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.

Manuscripts and Frothingham

Welcome to Carnegie Hall! Again.

A couple of distractions (family events and a virus) pulled me off-track a little.  Once that happens, it's tough to know where to start again, simply because there are so many places that need to be "started" again.  I have work yet to do on Arthur Dobrin's publications.  But first, one of those "places" that needs attention is the collection of Carnegie Hall Lectures, which I discussed earlier this month (January 10 and January 17).  I still have some loose ends to tie up there, but I did manage to achieve the first goal for the Project:  "Document the Carnegie Addresses in the Bibliography of Ethical Culture."  All 58 addresses have now been added to the Bibliography in a new section for Manuscripts/Typescripts.  This means that I will soon be adding all those typescripts from the Algernon D. Black file (Box 9D), which I recorded last September.

One other task related to the Carnegie Lectures has also been checked off my list.  I spent some (online) time with the Felix Adler Papers that are archived in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.  Happily almost all of the lectures in the NYSEC collection can be found there.  Indeed, it seems that there may be one or more copies of most of the lectures and, perhaps, more than one version of some of them.  I'll leave it to another scholar to compare the versions and progression of thought that they might reveal, since CU is bit out of the way for me these days.  

The value of the CU archive is, for me, more than scholarly curiosity.  We have digital copies of the Carnegie Lectures, but we don't actually know where the paper copies are.  Once we find them--and I will be looking for them on my next trip to New  York--we are also likely to see that they are in very fragile condition.  It is reassuring to know that there are other copies somewhere in the world.  Since the next goals of the project may require us to look at some of those other copies, well, we can breathe again.

Such is not the case with the search for a book that I only heard about a couple of days ago:  The Radical Pulpit.  This is a collection of lectures by Octavius B. Frothingham and Felix Adler.  The bulk of the collection is Frothingham's, but it is interesting to see the senior partner give such a boost to the junior partner (so to speak) with co-authorship.  After a fair amount of time searching all the usual repositories and sellers of books, I managed to find a clear description of the book in The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout:  Volume I [The Truthseeker Library] in New Zealand.  That listing includes the following information about The Radical Pulpit:

The Radical Pulpit. Comprising discourses of advanced thought by O. B. Ffothingham (sic) and Felix Adler, two of America's clearest thinkers. By O. B. Frothingham: The New Song of Christmas, The Departed Years, Life as a Test of Creed, Apocryphal Books of the New Testament, The Sectarian Spirit, The American Gentleman, The Language of the Old Testament, The Dogma of Hell, The Value of the Higher Sentiments, The American Lady, The Consolations of Rationalism. By Felix Adler: The Ethics of the Social Question, Emancipation. Lecture at the Second Anniversary of the Society for Ethical Culture, Our Leaders, Have We Still a Religion? Conscience. Price, in cloth, $1.00

I read that as 11 lectures by Frothingham and 3 by Adler. (Punctuation matters!)  However, we will need to find a copy in order to see whether I have counted correctly.  We will also need to find a copy so that we can document the publication information.  So far I have no place and no publisher and two copyright dates.  The dates that appear in various footnotes and lists are 1878 and 1883.  In all likelihood, the dates represent two editions, but it would be helpful to see copies.  Until then, I take some pleasure in seeing the young Felix Adler, who would have been 27 in 1878, getting a leg up thanks to the older and, at the time, much more famous author and speaker (not quite elderly at 56).  Lest it seem that I am getting all sentimental about Frothingham's "kindness" to Adler, I note that, in his last publication before his death in 1822, Frothingham wrote very positively about Ethical Culture as the predicted (by Emerson) Religion of Humanity and quoted Adler extensively (without, however, naming him).

If you run across a copy of The Radical Pulpit at your local library, snap a photo of the cover page and the reverse (where all the publication info is).  Oh, and get the table of contents, too.  Please and thank you!

Carnegie Lectures and Ethical Addresses

Octavius Frothingham, NYSEC Member

One step in determining whether and what to publish from the body of lectures presented at Carnegie Hall (1894 -1896) is checking whether an individual address has already been published elsewhere.  Using keywords to search between the list of Carnegie Lectures and a summary of the Contents of Ethical Record and Ethical Addresses, I have identified 9 Carnegie lectures that may have been published in EA&ER.  

1.    December 2, 1894, Felix Adler delivered the address "Prayer and Worship" at Carnegie Hall.  The same address was published in Ethical Addresses in 1895, First Series, pp. 159-176.

2.    February 17, 1895, William M. Salter delivered the address "The Ethics of Agnosticism" at Carnegie Hall.  The same address was published in Ethical Addresses, Second Series (1896), as "Ethical Agnosticism" (pp. 49-64).  

3.     April 14, 1895, Felix Adler delivered the address "The Teachings of Jesus" at Carnegie Hall.  An address with a similar title was published in Ethical Addresses, Sixth Series (1900), i.e., "The Teachings of Jesus in the Modern World," pp. 105-120.  The latter, however, carried the footnote that its text is from "An Easter discourse before the Society for Ethical Culture of New York, April 2nd, 1899."  A comparison of these texts might prove interesting.  Indeed, given the number of addresses that focus on the life, teaching, or ethics of Jesus given by various speakers and published over the years in various publications associated with the Movement, I daresay an article on "Four (or More) Ethical Views of Jesus" would be just as interesting as an indication of how thought has evolved--or not--regarding Jesus.

4.    November 24, 1895, Felix Adler delivered the address "The Attitude of the Modern Mind Toward the Belief in God" at Carnegie Hall.  An address (actually a compilation of three addresses) was published in Ethical Addresses, Tenth Series (1903) with the title "Changes in the Conception of God" (pp. 47-90).  A closer examination will be needed to determine whether the earlier address in incorporated into the later article or, indeed, whether and/or how Adler's thinking may have evolved over the years between these addresses.

5.    December 8, 1895, Edmund C. Stedman, George Haven Putnam, George C. Barrett, and Felix Adler provided addresses in honor of Octavius Brooks Frothingham at Carnegie Hall. The same addresses were published as "Octavius Brooks Frothingham Memorial Exercises" in Ethical Addresses, Second Series (1896), pp. 169 - 194. Reported in the New York Times on December 9, 1895, p. 6.

6.  January 5, 1896, Felix Adler delivered the address "The Monroe Doctrine and the War Spirit in the United States" at Carnegie Hall.  The same address was published in Ethical Addresses, Third Series (1897) pp. 1-20.  Reported in the New York Times (December 3, 1896), p. 3.

7.    May 10, 1896, Felix Adler, along with Camille Solomons and John Lovejoy Elliott, delivered the "Anniversary Exercises" at Carnegie Hall.  This address was followed by additional "exercises," also at Carnegie Hall on Friday, May 15.  The evening ceremony featured addresses by Alfred R. Wolff, William M. Salter, and M. M. Mangasarian as well as Adler.  The May 15 addresses were published in Ethical Addresses, Third Series (1897), pp. 99-116.  However, no typescript for these addresses seems to be included in the collection for Carnegie Hall.  Reported in the New York Times on May 16, 1896, p. 5.

8.    December 26, 1896, Felix Adler delivered the address "The Spiritual Meaning of Marriage" at Carnegie Hall.  A revised version of this address is published in Ethical Addresses, Sixth Series (1900), pp. 17-36.  Again, a textual comparison might prove interesting.

Since Ethical Addresses was being published at the same time as the Ethical Record before being merged into a single serial, both were succeeded by The Standard, and various books and collections of addresses were also being published around this period, more research is yet needed to confirm the publication history of these addresses.  At this point, my focus is on pushing forward with the Bibliography and entering the Carnegie Lectures.  More volunteers to assist in the publication research would be quite welcome!

Bibliophilic Quandaries: Alfred W. Martin

Alfred W. Martin, c. 1915

I'm in a bit of a quandary now.  My goal with this Bibliography is, as I see it, to document the literature of Ethical Culture.  That is going to eliminate sound recordings, video recordings, and various graphic arts.  I'm not happy about that, but the project is already much bigger than I had originally imagined.  If we can get to those other media--or if someone else joins in the work--we'll just have to see.  In the meantime, my quandary is with the writings of those we know were part of the Ethical Culture Movement for some period of time.  The quandary is whether to try to document everything that those folks wrote or just what seems to be in the realm of Ethical Culture "thought."

A case in point arises with the work of Alfred W[ilhelm]. Martin.  Martin appears (in my research) in Series Fifteen (1908) as having delivered an address entitled "The Spiritual Greatness of the Real Jesus" (Philadelphia, December 15, 1907).  By 1910, he is listed on the faculty of the 1910 Summer School of Ethics, sponsored by the American Ethical Union, and identified there as an Associate Leader for the New York Society for Ethical Culture.  When searching online for biographical information, I found an extensive list of publications from Martin, both before and after that "watershed" listing on the Summer School faculty when he is clearly identified within the Ethical Culture tent.  

So far, I have found very little online that reveals more about his life and his connection with Ethical Culture.  (A Wikipedia article would be handy at this point!)  His earliest publication (that I can find) is a collection of responsive readings and hymns published in 1890 (Character and Love:  Responsive Readings for Sunday School and the Home).  The volume has a distinctly Christian feel to it, but it includes Adler's poem (frequently sung as a hymn):  "The City of Light."  (For more on the publication history of this poem, see Aharan Varady's Open Siddur Project.)  This suggests that Martin was already exposed to some of the literature of Ethical Culture at that early point in his career.  Even clearer evidence of that exposure comes in the later volume, published in 1901, Not to Destroy, But to Build.  A chapter near the end of the book--"Unitarianism and Why It Fails to Satisfy"--makes direct reference to William M. Salter's address of the same title.

Should I document Martin's writing from the period before we can clearly associate him with Ethical Culture?  Should I document Martin's writing on comparative religion that is not clearly identified as having been originally delivered in an Ethical Culture forum (i.e., not a collection of platforms but his own personal research conclusions)?

I would tend to want to be as inclusive as possible, but that will certainly broaden the scope of the Bibliography.  Without annotation, doing so may be misleading to those wish to learn more about Ethical Culture (my target audience!) rather than the broader perspective of thought and discovery that others pursued in their intellectual and spiritual journeys.  Doing so would also expand the work of documentation quite significantly.  Nevertheless, there is insight to be gained from exploring the entire corpus of someone's work--and sometimes useful context shows up in odd places.  

Here's what I know about Alfred W. Martin--so far.

• According to the Hathi Trust, these are his dates:  1862-1933.
• No clue about where he was born or his earlier life.
• He married Eliza Frothingham, nicknamed Lillie.  Eliza may have been the daughter of Octavius Brooks Frothingham, a "radical Unitarian" and first president of the Free Religion Association.
• He served as minister for the First Free Church in Tacoma, WA, editing The Free Church Record at least through December, 1900.
• He seems to have had a close philosophical relationship with Felix Adler.
• He appreciated the "no creed" freedom of the Ethical Culture platform, but he was careful always to disclaim any intention to represent his views as those of his Ethical Society.
  

Beyond that, I got nothing.  Except.  In checking through the list of works catalogued by the Hathi Trust, I noted this:  Worship in the Sunday School for Workers in Small Schools (by A. W. Martin).  The publication date (1918) puts this work in the time frame when Martin was active in Ethical Culture.  The tone is heavily Christian, not the universal or comparative tone of his other works.  More online searching suggests that this book is the work of A[lbert] W[illiam] Martin, Senior, a Methodist minister in Arkansas.  So add this:

• Martin's roots may have been in Unitarianism, but they probably were not Methodist.  

I will hope to find out more on my next visit to NYSEC.  

Ethical Addresses, Series Two (1896) - Part I

Series Two!  It's beginning to feel like the Bibliography for Ethical Culture project might become a reality, but Series Two also introduces some new bibliographic and style issues.  At the moment there are also the logistical issues of where to put the Bibliography for public access, whether to continue entering the citations in a Word document or consider some other editing platform, how to involve more participants in the project, and so on.  For now, I'll stick to the bibliographic work itself and think about logistics tomorrow at Tara.

The bibliographic entries are organized by author's last name.  I have avoided (but not ignored) the convention of using a line in place of the author's last name to show the second and subsequent articles to indicate that all are written by the same author.  Because, for example, Felix Adler will show up on the bibliography many times, there is as yet no way to know which will be the first entry from which all others will derive their status as secondary publications.  At the moment, it seems easier to avoid the question and enter the author's name.  If there comes a day when we (I hope there's a "we") will want to add that line in place of last names, it will, no doubt, be a massive project to do so.  Perhaps a little hassle now would be worth avoiding that project?

I am also adding a List of Authors as I work through the various volumes of the series.  As unfamiliar as many of us seem to be with EC history, it may be that, through the accumulation of these author's names, we will learn more of the associations and interactions that served the early days of the Movement.  

In Series Two, we have the same contributors as for Series One:  Felix Adler, M. M. Mangasarian, William M. Salter, and W. L. Sheldon.  However, a new set of authors is listed as having spoken at a memorial service for Octavius Brooks Frothingham.  While I have been unable to locate any information (in a very brief internet search) that shows a direct link to Ethical Culture, Frothingham was the first President of the Free Religious Association.  Felix Adler and Ralph Waldo Emerson also were active in this association as were other members the Ethical Culture Movement.  In addition to Adler, Edmund C. Stedman, George Haven Putnam, and George C. Barrett also gave eulogies.  Adler shared the platform with a poet/critic, a publisher, and a New York Supreme Court Justice.  One cannot but wonder at the discussions these men would have shared in the years before this occasion, whether and how their associations continued.  

The graphic above shows an earlier political cartoon (Thomas Nast) lampooning the FRA and Frothingham (upper right).  I added Emerson (bottom) and Adler (upper left) to suggest connections.  Emerson's transcendentalism is also skewered by Nast's cartoon.  The text of the cartoon reads:

Principles of the Free Religious Association

No churches free from taxation

No churches at all

No Bibles in public schools

No Bibles anyway

No chaplains for the prisons, Army or Navy

No creed

No faith

No nothing 

The cartoon was published three years before Adler's Founding Address, so it is an anachronism to associate him with the cartoon, but I think it is fair to remind ourselves that Ethical Culture also drew some criticisms not so long afterwards. 

The record of Frothingham's memorial service marks an early departure in the larger series from including only platforms.  In later issues of Ethical Addresses, we will see reports of other memorial services, some celebrations, and some business meetings.  This issue is also noteworthy for the inclusion of three articles previously published in journals or pamphlets.

There's more yet to say about Series Two, but I will save that for next week, by which time I hope also to have found an online home for the Bibliography.