Ethical Addresses - Series Four (Still) - 1898

W. Sanford Evans

Series Four of Ethical Addresses, published in 1898, starts out with a problem.  That is, my source for these volumes, the Internet Archive, has all 21 volumes of the series, "Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation."  This particular volume skips directly from the table of contents to page 2 of the text, omitting the first page of William M. Salter's platform:  "The Cause of Ethics."  A better scan of the volume is needed.  (No doubt this statement will be repeated at we progress through the Bibliography.)

Several new authors appear in the Fourth Series:  S. Burns Weston, W. Sanford Evans, F. W. Foerster,  and Morris Jastrow, Jr.  I have already written a bit about the "adventures" of tracking down information about Foerster and the bibliographic rabbit trails that I followed in learning more about him.  The adventures continue.

• S. Burns Weston (1855 - 1936) appears in the Bibliography as the publisher of Ethical Addresses through the eleventh volume.  Weston helped found the Philadelphia Ethical Society in 1885 and served there as clergy leader.  He edited the International Journal of Ethics from its founding in 1890 until 1914.  An editorial in Ethics, the successor to IJE, sets the founding date in 1888 and actually identifies Ethical Addresses as the source of the later versions of the journal. [Singer, M. G. “Editorial: The History of Ethics.” Ethics 98, no. 3 (1988): 441–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2380959.]  Ethics is, according to Singer, "the oldest continuously published philosophical journal in the English language"--and it all started with Adler, Weston, and the "Ethical Union."
• W. Sanford Evans (1869 - 1949) was later known as a conservative politician in Canada.  According to Bradley J. Milne, Sandford's "early years were marked by success as a philanthropist, journalist, platform performer and lecturer for the Society of Ethical Culture in New York." (U Manitoba MA History Thesis, 1997).  His youthful platform on "Moral and Spiritual Education of Children" was a theme that he repeated in his later political career, i.e., that public schools should also teach ethics.
• Morris Jastrow, Jr. (1861 - 1921) was a noted scholar of "Oriental religions."  An assistant lecturer at Rodef Sholem Synagogue (Philadelphia), he resigned both from his position there and from Judaism in December 1886.  When he spoke at the Philadelphia Ethical Society in April, 1897, he was a librarian at the University of Pennsylvania and soon to become known as the author of numerous works on ancient and modern religions of the Middle East and other subjects.

In order to account for the historical perspective now gained from seeking more information about these contributors to Ethical Addresses, I have begun adding the appropriate source references to the Bibliography.  While my main focus (for now) remains on completing the catalog of the twenty one volumes of Ethical Addresses, I can already see a wealth of new (to me) resources coming to the fore.

An unexpected footnote in Ethical Culture history

Young Einstein

The Fourth Series of Ethical Addresses, published in 1898, has led me on one of those delightful excursions that researchers sometimes take into unexpected territory.  I had wanted to find out more about F. W. Foerster, whom Felix Adler introduced, in the Third Series:

Dr. Wilhelm Foerster has been created the first International Secretary. He is the son of Prof. Foerster to whom I have just referred, and the editor of the German weekly paper, Ethische Kultur. He was recently arrested and condemned on the charge of lèse-majesté for an article which appeared in his paper, and was confined for several months in a fortress. He was liberated on the eve of the assembling of the Congress at Zurich, and was enabled to be present at our opening meeting. He intends, as I understand, to give his whole life to the propaganda of the Ethical Movement. (p. 139)

 "Prof. Foerster" was Wilhelm Julius Foerster, a German astronomer (1832-1921) who was active in the German Society for Ethical Culture (GSEC).  Dr. [Friedrich] Wilhelm Foerster (1869-1966), was, like his father, an opponent of German militarism and active, for a while, in GSEC.  As, it seems, was Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

Trying to find out more about Foerster fils (both father and son are referred to as Wilhelm, although the son is also referred to as Friedrich, so I've resorted to an archaic solution), I ended up finding out more about Albert Einstein's relationship to Ethical Culture.  I had assumed he was merely acquainted with Adler, perhaps socially, perhaps in some social justice work.  I knew that he had, at some point, said:  “Without ‘ethical culture’ there is no salvation for humanity.”  But I did not realize that he had had a stronger connection to Ethical Culture while still in Europe.  Searching for Foerster fils, I ran across a self-published article on Yumpu that added to the picture:  "Tracing Back the Sources of Albert Einstein's Political Convictions: The Movement for Ethical Culture."  The author, Karlheinz Steinmüller, PhD, is Wissenschaftlicher Direktor at z-Punkt, The Foresight Company, and based in Berlin.  Steinmüller's notes on the article (published 2012 on Yumpu) say that it was written in 1992 but remained, to his knowledge, the most extensive look at Einstein and EC up to that point.  The article itself can be read for free and downloaded as a PDF, but it is somewhat corrupted, with a number of typographical errors (scannos?).  

Steinmüller's article posits a hypothesis--"Albert Einstein was influenced during his most formative years to a great extent by a circle of persons who belonged to the Ethical movement."  Of his hypothesis he says:

Two lines for corroboration (not yet proof) are open to us: 1[st] to establish biographical connections between Einstein and the Ethical movement, 2[nd] a comparison of Einsteins (sic) convictions with the aims of the Ethical movement. [Note:  Ordinals printed as superscripts.]

In addressing his hypothesis, Steinmüller refers to the first meeting of the International Ethical Union in Zurich.  Adler's report on that meeting was discussed in our consideration of Series Three.  A more extensive report by Foerster fils is provided in Series Four.  Steinmüller adds more historical context for the meeting and a few biographical tidbits about Adler, Gustav Maiar (a founder of the Swiss Society for Ethical Culture) and "one of the key persons in Einstein's youth" (p. 3),  and Foerster fils, noting that the latter converted to Catholicism in 1899 and left the ECM.  

The lives and work(s) of these men are all now part of the history of the Ethical Culture Movement and add some texture to those early years.  For the Bibliography, I have to figure out how to cite Steinmueller and regret that my high school German will not be up to the task of looking more deeply at GSEC.  Some additional questions arise:

• Albert Einstein apparently gave a "address" for NYSEC (New York Society for Ethical Culture)--"On the Necessity of Ethical Culture"--January 6, 1951.  Was he present at NYSEC on that date?  Or is this "address" a letter of congratulations to NYSEC on the occasion of its 75th anniversary? Is the original still archived at NYSEC?
• A version of this address seems to be included in Mein Weltbild by Carl Seelig (available in English as Thoughts and Opinions by Albert Einstein).  The publishing history seems likely to be a bit tangled.  Who said bibliographers don't have fun?  
• Algernon Black wrote to Carl Seelig in 1953 about the letter and Einstein's support for NYSEC (A. Black to Carl Seelig, July 17, 1953, Archive of the ETH, HS 304:200) according to Steinmüller. "ETH" in the context of Steinmüller's article appears to be ETH Zurich (in English, with more on Einstein here).  In the meantime, is there a copy of Black's letter in NYSEC archives?  
• Joe Chuman's pitch for his platform on "Einstein Religion" is yet another bibliographic trail to follow.  Was the platform recorded?  Is there a written text published somewhere already?  Are there plans to make the text--in whatever format--accessible to Ethicals?  
• Multiply those questions by all of our Leaders whose platforms are now more often recorded than written.  Just saying.

And so back to F. W. Foerster and his report on that first IEU meeting in Zurich.  The report is lengthy but still incomplete.  Foerster promised more information in Series Five, but, alas, did not remain a member of the Movement long enough to keep that promise.  I have to promise more discussion of his report next week. Cue dramatic musical chord.

Ethical Addresses - Series Three - 1897

The Third Series of Ethical Addresses (1897), now included in the Bibliography for Ethical Culture, provides more diversity in topics than previous issues.  Again, we have contributions from Felix Adler, William M. Salter, W. L. Sheldon, and M. M. Mangasarian.  In addition, we have an apparent lay leader from the New York Society (Alfred R. Wolff) and two women lay leaders from St. Louis (Lydia Avery Coonley) and Chicago (Mary J. Wilmarth).  I have added the new authors to the List of Authors (at the end of the Bibliography).  Can anyone provide more information about Wolff, Coonley, and Wilmarth?

My interest in the content as history of thought in Ethical Culture was piqued by entries on women's roles, with Sheldon trying to hold the line and Coonley and Wilmarth pushing it forward.  I also found the emphasis on international issues (Salter on Venezuela and Mangasarian on Armenia) reflective of a more practical application of ethics on a broader scale.  Adler's platform--"The Monroe Doctrine and the War Spirit in the United States"--is, I believe, an important statement about Ethical Culture's emphasis on the culture of peace as well as its dependence on democracy as an aspirational ideal.  Sheldon's platform on literature ("The Good and Bad Side of Novel Reading") is a precursor of several more of his platforms using literature as a basis for discussing ethics.  The interest in this particular article comes from his condemnation of some literary greats and at least one innovator as well as, for me, for his insistence on reality over fantasy.  His seems to be an approach to literature as lessons for life rather than an appreciation of the chance to find new horizons (and, perhaps, new perspectives on life's lessons).

Adler's report on "The Recent Congress of American and European Ethical Societies at Zurich" holds many interesting nuggets of information about the (then) still new Ethical Culture Movement in Europe.  (The ECM was already celebrating its twentieth anniversary in the US, an event also recorded in this volume.)  This particular report was delivered as a platform to the New York Society (October 18, 1896), so it is less formal than later reports but very reflective of Adler's own vision and interpretation.  From the beginning references to watch-towers to the ending questions of purpose and intention, Adler description is both lyrical and packed with information about these early days of the Movement.  He found three important outcomes of the Congress:  the formation of an international organization to bind the European and American Ethical Societies together (called the International Ethical Union, with Wilhelm Foerster as the International Secretary); the decision to establish a training college for Ethical Culture Leaders in Switzerland; to move beyond the essential ideas of Ethical Culture to Ethical action, or "practical philanthropy."  Adler gave strong endorsement to the "corner-stone of the Ethical Movement" in this Program (called a Manifesto by the delegates to the Congress) from the Congress:

The prime aim of the Ethical Societies is to be of advantage to their own members. The better moral life is not a gift which we are merely to confer upon others; it is rather a difficult prize which we are to try with unwearying and unceasing effort to secure for ourselves. The means which are to serve to this end are: first, the close contact into which our associations bring us with others having the same purpose in view; second, the moral education and instruction of the young in the ethical principles, which in their foundations are independent of all dogmatic presupposition; third, guidance for adults in the task of moral self-education. (p. 144)

The cornerstone is not, of course, the whole building, but the Program/Manifesto goes further to speak of involvement in the "the great social questions of the day," efforts to "obtain a more humane existence," "resistance to wrong and oppression" (to be considered "a sacred duty"), and other principles.  Noteworthy among them:  

We demand for woman opportunity for the fullest development of her mental and moral personality, and realizing that her personality is of equal worth with that of man, we pledge ourselves, as far as we are able, to secure the recognition of this equality in every department of life. (p. 146)

Is there a copy of that Manifesto somewhere in our Archives?  Is it included in its entirety in this platform address?  We know that Adler did not sign the later Humanist Manifesto I, but his endorsement of this one seems noteworthy. 

The Third Series did not present any new bibliographic challenges to me, but it did raise the question of copyright.  There will be many copyright questions associated with the entries of the Bibliography as we go forward, but the question of who owns the copyright to the Bibliography itself has been asked.  The answer is easy enough.  I do.  All rights reserved.  For now.  I may eventually change those rights to a Creative Commons license, but I am also considering shifting the copyright over to the American Ethical Union.  Given that this is a work in progress, I would like members of the Ethical Culture Movement to have access to the work as it progresses for their use in study, contemplation, Ethical action, and so on as the work continues.  As I (and others) document our shared heritage, we can decide together how best to protect this work from unwanted change or commercial exploitation.  Your thoughts are welcome.

Ethical Addresses, Series Two (1896) Part 2

The overall content of Series Two of Ethical Addresses is moving in the direction of more specific ethical issues and more precise framing of Ethical Culture rather than the broader philosophical interest of the First Series.  One essay that caught my eye was, again, from M. M. Mangasarian:  "Our Besetting Sins."  I wrote about this platform elsewhere, so I won't extend the discussion here except to point out that statements of that period continue to have relevance in the present even if only to provide a new perspective for our current thinking.  

Adler's platform, "Consolations," can also be found in this volume.  His description of the usual consolations offered in the face of death--universality of death, sympathy for loss, time's healing hand--woke within me the recollection of those consolations in facing the loss of my late husband.  Adler's clear and objective rejection of those consolations as having any real healing power made me weep.  He continued, however, to speak of compassion for and duty toward others and the functional utility of action as a source of healing (and consolation).  The thoughts that our lost loved ones live on within us brings a feeling of awe and, yes, some healing as well.  Adler ends this platform, apparently the end of a year-long series of platforms, thusly:

           The great mistake we make is that we do not look
upon our friends in the right way while they are still
alive and present with us. We cannot think of them
rightly when they are gone, if we do not think of them
rightly while they are still living. Often we regard them
as if they were our property. We believe that they exist
for the sake of our happiness, though we admit that we
also exist for the sake of theirs. But happiness is an
ambiguous term which easily becomes misleading. We
should look upon our beloved with more of awe. Their
true ministry is to be for us Revealers of the Divine, to
teach us to estimate rightly the things that are worth
trying for and the things that are not, to help us to become
equal to the standard of our best performance, and
to grow into our own true selves. And the world is not
dark when they have departed, because what they have
revealed remains. Their influence remains. The light
of their countenance still shines upon us. And to walk
always in that light, to live in the spirit of the holy dead
—worthy of them—is the supreme consolation.  [Emphasis added.]

As is often the case with Adler, it's difficult to excerpt the core idea without bringing along a fair amount of rhetorical flourish.  I'm not so sure about "Revealers of the Divine" or "holy dead," but Adler seems to have gotten well within range of something that qualifies as a consolation for such loss.  And, of course, I wept. (What?  Tears can heal, too.)

The Bibliography for Ethical Culture is now online!  I have placed it in my own Google Drive for the time being.  I continue to seek partners in this work.  In the meantime, I gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and advice given by Louise Jett (St. Louis Society for Ethical Culture) as I have taken some of the initial steps in this project.

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. 

Ethical Addresses - First Series - 1895

 

Ethical Addresses was a serial publication presented by the American Ethical Union.  The AEU was formed in 1889, 13 years after Felix Adler's Founding Address, which established the New York Society for Ethical Culture.  In those intervening years, three additional Societies were founded in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago.  The Leaders for each of these three newer Societies apprenticed under the supervision of Adler in New York and then set out to found their own Societies in those cities.  In 1889, they formed the Union, and in 1895 they began assembling an annual series of volumes which collected selected platforms (speeches) given by the Leaders.  

The First Series, published in 1895, included three essays each by Felix Adler (New York) and William M. Salter (Philadelphia) and two essays each by Walter L Sheldon (St. Louis) and M. M. Mangasarian (Chicago).  The topics tend to cluster around general questions of religion and philosophy and where Ethical Culture fits in.  I have yet to read all of these essays, but I expect there will be some interesting variations among the different Leaders' viewpoints and our thinking in the present day.  I personally find it interesting to consider where we began, with the emphasis on idealism, and how we've changed, with more emphasis on pragmatism.  Naturalism in one form or another does seem to have endured.  

Two essays struck me as different from the others, so I've read them first.  One, by Adler, was "Prayer and Worship."  I rather expected that Adler would have condemned both prayer and worship as futile, there being no evidence of a deity and Adler himself urging us to put creed aside for the sake of common action.  His Founding Address, moreover, had emphasized that our Ethical Culture meetings would be "simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism."  In the same address, he added:

We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. [Emphasis added.]

I have seen nothing in any Ethical Culture Society meeting that I have attended (so far) that sounds like prayer or smacks of worship.  Adler surprised me in this platform.  He did find some space for both prayer and worship--as functions--within Ethical Culture, and what he came up with might even have qualified as religious experience to John Dewey.  In any case, I found it a lovely way to accept those concepts into Ethical Culture.

The second essay, by Mangasarian, is an interesting and sometimes practical discussion of "Teaching and Teachers."  Coming from a family of teachers and having some experience in the area myself, I was curious to see what Magasarian had to say.  As expected, there were some attitudes that fit in well with the period, including comments about women teachers and their need to be, well, more ladylike.  He did, however, make some very astute comments about both the value of education and the degree to which informal behaviors become lasting influences.  I'll probably read it again for the sake of its relevance to current discussions about education, the role of parents, and the influence of religion and politics on a, presumably, areligious and apolitical institution.

With this First Series came an immediate set of questions related to bibliographic style and the logistics of the project.

• Ethical Addresses is a serial.  It is an annual collection of speeches by different authors.  There is no named editor.  I am using the Chicago style for bibliographic entries, citing both the individual volumes of the series and each essay title as separate entries. 

         Author Last Name, First M. "Chapter or Essay Title." In Book Title, edited by First M. Last Name, page range.     Place of Publication: Publisher, date.

• Ethical Addresses is long out of copyright.  The entire series has been "digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation."  All of the volumes are available in the Internet Archive (archive.org), some from multiple scan sources.  The First Series can be seen here.  The entire volume can be downloaded in PDF and other formats to read offline.
• It is possible with current technology to extract individual articles from the original volume.  I have, for my personal use, extracted both the Adler and Mangasarian articles discussed above so that I can look at them more closely to refer to them in my writing.  I would be interested to discuss the ethics of reposting those or other articles on a different website might be.  
• The First Series (and others in the series) has been reprinted from the Internet Archive scans by Leopold Classic Library and can be ordered on Amazon and other sources.

Next week I hope to have found a home for the bibliography so that others can use it as a resource.  Each iteration will be dated to reflect its current status (later dates will reflect more entries having been added).  I have begun adding the entries for Series Two; One and Three are completed; the background research on authors and subjects may take a bit more time to complete.

 

Setting a goal for 2026

The Ethical Culture Movement will celebrate its sesquicentenniel anniversary on May 15, 2026.  That will be 150 years since Felix Adler made his Founding Address in 1876.  I expect there will be some wonderful celebrations, remembering the past, applauding our accomplishments, toasting the future.  My own interests lie more in the area of the body of writing that Ethical Culture has inspired.  It's not, I think, a very large corpus.  What there is seems quite scattered, even lost to common view.  I suspect, however, that there is quite a bit more than seemed initially evident when I became a member of the Ethical Society of Austin just a few years ago, and I have set out to find it.

Whatever I find, I will try to document in this "biblioblog" and in the more formal bibliography of Ethical Culture that I hope to create.  I have in my possession, for example, several volumes of the early EC serial, Ethical Addresses (published 1895-1914).  I have reviewed the contents enough to see that there is quite a bit from our past that has relevance to our present.  I want to make these volumes and their contents more accessible to my fellow members.  I wouldn't mind having more discussions of how things have changed--or stayed the same--in our society and in our Ethical Culture Societies, starting with these same references.  I am hopeful that a bibliography that includes the individual articles (platforms and essays) will both inform and inspire our members in their individual pursuits in Ethical Culture.  

I am also hopeful that others will help contribute to the task of preparing this reference resource, especially by uncovering more pamphlets and publications in the archives of their Societies--or even in the desks and cupboards of their older members, but also in the direct tasks of developing bibliographic entries that, if possible, also point the user toward access.  With our 150th anniversary as a target, we can certainly make a good start on recovering our lost past and securing solid footing for our future.

If you would be interested in a really inspiring scavenger hunt, please leave a comment below.