Ethical Addresses - Ninth Series

A Silence Not Empty

The ninth volume of Ethical Addresses, published in 1902, includes 10 lectures by four leaders.  Felix Adler, Walter L. Sheldon, and William M. Salter each contributed 3 lectures, and a new leader, David Saville Muzzey, provided a single lecture.  

Intending to skim Salter's first lecture ("'Thy Commandment Is Exceeding Broad;' or, The Scope of Morality," pp. 1 -15), I encountered a sentence that made no sense.  It took a few minutes to see that two lines of type had been reversed in the printing of page 5.  This section of the lecture is referring to "'good, moral,' people." As printed, it reads:  

They are satisfied 
never be. They may die as they lived, simply respectable
 — and their satisfaction may be broken up and it may 
members of society.

 A few moments of study revealed the error.  The lines should be written as:  "They are satisfied--and their satisfaction may be broken up and it may never be.  They may die as they lived, simply respectable members of society." 

Having gained the meaning of that sentence, I was curious to continue reading the lecture, to see more of the direction that Salter was marking from his initial exegesis of Psalms 119:96.  His trail, if I may call it that, passed by those "good, moral people" who live blameless lives as respectable members of society but fail to pay attention to improving the virtue of their private selves; moving on to those who focus on their private morality and, in some cases, future hope of reward but fail to apply themselves to making this world a better place; and finally noting that those who focus on social justice and change may fail to address their personal lives in ways to bring themselves in line with the better world that they seek to shape.  In passing by these people, Salter praised them all for the good that they practiced, whether publicly or privately, but he challenged their narrow point of view.  He interpreted the message of the psalmist to suggest that there is no one best way to be moral because our world, our universe, is so broad and endless.  Salter seemed to be suggesting that that vastness is our mandate to take a broader approach to morality and engage in both personal and public spheres to develop excellence and justice in all ways.

The tension which Salter reveals between our public and private selves and between our desire for self-development and community action is still present today in Ethical Culture.  Active discussions in the AEU, 121 years after Salter's lecture was published, include ongoing debates concerning whether our focus should be on social justice or on changing our attitudes and understandings instead.  Salter's everything, everywhere (but maybe not all at once) approach would fit right in.

Other lectures in this series focus on marriage, children, religious teachers and systems of belief.  David Saville Muzzey makes his debut with "The Ethics of the New Testament" (pp. 149-170).  Adler raises two ethical questions in regard to the Philippine War (p.171):

1. Is it treason to condemn a war waged by our country while the war is still in progress?

2. Are civilized nations justified in adopting uncivilized methods of warfare?

One other lecture--Adler's "The Moral Value of Silence" (pp. 77-92) also caught my attention as I was considering what graphic could be used to highlight this volume of lectures.  As I focused on "silence," I read this passage at the conclusion of Adler's talk:

Out of the silence have we come, and into the silence shall we pass. A silence not empty, but, like the star-sown canopy of night, replete with light, and power, and law. Vainly, as I think, do men seek to frame the meaning of the Universe into a word. Let us desist from such useless efforts. Let us deepen in ourselves the sense of the infinitude and the majesty of it all, and revere the radiant mystery in a silence like its own!

It took less than a moment to grasp how refreshing it would be to sit for a while with that "silence not empty." 

Nonetheless, here is a final note for the Ninth Series, which inaugurates the practice of promoting other publications by Ethical Culture leaders and a directory of the existing Ethical Culture Societies.  Happily the listed publications are also available online through various sources and will be added to the Bibliography.

• The Moral Instruction of Children By Felix Adler.
• Creed and Deed By Felix Adler. 
• Ethical Religion By W. M. Salter. 
• Anarchy or Government By William M. Salter. 
• An Ethical Movement By Walter L. Sheldon. 
• An Ethical Sunday -School A Scheme of Moral Instruction for the Young. By Walter L. Sheldon. 

Ethical Addresses - Seventh Series

The Seventh Series of Ethical Addresses, published in 1901, included lectures from Felix Adler (1), William M. Salter (3), Walter L. Sheldon (4), and Percival Chubb (2). The lectures range from philosophy (Marcus Aurelius to socialism) to literature (Ruskin to Kipling) to practical matters related to self-culture clubs in St. Louis with a special bonus review of the Nineteenth Century as the Twentieth Century begins. 

Walter L. Sheldon's two-part "sketch" of the history of the Wage-Earners' Self-Culture Clubs of St. Louis (pp. 39-78) is a noteworthy contribution both to the history and the philosophy of Ethical Culture. The idea of self-culture--personal development--is central to the Movement founded by Felix Adler.  The self-culture clubs of St. Louis reflected motives similar to those that inspired the settlement work in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere.  Sheldon is careful to explain how St. Louis differed from those areas and how it is less suited to the solutions offered through settlement houses.  Instead he details the genesis and inspiration of the self-culture clubs, emphasizing that the goal for the clubs was personal development without any religious proselytization and without the element of training for economic advancement.  The clubs depended on hundreds of volunteers and became well respected in the larger community of St. Louis.  Sheldon adds the practical reasons for legally incorporating the clubs as entities separate from ECSSL, matters of governance and funding, and detailed examples of programming.  Readers today may find interest both in the historical record that Sheldon presents and a model that can be applied--with a few updates--to current needs for community engagement in other cities that are home to Ethical Culture Societies.

Although the St. Louis clubs began with programs for men, they did eventually include programming for women and youth.  Sheldon admits that the racial history of St. Louis, a city located at a point of strategic value in the US Civil War and divided in its loyalties throughout the war, added difficulties in providing similar clubs for "the large colored element of St. Louis."  He does, however, note that doing so would be "the next step, probably," indicating awareness of need and a desire to serve the whole community of "wage-earners" in St. Louis.

Another notable lecture from Sheldon was delivered on "the last Sunday of the Nineteenth Century," presumably also in St. Louis.  His "A Survey of the Nineteenth Century" is an eye-opening review of the accomplishments of a century that Sheldon nonetheless asserts was not a creative age.  Instead, he argued that the 19C was a period of reaping the seeds that were sewn in previous centuries in science, philosophy, etc.  (Hence the self-rake reaper shown above.)  This reaping included the expansion and development of democracy, scholarship that established the Bible as literature, application of the principles of evolution, development of the novel, and on to the applied arts that led to so many inventions.  Sheldon likened the product of earlier centuries to great thinkers with great ideas, but the 19C proved more powerful by the spread of those ideas to the many.  His analogy with the growth of a coral island made that notion of the strength of multitudes even more vivid.  Sheldon's conclusion about the 19C, however, sounds an alarm:

The first effect of the mighty achievements of the nineteenth century has been to set up such a worship of the body-side of life, such a care for physical comfort, for the good things of life, as they are called, for the surface-side, for external pleasures, the play-side of life, that the spirit of man or in man has been in a process of decay. In a sense, this has been the most unspiritual age for the last two thousand years.  

Sheldon ends his survey with hope but also a clear call for more attention and care for the "spirit-side" of life.