement, which seeks to achieve
definite practical results. Here it is evident that
radical changes in the external career and in the
internal experiences of a people will bring about
important changes in the desires, feelings and
thoughts, as well as necessitate postponement of
the most outstanding tasks, that any societies or
organizations for the advancement of ethical cul-
ture may have set for themselves. Fundamental
changes in the nature or in the aims of such a
society may not be necessary — that has not even
been the case with such societies as those for the
advancement of peace, and the like, whose activi-
ties, although interrupted by the war, had their
existence justified by the same war — but rather
certain of the tasks of such organizations are
brought into the foreground, while others are
temporarily relegated to the background ; so that,
on the whole, the external character of the organi-
zation does appear somewhat changed.
That the Society for Ethical Culture did not
find it necessary to be untrue to its original pur-
pose and reason for existence when suddenly
the sham culture of the well-bred and educated
European peoples collapsed before the force of
the still unconquered bestiality of war, is a fact
in which we can find no little satisfaction. "When
the question was asked us: **What shall happen
now — when we are at war — with ethical cul-
ture?" we were able, in August, 1914, calmly to
reply that we should see our brothers in our
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 369
enemies, and keep resolutely in mind the ideal of
the cultural unity of mankind.^
Perhaps to many, it may seem still too early
for us at this stage, when the war is still raging,
and when no one can predict in what economic
and spiritual conditions our people and humanity
will find themselves after the war, to seek to plan
the future programme for ethical societies. May
not the work differ, according as it may be done
for a victorious or a conquered people?
It is certain that there will be minor differences,
especially in the national aspect of ethical culture.
But let us not forget that ethical culture is,
primarily, a matter which concerns humanity at
large. Dr. Friedrich Jodl wrote, as early as 1893 :
Ethical culture can no more be limited in its
activities by political boundaries than by the
differences between economic and social classes.
It is the common concern of the entire human
race, and can achieve its greatest amount of good
only when it is not kept within the limits of a
single nation or a single race, but when its spirit
pervades all of human society. Ethical Culture
is fundamentally international, not because it
disparages nationalities, or regards them as
ethically valueless, but because it believes that
the highest development of a national life is im-
possible except nnder an ethical organization of
the whole of humanity.
Let us remember also, that, just as after a
battle there are no longer friends and enemies,
but only luounded, so after this war there will be
in all probability neither victors nor vanquished
in the strict sense of the words, but only a
humanity, bleeding from deep wounds. The task
*See Ethische Eultur, vol. xxii, No. 16.
370 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
of Ethical Societies after the war will not be
merely to act as a *^ Society of the Red Cross*'
for the social struggles of mankind, but in their
work of healing the wounds which morality,
justice, humanity, mildness and mutual respect
have suffered, they must bear in mind a still
higher purpose, the creating of a union of man-
kind which will make impossible the inflicting of
such wounds, in the future, and forever. At all
events, it is possible to-day to secure an insight
into the great work that must be done after the
war by all men of good will, even though addition-
al special tasks concerning the treatment of this
or that particular people on account of national
peculiarities may later on appear.
It will be of value to us now to enumerate
succinctly all the moral tasks which our move-
ment had set for itself before the war, prepara-
tory to an investigation of what we may expect
to accomplish after the war. In 1892, as now,
our work was closely tied up with, and deter-
mined by, the state of affairs in which national
politics in Germany found themselves. This was
one of great complexity, due to the struggle be-
tween the Government and the Socialists, and to
the strife of Catholic and Protestant, with the
attempt on the part of the Protestants to de-
nominationalize the entire school system.
Into this infinitely difficult and strained situa-
tion the founding of the German Society for
Ethical Culture came as the attempt at a concilia-
tory force which, independent of party lines,
sought to bring about better understanding be-
tween the educated and property-owning classes
and the powerful labor movement. It was natur-
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 371
ally destined, despite its sincere and upright
protestations of political neutrality, to incur the
distrust and hatred of all fanatics, the fanatics
for authority, denominational politics and violent
"Realpolitik," as well as of those agitators who
were exponents of the class struggle and the
demolition of capitalism. The movement for Etlii-
cal Culture did not find the support it expected
in the leading circles of society, despite the strong
interest that was at first shown in intellectual
circles, who saw in it a possibility for advancing
their own particular purposes. Dr. F. W. Foers-
ter very fittingly characterized, in a report of the
international ethical secretariat for 1898, the
opposition that was met on all sides:
The apparently unpunished success of an era
of a ruthless governmental policy of coercion on
the one hand, and the apparent powerlessness of
idealistic efforts at a unification of the father-
land on the other hand, have stifled in all levels
of society, irrespective of political lines — but
particularly in the circles of academic idealism
— the faith in the historical power of a moral
ideal, and have allowed to take root in its place
the conviction that all great social changes are
brought about only through a pact with the devil,
and that humanity advances, not by means of
the gradual growth of fidehty, sympathy, and
insight, but by means of so-called great, decisive
acts.
The '* ideology" of the advocates of Ethical
Culture was ridiculed in the same manner as a
** bludgeon-pedagogue'' would laugh at the idea
that an education of the will is possible without
the use of physical violence. The type of society
which all ethicists are striving to attain, a society
372 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
in which justice and truthfulness, humanity and
mutual regard would prevail, was regarded as a
beautiful Utopia, a golden age, the necessary
requisites for which were, however, totally absent
in actual humanity. It was not denied that every-
one was suffering under the existing conditions,
in wliich selfishness, violent greed, insincerity
and untruth, unbridled sensuality, intolerance and
quarrelsomeness were reigning factors ; but these
circumstances were either regarded as unavoid-
able imperfections of this world, or it was thought
that change could be brought about rather
through a sudden revolution than through any
such infinitely slow and painstaking process as
the education of an entire people. There was
no lack of movements for the reform of our order
of society, for the alleviation of the sick organ-
ism; but that such movements must begin with
the individual, that perforce we must begin with
the conscious creation of a good will, of an " inner
consecration'* — these were tones that had hither-
to been heard only here and there in narrow re-
ligious circles, and were looked upon as the
penitential preachings of ecclesiastical recluses.
Prof. Jodl says : * * Ethical culture has at bottom
no other aim than to instil in its students and
adherents the spirit and courage of sacrifice. '*
** Ethical societies,'' wrote Hugo Eeinhold,
* ' should, above all, be societies for the cultivation
of the inner life. . . Never has there been a suc-
cessful reformer, whose reform did not begin
with his own life. What unites us all, then, is the
firm determination to ascertain what constitutes
our duty." In almost religious tones, Ferdinand
Toennies wishes to ** assemble all those who are
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 37 3
firm in the conviction that there is a peace of the
soul that is more valuable and indispensable than
what is called soundness of body, namely a frame
of mind that daily cleanses itself of desires and
lower emotions, steels itself in work and thought,
and refreshes itself in simple, wholesome joys.''
And in strong terms, Felix Adler, at the Congress
of Zurich in 1896, warns us of a reformation
which begins always with the others, with society :
The Ethical Movement has the task before it
of warning man of the danger of losing his in-
dividuality in an ill-understood zeal for the wel-
fare of others and of expending his entire energy
on social reforms. In truth, a man cannot be
a source of help to his fellow men when he
fritters away his personality on strangers, but
rather when he uses it up within himself.
As an essential prerequisite for all further ac-
tivity, then, there was recognized the necessity
foi" the moralization of the Self. As everyone
who understands human nature will know, how-
ever, this does not mean that therewith it was
done. To what extent such activities as public
lecturing, practical welfare work, the establishing
of public reading rooms and libraries, bureaus
for free legal advice, charitable agencies, etc.,
have contributed to the possibilities for the eleva-
tion of the Self, can only be conjectured. The
conditions of the times determined the direction
which the outward activities of ethicists were to
take. Deviating from the policies pursued by the
American and English societies, which attempted
to replace religious cults with ethical culture, the
German Ethical Society set as its task the bring-
ing about of a reconciliation between the opposing
374 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
social elements in the nation. To relieve the
great social strain was its task.
It is well known that the voice of the Socialist
leader Robert Seidel, who approved our objects,
and a number of similar voices, remained iso-
lated, and that the social-democratic party, under
BebePs leadership, rejected the Ethical Move-
ment as a ** product of fear on the part of the
bourgeoisie," merely because the movement de-
clined to be unconditionally subordinated to the
prevailing party programme and dogma. The
development of that party, especially since 1903,
and the close contact between the so-called re-
visionism and the Ethical Culture work, seems
nevertheless to indicate that a neutral and non-
partisan study of the entire run of social ques-
tions would contribute more to a solution of our
social problems than anything else. The feeling
is gradually growing, that the solution of our
problems lies not in the triumph of any particular
group, nor in the socialization of the means of
production, but rather in a popular education of
personalities, founded on social-pedagogical prin-
ciples. We are indeed still far removed from the
clear acknowledgement made by the speaker of
the English socialist-labor party, who, as early as
1898, publicly said:
Even if to-morrow we were given the most
perfect social organization and constitution, our
social questions would by no means be solved, if
these institutions were not permeated and sup-
ported by a far higher understanding of the
duties of a citizen and of a human being. The
Ethical Movement must become the religion of the
Labor Movement.
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 375
To what extent the quite obvious moderating
of the antagonism between social-democracy and
the middle classes in the last two decades has
been due to the work of the ethicists in intellectual
circles, among those of education and wealth, can-
not be determined with any degree of certainty;
perhaps we can nevertheless point out modestly
that only since 1892 has the idea of an *^ ethical"
aspect to all political questions appeared in the
broadest publicity, to remain permanently.
The two great lines of action of its public ac-
tivities were given to the Ethical Society almost
against its o\^^l wishes, by the circumstance that
it had its origin in the opposition to the de-
nominationalizing of the schools. Even up to the
present time it has had to defend itself — with
more or less justification, inasmuch as occasion-
ally isolated personalities must be excepted —
against the accusation that it is fundamentally an
anti-clerical or even anti-religious society. Of
course, the very fact that it wishes to accomplish
its aim of moral education of the masses ** inde-
pendently of all shades of religious belief" was
destined to incur the enmity of denominational-
ism, which regards religion only in the garb of
creed. Whoever, like Prof. George Gizycki,
wishes '*in religion, in philosophy and politics to
grant complete freedom, and wishes so to serve
the purpose of mutual respect and reconciliation
of opposing sides," never succeeds in convincing
the partisans by his declaration of neutrality.
There the old maxim ** Whoever is not for me, is
against me," is applied. If, in addition, there
is set forth a firm, scientifically founded theory
of the essential independence of morality from re-
376 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ligion, and furthermore a practical propagandist
work for the solution of all moral educational
tasks outside of the limits of the parish, it would
seem indeed almost impossible to expect that the
Church should not see in this new spiritual move-
ment a competitor, if not an opponent to its en-
deavors, and not, as we originally hoped, a co-
worker in tlie winning back of the people to the
service of an ideal. In support of the thesis of
the independence of morality from religion, we
cite the words of Jodl :
Two facts must be admitted, even by the most
zealous defenders of religious belief. The first
of these is that the religious manifestations, by
means of which people seek to order or govern
their lives, vary very widely among the various
groups. This no one can deny; religious societies
themselves exemplify this fact most clearly, in
that they make use of a variety of symbols, and
exclude each other from their respective societies,
and often harshly attack each other. The second
fact is the steadily progressive disintegration
which has been going on for the past two hun-
dred years in the entire domain of Christian
culture.
The task which we have set for ourselves is the
elevation of the moral life, the cultivation of a
cleansed mankind, the development of a genuine
humanity, independent of all the religious or
metaphysical considerations with which mankind
has hitherto largely associated its ethical ideals.
We stand on the conviction that there is a
science of ethical life, as there is a science of
nature and a science of economics This science
of ethical life, or morality, we want to carry from
the chair of science into the market-place; we
want to make it popular, and give it a voice in
public life and in education. . . .
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERaiANY AFTER WAR 377
It is clear that, with such a fundamental
position, through which the education for moral
self-sacrifice is completely separated from the
otherwise untouched religious world of emotion,
there must occur a further opposition to the many
philosophical societies which arose so numerously
towards the end of the last century and the be-
ginning of the present one. The ^'Egidyan''
movement for a religion of life stands close to us
in a personal way; the ** societies for free re-
ligion," the '' free-thought societies," and the
later ^^Monists," although having much in com-
mon with us, and at times running in parallel
courses in practical matters, have not been able
to keep up an enduring connection with our move-
ment, in spite of efforts to secure such connection.
Each one of these organizations is subject to the
accusation that it separates people, whereas the
ethicists are seeking to unite. In vain has Felix
Adler reminded us that the Sermon on the Mount
said: ** Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God," and interpreted it to mean that
the purity of heart is not the consequence nor
the result, but the pre-requisite for the ** seeing
of God"; the ethical experience must come before
all religious or philosophical acceptance of God
and the world. He throws out to us the question :
How can one reap a philosophy, when one has
not sown a character? Values of faith cannot be
merely accepted, they must be slowly earned —
and earned, not through mere belief, but through
the power of the will and the cleansing of the
heart. If you go your old way with the idea
that philosophies of life are lying ready-made
and prepared so that you need only to select one
378 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
of them, then you are working not only against
your .own spiritual growth, but against the de-
velopment of the finer elements of your character.
A genuine faith is a flower, not a root; a result,
not a beginning. . . . The man who on the
threshold of life says to himself : *What I need,
before I begin to work and to live, is a creed,
in order to guide and sanction the conduct of
ray life," would be entirely on the wrong track.
No, he should rather say : "Before I can deserve
a genuine faith of ray own, I must, through the
manner of conducting my life, gather the neces-
sary facts through experience out of which the
faith grows."
With this survey of the fundamental activities
of the Ethical Society, which had as their aim the
moral ennobling of personality, and of the two
principal directions which were given to the
movement by the conditions existing at the close
of the last century, — namely, the field of social
reconciliation on the one hand and opposition to
denominational dogmatism on the other, — we can
perhaps close our consideration of the task set
for itself by the Movement before the war, with-
out going into a discussion of a large number of
possible avenues of activity which were entered
into as side issues. Among these minor activities
are the battle against the frenzy for power and
coercion, against the clamor for territorial ex-
pansion, against imperialism in certain circles,
and against militarism; also the advancement of
all movements for the education of the masses,
the active support of women in their struggle for
greater rights and duties, and the co-operation
with the Peace movement in the matter of bring-
ing about unifying organizations, mutual under-
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY ABATER WAR 379
standing, and agencies for securing greater politi-
cal rights.
If we now turn to the most urgent tasks which
after this stupendous conflict will confront the
organization of all people of good will, it immedi-
ately becomes clear that in the field of tasks and
aims, ''the last'' will, of necessity, be ''first."
The remark is here appropriate, that the Ethical
Movement makes not the slightest pretext of
claiming that any of the tasks which it has set
for itself have been completely accomplished and
therefore done away with. None of the previous
aims must be lost sight of. But it must be empha-
sized that the coming task, which wiU involve
enormous expenditures of energy for generations,
is the work of gradually allaying the inconceiv-
able store of hatred, distrust, slander, greed and
loathing, and removing these obstructions from
the road to peaceful international unions, and of
renewing the ties of mutual understanding, so as
slowly to eradicate the effects of the reversion
from nationality to bestiality. Making possible
further progress toward the aims of humanity
must be our most prominent task after the war.
Already in the second congress of the Inter-
national Ethical Union in Zurich in 1896, it was
stated as part of the general programme:
We heartily support the endeavors to create a
general world peace, and designate as our
especial part in this enterprise, the overcoming of
militarism, the limitation of the power which this
militarism exercises, particularly on the minds of
our youth, and to work toward the purpose of
so changing the militaristic element that only
those of its constituents which have definite
380 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
ethical value shall appear ; furthermore, we sliall
attempt to curb that national egoism and super-
patriotism, which are to-day just as dangerous
enemies of peace as are the prejudices and in-
terests of the ruling classes ; finally, we shall try,
in times of hysteria and blind hatred, to re-
establish the reign of conscience and reason.
And, in the platform laid down by the sixth
annual convention of the German Ethical Society,
in 1901, the following was set down :
The Ethical Movement has, with respect to
the moral standards of mankind in general, a
fundamentally international character. But, in
order to work most successfully in the field of
national culture, it is forced to concern itself
with national forms of political and social life.
Insofar as Germany is concerned, the movement
knows itself to be in harmony, in its entire
field of endeavor, with the noblest spiritual forces
of the country in its efforts to suppress all
national conceit.
That the Ethical Movement will be justified in
counting upon the co-operation of the great peace
societies and committees for mutual understand-
ing, and, in fact, of all international organiza-
tions, is equally as clear as the special task which
will faU to all organizations of its kind in the
various countries. For Germany — and else-
where as well — the crucial question will be
whether the partly justifiable national emotions
which, in our people, have been stirred to their
deepest depths, can be brought under the control
of reason and discretion. An enormous amount
of wisdom, understanding sympathy, and tact will
be required in the task of drawing the fine line
between the easily understood disillusionment
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 381
which the great amount of soul-sickness, misery,
fear, and need have engendered among the people,
together with the indignation over the injustice
which has been done them, and the national pride
which the heroic efforts exerted by these same
people on the battlefield and at home, and to sepa-
rate the elements of these emotions which have
ethical value from those which have none, without
injuring in the slightest degree any of the valu-
able sentiments which may lead to greater solid-
arity among mankind.
This humane ideal has a long path of passion
behind it, but perhaps the tombs of martyrs that
bestrew its rocky way from barbarism to civiliza-
tion are still too few. Originally the idea of a
common union of mankind seemed in direct oppo-
sition to the desired moral strength of a narrow
social group. The increasing moralization of
family life and the consolidation of the horde-like
national existence went hand in hand with the
ruthless annihilation or enslaving of all those out-
side the tribe; the tighter the ring of morality
and right drew itself around the members of such
a group, the sharper became the injustice and dis-
respect for all *^ barbarians.*^ Wife-stealing and
plundering, oppression and seizing of territory,
wars of conquest and crusades against all unbe-
lievers, accompanied the growth of national
power. Everywhere it was thought that a united
mankind could be brought about only through the
creation of ** world-empires,** held together by
the might of the victor, or, on the spiritual side,
through the phantom of a unified religion, to
which unbelievers would be forced to adhere.
Thus may have originated the gigantic empire
382 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
of the Incas in South America, of the Chinese in
Asia, of the Babylonians, Assyrians, or Persians,
until after the short episode of Alexander's
world-empire, the monstrous Koman Empire
spread over Europe. The last examples of this
idea Avere the attempts of Charlemagne, the Holy
Koman Empire of the German nation (on the
spiritual side the Papacy), — the idea of uniting
civilized humanity by force, up to the dreams of
the first Napoleon, who, in the name of the
general rights of man, of liberty, equality and
fraternity, sacrificed the blood of hmidreds of
thousands.
A purely illusory form of this idea of a great
brotherhood of man occurred in the eighteenth
century literary ** enlightenment," w^here, in con-
scious opposition to the universalism of the
Papacy, a common religion of love among man-
kind was hoped for —
Tho' Christian, Jew or Hottentot,
We all believe in one same God;
and, more ethically, by our classicists Lessing and
Herder, up to Schiller's
Seid umschlungen, Millionen, diesen Kiiss der
ganzen Welt !
With the prevalence of such emotionally ex-
travagant brotherly love the iron fist of the Corsi-
can was bound to weaken its grip. As a reaction
against the unscrupulous re-division of the
European map, with total disregard for all
national boundaries, there arose in the nineteenth
century with increasing fury a powerful wave of
nationalism, which, to all appearances, has not
yet reached its fullest dimensions. In the last
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 383
hundred years not only Prussia-Germany and
Italy have developed into separate national en-
tities, but it is familiar to all, how Greeks and
Czechs, Slavs and Latins, Serbs, Bulgars, Kou-
manians, China and Japan, America, etc., have
striven for national isolation and political inde-
pendence. And the spirit of national expansion,
once awakened, became transformed again into
imperialistic designs. In the same breath in
which it shouted its cries of ^^ Every country for
its inhabitants! America for the Americans!
The Philippines for the Filipinos,'' etc., it denied
to the weaker nations of Africa, Asia and the
East the same rights which it was so loudly claim-
ing for itself. The policy of colonial exploitation,
pursued in recent times principally by England,
found imitators. After England had seized
Egypt, India, Africa and the Boer regions, Russia
and England together grasped for Persia, Bel-
gium took the Congo state, France seized Mo-
rocco, Tunis, and Indo-China, Italy seized control
of Tripoli, and Germany, clearing up the meager
remnants, *' leased'* Kiauchau.
We have, then, a remarkable mixture of natio-
nalisyn with imperialism before us, as whose
servant there appeared — by no means exclusively
Prussian-German — militarism. In the ethical
purification of these existing powerful movements
according to the principle of a peacefully co-oper-
ating cultural humanity there lies quite evident!}'
the great moral task of the near future.
It was a great mistake to suppose that the in-
ternationalism of this mechanical age, with its
extensive commerce, traffic, industry, science, and
engineering feats, yes, even of art, would of neces-
384 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
sity call a halt to this immoderate nationalism.
All these things have prepared the ground for a
future union of mankind, when the will for it shall
be present ; but the will itself they did not create.
These international undertakings have not wholly
tended to hinder the too narrow nationalism, but
have actually on occasion tended to intensify
national might and greatness, because they loosed
the great competitive forces and encouraged the
great natural principle of the survival of the fit-
test in the struggle for existence, just as much as
their activities might have tended to advance the
ethical principle of co-operation.
As still stronger must we consider the influence,
in spiritual matters, which this world trade and
world commerce had upon the intensification of
nationalistic feeling. This international ex-
change brought about a widespread consciousness
of the differences in the feelings, thoughts and
desires which distinguish one nation from an-
other, and awakened national pride, patriotism
in the narrower sense. Everywhere — even in the
most isolated regions under foreign rule — people
began to emphasize and emotionalize the dis-
tinguishing elements of their particular national
characters: common language, identical customs,
common rights, shared treasures of literature,
from the folk poetry to the untranslatable classi-
cal works ; common history, even external similar-
ity of physical type. With this grov/ing conscious-
ness of individual type, dignity and contribution,
there must, according to psychological laws, go
hand in hand the notion that one's own people
represent a particular sympathetic characteriza-
tion of humanity which none of the others possess.
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 385
And what is the worst (or is it the best?) about
all this is : every nation is justified in this assump-
tion. It is not merely an honest subjective opinion,
but objectively true that the Frenchman, the
Englishman, the Russian, the German, the Bel-
gian and the Jap each represent a particular note
in the harmonious concert of humanity. The
present hatred cannot deceive us in this respect.
But an understanding of this fact must be awak-
ened. As Felix Adler advised: We have need
of a Science of Nations, which could be taught
in the secondary and higher schools, a folk-
knowledge, which would concern itself not with
the curiosities of African or Australian wild
men, but with our neighbors ; a biology of Europ-
ean species : ho77io sapiens. Granted that the Ger-
man in general has to-day more and better in-
formation concerning such matters than the
others — that is not enough! This war must
have brought this fact home to us in a sinister
manner. But the others should know us. Out
of such a knowledge there would grow a respect
for the justified differences; and, still more, a
conscious elevation of humanity. Through ex-
changes in art and in science, technique and civili-
zation, there arise the greatest fruits of intellec-
tual and moral culture, and these would be
enhanced by the crossing and intermingling of
nations. Commercium is always followed by Con-
nuhium.
Although there lies no great danger in the
honest and partly justified notion that each nation
has, of its being the chosen one, the ethicist must
nevertheless battle energetically against the in-
tolerance and exclusiveness of an imperialism
386 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
which seeks to shut out all other nations from
supremacy on land as well as on the sea. No
nation has a monopoly of any one of the rights
of mankind, and it is the duties and not the rights
which are apportioned to the nations according to
their greater or less ability to exercise them. The
aim is not equality or uniformity, but the right
fullness and harmony of a differentiated mankind,
in life, as in religion, art and science.
This superheating of the national fever has
brought on the world crisis with aU its horrors,
its wildness, and the unjust accusation of barbar-
ism. The national egoism is of distinct ethical
value, like the naive self over-estimation of the
child, that feels itself to be the central point in
its world, and like the battle for self -maintenance
and the assertion of individual rights with a man.
But it must not infringe upon the foundation
stone of human rights, justice (as does the re-
pulsive English^ phrase "my country right or
wrong'') ; and also the second factor of morality,
kindnesSf must not be disregarded. It is to be
hoped that we are cured of the purely emotional
enthusiasm for the idea of human brotherhood,
and of the religious fanaticism for a herd under
a single shepherd. It is unreasonable to try to
ignore race, nationality, cultural history, national
consciousness, local interpretation of a religion,
etc., and to reverence the bloodless spectre of the
tenet: **A11 that bears the countenance of man-
kind is sacred to me." National peculiarities
persist like the infinite number of individual
differences, according to race, outer or umer edu-
*In 1915, the Germans generally ascribed to this phrase an
English origin. It is, of course, American, not English. — Ed.
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 387
cation, level of culture and — amiability. There
exist natural aversions between races and peoples
which it is useless to deny or try to philosophize
away. But they can nevertheless be mitigated,
and in the sen-ice of mankind, for all practical
purposes, be put into the background. It is logi-
cal that we do not love all men equally with an
infinitely broad, and therefore thin, general love
of humanity, bat rather graduate our affections.
We need to make ourselves cognisant of the fact
that generous, kind treatment in place of power
and oppression in our colonial policies, would
eventually make even the most backward and
weaker peoples less repulsive to us. What the
religious mission has failed to accomplish — if it
has not actually incurred enmity — remains for
the Ethical Movement in our colonial policy to do.
A significant beginning was the assembling of the
Races Congress in London in 1911, convened
through the efforts of Prof. Felix Adler. This
Congress sought *4n the light of the modern con-
science to foster a better understanding, more
friendly relations and a wholehearted co-opera-
tion among the peoples of the earth.'*
The questions of gradual, uniform disarma-
ment, and of the building up of courts of arbi-
tration, the creation of a real law of nations,
through an international law-giving body, com-
posed not of professional politicians, diplomats
and jurists, but of the best representatives of the
productive classes of society among all peoples,
the possibilities for stronger politico-economic
combinations within Europe — in short, such
technical problems of popular enlightenment —
we ethicists gladly leave to those agencies which
388 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
are best qualified to deal with them, retaining for
ourselves the task of cultivating a spirit of co-
operation which will penetrate our peoples to
their innermost depths.
Having found the most pressing task of Ethical
Culture after the war in the creation of moral
forces which shall permeate nationalism, colonial
policy and militarism, there remains still a large
mass of further problems that await solution.
It is well known that in ecclesiastical circles
there is expected to result from the war a revival
of the religions spirit, similar to the rebirth of
patriotism which is awaited in political circles.
The hot-blooded advocates of this mystic idea
speak of the divine judgment which is to be visited
upon all unbelievers, inveigh against the indiffer-
ence of the times toward religious values, and
against the hatred and enmity focussed upon
Christendom from many sides. The movements
which have reduced church attendance, such as
monism, freethought and Ethical Culture, are ex-
pected to be overcome.
Such statements are made by fanatics, who in
deep self-delusion confuse real religiousness with
ecclesiasticism, and one can dismiss them with
the calm assurance that no one would more joy-
fully and warmly welcome a genuine revival of
real piety (not to be confused with the running
to church of agitated unbelievers whom '*need
has taught prayer'*) than would the ethicists.
True piety differs only in form from moral ideal-
ism, and is surely its best aid, even if temporarily
confined to ecclesiastical channels. A religious
revival, although it may have enormous effect in
its first enthusiastic surge, would perhaps not be
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 389
lasting. We are confirmed in this belief by the
fact that in great crises the two great opposing
religious groups have not succeeded in putting
aside their eternal quibbling over dogmatic for-
malisms and working together for the common
good. If something of a spirit of ethical-religious
piety has spread among our people, it has been
based on the realization of how unimportant are
the differences of creed which have separated, in
daily life, those who in the dire necessity of war
cast their common lot for the welfare of the
fatherland. A spirit of comradeship arose again
in the trenches, amid the roar of battle, in the
quiet watches of the night, at the common Sunday
services, and also on the brinks of undenomina-
tional trench-graves and in the co-operative care
of the wounded. People who, throughout their
school careers and under the leadership of their
churches, had been trained to be antagonistic
toward each other, here united in the common
work of humanity.
The battle which the Ethical Movement,
through the pressure of necessity, has been forced
to wage, not against religion as such, but against
over-zealous denominationalism and dogmatic
subordination of the school to the church, will,
according to all indications, be made easier rather
than more difficult after the war. Whether or not
the new orientation of large social groups will
take the direction which I have indicated in * * Ger-
man Eeligion'^ (which was written entirely from
my own viewpoint, and in no wise under the aus-
pices of the Ethical Society), we need not consider
at present. In no event will it lead to a strength-
ening of denominationalism.
390 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
After the war, just as in the past, there will be
necessary a conscientious vigilance, especially to
protect the schools from clerical domination.
With ultramontanism and Protestant zealotism,
as with all **isms^* that are dogmatically exclu-
sive, no reconciliation will ever be possible. More
likely is a reconciliation mth our excellent South
and West-Germans, Bavarians, Alsatians, Tyro-
leans, who, although they will long adhere to their
narrow creeds, have nevertheless, in the hour of
need, demonstrated themselves to be genuine Ger-
man men and women, spirit of our spirit, and
blood of our blood. It will indeed be one of the
most important tasks of ethicists to look behind
the masks of provincial patriotism and denomina-
tionalism and find the countenances, and cast
away the things which outwardly seem to separate
people from one another and bring to light the
unifying, common good-will.
One of the inevitable consequences of even the
most enthusiastic war of defense is the moral
callousness of the people who take part in it ; or,
less crassly put, the lack of sensitiveness, or the
numbing of sensitiveness, to the sufferings of fel-
low-beings, the cold indifference to property dam-
age and the total disregard for the rights of
others. We have numerous reports of the self-
conquest that is required of the soldiers (particu-
larly those from rural sections) who are forced,
for the first time, to march rough-shod over a
waving field of grain, or to trample upon any
cultivated ground; or worse, in a hand-to-hand
battle, to use the drawn bayonet against an oppon-
ent for the first time. The frenzy of blood and
battle and the dire need of the moment help many
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 391
a one to conquer this sensation and to dull per-
manently any feeling of horror or aversion for
such acts. A necessity, to be sure! But a moral
gain? The need of preser"\^ng one's own body and
soul eventually closes heart, ear and eye to all
suffering on the part of others. *'The habit of
s^Tnpathy must be broken," such is the repeated
sigh of the soldiers; and, moreover, of the solid,
moderately well-meaning element among them.
What effect may such experiences have upon the
moralty weak characters, upon the youths who
even in times of peace are only too ready for
quarrels and violent deeds? What reaction will be
produced in those who have grown up in the slums
of great cities — some of whom, despite the selec-
tion that is exercised in recruiting soldiers, to
eliminate those who are unfit to wear the national
uniform, nevertheless find their way into the
ranks ? Although the iron German discipline may
make atrocities almost impossible, yet discipline
is not education ; it is at best but a pre-condition
for it. In the souls of many of these young people
there will undoubtedly remain a sediment of low
desires which will reason as follows: **In war it
was permitted, even commanded ; why may we not
in time of peace, in our class struggle, do likewise,
if only we are not caught f The ruthless inroads
upon private property breed a brutal joy at des-
truction and lead to mistreatment of unarmed
civilians and a disregard for human life, a readi-
ness to act at the slightest pretext of secret oppo-
sition or the slightest suggestion of deception.
Particular consideration is demanded by the fact
that in the war of 1871 the percentage of vener-
eally diseased in the German army was approxi-
392 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
mately 45% ; which brings up the sexual-ethical
question.
These facts concerning the moral degeneration
that accompanies a war have been demonstrated
so often in history, and scientifically so often es-
tablished, that everyone concerned with the edu-
cation of the masses must concern himself with
them.
Even before the war we complained bitterly of
the frightful lack of true education for our youth,
in the home, in the school, and in the field of
schematic religious instruction, for that dangerous
span of years that lie between the school bench
and the barrack-room, and even in the latter itself.
Our efforts were directed towards an education
which has for its aim the creation of a genuine
humanity. It is, then, clear how the need for such
a moral education has been intensified by the war !
For even if we do nothing toward moral educa-
tion of the returning soldiers we must consider
that, inasmuch as the growing generation looks
up to the soldiers, in a sense, as heroes, therefore
the moral ideals of the soldiers will be reflected
in the hearts of those who admire them. The
tiling whose influence we fear most is that ad-
miration will be aroused for those elements of the
military life which deal with the lack of restraint
when in the enemies* country, the disregard for
human life and the disrespect for peaceful pur-
suits and private property, to say nothing of the
horrors and the joy of exercising deception and
cunning.
The Ethical Societies would therefore forsake
their greatest duties to their nations and to hu-
manity, were they, at this time, to give up their
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 393
hattle to siibstitutG a true moral education for the
worn-out denominational education in the schools.
The great necessity for such a reform must have
opened the eyes of many of our former opponents
and of many more or less lukewarm friends.
Difficult tasks await us in the reconciliatory
work in the fields of social and economic endeavor.
We may hope that the war has swept away many
prejudices, and that some of the comradeship of
the trenches will be retained, for a while at least.
But economic distinctions and deeply-rooted
liahits are not easily disregarded, and many signs
already indicate that the carefully maintained
*' truce" between laborers and employers will not
long survive the war. In addition to this, the ex-
periences of the war, particularly the attempts to
starve Germany, Avill, after the war, lead to
agitation for a strengthening of the agrarian pol-
icy, and a revival of the Fichtean idea of the
''closed commercial state." The attitude of the
working classes toward the ''bread-controllers"
under an enormously strengthened capitalistic in-
dustrial system is apt to become considerably
worse, especially as the economic burdens of the
war and the tremendous debt wdll weigh most
heavily on the poor. Here the greatest amount
of emphasis will have to be placed upon the
ethical viewpoint in the consideration of problems
which the class struggle will bring up.
For a genuine re-birth of our German people,
we shall need indeed to revive the spirit of
brotherly love, mutual understanding and hand-
in-hand co-operation, as these are being shown
during the war in gratitude toward those of our
fellows who are battling at the front. From every
394 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
side there are coming oiTers of aid from hundreds
of thousands who wish to do something to allay
the cares, misery, sickness, deformities, and un-
employment among returning soldiers and their
dependents. Large groups of industrial leaders
have declared themselves prepared to desert the
principle of the use of the greatest amount of
man-power, at minimum pay, in the interests of
those who have incurred losses as a result of the
war; great property owners and garden-cities
have given land to be occupied by such invalids as
desire a tract of land of their o\\^l in return for
the sound limbs which they have sacrificed for
their country. True, all these are only beginnings ;
and we must take care that the ardor does not
abate. To make this spirit permanent there is
necessary, on the part of hundreds of thousands,
an inner moral transformation. Many who hith-
erto looked only for ** profit" for their o'^ti or
their family interests will have to turn away from
the ** Manchester'' principle, which has been over-
come in politics but not in economics, and whicli
believes that each individual, by advancing his
own interests to the uttermost degree, automatic-
ally furthers the interests of the group. There
must be a change from the anarchy of purely
capitalistic production to the powerful federation
of consumers.
Obviously, if there is to be brought about a
remedy for the ills of our social-economic life
and the popular morality which is so closely de-
pendent upon it, as well as for the unsatisfactoiy
conditions in international relations, the funda-
mental principle of competition for a place in the
sitn will have to be replaced by the powerful
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 395
thought of a co-operative striving for the attain-
ment of a higher social and ethical culture. The
principle of Power, which is based upon the as-
sumption that constant clashings between the
wills of individuals, classes and nations can lead
to an enduring state of society, must be super-
seded by the principle of Justice, which sets forth
the thought that through the co-operation of the
members of society alone can a condition of stab-
ility be obtained which will not be affected by
every storm of selfishness and emotion, and
wherein freedom, justice and equality before the
law will prevail.
An enduring inner peace in our society can be
purchased only at the cost of willing and far-
seeing sacrifices, which every individual, every
social class and every economic group will have
to make. The property-owning class will have to
give up a part of its historically acquired privi-
leges; industry and capital must learn that they
need, not only hands, but a thorough-going peace ;
they must give up their unholy hunger for un-
earned income, and rid themselves of the stupid
terror of a **red peril'*; the laboring classes will
have to give up their fanaticism for the ** class
struggle" and their isolation from the national
life. Only in this manner can a sound economic
and inner-political organization originate, which
will be able to form a foundation for later pro-
jects with a view toward an international organi-
zation of justice, which would guarantee a real
cultural co-operation among mankind, in place
of the battle of all against all, commercial strife
and armed peace.
Next to fraternity, we must demand equality
396 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
before the laws of the community. In this respect
the war was an educator in the general and equal
duty of sacrifice, of equality before the enemy and
before Death. Whoever is familiar with our poli-
tical organization, particularly in north Germany,
knows how much historical rubbish and debris in
the line of prejudices and privileges remains to
be cleared away. I am thinking not only of the
suffrage question, or of the overcoming of the
militaristic and bureaucratic domination, or the
unequal distribution of the tax burden, but also
of the questions of equal educational opportuni-
ties, equal legal rights, the abolition of the idea
of ** state-supported" parties, and much else.
The accurate political instinct of the French
people designated as the third of the great rights
of man, liberty. Freedom correctly understood,
ethical freedom, means not liberty to do what the
whim of the moment suggests, but what the con-
science commands; the highest subordination to
the inner law of the spirit by means of sincere co-
operation. Above all, there stands naturally the
fact of the freedom of conscience and of belief,
which necessitates the abolition of the Avell-meant
but infinitely harmful domination of the Church in
politics, for the welfare of the German people. In
fullest freedom — only binding themselves to con-
sideration for the rights of others — may denomi-
nations and philosophical societies let their ad-
herents gather and teach, and exercise their in-
flaence. In the world of the intellect, and here only,
'^Manchesterism'^ still holds with full force, as we
have it in the words of Gamaliel in the Acts of the
Apostles: '*If this work is of God, it cannot be
overthrown; if not, it will come to naught."
ETHICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY AFTER WAR 397
And next to this freedom of intellectual en-
deavor, let us have also freedom of vocational
opportunity. Without interfering with the well-
established rights of those who live "happily in
their possessions," we should not allow the
movement for free land, and land reforms in gen-
eral to die. All the old ethical demands of such
parties who see, next to properly constituted
authority, the fundamental principle of free voca-
tional activity for citizens as a great factor for the
welfare of the fatherland, may be assured of our
support. Free trade, at least within our national
boundaries (if an extension of this principle to
all civilized nations is as yet impracticable), free-
dom of commerce, freedom of travel, industrial
freedom, autonomy, freedom to organize for co-
operative purposes, and, last but not least, free-
dom of the schools and popular education in gen-
eral from the bonds of denominational and bu-
reaucratic domination : if the Ethical Societies can
contribute a modest share to the accomplishment
of these things, then their mission may gradually
approach fulfillment, and our posterity may enjoy
with Goethe-Faust the "last, highest moments":
To many niiUions let mo iurnish soil,
Though not secure, yet free to active toil;
Green, fertile fields, where men and herds go
forth
At once, with comfort, on the newe&t Earth.
A hind like Paradise here, round about:
L'p to the brink the tide may roar without,
And tliough it gnaw, to burst with force the
hmit,
r>y common impulse all unite to hem it.
398 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away
Of childhood, manhood, age, the vigorous day
And such a throng I fain would see, —
Stand on free soil among a people free !
Then dared I hail the moment fleeing:
"Ah, still delay — thou art so fair I"
The traces cannot, of mine earthly being,
In aeons perish, — they are there !^
^Bayard Taylor's translation.
A Confession of Faith
By S. BUENS WESTON (Philadelphia).
THE CONTRIBUTION I make to this volume
in honor of Felix Adler, on the occasion of
the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Move-
ment, is a frank statement of my own Ethical
faith. My present position may be made clearer
if I review briefly the steps that have led to it.
This will not be a story of a sudden and radical
change from one set of religious convictions to
another, but rather an account of the gradual de-
velopment from early boyhood of a theologically
creedless but positive and constructive ethical
faith.
Going back to the early years of my life in a
New England rural community, I cannot recall
having any strong religious convictions inconsist-
ent with those I hold today. Though brought up
under the influence of a mild type of evangelical
Christianity, though I heard the daily reading of
a chapter from the Bible, the family prayer, and
the blessing at the table three times a day, though
I went to Church and attended a Christian Sun-
day School, the theological views that were
preached and taught made no marked impression
upon me. They did not win my heart or take
hold of my convictions. Prayer meetings and re-
vivals were held, but the theological appeal totally
failed in my case. Consequently, I was not * * con-
400 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
vorted," and never joined a Clmrch. Jesus, it was
tauglit, was a supernatural being, the "Son of
God," in whom one must have faith in order to
be saved from the future torments that were to
be meted out to unbelievers. But I remember say-
ing to myself Avhen a boy of nine or ten, that
J believed that Jesus was only a man, not a divine
being.
Convictions of this radical kind were silently
entertained, and I gave no indication of a special
interest in religion. Yet it was predicted by my
maternal grandmother that I would some day be
a minister, a calling that was the farthest from
my mind or desire. To become a preaclier of
theological doctrines, to make public or private
prayers to a supernatural being, to foretell what
is going to happen to us after this earthly lif(»
has closed, would require a kind of conversion I
never underwent. My other grandmother showed
her breadth of mind by saying that though I was
an unbeliever and had not joined a Church, she
thought I would be allowed a jjlaee in heaven.
This early attitude of doubt and scepticism in
regard to theological teachings was sti'engthenrd
during my preparatory and college years. Kadi-
cal religious opinions were voiced and liberal re-
ligious thought found frequent expression at
Antioch, where I graduated in 1876. The idea
))egan to grow upon me wdiile at college tliat a
church or religious society, based on a purely
liumanitarian and ethical view of life, could be n
^3:reat moral and spiritual force for good. The
time-honored creeds and rituals might be given
up, yet that which is of vital importance in re-
A CONFESSION OF FAITH 401
ligion — its practical ethical teachings — would
remain.
In that frame of mind I graduated from college
and entered the Harvard Divinity School, without
committing myself to the acceptance of any
Churcli creed whatsoever. The School allowed
perfect freedom of thought and speech, and also
freedom of action in clioosing one's future career.
Tlie liberty allow'ed in the expression of ox^inion
is shown by the fact that in one of the Divinity
School debates, I maintained that Unitarians or
others, who hold that Jesus was a purely human
being, Avith no more claim to divinity than can
be accorded to the founders of any of tlie other
great religions; wlio say tliat the teachings of
Moses and the prophets, of Jesus and Paul, have
no special divine authority, and are to be accepted
only in so far as they commend themselves on
strictly rational and ethical grounds, have no right
to call themselves or to be called '•'Christians."
The study of the Old and New Testament, the
History of Cliristianity, and Comparative Ke-
ligion at the Divinity School, revealed to me the
striking similarity and great value of their ethical
teachings, and at tlie same time showed how con-
flicting, unsatisfactory and untenable were their
various theologies. The Divinity" School coarse
did not create in me a desire to be a "Christ-
ian" minister. I felt a strong and groAving de-
sire, however, to be the advocate of the kind of
Ethical Religion that was being proclaimed at
that time by a young JeAvish leader in Ncav York,
AA'hom Francis E. Abbot described, in an address
in Boston, as a remarkable example in the modern
AA'orld of the ancient HebreAv prophets. The news-
402 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
paper reports of Felix Adler's Sunday addresses
were read from week to week with the greatest
interest. During my Divinity School course I at-
tended the meetings of the Free Eeligious Asso-
ciation held in Boston, and heartily sympathized
with the emphasis that was laid upon freedom,
fellowship and character in religion.
After graduating from the Harvard Divinity
School in 1879, 1 occupied, for a year and a half,
a very liberal Unitarian pulpit at Leicester, Mass.,
my predecessor in which had been a radical
preacher. The message of my Sunday addresses
was from the standpoint of a strictly humanitar-
ian and ethical view of religion, without any ad-
mixture of the kind of supernaturalism for which
the Churches in general stood.
At the end of nine months the question was
raised by a trustee of the Southgate Fund, from
which the Church derived considerable income,
whether it would be entitled to it, if I continued
to occupy its pulpit. The Church maintained that
it would. The matter was referred to the Council
of the National Unitarian Conference, which, at
the end of another nine months, decided against
the Church. I immediately resigned, and my con-
nection with the Church ceased.
The next two years, 1881-83, w^ere spent abroad,
studying chiefly in the Universities of Berlin and
Leipsic, with the distinct purpose of fitting my-
self to become a leader of a Society for Ethical
Culture. While at Berlin, I visited various
Churches and was impressed by the fact that
hardly any men were present at the Sunday
services. On the other hand, meetings of the
**Freie Gemeinde^' had a large proportion of men.
A CONFESSION OP FAITH 403
German students often remarked, **Ich gehe nie
in der Kirche.'* The distinguished Friedrich
Paulsen, whose brilliant lectures I attended, told
me that the Churches had no hold on the educated
classes in Germany. That was in 1882. In those
days my mind went back constantly to the Society
for Ethical Culture of New York, where the leader
was proclaiming an ethical and spiritual message
that sceptical Germany would, I felt sure, gladly
listen to, if it had the opportunity.
After returning from abroad, I spent two valu-
able years in work and study with Felix Adler
and his Society in New York, which deepened my
faith in an Ethical Religion.
Coming to Philadelphia in the spring of 1885
to address the first public meeting that was held
for the purpose of organizing an Ethical Society
in this city, I took as my topic *'The Need of an
Ethical Religion.^' A Society was soon organ-
ized, with which I have ever since been actively
connected. For the first five ^^ears I held the
position of Lecturer of the Society, and after-
wards, for now close to thirty years, that of
Director. In the interim between these two
periods, William M. Salter was lecturer of the
Society for five years.
With this brief review of my religious history,
I will now state more explicitly some of the cardi-
nal points of my ethical faith. Two things already
stand out distinctly: first, that a theocentric re-
ligion, as expressed in theological creeds, has
never appealed to me : second, that a homocentric
religion, expressed in efforts to raise the moral
standards of society and of personal life, and in
trying to promote the realization of higher ideals
404 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
in all social, national and international relation-
ships, has found a warm response both in my
mind and heart.
I believe in the supremacy of ethics in religion.
I believe there is nothing more sacred and more
truly religious than whole-hearted devotion to
that which one holds to be of supremest Avorth —
one's ethical ideal. For each and every individual
there can be nothing higher than that. In so far
as that ideal is made the lodestar of daily life, one
is religious in the best sense of the Avord.
'^ Conduct,'' said Matthew Arnold, ''is three-
fourths of life." Conduct in all the relations of
life, guided and inspired by moral idealism, is
ethical religion. "Hitch your wagon to a star,"
said Emerson. Fasten the eyes of your soul on
the moral ideal, says Ethical Religion. This is
not an easy thing to do. The insistent forces of
a materialistic and hedonistic nature that sur-
round every individual, offer alluring prizes that
divert attention from the supreme aim of life.
This is but to say that the lower self wars
against the higher self, and in too many cases
wins the battle; and wretched lives, unhappiness,
misery for oneself and others, are often the dire-
ful consequence. The aim of Ethical Religion is
to strengthen the whole moral fibre of man, so as
to enable him to maintain his ethical integrity in
all the relations of life.
The work of ethical education begins with the
very youngest, and concerns itself with every
stage of development throughout the whole span
of life, however long it may be. The moral prob-
lems of childhood and youth, those that confront
the adult in home life, in business life, in the vari-
A CONFESSION OF FAITH 405
ous professions and occupations, and those that
besot old age, are matters of prime ethical im-
portance. And not these problems alone, bnt
those that arise in the relationships of groups
within themselves and to other groups, including
the ever-widening circle of groups until it com-
passes the whole world, are the very sum and sub-
stance of the absolutely essential things Avith
Avhich Ethical Religion must deal.
The kind of religion that means the worship of
beings supposed to have been supernaturally re-
vealed, the modern mind is more and more dis-
carding. The claims of supernatural revelation
cannot stand the test of a thorough examination
by scientific methods. When the light of histori-
cal research, scientific investigation and philoso-
phical reasoning is throwTi upon them, they fall.
They fare no better when weighed in the balance
by the free intelligent conscience of mankind.
Yet superstitions, once they have been thorough-
ly believed, die hard. When they have been
organized into a cult, when great institutions have
been built upon them, when a vast priesthood is
endeavoring to keep them alive and insisting that
man's salvation depends on accepting them, it is
easily seen why they persist for generations and
even for centuries. Yet the process of time and
the logic of events bring changes. As knowledge
grows and widens, theological controversies arise
and radical differences of opinion are expressed.
Gradually theological ideas undergo a transforma-
tion, and conceptions once held to be sacred and
absolutely true are discarded. This evolutionary
process is still going on, and will continue until
the belief in a supernaturally revealed religion
406 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
is entirely outgrown, as it is already by a vast and
increasing number of people.
Does this leave religion in a negative and hope-
less state? On the contrary. **The progress of
theolog>%*^ said Emerson, **is steadily toward its
identity with morals. ' ^ "^Tiatever happens to the
beliefs of men in regard to a personal God, a
supernatural Christ, a personal immortality in
heaven, man still remains man, and the world
he lives in remains real. This life is sure while
it lasts; and, while in it, man cannot divest him-
self of the fundamental realities of his owti ra-
tional and moral nature. These fundamental
facts are a firm basis for the religion of the future
— an Ethical Religion — with roots as deep as the
very nature of man. This indestructible basis of
Ethical Religion is not only as enduring but as
old as the human race. It is that which has given
to all the great religions of the world, whatever
they possess that is of permanent value and trans-
cendent worth; and it is in the ethical principle
alone that they have a real unity.
The conflicts between religions that have arisen
because of their creedal, ecclesiastical or ritualis-
tic features, based on supernaturalism, have made
dark chapters in human history. Our present-day
Fundamentalists are those who are trying to per-
petuate the theological dogmas formulated in by-
gone times, from which they see the world drifting
away. If their interest and their energy were
centered on the great essentials in which all re-
ligions agree, namely, the fundamental ethical
verities, they would be helping the intellectual,
moral and spiritual progress of humanity, instead
of retarding it, as their efforts are now doing.
A CONFESSION OF FAITH 407
Out of the depths of our common, ever-aspiring,
moral and spiritual nature, all religions have
arisen. In each stage of development the spiritual
ideals of a people have been limited by their ignor-
ance or state of culture. Knowledge has growTi
slowly. For that reason we do not condemn the
lower ideals of the past. For their time and for
the people who accepted them, they stood for the
best they could conceive. Neither should we hold
up to ridicule the beliefs of those who are in
that same stage of thought and cultural develop-
ment today. The religious ideals and institutions
that give to any group of people the kind of
spiritual food that satisfies them should not be
ruthlessly destroyed.
One should not be deterred, however, from stat-
ing clearly one's liberal or even radical views.
Under all circumstances, one must be intellectually
honest in the expression of one's convictions.
This is especially demanded of those who assume
the office of public teachers of religion and moral-
ity.
It is wholly unethical to use words with a
double meaning, and make it appear that one
holds religious doctrines one no longer really be-
lieves. **It makes me shudder," said a prominent
clergyman to me some time ago, *'when I realize
that what I affirm, in repeating a creed, I no longer
believe." That is the tragic situation of many
progressive clergymen who are occupying Christ-
ian pulpits. They salve their conscience by saying
they are using the old theological terms in a
purely symbolic sense. Many of their fellow
clergymen and Church members believe literally
in what to them is mythical and only to be used
4U8 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL. RELIGION
symbolically. If they spoke out boldly and clearly
their honest convictions, they would probably lose
their positions. It is a trying dilemma to face.
Whether one holds religious views similar to those
of the late Mr. Bryan or to those held by Robert
G. Ingersoll, one can equally honor the genuine
sincerity of both.
Ethical religion, as I view it, not only calls for
absolute intellectual sincerity, but it has to do
with this life and this life only. If there is an-
other life in another world, there cannot possibly
be a better preparation for it than to do all we
can to make this life of highest worth to our-
selves and to others. That this infinite universe
is an unfathomable mystery, no one can deny.
We see the process of evolution going on in the
small sphere we inhabit, but as to the ultimate
origin, ultimate nature, and ultimate end of all
things, no one can say. What precedes birth and
what follows death — the old, old question of
Whence came we, and whither are we going? —
time has not yet solved. We do know, however,
that between birth and death we have a period
of responsible conscious life. The fact that this
is the only life of which we are sure, cannot fail
to impress upon us the importance of utilizing to
the fullest the golden opportunities that lie before
us to make our own life, while we possess it, what
it should be in personal worth and in helpfulness
to others, for each day, each hour, each moment,
passes away never to return. In these fleeting
periods of time between the cradle and the grave,
we are not only creating our own personal charac-
ter and shaping our life's destiny, but helping to
influence and shape the future course of humanity.
A CONFESSION OF FAITH 409
Inborn within man, or acquired by him, is the
idea of the perfect. That is the goal that ever
beckons him on, though he never reaches it. The
era of perfection is never attained, and never can
be, since ideals grow and expand as man grows in
Imowledge, culture and ethical spirituality^
Hence, the glory of the pursuit is never lost. The
aspiring spirit of man is ever searching for some-
thing higher and better than he has yet attained.
As the poet says, **The soul sees the perfect which
the eyes seek in vain.'' The absolutely perfect
individual has never existed. Even Jesus of Naza-
reth said, "Why callest thou me good? There is
none good but one, that is God."
God is the mental picture of the Ideal — an
ideal which is never higher than the intellectual
and moral conceptions of those who create it. The
Gods of the past have been creations of the human
mind. No God ever existed as he has been
pictured, except in the mind of man. The same
may be said of the various conceptions of heaven
and a future life.
I have tried to express clearly my own funda-
mental moral and religious beliefs and my own
conceptions of Ethical Keligion, not those of other
Ethical leaders, who are in no way to be held
responsible for what I have said.
In this age of great religious and moral unrest,
equally earnest and thoughtful people not only
hold different metaphysical and theological
views, but differ also as to the unsolved problems
of human relationship in our social organism. As
for me, I have learned to respect every man's be-
liefs, no matter what they are, if they are sincerely
held, and if, underlying and over-arching them,
410 ASPECTS OP ETHICAL RELIGION
shining through and transfiguring them, there is
the clear white light of high moral aspiration ; —
if, in other words, the}^ receive radiance from the
ethical ideal.
It is an old saying that there are many paths
to heaven. There are in truth many paths to right
living, many roads leading towards the kingdom
of heaven on earth. Ethical Religion offers its
way to such a goal. To follow it does not require
committing oneself to or against any theological
views. The one essential thing is an ethical pur-
pose. That is the very core of Ethical Religion.
An ethical philosophy of life has been developed
by the founder of the Ethical Movement, which I
feel confident will gain a larger and larger num-
ber of adherents as time goes on. The Ethical
Movement, however, received world-wide recogni-
tion before that philosophy was published. Other
ethical philosophies will be given a hearing. The
Ethical Movement is broad enough to include
them all. The whole spirit of the Movement is
focused on the aim and the way of life, regardless
of the various speculative views which its leaders
and members may hold.
I believe, finally, that the Ethical Movement, as
represented by the various Ethical Societies in
this and other countries, has all the essentials of
the future religion of mankind.
**Hearing the Witnesses"
The Place of Philosophical Studies in Ethical
Culture.
By JAMES GUTMANN (New York).
FOR THE TITLE of this essay I have borrowed
a phrase from him to whom this volmne is
dedicated. To a reader acquainted with Dr.
Adler's teachings it will, I hope, be apparent
before he has read far in this brief paper, how
much more than the title the present writer owes
to Dr. Adler. I rejoice at this opportunity for
making grateful acknowledgment of that unique
obligation which a pupil owes to a master who
stimulated his initial interest in philosophic
themes and has guided his subsequent studies. It
is with this indebtedness in mind that I shall seek
to set down my impressions of the relation of phil-
osophic discipline to that great educational enter-
prise which we call the Ethical Movement.'
*For the information of readers not familiar with the history
of the Ethical Movement, it is appropriate to note some facts
from the record of the Ethical Societies during the past fifty
years, which have a bearing on the subject of the present dis-
cussion. It may be mentioned that Dr. Adler has himself been
for many years a Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy In
Columbia University, and is known as a representative of a
noble philosophic tradition as well as a pathfinder to new
philosophic positions. Dr. Adler's numerous writings in ethical
philosophy, the philosophy of education, etc., are widely
known, and his two most recent books, "An Ethical Philosophy
of Life" and "The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal" (the
412 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
The phrase ** hearing the witnesses" suggests
the nature of the special interest in the history of
ideas and ideals which is to characterize our ap-
proach to the philosophers. The thinkers and
seers of bygone ages are looked upon neither as
the spokesmen of authoritative and final revela-
tions which must be accepted as such, nor as pur-
veyors of outworn doctrines which are to be set
aside in favor of more up-to-date, or hot-f rom-the-
press, utterances. It is rather as testimony that
their words come to us, the testimony of witnesses
whose messages on human life and human destiny
deserve reverent attention and may yield us
increased insight, understanding and vision.
Philosophy, conceived of in this way, includes
all those precious documents and records of the
past which render more intelligible the Odyssey
of human life and increase our understanding of
the world and man's place in it. The witnesses
whom such a conception of philosophy recognizes,
include not only those philosophical writers in
the canon of academic tradition, but also ^'lovers
of wisdom'' whose philosophic views have been
expressed through other media than the treatise
latter being the Hibbert Lectures deUvered at Oxford Univer-
6ity in 1923), give the systematic formulations of his thought
Other leaders of the Ethical Societies have also contributed to
the field of philosophy. Mr. William M. Salter's "First Steps
in Philosophy" was published in the early days of his connec-
tion with the Chicago Ethical Society; latterly he has devoted
his time largely to philosophic investigations, of which his
volume, "Nietzsche the Thinker," is a noteworthy product. Mr.
Walter L. Sheldon's, Dr. Stanton Coit's, Mr. Alfred W. Martin's
and Professor Nathaniel Schmidt's contributions to the phil-
osophy of religion and to comparative religion ; writings by
Dr. Henry Neumann and others in the philosophy of education ;
treatises on ethical theory by such representatives of the
Ethical Movement in Europe as Dr. J. S. Mackenzie, the late
Bernard Bosanquet, Dr. Friedrich Jodl and others, may be cited,
"HEARING THE WITNESSES" 413
and text-book. Aeschylus as well as Aristotle
must be heard if we would gain in full the ad-
vantages of hearing the testimony which the Greek
world has to offer us; Dante will take his place
with Thomas Aquinas in acquainting us with the
majesty — and, perhaps, the limitations also — of
the mediaeval mind; Goethe together with Kant
will speak for Germany.
But this inclusiveness is not the only result of
the approach to philosophy which we are en-
deavoring to sketch. Our attitude will also in
large measure determine the nature of our study,
and it will affect the methods to be employed in
^^ hearing the witnesses." Indeed, an arduous
and exacting discipline is implied if the testimony
of the past is to be made genuinely significant for
us. This discipline requires scholarship far more
difficult than that involved in a merely formal
recitation of the facts of the history of philosophy.
It necessitates a fuller knowledge, the utmost
scrupulousness of interpretation, and an informed
and disciplined imagination.
These tools — knowledge, power of interpreta-
tion, imaginative reconstruction — must be em-
ployed in listening to the evidence of the witnesses.
as well as less comprehensive works by other leaders of the
American Societies.
These philosophic interests were by no means limited to the
group of leaders and lecturers of the Ethical Societies; in-
deed, as is churacteristic of the Movement, they constituted a
Held of joint activity between leaders and members. Philosophic
Interest found expression in the programs and undertakings
of the Societies, in study groups, special classes, in "self-cul-
ture clubs" founded by Mr. Sheldon, in adult moral education,
In periodical publications, and, most notably, in the Sunday
meetings of the Societies. There, philosophic themes were dii5-
cussed, and from 1876 to the present day such names as Mar-
cus Aurelius, Spinoza, Kant, Emerson, etc., appear again and
again as subjects for the address.
414 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
As is the case whenever testimony is to be heard,
we must be possessed of *' rules of evidence.**
Three factors, at least, can be discriminated
if we are to approach our office with understand-
ing; (1) we must have some knowledge of who
the witness is, that is, his biography and phil-
osophic personality; (2) we need to know some-
thing of his social setting, his relations to other
men and institutions, and (3) we shall want to be
informed about his place in the current of ideas
and intellectual and spiritual traditions.
In the first place, then, we are obliged to recog-
nize that the writings of the philosophers cannot
be understood, save in the rarest instances, if
they are taken as so many printed pages, bound
together and placed conveniently on the library
shelves. So unhuman a conception overlooks the
intimate relation between the personality, ex-
periences and development of a thinker and the
growth of his thought. Though the scriptural in-
junction to ** Remember now thy Creator** was in-
tended in a different sense, it might none the less
serve as a useful reminder to every reader of a
book, that the book has issued from the mind and
experience of an author, and cannot be understood
in isolation from them.
This first point is, indeed, generally accepted
and more or less adhered to in contemporary liter-
ary criticism. It may, therefore, be well in pass-
ing to suggest certain dangers which are involved
in carrying biographical interpretation beyond its
legitimate limits. Important as it is to relate a
work to its author, this cannot be accomplished by
the too impressionistic method of singling out a
few perhaps striking, or even amusing, incidents
"HEAEING THE WITNESSES" 415
in an author's life or aspects of his personality,
and using them to explain all the qualities and
peculiarities of his work. A man's life must, after
all, be considered as a whole; to discover a few,
often unrelated, episodes and make everything
else depend on them is a violation of the very
method it pretends to exemplify. To explain the
philosophy of a Schopenhauer or a Carlyle by ref-
erence to digestive disturbances is hardly an in-
stance of the genuine application of biographical
data to criticism. Many a man has been a dyspep-
tic without becoming a philosopher ; and, for that
matter, many a philosopher has doubtless suffered
from maladies which failed to produce a pessi-
mistic strain in his work. To account for Socrates '
willingness to drink the hemlock by referring to
Xantippe would be a poor way — though scarcely
worse than that followed by several popular biog-
raphies recently published — of increasing the
understanding of a philosophy by seeing it in
relation to the life of its author.
A second objection to the uncritical use of this
method, lies in the failure to distinguish the basis
of understanding from the basis of judgment.
Whereas the intelligibility of a philosophy may
be greatly increased by reference to its origin,
the question of its validity will not be affected
thereby. The evidence which is brought before
the court of reason cannot be understood, except
in rare instances, without asking who the witness
is who is testifying ; but the value of the evidence
must be determined on other grounds.
Our second point is closely connected with the
need of studying a work of philosophy in relation
to the life and experiences which gave rise to it.
416 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
We have mentioned the need of seeing a philosophy
in the general setting of the period in which the
philosopher lived. For it would surely be quite as
perverse to attempt to read and comprehend an
author without regard to his milieu, as to study
any one of his writings without considering its
place in the whole body of work of its creator. It
has been pointed out that to follow the history of
''Utopias'^ it is but necessary to consider the
most glaring defects of the age in which each
ideal society was conceived. The ideals are, so
to speak, compensatory to the blemishes in cur-
rent life. To understand the political thought of
Plato or Aristotle, in any case, it is necessary to
see them against their background of the Greek
city-state; in reading the ^'Eepublic" or the
'*Laws" one must also bear in mind the tragic
circumstances of the Peloponnesian War; in
studying the ''Politics" one gains by noting the
ironic neglect of the Alexandrian Empire. To
fathom the full meaning of Stoicism the reader
must pay heed to the political factors operative
in that period which Professor Gilbert Murray
has described as characterized by a "failure of
nerve.'' To understand mediaeval philosophy
without reference to the influence of Christian
faith and the current ecclesiastical polity would be
manifestly absurd; and no more would it be
possible truly to comprehend the course of phil-
osophic speculation since the seventeenth century
without constant reference to the state of the
natural sciences. Moreover, this is true not only
of those philosophers who, like Bacon or Comte
or Spencer, explicitly based their teachings on
what they took to be scientific grounds, but equally
"HEARING THE WITNESSES" 417
applies to those thinkers who reacted against the
domination of the physical sciences.
The third general influence which we have indi-
cated as being of essential importance in the study
of philosophic systems, is the intellectual tradi-
tion of which, in one way or another, the phil-
osophy is a part. In a sense this factor is really
a part of the total environment, a most pervasive
part. But since it has a special significance not
attached to any other portion of the general
setting in which thought operates, it seems well
to consider it separately. Not only is the termi-
nology of technical philosophy strongly affected
by its origin, but many of the actual problems to
which thinkers have addressed themselves must
be studied in the light of earlier controversies or
difficulties. Where problems have lost their
relevance to genuine contemporary interests they
thus come to appear barren and trivial. The stock
example, the mediaeval conundrum as to the num-
ber of angels who could dance on the point of a
needle, gives its impression of triviality and futil-
ity not so much because of the inherent absurdity
of the query, as because of its total meaningless-
ness in our present intellectual scene.
But many problems which continue to excite
and interest, are no less intimately connected wdth
traditional bases. Questions concerning the
nature of the soul — where in the body is it lo-
cated? what becomes of it after death? and the
like — are commonly answered in accordance with
certain definite traditions, influenced, to be sure,
by the other factors previously mentioned, the
personality of the individual and the influence of
his specific social environment. But the crux of
418 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
the matter is the fact that the questions them-
selves take the peculiar form which is theirs, by
reason of past beliefs rather than present thought.
It is, therefore, only by recognizing the intimate
connection between any set of ideas and the tra-
ditions to which they are related, that the in-
dividual can attain to philosophic convictions of
his o'v\Ti, commensurate with his own legitimate
needs and interests. That these will, in their turn,
be largely determined by his own peculiar charac-
ter, experiences, education, cannot be denied. Nor
would philosophic discipline, conceived as part of
ethical education, aim to lessen the specific and
personal differences in the philosophic views of
the individual. Quite the reverse. It is precisely
because of the insistence on the fact that the ac-
ceptance or rejection of any philosophic theory
depends on the individual, that philosophic studies
have special importance in ethical culture. Not
to train disciples of any philosopher, but to de-
velop lives which are justified in the integration
which they attain, in their own inner unity
(whether this be accompanied by any explicit
philosophy or not^ is the aim.^
Indeed, to many persons, the formulae of phil-
osophy are by no means congenial. Many will
view with scant approval the pursuit of interests
which they regard as unbearably '* theoretical''
and * * impractical. ' ' To say that such judgments
themselves imply a certain type of philosophy
'In this connection may be mentioned the position of the
Ethical Societies throughout the fifty years of their existence,
which Dr. Adler has summarized in the Preface to his "Ethical
Philosophy of Life" : "The Ethical Societies as such have no
official philosophy."
"HEARmO THE WITNESSES" 419
would be true, though paradoxical. But the fact
to be kept in mind is that such a conception of
philosophy as we are outlining, aims to do justice
to variations in interest and approach, as well as
to make full allowance for diversity of philosophic
views.
But though a variety of philosophic interpreta-
tions of life be inevitable, indeed desirable, the
common fruits of philosophic study may, in a
general way, be indicated. Though the purpose
of ** hearing the witnesses'* is not to be the mak-
ing of disciples for any one philosophy, neverthe-
less a common purpose may well be present. The
philosophic conclusions will vary, but the particu-
lar contributions of such study to ethical educa-
tion may be considered as threefold. First, the
study of philosophy, undertaken from some such
point of view as has above been indicated, should
bring those consolations which are familiarly
associated with ''being a philosopher**; second,
it should yield an intellectual emancipation, act as
a liberalizing influence; and, third, it should not
only console and liberate the student but should
inspire him as well. Of each of these three gen*
eral aims we shall, in conclusion, briefly speak.
The Koman, Boethius, author of the ''Consola-
tions of Philosophy,** is in a sense a symbol of
humanity in its attitude toward philosophy. De-
prived of worldly goods and of the high offices
and honors which had been his, punished not only
through his own suffering but through the dis-
tress of those dear to him, he stands, with Job,
as a noble sufferer. Imprisoned by an emperor
who had been his friend, he maintained, centuries
before Lovelace penned his poem, that ** stone
420 ASPECTS OF ETHICAL RELIGION
walls do not a prison make/' He wrote of the
consolation which philosophy may bring to those
who face hardship and loneliness, and his phrase
has been repeated by many who never heard his
name. The common injunction: *'Be a philoso-
pher, ' ' itself suggests the supposed efficacy of this
attitude in bearing pain and in achieving a noble
demeanor in times of stress. The pursuit of
philosophy itself may be less effective than one
would desire, and many who have had no notion
of what the word signifies have achieved its im-
plied excellence. But in less dubious ways, a
study of philosophy may genuinely bring consola-
tion, through the satisfactions which disinterested
intellectual activity affords.
Not only are these benefits in times of special
distress possible, but philosophy may, to a unique
degree, minister to that need which all men feel,
though in varying measure, of finding assurance
that their lives are not meaningless, that the uni-
verse is in essence in harmony with their own best
purposes, and that — however rude and unsatis-
factory the world about them may seem — they
can discern, though dimly, a more adequate order
which will comfort and console for the defects of
the immediate scheme of things.
In the second place, the study of philosophy
must, it would appear, almost from its very
nature, act in such a way as to liberate the mind
from the thralldom of provincialism. Not only
can it dissipate the literal provincialism of place,
but the reading of the record of man's thought
and aspiration — crossing as it does the artificial
boundaries of group and class and time — should
liberate from the provincialism of the calendar as
"HEARING THE WITNESSES" 421
well. A mere listing of the names of the great
* 'witnesses" is a significant and salutary check
on any excess of national and racial pride; a
graphic representation of lines of influence and
indebtedness would reveal the extent to which
intellectual obligation is an outstanding fact in
the history of ideas.
Another type of provincialism, and one to which
the scholar's mind itself is especially prone, was
perhaps suggested as infecting what has been set
down above. For is there not here an excessive
pre-occupation with the past? That such an in-
terest might, in a sense, be justified by the prevail-
ing tendency to dismiss history as in every respect
passe is an insufficient rejoinder. More adequate
is the reply that such a conception of the history
of philosophy as has here been outlined, implies
no glorification of the past. If the philosophers
are summoned as witnesses, the defects of their
testimony are by no means to be overlooked.
Though it is on the excellences of the evidence
that our attention is especially focussed, the limi-
tations are not disguised nor minimized.
But the essential thought to be borne in mind is
that the history of philosophy — like all history —
has a '* third dimension," though this has too
often been neglected ; and this ethical culture seeks
to emphasize. To vary the figure somewhat, it is
a very false conception of history which sees it
as a line running from a point in the distant past
of primitive times to a terminus in our present
day, the line being there suddenly ended. History
extends in two directions from our present, and
a sense of the future is by no means the least
422 ASPECTS OF ETHIC AI^ RELIGION
important awareness in the mind of the ethical
student of ideals.
Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton is said to have depre-
cated such an absorbing interest in the future.
He expressed his preference for ancestor-worship
as against ** posterity- worship/ ^ and remarked
that he would feel it an absurd thing to be seen
**on his knees to his descendants.'* The personal
reference aside (and the picture suggests a de-
lightful opportunity for the brush of Mr. Max
Beerbohm), it is to be pointed out that Mr. Ches-
terton is fundamentally mistaken in the posture
which he assigns to those who seek increasing
realization of their ideals in the future rather
than in the past. Not on their knees should such
worshippers be found, but on their feet, and striv-
ing energetically towards that future which they
en\asage as excellent.
A more serious objection to this sort of '* futur-
ism" perhaps, and one which touches both our
conception of history and of the inspiring injflu-
ence of philosophic study, involves a criticism of
the relation of present to future satisfactions.
Does an intense desire for future achievement
tend to decrease present goods? Such a thought
gives point to the tale of the ** log-rolling" con-
gressman who, when urged to vote for a measure
in the interests of posterity, demanded to know
what posterity would, in return, do for his con-
stituents. The truth of the matter is that pos-
terity may work enormous benefits for contem-
porary society if the latter only recognizes its
spiritual relationship to the future.
A conception of philosophy which holds that it
arises from human needs and ethical experience
"HEARING THE WITNESSES" 423
will also portray it as effective in human situa-
tions and serving ethical ends. It is in this sense
that we may refer to the inspiration of philos-
ophy. For genuine inspiration, as Dr. Adler has
recently said, is that which produces effective
aspiration. Consolation alone, may result in the
individual's withdrawal from rude contacts with
the actual world; and if it does so, not only will
the world remain as rude as ever but his philoso-
phy will go to seed and decay. Intellectual libera-
tion, good as it is, may be sterile and barren if the
freedom which it secures is not utilized. Philos-
ophy, as part of ethical education, will yield con-
solation and seek intellectual liberation; but,
beyond these, it will strive to produce effective
aspiration. If it succeeds in this, and only when
it does, it will fructify itself. Not Truth, but its
ardent pursuer, ** though crushed to earth will
rise again."
)70. i
Aspects of ethical religion; mam
170.4B851a 1968 C 2
3 \^^^ D33At B'^Bt
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