Ethical Addresses - Tenth Series

 

Series Ten:  Contents

The Tenth Series of Ethical Addresses, published in 1903, presents 10 lectures and writings from Felix Adler, William M. Salter, Walter L. Sheldon, David Saville Muzzey, and Percival Chubb.  Their contributions continue to focus on religious concepts and the Ethical and moral reflections in literature,  social issues, and the care and education of children.

My attention was drawn to Adler's first contribution to the volume:  "Ethics and Culture" (pp. 1-16).  The "Culture" in Ethical Culture is a puzzling term in this century.  My interest was caught by this title along with the hope that clarification would be forthcoming, and, to some extent, it was.

The address was originally given at the Harvard Philosophical Club fifteen years prior (January 9, 1888) to this (re)publication.  Adler begins by noting that Ethics, as a concept is well defined in the literature, but Culture is less so.  He offers the common notion of Culture as a baseline:  "The marks of culture as commonly understood are three: literary taste, aesthetic sensibility, and fine manners" (p. 1). Then he dismisses that notion and several others before asserting that the notion of culture is an ethical notion, that is ". . . the laws by which we fashion this human world are called the ethical laws" (p. 8), and, a bit later, ". . . we must be strong enough to judge for ourselves what is right and live according to the leadings of our own reason" (p. 10).  Seeking to be cultured, Adler says we must work on our inner moral life without expecting perfection or indeed that we have all the information needed to guide us.  Instead, we are to act and, in the process, learn what the practical actions we pursue have to teach us--both when we are successful and when we fail.  Without Adler explicitly saying so, the implied meaning of culture does include the work of developing our inner selves with the aim of improving our own moral character, doing so, however, in community and through action.

"Ethics and Culture" was first published April 1888, according to M. G. Singer ("The History of Ethics," Ethics, 98, no. 3 [April 1988]), who determined that the lecture was the first article in the first issue of the Ethical Record, which was the predecessor of the International Journal of Ethics, which was the predecessor of Ethics.  I would need better access to an academic library to be able to retrace that path, but I hope to see relevant archives for the Ethical Record when next I am in New  York.  

Also of interest regarding this address is that it was given at the Harvard Philosophical Club at a time when W. E. B. Du Bois was a student at Harvard and a member of the Club (Du Bois, W. E. B. “A Negro Student at Harvard at the End of the 19th Century.” The Massachusetts Review 1, no. 3 (1960): 439–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25086526).  Whether Du Bois attended this particular address or whether this address provided an initial link between the two men is an open question, but it does suggest potential pathways for their connection.  It also makes a later lecture in this same volume more troublesome even than it first seemed.

I always cringe when I see something written in earlier years that refers to "the Negro Problem."  Whatever I find always seems to imply that the "problem" is more the fault of Black folks for choosing to wear the wrong skin than it is the fault of non-Black folks for constructing a false division among humans because of skin color.  Perhaps I oversimplify, but I did cringe to see Salter's lecture--"The Negro Problem:  Is the Nation Going Backward?" (pp. 163-180) in the table of contents.  The question of the title would lead one to think that there will be less patronizing and, well, racist perspective here than the initial words suggest.  Salter does make an effort to assert the brotherhood of all humans, but he also immediately lapses into hierarchical thinking:  "Yes, there are advanced races, and there are backward races; there are civilized races and there are savage races ; there are white races and yellow races and brown races and black races ; but all alike are men — all alike belong to the greater brotherhood of the human race" (p. 164).  The lecture is in line with Ethical thinking regarding intrinsic human worth and includes some soaring passages expressing our shared commitment to that worth in every human being.  Even so, it is set very firmly in its time of writing and is freely larded with bias and stereotype and diminution of the very people it seeks to uphold as equal.  Again, it is not my purpose here to judge the values of the past by the values (and knowledge) of the present, so I must leave it others to place this lecture in its proper context for Ethical Culture. 

On a more bibliographic note, the promotional pages included in this volume led me to two more volumes of Ethical resources:

• Walter L. Sheldon, The Old Testament Bible Stories, as a Basis for the Ethical Instruction of the Young (1902).  Available online for free download from Archive.org.
• Stanton Coit (ed), The Message of Man:  A Book of Ethical Scriptures (1902).  Also available for free download from Archive. org.  

There were also promotions for Ethical Record and the International Journal of Ethics, both of which deserve more and separate attention.

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 - Eighth Series

Thomas and Julian Huxley, 1892

Series Eight of Ethical Addresses has now been added to the Bibliography for Ethical Culture.  Up to now, this blog has been playing "catch up" with the bibliographic entries made more than a year ago.  Now we are making progress again.  

Issued in 1901 (the same year as Series Seven), this issue includes fewer addresses than seems usual and more new platform speakers than usual.  While the implied message is that there was change or turmoil or other issues happening in the background around that time, what is before us in this issue is an intense focus on concepts related to Religion in general (albeit with a comparative perspective) along with some acknowledgement (pro-forma?) of the turn of the century but not-so-much about Ethical Culture per se.

New authors in this issue include:

• Edwin D. Mead - Mead was co-founder and editor of New England Magazine, a literary magazine published from 1884 to 1917.  He served as president of the Free Religion Association, which would have given him a connection to Felix Adler, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others who appear in these volumes.  Mead, along with his wife, Lucia Ames Mead, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.
• Wu Ting-Fang - Wu was the Chinese Minister to the US, Spain, and Peru (1896 - 1902).  He lectured widely about Chinese culture and history in an effort to counter discrimination against Chinese immigrants.
• Frederic Harrison - Harrison helped found the London Positivist Committee, which was an atheistic philosophical society following the ideas of Auguste Comte.  A lawyer, Harrison was politically active and wrote extensively about positivism and Comte.
• Langdon C. Stewardson - Stewardson was a challenge to track down.  Indeed, his politically and socially active wife was more immediately searchable via Google.  However, Stewardson did eventually emerge in the more obscure sites of academic journals and web archives.  He served (1898) as Chaplain of Lehigh University.  In 1901, he was President of Hobart College (then an institution reserved for young men only) and a contributor to the International Journal of Ethics.  (Adler served on the editorial board of the IJE for many years.)

One lecture in this volume that I found to be of particular interest is Adler's "Huxley's Attitude Toward Religion" (pp. 99-122).  I have to confess that I have read from the works of the brothers, Aldous Huxley and Julian Huxley.  I had not, until reading Adler's platform, known of their grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (also known as "Darwin's Bulldog").  While Adler strains at (this) Huxley's newly coined term--agnosticism--I found Huxley's reasoning more congenial to my own thinking, being less encumbered by the idealism that was still the center of Adler's conceptualization of the world.  Having been alerted to (this) Huxley, I have found his style of writing, as did Adler, very much to my taste, and his thinking even more so--since Huxley wrote to be accessible to the lay reader.  

Adler refers specifically to Huxley's letters to Kingsley and his Romanes lecture, both available for download from the Internet Archive.

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.   

Ethical Addresses -- Sixth Series Continued

 

Enid Stacy (Widdrington)

The non-Adler articles included in the Sixth Series of Ethical Addresses (1900) were written by Leaders of the Western Societies in Chicago and St. Louis, with the exception of a new voice from England:  Enid Stacy Widdrington.

William M. Salter, founder of the Chicago Society,  provides a platform delivered to multiple Societies in existence at that time (St. Louis, Chicago, and Philadelphia):  "The First Thing in Life," pp. 1-16.  He also provided a set on two "opposing" analyses of Walt Whitman:  "The Great Side of Walt Whitman" (pp. 121-144) and "The Questionable Side of Walt Whitman" (pp. 145-166) as well as lecture on "The New Militarism" (pp. 85-104).  The latter lamented the rising pressure from religious and economic leaders to the arm the US in anticipation of greater involvement in expansionist actions.

Walter L. Sheldon, founder of the St Louis Society, contributed a two-part summary of a series of eight lectures originally titled "The Bible from the Standpoint of the Higher Criticism" as well as a single platform--"Why Prosperity Does Not Always Bring Happiness" (pp. 167-186).  NB:  As gloomy as the latter may sound, Sheldon's recommendation is to be more temperate in one's expectations.  "Money can buy a certain degree of happiness," Sheldon says, "But money cannot guarantee happiness."

The new voice that Enid Stacy (Widdrington) provides for Ethical Addresses is the experienced voice of a British activist and lecturer.  She provides an interesting history of the issues arising from the strategic importance of the southern tip of Africa to colonial commercial and military ventures.  Widdrington's clear and detailed recital of the history of settlement and government in southern Africa point, at the time of a rebellious war in that area, to the role of the British government in making peace impossible.  Her lecture on "The Moral Issues of the Transvaal Question" leads ultimately to an expression of hope for a British victory, but one which is worthy of the higher values of her countrymen:  

The only kind of British supremacy I care for is that my country may lead the world, not in territorial expansion, military strength or commercial greatness, but in the purity and honor of its government, the happiness of its citizens, the high character and ennobling influence of its civilization. If with these qualities, and by means of them, comes imperial expansion, well and good. It will mean that countries are attracted to our flag by respect for our laws and desire for our protection. If we degrade the higher and nobler elements in our civilization by love of power, greed for gold and the desire to outstrip trade rivals, such supremacy is not worth fighting for.

The lecture was given on November 12, 1899, at the Philadelphia Society, two months into the Second Boer War, which did not end until May 31, 1902.

Adler Lectures in Series Six

Helen Goldmark Adler

The Sixth Series of Ethical Addresses (1900) includes two platforms by Felix Adler.  The first, "The Spiritual Meaning of Marriage" (pp. 17-36), was originally presented on January 26, 1896, at Carnegie Hall.  As was usual at the time, the New York Times reported the gist of the speech, a lovely paean to the mutual support offered, one to another, by husband and wife, as they live in an Ethical marriage:

Man says to woman, 'Be thou my judge.'  Woman says to man, 'Do thou, by the influence of thy mind and nature upon mine, aid me to ever broader and wiser standards.'

My role here is not to be critical of progressive 19th century standards in the 21st century, but to look at the bibliographic history associated with this text.  In that role, I note that a typescript of this platform exists in the NYSEC-AEU archives and differs slightly from the published text.  I leave it to other scholars to consider the differences as reported and published.

The second Adler lecture, "The Teachings of Jesus in the Modern World" (pp. 105-120), was presented on Easter, April 2, 1899.  This platform fares better in the 21st century as it points to four areas in which the "Modern World" of 1899 also appreciated the teachings of Jesus:  

1. Do not do evil to do good:  " . . . [I]t is wrong in principle and disappointing, so far as the result goes, to fight the devil with fire; to try to defeat the evildoer by using his own weapons; meeting fraud with fraud and violence with violence" (pp. 111-112).
2. All humans have worth:  " . . . [I]n contrast to arguments drawn from so-called Darwinism and aristocratic pride, we shall not forget the moral equality that underlies the diversity of gifts and talents" (p. 116).
3. Love one another:  ". . . [T]he higher and better kind of love, the spiritual love, it is in our power to create in ourselves and ever again to recreate. The desire to help to uplift the other is the indestructible safeguard of that love" (p. 119).
4. In hope is our renewal:  "This is, in effect, what he says: that in the nobler inspirations of man there never is occasion to despair; that in things of the spirit there is no such word as fail; that, however low a human being may sink, it is always within his ability to rise again. There is this invincible power of renewal, of being born again, of beginning at any moment the new and the better life" (p. 120.).

Interestingly, I can find no evidence that the New York Times reported on this platform despite ample coverage of Christian services on the same day.

Ethical Addresses - Series Five

 Series Five (published 1899) was added to the Bibliography more than a year ago, but I had to set further work on the project aside while I undertook other duties on behalf of the American Ethical Union.  I am grateful, at last, to return to this much loved project and my hope to compile a Bibliography fit to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Ethical Culture on May 15, 2026.

The fifth volume of Ethical Addresses adds one new writer to the table of contents (Percival Chubb) and includes several lengthy studies that extend for two or three articles.  These include Adler's work on the discipline of children, Salter on the value of the Bible, and Sheldon on the plan of the Sunday School.  Individual contributions come from Adler ("The Ethical Culture Society as the Meeting Ground of Jew and Gentile"), Salter ("A New Nation and a New Duty"), as well as Chubb ("The Conservative and Liberal Aspects of Ethical Religion").

Chubb was a founding member of the Fabian Society in London and soon after a member of the Ethical Society there.  When he immigrated to the US, he eventually became an associate Leader for the New York Society for Ethical Culture (1897 - 1910) and then senior Leader for the Ethical Culture Society of St. Louis (1911 - 1932).  After his retirement, he served as President of the American Ethical Union from 1934 to 1939.  

Looking for a copyright-free picture of Chubb, I did run across this blog post about his early efforts to reform the "comic supplement," about which, he opined, there is "no single influence that is poisoning America at the fountain sources more than the so-called comic supplement.” [“The ‘Comic’ Nuisance,” The Outlook, March 6, 1909, pp. 527-529.  Authorship is not attributed in the journal itself, so it is yet to be confirmed.]

Adler's work, The Punishment of Children, was published by Abingdon Press (New York, 1920) as one volume.  It is available as a reprint from multiple publishers through Amazon.  Scanned copies are available for free download from Project Gutenberg as well as from Google Books.