Distractions come in all forms--home, health, work on the NYSEC archives, holidays, and on and on. I have not been able to work as consistently on the Bibliography of Ethical Culture as I would like in the past few months. One advantage of a quiet holiday is time for the mind to return to whatever constitutes homeostasis. For me, that "set point" or baseline seems to involve a chance to tinker with the Bibliography. And so I did.
This morning's tinkering was a return to Ethical Addresses. I am trying to track down the publication history of the articles in this serial, starting with the First Series (1895). The volume's preface indicates that all of the lectures included were "given before Ethical Societies" and one had been published in the Forum. Only M. M. Mangasarian's address--"The Religion of Ethical Culture"--includes specifics about its history, i.e., that it was an address given to the Chicago Ethical Society, April 8, 1894.
Recently I found a typed list of addresses delivered to the New York Society for Ethical Culture from 1893 to 1933. The list provided dates for Felix Adler's three addresses, all three of which appear to have been presented at Carnegie Hall:
- What Do We Stand For? - October 22, 1893
- The Modern Saint - March 11, 1894
- Prayer and Worship - December 2, 1894
The first of these was acknowledged as having been published in The Forum without providing more specific information. I managed to track it down--The Forum, Volume 16, November 1893, pp. 379-87--with the title: "Modern Scepticism and Ethical Culture." At the same time, I found that the version published in EA had an addendum not included in the original essay--"A Statement as to the Attitude of the Ethical Movement toward Religion"--which is attributed to the joint agreement of the Ethical Culture "lecturers" of the period.
The Ethical Society of St Louis has inventoried and had posted a large portion of its archives online, but now that material seems to be unavailable to non-members. I did (earlier) manage to confirm the dates (years) when Walter L. Sheldon's two lectures were given to that Society:
- What Does it Mean to Be Religious, and What Is Religion? - 1894
- True Liberalism - 1894
I was unable to find further references to any of William M. Salter's lectures in this volume. The search will continue.
Another "area" for recent work on the
Bibliography has been the result of the
DDOS attack on the
Internet Archive in October. All of the issues of
Ethical Addresses & Ethical Record are posted there as are many other works that have been listed in the
Bibliography. In the weeks following the attack(s), none of these works were available, which substantially hampered my ability to check references and such. One task that I had intended to carry out was to add the link to each issue of
EA&ER to each article listed in the
Bibliography. I had already provided links to the volumes, but that still required users to scroll up and down between the volume link and the individual articles. Thinking I would make things easier to use, I started adding those links. Since it's a tedious process, I would only complete one issue in a day and move on to something more interesting. That work came to a screeching halt with the DDOS attacks and made me very aware of the vulnerability of a sole repository. Now that service has returned, I am continuing to add those links. It's still just as tedious, so it will be a while before I complete the effort, but at least it's possible.
One thing that is
no longer possible with the Internet Archive is the result of another sort of attack, this one entirely legal but with lasting effect.
Hatchette v. Internet Archive resulted in the
removal of thousands of books that had been made available for online lending--one hour at a time--from the site. I can no longer remotely check out a book to look at its contents and determine whether it is relevant for the
Bibliography much less spend any time reading it. This will slow some of the work down considerably, since I have limited mobility and find it difficult to park and enter the brick and mortar libraries that are within driving distance of my home.
Going forward (while remaining in out-of-copyright territory), I have begun looking at the International Journal of Ethics, which was published by the AEU from 1890 to 1914. The goal will be to continue searching for overlap between EA&ER and IJE as well as to identify more primary and secondary sources related to Ethical Culture. Hathi Trust looks like it will be my source for this material. It should keep me busy between home, health, NYSEC archives, holidays and so on and on.
Happy new year!
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