Before Creed and Deed

 

Felix Adler

The young Felix Adler spoke at his father's temple (Emanu-el) on October 11, 1873.  This was an occasion of note, and the New York Times duly reported it on October 10 under the caption "City and Subsurban News":  

Rev. Dr. Felix Adler will preach at the Temple Emanuel, Fifth avenue and forty-second street to-morrow, at 10 A.M. (https://nyti.ms/4qUz461)

Adler's lecture, "The Temple of the Future," often referred to as the Temple Address, did not meet with universal acceptance by the Temple congregation (see Howard B. Radest, Toward Common Ground, pp. 13-15).   Indeed, in the aftermath of the lecture, Adler removed himself from consideration as a rabbi for Temple Emanu-El and seemed to be without a career.

The next Times report on Adler suggests, at least, a career as a public speaker.  On Monday, February 9, 1874, Adler spoke at Lyric Hall on Buddhism:  "The Life of Buddha---Lecture by Dr. Felix Adler" (https://nyti.ms/4gYH9C9).  The third and final pre-Ethical Culture lecture reported by the Times was datelined "Ithaca, Tuesday, June 30, 1874" and published the next day (https://nyti.ms/4xaCnHu).  While the lecture on Buddha seems likely to have been open to the public (Lyric Hall was a popular venue for lectures and other public events), the Ithaca lecture was reported as Adler's "inaugural" lecture, being given as a member of Cornell University's faculty, Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literatue and History, noting that:  "The Professorship was established during the last term on a foundation of $20,000 given by Mr. Seligman, New-York."

The Cornell lecture touched on history, philosophy, psychology, and philology.  Of note for its contemporary relevance is the following passage:

Absorbed in the interests of the present, we forget too often that there was a yesterday, that there will be a to-morrow.  Consciousness of what we owe to the past, or what we hold in trust to the future, will sanctify our national life.  The duty of guarding, preservings, and if need be, correcting the national spirit belongs to the universities. [Emphasis added]

Adler did not come to the attention of the Times again until 1877, in the spring of the first "season" of the new New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Adler and "the Departed"

Not a resting place, as Adler points out.

OK, so I'm taking another "break" from thinking about planning and logistics for the Archives and the Ethical Culture Institute and how to manage . . . well, I need a break.  So it's back to the Adler Study for a little time out.

Bookcase D reveals a number of books on religion, often from followers of some of those religions.  Mary Baker Eddy crops up, for example.  Joseph Fort Newman's 1926 book---Best Sermons:  1926---seemed sure to be one of those books.  Even though it referenced 1926 in the title, there was nothing in the photo of the book that I was working from that told me the date of publication, so I had to dig around a little.  Newman's book turned out to be quite popular, and I found it in several repositories.  

It took a while to get the publication date, and by that time I had also glanced at the table of contents.  I recognized some of the names, e.g., Fosdick, Niebuhr.  Imagine my surprise to see Felix Adler among them.

Yes, among the best sermons of 1926, Felix Adler rated with his "An Ethical Attitude toward the Departed."  

The source of this lecture is not evident.  A keyword search of NYSEC's list of lectures from 1893 to 1933 does not turn it up with either "attitude" or "departed."  The lecture was published as a chapter in Adler's Incompatibility in Marriage in 1930, but the only indication of source found there is the prefatory statement:  "The addresses in this volume were delivered at considerable intervals and under widely different circumstances" (p. [v]).  Perhaps it was given someplace other than NYSEC; perhaps it was given at NYSEC with another title.  As work progresses in the NYSEC Archvies, perhaps we will find the original text.

In the meantime, this is another example of what I am calling "reflection."  Adler gave a lecture that spread beyond the boundaries of Ethical Culture in quite a positive manner, reflecting Ethical Culture into the larger community.  (I emphasize "positive," since there are other examples turning up where the reflection is quite negative, a phenomenon in itself that might merit some further analysis at a later date).  In this instance, Adler's lecture was added to a serial publication which seemed largely Christian in its orientation (although Newman, who began as a Baptist in Texas and ended as an Episcopalian in Philadelphia, did have a period of working with "universalist" and "non-sectarian" churches).  Given Newman's apparent stature in the early 20th century, I'd say that Adler's inclusion was pretty positive.

Similarly, when the lecture was published as a chapter in Adler's later work, the New York Times gave a positive review (and more reflection), saying:

No one else pleads for the recognition of the ideal, for the luminous and austere but warmly human conception of life's duties and obligations, for the broadly visioned outlook upon human relations with quite the same combination of tolerant acceptance of human frailties and weaknesses and stern insistence on the endeavor of the individual to live up to the best that is in him.  (NYT, 3/23/1930) https://nyti.ms/4q49Lgk

The lecture itself (as published by Newman) is a fairly coherent review of the various ways in which we mourn, honor, or forget those who were part of our lives while alive---and then departed.  I say "fairly coherent" because one can make a good outline from it and list the various points that Adler makes about how we react to death and then how we should react to death.  It will take a bit more study for me to see the cohesion in his concluding paragraphs.  The concepts are, at this point, still rather vague to my understanding, although I see striking evidence of Emerson (still) here near the end of Adler's life.  It's possible that I am personally more comfortable with his conclusions in "Consolations."  It's also possible that I was looking for a more definitive discussion of the "acceptance of human frailties" mentioned by the Times.

Even so, an interesting afternoon with yet another puzzle to solve.

Doctor X and the Bibliography

The dustover tells the story

I'm taking a break from all the other things that are pulling at my time to "play" with the Bibliography for a while.  This sort of play is relaxing at the same time it holds my interest and provides the occasional challenge.  Right now, I am challenged to complete the inventory of NYSEC's Adler Study and decide which volumes should be added to the Bibliography.  So far I have not managed to recruit any volunteers to help with the task of converting the photos taken by Amy Schwarz and Danny Hansen (heroic volunteers themselves!) into bibliographic entries for the inventory.  So now, as a means of relaxing (really!), I'm doing it myself.

Aside from all the reasons why NYSEC (and the Ethical Culture Movement at large) might want an inventory of that collection, there are a number of other tasks to be performed, not only to protect and preserve it, but also to share it with members and interested scholars.  One task, in the not too distant future, will be to identify within the larger collection, those books which are "core."  That would include those written by Ethical Culture "thought leaders":  Society leaders, of course, but also members, writing about Ethical Culture itself and reflecting Ethical Culture in their writing (or other creations) on other topics.  This "core" will need extra protection, I believe, and will likely be moved to a new location within the Study where there will be less deterioration caused by sunlight.  I would also, of course, want to add these "core" items to the Bibliography.

One puzzle that occurs as I work my way through the full collection (I am only on the third of ten bookcases right now) is the occasional appearance of novels.   Were these of some interest for their ethical perspective?  Did a lecturer use them as a resource for a Sunday platform?  Were they written by a member of the Society?  Did they just "sneak in" to this rather special collection by accident?

I encountered the first of these novels in Bookcase A.  The title is Intern, and it was written by Dr. X, clearly a pseudonym.  A little searching on the internet provides the author's real name:  Alan E. Nourse.  Nourse, to my knowledge, is not an Ethical Culture leader.  A little more research revealed Nourse to be a science fiction writer who was also an MD, at least explaining the title.

A little more research pulls up Matthew Wisniok's Engineers for Change:  Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America due to a footnote listing Nourse and his book:  So You Want to Be an Engineer?  I had been trying to make a connection between Nourse and NYSEC (or any Ethical Culture Society), and, sure enough, NYSEC was also mentioned (sorta) in Wisniok's book.  Chapter 1, page 1:  Protesters at the 1971 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Convention in New York City gathered at Columbus Circle to protest the keynote speaker (David Packard, cf. Hewlett-Packard).  

Denied a booth inside the Convention, the dissident engineers worked to direct “ productive and creative people” to their counterconference a few blocks away at the Ethical Culture Society Hall. Those who made the trek discussed how to turn “ necrophilic” technologies into “ humane ” ones in a new organization called the Committee for Social Responsibility in Engineering (CSRE).

I can't tell you how much I hope NYSEC was a party to the development of CSRE!  

On the other hand, I'm still trying to figure out Nourse.  None of the other searches puts him in New York, so I can't make the connection that he was ever a member of NYSEC without considerably more research.  I was just about to think I'd have to read the book, when I found an image online that provided the needed enlightenment.  The dustcover tells it all:

The week-by-week diary of a young doctor during his year of hospital internship.  Frank, sometimes shocking, and completely honest, it is the first inside account of modern medical and hospital practice that has ever been . . . 

Oh!  Not actually a novel, I now consider this book a "source" for someone's lecture and will not add it to the Bibliography. 

Another novel, from Bookcase C, turns out to be "core."  Elizabeth Gertrude Stern wrote A Marriage Was Made in 1928.  A bit of searching turns up the fact that, in 1928 at least, Stern was a member of the Philadelphia Ethical Society.  That same search turned up more about her very interesting corpus of work that focused on the experience of cultural transition for immigrant families, women's roles in a time of social change, and family relationships.  I've added it to the Bibliography as a primary source.

The question of whether a source is primary or secondary is itself a troublesome one.  I added Stern's book because she was an ECS member, and I think that we must consider, in such works, whether and to what degree Ethical Culture might be an influence on the underlying philosophy which might inform or be expressed in such works.  That Stern eventually became a member of the Society of Friends, presumably leaving PES, makes that decision more complicated.  More research is needed to determine, if possible, what that decision meant to her alignment with EC and whether this or any other of her work should be included in the "core."  Interest in her presence, even if only temporarily, in the "core" might well spark more research into the history of the relationship between Ethical Culture and those who leave Judaism in America.

Some Fruits of the Ethical Education Tree

Muriel Rukeyser Quotation*

It's nice to have colleagues.  

Kirk Ruebenson contacted me several months ago to discuss the NYSEC Archives and his interest in consulting those resources.  We met, we chatted, and we shared all sorts of information about Felix Adler (and his family) as well as Ethical Culture and Kirk's particular interest--the Ethical Culture Schools.  

Because May 15 is considered "Founder's Day," the anniversary of Adler's Founding Address given in 1876, I have looking at early materials related to that occasion.  I ran across--in resources that Ruebenson had shared with me a while back--an article entitled:  “Struggle for the Soul of Felix Adler."  This led me to Jared R. Stallones, a scholar of the history of education, who wrote that article and another, "Struggle for the Soul of John Dewey:  Religion and Progressive Education.”  I read the article about Adler (thank you for sharing, Kirk) with considerable fascination, since it makes the connection between Adler's Jewish upbringing and the reflection of that upbringing and his more progressive ideas about religion as they are occur in the Temple Address ("Judaism of the Future," address to Temple Emanu-El, October 1873), a key point in Adler's pivot away from Judaism to Free Religion and, eventually, to Ethical Culture.  I hope to be able to read the article about Dewey, if I can get access to it.  In the meantime, I will add those articles and several others to the Bibliography along with Stallones' book--Conflict and Resolution:  Progressive Educators and the Question of Religion (2010)--which I have ordered.  I look forward to reading it since (a) he includes chapters on both Adler and Dewey and (b) the issue of religion in education--whether through state-supported charter schools run by religious organizations or plastering commandments all over classrooms here in Texas--is also related to the long-running discussion of the "moral instruction" of children in Ethical Culture.

In the meantime, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and ProQuest have all been helpful in tracking Stallones and, very interestingly, his citation in a dissertation by Laiti Mayk-Hai ("Towards a Poetics of I/Eye Witness:  Documentary Expression in Jewish-American Poetry of the 1930s" [Jewish Theological Seminary 2015]).  Mayk-Hai writes about the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser (among others) and links Rukeyser's writing to her years as a student in the Ethical Culture Fieldston School.  References to Adler also abound.

Ruebenson and I have shared some delightful conversations (part of the joy of collegiality) about "following rabbit trails" (part of the joy of research) as we move from one source to a reference to a whole new perspective on the issues that we are studying.  This day's work may provide yet another one of those conversations.  In the meantime, I must email him the link to Mayk-Hai's dissertation.

*Image credit:  Wikipedia contributors. “Muriel Rukeyser,” May 6, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Rukeyser#/media/File:Library_Walk_6.JPG.

International Journal of Ethics

"And miles to go before I sleep" . . . might aptly apply to the current task.  I was fortunate enough to run across an index to International Journal of Ethics for the first 24 or so volumes.  I am now working my way through the index to identify appropriate articles for inclusion in the Bibliography.  I am also fortunate that this journal is "important" enough to be digitized and available--in whole or in part--in several repositories.  The "miles to go" is the not-tedious-but-time-consuming effort to access each article, determine whether it is appropriate for the Bibliography, and then document it.  Of course, nothing is ever that simple.  It's one thing to see the Felix Adler's name (for an obvious example) shows 9 entries in the index.  It's another to determine whether the article is pertinent to Ethical Culture.  (In Adler's case, that's pretty much a no brainer.  He wrote it, so it's in.)  It's still another to determine how to include the article.  That's one point at which time can be consumed.  

In October, 1891, Adler published "The Problem of Unsectarian Instruction" (IJE, 2:1, pp. 11-19).  A couple of issues later (IJE, 2:3, pp. 374-75) there is his "Brief Rejoinder to J. Mavor (D)."  The "D" indicates that this is a discussion entry, so now I need to check J. Mavor's article to see what Adler is discussing.  As it happens, Mavor was discussing Adler's earlier article on unsectarian instruction.  Adler's rejoinder to Mavor provided the same information given by the footnote linked to the title of his original article:  

Introductory lecture of a course on Moral Instruction, given before the School of Applied Ethics, Plymouth, Mass., July 1891.  [The complete course of sixteen lectures will be published by D. Appleton & Co., New York.] 

And, sure enough, The Moral Education of Children (the complete course), was duly published as Volume 21 in Appleton's International Education Series in 1892.

The conundrum of which is primary, which secondary, and how to cite a discussion article has sent me thumbing through the Chicago Manual of Style (which is not a bad thing), but that adds to the consumption of time, because, well, I have to read some of these articles as well, don't I?

So, I've added one article by Jane Addams ("Ethical Survivals in Municipal Corruption") and will turn next to Bernard Bosanquet (British philosopher, active with the London Ethical Society).  But the time is taken with looking up biographical information, thumbing through--and pausing to read--the articles themselves, and considering the context both within and without Ethical Culture as these papers were written and sometimes delivered at various meetings.  It is rather like one of Felix Adler's favorite escapes, hiking in the Adirondack--an escape from the intense activity of life in the city, a chance to recoup a sense of peace and place, a rigorous bit of exercise that keeps one's faculties "in shape."

It will take a while to complete this "exercise."  The index for these earlier years of IJE (now published by the University of Chicago as Ethics) runs for 15 pages of abbreviated entries.  On a first pass, I have marked (on my copy) the names of authors that I recognize from previous work on the Bibliography.  Bosanquet already had one entry; ow we have the chance to learn more of his work in Ethical Culture.  Most of the names I have marked are, admittedly, past leaders of the early Societies.  After this first "pass" through the list, there will also need to be a further review of authors and topics.  Likely this will take months before I might consider that I have done all that I can, but there are two points that might bring an end to this somewhat wandering reflection on the IJE index:  (1) A structured plan to add entries to the Bibliography from this resource has now begun, and (2) after some time away from working on the Bibliography, it's good to be back, wandering through the hills and valleys of ideas and discussions, noting the milestones, looking with awe at the vistas of thought and knowledge that we can now add to our understanding of the history of Ethical Culture.

North American Review

Thomas Hunter

Because He Walked the Talk

Once in a while, I find something that intrigues me, that leads me down a new path.  Almost always I find something wonderful along that path even if the path doesn't seem to take me anywhere equally wonderful.  (Or something like that.  Metaphor is weak today.)  

So yesterday, I ran across a paper on the internet.  It was entitled "'Modernity' in Education around 1900," written by Jürgen Oelkers and sourced as "Opening lecture Conference 'Pragmatism in the Reticle of Modernization - Contexts, Concepts, Critiques' Centro Stefano Franscini Ascona, 7 September 2008." [https://www.ife.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ffffffff-bb47-55f9-0000-0000209b615d/Ascona2008english.pdf, accessed March 26, 2025].  I think I was searching for information about Standard Hall, the location at which Felix Adler delivered what is called the "Founding Address" in 1876.  Since Oelkers mentions that lecture and its location, Google gave me this new path to follow.

Oeklers' bibliography included two Adler references that I had not seen before.

Adler, F. (1880): Educational Needs. In: The North American Review Vol. 136, No. 316 (March), p. 290-295.

Adler, F. (1889): The Democratic Ideal in Education. With an Illustration from the Workingman's School and Free Kindergarten, New York. In: The Century Vol. XXXVIII, New Series Vol. XVI (May to October), p. 927-930.  

So I looked them up.  Well, I looked up the first one, which took me further down that branch of the path to The North American Review.  I have yet to backtrack and follow the other branch (The Century), but I'm sure that will also be interesting.  The NAR branch was a bit of a challenge since the serial is still published, but its earlier volumes are no longer archived by the publisher.  Fortunately, The Hathi Trust has archived several volumes of the journal.  The NAR was founded in 1815 in Boston.  Oelkers references the 136th volume and gives the date as 1880, so it took a bit of searching to find that the 136th volume was published from January to June of 1883.  As it happens, the NAR issues two volumes per year.

A bit more search showed that Adler's article was part of a set of articles on the same topic by four contributors, including:

• G. Stanley Hall (earned the first PhD in psychology in the US);
• Thomas Hunter (founder of the Female Normal and High School, now Hunter College);
• Mary Putnam Jacobi (American physician, first woman graduate of a pharmacy college in the US).

On the whole, a rather elite panel for this discussion, providing a diversity of perspectives and well-worth considering as a whole.

Happily, the scan of this journal that was taken from the Cornell University collection also includes the index.  Happy is the path that passes by an index, I always (well, sometimes) say.  In this case, the path was a very happy one.  I found reference to yet another Adler article ("A Secular View of Moral Training"), Moncure D. Conway ("Gladstone"); Edwin P. Whipple ("Carlyle and Emerson"); Frederic Henry Hedge ("Ethical Systems"); and O. B. Frothingham ("Criticisms and Christianity").  Both of the Adler articles will now go in the Bibliography as will the third once I have a chance to follow the path to The Century and confirm it.  The relevance of the other articles to the Ethical Culture "core" of the Bibliography remains a question.

These are my unanswered questions plus a couple of opinions:

• Moncure D. Conway's name comes up often because of his association with the South Place Chapel in London, which was renamed the South Place Ethical Society when Stanton Coit replaced him as "leader."  Later, Conway replaced Coit, who moved on to the London Ethical Society.  South Place was eventually renamed as Conway Hall.  Did he lead South Place as an Ethical Society when he replaced Coit?  It's possible, of course, but I think Conway is an important historical figure to whom we owe some concern for accuracy.  That would also entail more research as well.
• Edwin P. Whipple's article is not directly related to Ethical Culture except to the extent that it relates to the two named writers who influenced and/or caught the attention of Ethical Culture leaders.  M. M. Mangasarian delivered two lectures at Carnegie Hall in 1894 concerning Carlyle and then Emerson.  Other leaders talked about them as well.  While this article doesn't seem like a candidate for the Bibliography, I'd certainly keep it handy for reference if I were to write about what various lecturers in the Movement had to say about Emerson and Carlyle.
• Frederic Henry Hedge's article doesn't seem to point toward Ethical Culture either.  He was however, one of the early Transcendentalists and, although he left that Movement eventually, he remained within the circle of friendships that arose from it.  His focus on ethics, especially in a journal that published Adler, warrants some attention, at the very least.  (I may have talked myself into adding this one to the Bibliography.)
• O. B. Frothingham was Adler's mentor in the Free Religious Association.  Adler left the FRA in 1882 because it seemed unable to walk the talk, but he hosted the memorial service for Frothingham at Carnegie Hall before the New York society for Ethical Culture in 1895.  As ubiquitous as Frothingham's name is whenever the early years of Ethical Culture are discussed, I tend to think we don't know enough about the man, his work, and his influence on Felix Adler.  Yet another path to follow?  (Yes.)

So, yes, there are many more volumes of the North American Review to review.  Miles to go before I sleep?   Or maybe this is a time to call for volunteers.  As paths go, this doesn't involve a lot of walking--if anyone is interested.

Update:  I just found the published source of the Oelkers article that I found as a PDF file online.  The citation would be:

Oelkers, Jürgen.  "'Modernity' in Education around 1900," in Pragmatism and Modernity.  edited by Daniel Tröhler, Thomas Schlag, and Fritz Osterwalder.  57-79.  Leiden:  Brill, 2010.

Adding it to the Bibliography now.

The Free Church of Universal Religion

Don't bother to Google that.  The reference in the title is to the church established in Tacoma, Washington, by Alfred W. Martin.  Or rather it is the church that he led to break from the Unitarian fellowship to become a Free Church around 1894.  It doesn't seem to exist anymore, but the name is one that reflects the early interest and work of this EC Leader, pre-EC.

Martin served as an Associate Leader for the New York Society for Ethical Culture (1907-1932) and, for twenty of those years, gave Sunday evening programs on comparative religion.  A large number of his works are already listed in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture.  I recently had the opportunity to talk about his work with the Ethical Society of Austin.  Preparing for that talk led me to a memorial essay by George O'Dell, Martin's colleague at NYSEC, which was published in World Unity Magazine in 1934.  O'Dell's personal knowledge of Martin, his life, and his work helped give me a more rounded picture of a very prolific writer who doesn't seem to figure in the "folklore" of Ethical Culture.  That is to say, few of us have ever heard of him.

Whether or not that will change as a result of my research, I can't say.  However, I have had several gratifying days of searching for and documenting his work.  While the same bibliographic quandaries his work raised earlier still remain, I am pleased to be able to add more entries from The Free Church Record, the serial that Martin edited and published from 1893 to 1900.  While much of Martin's writing in that journal reflect his own "spiritual journey" on a clearly theistic path, Ethical Culture is present here and there in the volumes of the journal that I have documented so far (1896 - 1897).  Since I can't yet resolve that issue of whether to "include everything" or just focus on what he wrote while actively engaged in Ethical Culture, I am just appending his non-EC writing to the Bibliography (temporarily, of course) while I figure out the best approach.  I do think the insights offered by his earlier writings will be useful if someone decides to do a more thorough study of Martin's development than is provided by O'Dell's brief tribute.