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Three Types 
 
 of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 of the Past Half Century 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
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 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
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Three Types of 
 
 Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 of the Past Half Century 
 
 BY 
 
 LEO JACOBS 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All rights reserved 
 SfJ 
 
PBINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMEWOA 
 
 COPTMGHT, 1922, 
 
 By the MAOMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and printed. Published May, 1922. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
 y. ;j 
 
TO 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON 
 
 my revered teacher, exemplar, and guide, 
 
 I dedicate this humble effort of 
 
 mine towards the construction 
 
 of a better world. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Practical as distinguished from theoretic ethics is 
 a by-product of the industrial revolution, and one of 
 the new sciences of the second half of the nineteenth 
 century. Like every new science, it stands in need of a 
 terminology of its own. The old terms applicable to 
 theoretic ethics no longer satisfy. Such words as "so- 
 cial," "organic," "solidarity," and even "religious," 
 "good," and "true," require a reinterpretation, if not an 
 altogether new conceptual setting. The development of 
 this new terminology is slow. Meanwhile a word of 
 caution must be sounded by an author who undertakes 
 to work in a new field with tools originally fashioned 
 for a different soil. 
 
 By the term "Religious Ethical Movement," I mean 
 an ethical movement which rests on a theological dogma. 
 The Christian Socialist Movement which is described 
 in the first chapter is but a part of the "Eeligious 
 Ethical Movement." The Jewish Community Centers 
 which are sptringing up about us are another part of the 
 same movement, resting, however, on a somewhat differ- 
 ent theological basis. I use the term "Religious Ethical 
 Movement" rather than "Christian Socialist Move^ 
 ment" as a chapter-title, because the former is more 
 inclusive; and the results which follow from an analy- 
 sis of its principles would therefore hold true not only 
 of Christian Socialism but also of Jewish Eeligious 
 Movements. This title must not, however, be taken to 
 imply that the other practical movements are irrelig- 
 ious. This is a point I wish to stress; for most of us 
 
viii Prefatory Note 
 
 axe all too prone to take tlie usual contrary of a given 
 term for granted. 
 
 This applies to the implication of the term "pure^' 
 in the title "Pure Ethical Movement." It is not in- 
 tended to mean that "The Eeligious Ethical Movement" 
 and "The Social Ethical Movement" are impure in the 
 ordinary sense of the word. Surely those who joia the 
 Ethical Cidture Societies do not regard themselves as 
 alone saintly and all others as less so. In speaking of 
 the Ethical Culture Movement as "The Pure Ethical 
 Movement," I use the word "pure" in its technical 
 sense with no implication that the movement claims a 
 monopoly of the highest virtue. The terminology of 
 practical ethical science is, as was said, in the process 
 of formulation, and the terms used meanwhile are there- 
 fore provisional. The word "pure" in the chapter on 
 "The Pure Ethical Movement" is descriptive of an 
 ethical movement which rests on no theological dogma 
 whatever. 
 
 It must also he understood that what is here set forth 
 about each of the three practical movements commits 
 no one but myself. Their founders and followers may, 
 perhaps, disagree with my interpretations. I offer them 
 as my own. 
 
 A word of appreciation of those who assisted me in 
 the task of sending this work forth to the world must 
 not be omitted. The deepest appreciation is felt by 
 the author for the labor bestowed by Dr. Henry 
 Neumann and Mr. James Gutmann in reading the 
 proof-sheets, and for their invaluable suggestions. 
 Lastly I acinowledge with warm gratitude the efforts 
 of my wife, without whose initiative this work would 
 still be resting as manuscript ia the drawer of my desk. 
 
 Beookltw, E". T. 
 
 January, 1922. Leo Jacobs. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 AMONG English-speaking peoples there have 
 been in progress during the past fifty years 
 three types of ethical reform movements. These 
 aimed at practical and not at merely theoretical ethics. 
 They aimed at conduct and not at theories of conduct. 
 Each of these types has had a free run for at least a 
 generation, and during this period each has developed 
 and perfected its scheme and method, setting forth its 
 ground plan and its propaganda. Time has now come 
 to examine the aim and scope of these reform move- 
 ments, with a view towards determining the chances 
 of success which each type inherently carries by virtue 
 of the principles on which it makes its appeal for a 
 more ethical conduct. A practical ethical movement 
 resembles in this one respect a political movement. 
 Both make an appeal for a certain line of conduct. But 
 the manner of estimating their success in obtaining 
 their object is ascertainable in the one by a resort to 
 the suffrage of the people, a purely a, posteriori process ; 
 in the other by an indirect a, priori process; for there 
 is no direct way of determining the efficiene^ of a con- 
 temporary ethical movement. 
 
 The three types of practical ethical movements must 
 therefore be subjected to an internal criticism, if their 
 efficiency as practical movements is to be determined. 
 This is all the more necessary because in the absence 
 of any other test, the protagonists of each type claim, 
 for one reason or another, the superiority of the one 
 
X Introduction 
 
 favored by them over those favored by others. There 
 are at present hosts of workers in the Religious Ethical 
 Movement, who have certain interests to maintain. 
 Now it is as easy to become a bigot in an ethical as in 
 any other movement, and those who are attached to 
 certain interests often become willing bigots to main- 
 tain them. And by most people the glowing accounts 
 these give of their successful achievements in practical 
 ethical reform, can neither be proved nor disproved in 
 any direct way. To a few only is direct observation 
 possible, and these few are offset by the many who have 
 an interest to maintain. Where it is thus hard to 
 maintain the truth by an appeal to objective facts, re- 
 sort must be had to subjective principles. A thorough 
 analysis of these will reveal the strength and weakness 
 of the types to which they belong and thus also forecast 
 the likelihood of their efficiency in practical affairs. 
 
 Each of the three types of the practical ethical 
 reform movements rests on a different basic principle, 
 from which it derives the greater part of its strength 
 and no small share of its weakness. To set these forth 
 by an analysis of the movements both in their historic 
 developments and in their principles is the object of 
 this work. Whatever positive contribution to practical 
 ethics is to be found herein, has been set forth not 
 as a separate and altogether new thesis — for in a treat- 
 ment of practical ethical reform movements, this 
 would involve, nay necessitate, the formation of a differ- 
 ent and entirely new movement which is not at all 
 necessary — ^but has been embodied in the negative 
 criticisms of the Religious Ethical Movement in Chap- 
 ter I and of the Social Ethical Movement in Chapter 
 II; but more directly in the positive and favorable 
 criticism of the Pure Ethical Movement treated in 
 Chapter III. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Religious Ethical Movement 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Christian Socialism of Maurice .... 1 
 
 II. The New Christian Socialists 15 
 
 (a) The Guild of St. Matthew .... 17 
 
 (b) The Christian Social Union ... 23 
 III. The Present Status of Christian Socialism . . 30 
 
 (a) The Christian Socialist Fellowship . 30 
 
 (b) Christian Socialism from the Univer- 
 
 sity Chair 34 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Social Ethical Movement 
 
 I. The History of the Movement 54 
 
 (a) Its Inspirers and Pioneers .... 54 
 
 (b) Its Institutionalization 61 
 
 (c) The Danger Involved in Institutional- 
 
 ization 71 
 
 II. Its Immanent Idea 83 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Pure Ethical Movement 
 
 I. Its History 106 
 
 II. Its Method of Reform 118 
 
 III. Its Philosophical Implications 129 
 
 (a) Its Attitude Towards Reality ... 129 
 xi 
 
xii Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAOB 
 
 (b) The Value of Such an Attitude To- 
 wards Eeality 140 
 
 TV. The ISI'ature of the Ethical Ideal and Its Historic 
 
 Sources . . . w 150 
 
 V. What Hope for Practical Moral Eeform Can 
 
 We Draw from the Ethical Ideal? .... 166 
 
 Bibliography 175 
 
 Index 183 
 
Three Types 
 
 of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 of the Past Half Century 
 
THREE TYPES OF PRACTICAL 
 
 ETHICAL MOVEMENTS 
 OF THE PAST HALF CENTURY 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 THE KELIGIOUS ETHICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 (I) The Christian Socialism of Maurice 
 
 THE second and third decades of the 19th cen- 
 tury were characterized by tremendous social 
 unrest. They represent a period of transition, 
 political, industrial and economic, which was ushered in 
 with the subsiding of the ISTapoleonic cyclone. The un- 
 rest was universal. To the sighs of the lowest classes of 
 society, centuries old, was added a general unrest that 
 permeated the social mass and threatened to burst the 
 fetters that bound it. 
 
 Though the shackles were everywhere under new 
 strain, these strains were not of the same kind in all 
 places. In England and in America, they were indus- 
 trial and economic; in Italy, in Spain, in Austria, and 
 in Poland they were political. The calm has by no 
 means arrived yet, though the storm has somewhat 
 changed in character. As a result of this unrest some 
 progress was made. In America, slavery was abolished ; 
 and much has been accomplished in England and in 
 
 1 
 
2 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movememts 
 
 Italy, countries whicli were fortunate in the possession 
 of high-minded leaders. 
 
 Despite these achievements there still remains 
 enormous social and industrial unrest to-day. Yet 
 there is a difference between the unrest of to-day and 
 that of the middle of the century. The working class 
 of 1848 felt itself in possession of little power, and 
 that for three reasons: 1. It had as yet little experience 
 in organization and therefore was unable to bring 
 united pressure to bear upon the weakest point of the 
 opposition. 2. It looked upon the opposition party 
 with somewhat of the awe with which the serf looked 
 upon his master. 3. The dignity of labor had not yet 
 been sufficiently established and therefore the working- 
 class did not find itself bold enough to face the employ- 
 ing class as equal faces equal. The unrest expressed 
 itself therefore intermittently, breaking out here and 
 there, often with volcanic intensity. 
 
 The unrest of to-day is characterized by just the 
 opposite marks. To-day the working class is in pos- 
 session of the consciousness of a tremendous power — 
 a power secured by effective and experienced organiza- 
 tion, and it no longer feels any of that reverence toward 
 the upper class which used to serve as a deterrent prin- 
 ciple in its opposing attitudes to the employing group. 
 In addition, the increased comforts with which modem 
 inventions have blessed even the very poor, have filled 
 up somewhat the gap between the two classes and helped 
 to raise the contestajits to a nearly similar level. The 
 battles between the industrial classes to-day are there- 
 fore more masterful. The parties are always on the 
 qui vive, and are ever preparing in times of industrial 
 peace for the trying times of industrial war. The 
 clashes therefore when they do come are like those 
 which occur when Greek meets Greek. 
 
The Beligious Ethical Movement 3 
 
 It was, however, only slowly and gradually that the 
 inequality in the fighting equipment of the two classes 
 was removed. In the history of the removal of this 
 inequality, the Religious Ethical Movement plays a 
 great part. It has helped to match the combatants, and 
 has also tried to parry their blows; and like the Red 
 Cross Societies on the battlefield, it has endeavored to 
 assuage the wounds after they were once made. To 
 trace the history of its activity we must go back to the 
 Reform Bill of 1832. 
 
 The Refonn Bill of 1832 enfranchised the middle 
 class inhabiting the newly arisen manufacturing cities. 
 But the workers in the factories and the sweaters in 
 the shops still reonained in a condition of subserviency. 
 They were subject to the aristocracy of wealth which 
 is even more distasteful than subjection to a feudal 
 aristocracy of birth. The feudal lord was at least 
 solicitous of the condition of his underlings, and a sense 
 of undefined duty moved him to take under his pro- 
 tection his lowly tenants. E'ot so was it with the new 
 aristocracy. The moneyed aristocrat owing his wealth 
 to the exploitation of laborers to whom he was bound 
 by no feudal ties was more ruthless than the feudal 
 lord. He was more self-centered, more self-flattering, 
 more boastful of his energy and resources. 
 
 This attitude of the captain of industry was bound 
 to bring about a spirit whose philosophy of life was 
 expressed in the saying, "Each for himself and 
 the devil take the hindmost." This extreme individ- 
 ualism felt no duties towards others, nor scruples 
 about means. It rested, in short, on a lower moral 
 plane than did the fuedalism which it supplanted. 
 No wonder that men like Carlyle and Ruskin detested 
 it to the utmost and with prophetrlike vehemence called 
 for a return of the old feudal order. The new was 
 
4 Thre& Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 evidently worse than the old. Human emotions seemed 
 to have dried up during the transition from the one 
 to the other. The moneyed aristocrat had neither pity 
 nor love; neither the fatherly anxiety of the feudal 
 lord, nor the prudent selfishness which characterized 
 the southern slave owner. 
 
 Oarlyle, apostle of paternalism, abhorred strongly 
 this type and blamed the individualistic system for 
 giving it birth. Not knowing how to turn the new 
 individualism back to the humane channels from which 
 it sprang, he came to hate individualism which was 
 responsible for the new order. Tennyson had not yet 
 written the lines : 
 
 "The old order ehangeth yielding place to new, . . . 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world," 
 
 and Darwin had not yet propounded the new truth. 
 Carlyle therefore could see no way out of the difficulty 
 except by going back to the old. He lived in an age 
 of transition and not being able to go with the current, 
 he undertopk to buffet it. His work is an apotheosis 
 of Feudalism. He says, "Let the merely commercial 
 contract between man and man be dissolved, and let the 
 old, feudal, domestic, yea even if it were serf-like rela- 
 tion be restored." Carlyle had no other plan of 
 redemption. 
 
 Carlyle was the prophet of the Ideal Order. He 
 stood for the German notion of law, a rather abstract 
 concept which he borrowed from German Philosophy. 
 The concrete seemed to his idealistic temperament 
 somewhat polluted and corrupt, and to stand much in 
 the relation which the concrete particulars of Plato 
 stood in with regard to the Ideas. Carlyle thus de- 
 spised the concrete. He could not tolerate any aber- 
 ration from the ideal even in the social sphere. Now 
 
The Beligious Ethical Movement 5 
 
 the sphere of social economics is the most concrete of 
 all the spheres of life, and the application of the ideal 
 order of Law for which Carlyle stood to this sphere 
 seemed at that time perhaps as incongruous as does 
 at present the application of Christian Science to a 
 person suffering from physical ills on his sick bed. But 
 to Carlyle this was the only way of redemption from 
 the social and industrial ills of the times. He abhorred 
 any other plan; for he believed in no other. 
 
 The redemption which Carlyle failed to see was, 
 however, perceived in a quarter which Carlyle was, to 
 be sure, acquainted with, but which he utterly despised. 
 That quarter was the Church. Now the Church has 
 ever been the institution in which the ideal is made 
 concrete and in which it is particularized. In it, the 
 Great Unknown is clothed with a particular personality 
 and made perceptible to the senses ; and even the Great 
 Beyond is particularized into Heaven and Hell. It 
 was this institution, so adept in the art of particulariza- 
 tion, that now stepped into the arena and applied its 
 methods to the social and industrial difficulties of the 
 time. In this institution the concrete affairs of the 
 world are given a place in the grand mosaic of life, and 
 the new conditions which Carlyle's ideal order could 
 not arrange in that mosaic, were embodied in it by a 
 churchman, Frederick Denison Maurice, a contempo- 
 rary of Carlyle. It was Maurice who first applied to 
 the new concrete industrial problems the religious 
 machinery which was by nature so well adapted for 
 dealing with the concrete. Maurice was persuaded that 
 in Christianity alone lay social salvation. 
 
 Carlyle and Maurice represent two different types. 
 To contrast the one with the other, is to contrast the 
 abstract German Philosophy of Eeason with the con- 
 crete practical English Philosophy of sense which loved 
 
6 Thre& Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 to deal with particulars. It is with concrete particular 
 social endeavors that we find Maurice connected at all 
 times. 
 
 In 1848 the condition of the laboring classes was 
 deplorable. Strangely enough, it was the class most re- 
 cently enfranchised, the industrial merchants who had 
 been enfranchised in 1832, that now were the oppres- 
 sors of the laboring classes and opposed their enfran- 
 chisement. Kingsley's "Yeast" and "Alton Locke" 
 give by no means exaggerated pictures of the conditions. 
 The sweaters in the shops, the workers in the mines and 
 factories werB no better off after 1832 than before it. 
 They were literally enslaved bodily and mentally. The 
 laboring classes looked back to 1832 when Parliamen- 
 tary legislation removed the political disability of the 
 middle class ; and copying the political program of that 
 class they likewise sought by legislative enactment to 
 better their own circumstances. They put their trust 
 in a freer charter, and for a long time after 1832 Char- 
 tist agitation was the propaganda of the working class. 
 For many years occasional riots and conflagrations in 
 various localities in England were part of their policy. 
 
 By 1848 the laboring classes, who for years had seen 
 their hope in Chartism, began to lean towards Social- 
 ism ; and Socialism had by that time assumed a political 
 aspect. The social and political movements had 
 "coalesced, and the agitation for new reforms became 
 thereby more threatening. This threat took a definite, 
 though a veiled forin in April, 1848, when the monster 
 petition of the Chartists estimated to contain a million 
 signatures, was presented to the Parliament. It was 
 generally supposed that the implied threat would be 
 carried out with riot and revolution in case Parlia- 
 ment failed to comply. England was really frightened ; 
 but the lethargic clergy did not move. 
 
The Beligwus Ethical Movement 7 
 
 Those who looked upon the times impartially, and 
 not from the viewpoint of a class, felt alike the wrongs 
 of the laborers and the inadequacy of their demands 
 for a Parliamentary reform. They were desirous to 
 avoid bloodshed and felt that something ought to be 
 done. Chief among this group was Maurice, the son 
 of a Unitarian minister who shared with his father 
 and sisters the community-work which circumstances 
 called forth during the period of his youth. The ex- 
 perience he had gained then helped him now, in his 
 manhood; to tackle more confidently the problems 
 which gave rise to Chartism. He was ably seconded by 
 Kingsley and Ludlow. This group of three set about to 
 mend matters in a way that seemed to them most likely 
 to succeed. Their efforts were heroic and their indefat- 
 igable zeal resembled that of Mazzini in his efforts for 
 Italian unity. These high-minded men knew the 
 futility of the Chartist proposal to bring about eco- 
 nomic reform by mere Parliamentary fiat, and urged 
 strongly against it; but not by forceful measures did 
 they manifest their objection to Chartism. 
 
 Theirs was an educational propaganda carried on 
 through a periodical called Politics for the People, 
 which Maurice and Kingsley had established and to 
 which the latter was the chief contributor under the 
 nom de plume of Parson Lot. The aim of this period- 
 ical was to bring about a better feeling between the 
 upper class and the working class. Politics for the 
 People combated successfully the Chartist's fallacy 
 of relying on an act of Parliament to bring about a 
 moral reform and to stem greed and selfishness by a leg- 
 islative fiat. They taught that only by Christian prac- 
 tices can human relations be amicably established. The 
 articles written in Politics for the People stirred 
 up vehement opposition from those who were bene- 
 
8 Three Types of Practiced Ethical Movements 
 
 fited by the status quo, but they had, nevertheless, the 
 effect of bringing about a better feeling between the 
 upper class and the working men, some of whom be- 
 came closely attached to Maurice and to his concilia- 
 tory policy. This was exactly the object for which 
 Maurice's movement was started, namely, the removal 
 of the barrier which existed between laborers and 
 employers. As early as 1840 he writes: "What edu- 
 cation can avail best to put down Chartism? By 
 confuting its unrighteous pretensions, by satisfying 
 its righteous demands. This is the education which 
 the people of England want." For about two years 
 this education was spread by Politics for the People. 
 At the end of this period, the more sensible men 
 at least began through his efforts to fraternize with 
 workmen in education, in amusement and in organiza- 
 tion. Opposition to Maurice's propaganda soon mani- 
 fested itself. He was accused of being a Socialist ; and 
 the accusation came not only from his lay brethren but 
 from his fellow-clergymen as well. The term Socialism 
 at that time implied also atheism and a disregard for 
 moral laws and consequently violence and bloodshed. 
 The English clergy, while not organized as solidly as 
 the continental Neo-catholic clergy in opposition to 
 Socialism, were none the less as strongly opposed to it, 
 and mostly through ignorance of what Socialism 
 stood for. 
 
 The clergy were infected with an aristocratic aloof- 
 ness from the laboring classes of whose economic cir- 
 cumstances, which were by far more pressing than their 
 spiritual needs, they knew nothing. They lived in that 
 careless indifference to the actual worldly condition of 
 their flocks which made their mission as pastors a 
 mockery. The estrangement between that Christian 
 life of the clergy and the economic life of the laboring 
 
The Religicms Ethical Movement 9 
 
 classes meant, in short, that the life of the latter was 
 unchristian, and that of the former unpractical. ISo 
 one appreciated this more fully than Maurice who had 
 h«en brought up amidst his father's practical schemes 
 of social reform. Even before the ripening of the 
 Chartist petition he writes: "The necessity of an 
 English theological reformation as the means of 
 averting an English political revolution, has been more 
 and more pressing my mind." 
 
 To win the support of the clergy to his view he began 
 a new periodical called the Christian Socialist. It was 
 intended to bring about a better understanding between 
 the clergy and the laboring classes, just as Politics for 
 the People was designed to bring about a better under- 
 standing between the upper class and the working peo- 
 ple. Its whole tenor is a protest against "unsocial 
 Christians and against unchristian Socialists." All the 
 misery of life is attributed to the unchristian relation 
 between man and man. "Every successful strike," he 
 writes in 1850, "tends to give the workmen a very 
 undue and dangerous sense of their own power and a 
 very alarming contempt for their employer, and every 
 unsuccessful strike drives them to desperate and wild 
 courses." The only open path which leads to a proper 
 relation between man and man in all their dealings, 
 public, private, economic and industrial, is that which 
 leads to the constitution of society on a family basis. 
 "I may talk," he says, "about the Church as a family 
 forever ; if I do not try to show that it can ever under 
 any circumstances fulfill some of the obligations of 
 one, my preaching is a poor thing." 
 
 The central theme of Maurice's social philosophy, 
 the basic principle that underlies all his thoughts is the 
 Fatherhood of God. By tenaciously holding to the 
 Fatherhood idea, he felt that he could inculcate in all 
 
10 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 men the Brotherhood idea, and in this way root out 
 the selfish greed from men's hearts which was respon- 
 sible for the inhumanity manifested in the new indus- 
 trial order. Accordingly he emphasizes it to such an 
 extent that the theological consideration becomes to him 
 the most embracing phase of human life. From it are 
 derived all human institutions; state institutions, edu- 
 cational institutions and family institutions. In his 
 conception of the State he does not start from the rad- 
 ical or popular ground. "I begin," he says, "in the 
 acknowledgment of the divine sovereignty; thence I 
 come to the idea of kings reigning by the grace of God ; 
 This I hold to be the first of political truths historically 
 and the first fundamentally." The same principle he 
 sets forth in regard to the educational question that was 
 troubling Parliament at the time. When the Educa- 
 tional Bill was before Parliament, the question debated 
 was whether the State or the Church was more fitted 
 to undertake national education. Maurice moved by 
 his metaphysical, theological ground-principle presses 
 the view that theology rightly understood as the study 
 of existing facts, was best fitted for the purpose of 
 binding all other studies which form the curriculum 
 of a national system of education. Theology was to 
 serve as the "scientia scientiarum," the science whose 
 business it is to assign to all other sciences their 
 proper place. Sociology and econoroics thus became 
 the mere handmaids of tbeology. 
 
 The close acquaintance and association with working- 
 men which the publication of the two successive period- 
 icals had fostered, led directly to a practical setting 
 forth of a new policy in economic reform. Fixed by the 
 theologic notion of God's fatherhood which cannot be 
 squared at all well with an individualistic system, the 
 Christian Socialists ceased mere literary propaganda 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 11 
 
 and conceived the plan of workingmen's cooperative 
 associations. They pushed tlie scheme by touring the 
 country and by lecturing. They also changed the name 
 of their periodical to Journal of Co-operative Asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 The political economists of the Eicardian school at 
 once felt their field invaded and took swift measures 
 to repel the invaders who, as they thought, came from 
 a foreign province with Christian principles as weapons. 
 What business had theologians with economic prob- 
 lems? Maurice, whose voice was the "ipse dixit" of 
 the group, launched forth with the theory that "Political 
 Economy is not the foundation of morals and politics, 
 but must have them (the Christian Principles) for its 
 foundation or be worth nothing. Competition," he 
 says, "is put forth as the law of the universe. That is 
 a lie. The time is come for us to decree it is a lie by 
 word and deed. I see no way but association for work 
 instead of for strikes. I do not say that the relation of 
 employer and employed is not a true relation. I do not 
 determine that wages may not be a righteous mode of 
 expressing that relation. But at present it is clear 
 that this relation is destroyed, that the payment of 
 wages is nothing but deception." 
 
 Unmindful of the attacks of the economists, the 
 Christian Socialists established workingmen's associa- 
 tions all over England. A group of promoters was 
 formed at first to advise and then to finance these 
 associations. Of these associations many prospered, 
 but many also failed, much to the delight of the Ri- 
 cardians. The failures were due mostly to the mis- 
 trust which sprang up am.ong the workers. 
 
 Education, especially moral education, must be sup- 
 plied if workingmen's associations were not to go down 
 in failure. Maurice and his friends at once came for- 
 
12 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 ward to supply the need. He established a working- 
 men's college where instruction was given in the eve- 
 nings. The faculty numbered men of prominence, and 
 all gave their instruction gratis. The college was a 
 great success, and was the last of the practical schemes 
 of social reform conceived by the early Christia,n 
 Socialists. They had devoted the best part of their 
 lives to social reform and had become old in the ser- 
 vice. At the time of Maurice's death all classes of men, 
 his staunchest opponents among them, acknowledged the 
 greatness of his work. Indeed the comparative calm 
 that settled over the land was acknowledged to be due 
 in the words of Brentano "to the Christian spirit and 
 personal efforts of Maurice and his friends." 
 
 It has sometimes been said that the great social re- 
 former must be possessed not so much of a great truth 
 as of a great enthusiasm for that which he believes to 
 be the truth. In this sense Maurice was a great re- 
 former. For the truth which he enunciated, the 
 Fatherhood idea as applied to industrial relations, is 
 but a half-truth at best. Yet from belief in this truth 
 he never for a moment wavered. On occasions, the 
 singleness of the truth which he believed in made him 
 blind to other truth. While listening for instance to a 
 lecture by Carlyle, he restrained himself with difficulty 
 from jumping from his seat. "I felt throughout" 
 (the lecture), he says, "how much more kind and toler- 
 ant towards the truth in all forms of faith and opinion, 
 he can be and should be, who does in his heart, believe 
 Jesus Christ to be the son of God and that all systems 
 are feeling after Him, in the common center of the 
 world, than Carlyle can ever be while he regards the 
 world as without a center, and the doctrines of Christ's 
 Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection as only one of 
 the mythical vestures in which certain actions, which 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 13 
 
 without sucli a vesture, he secretly knows and confesses 
 to be good-for-nothing abstractions, have wrapt them- 
 selves up." Maurice sought and found a metaphysical 
 basis. "I cannot find," he writes again, "that Carlyle 
 leads us directly to a center ; but I do find that he makes 
 us despair for want of one, and that he expresses the 
 indistinct wailings of men in search of it better than 
 all the other writers of our day. Just as far as I have 
 been able to grasp this belief in a Head of Humanity, 
 just so far the greatest problems of Ethics seem to me 
 to find a solution. . . . This was the rock upon which 
 I felt I could rest. It was a foundation for a universal 
 human society. ... If Christ be really the head of 
 every man, and if he really had taken human fiesh, 
 there is ground for a universal fellowship among men, 
 a fellowship that is itself the foundation of those par- 
 ticular fellowships of the nation and the family which 
 I also consider sacred. It is the business of the Church 
 to assert this ground of universal fellowship; that it 
 ought to make men understand and feel how possible 
 it is for men as men to fraternize in Christ; how 
 impossible it is to fraternize except in Him." Maurice 
 was influenced not by the force of intellect but of faith. 
 He found the key of all his problems, not in an infalli- 
 ble reason but in faitb in the everlasting love of God. 
 Such then is the solution of the economic problems 
 which the new industrialism called into existence. 
 How much better is this than Carlyle's solution? 
 The want of a center, w'hich Maurice deplored in 
 Carlyle, he believed he made good. Christ was the 
 center and only in Him was it possible to fraternize. 
 What was the result ? Those outside of Him could not 
 come into brotherly relations. Maurice not only taught 
 but acted upon this exclusive principle, as for instance, 
 when he refused to work with other Christian sects on 
 
14 Three. Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 the ground of our common Christianity "because to 
 fraternize upon the common elements in sects is an 
 avowal that you fraternize on some other ground than 
 that of our union in Christ." In other words, you must 
 accept the metaphysical basis of Maurice's ethics or 
 he will not enter into ethical relations with you. You 
 must be able to say with him, "Our father who art in 
 Heaven," or you will not be able to cooperate ethically 
 with him in earthly labors. 
 
 This is the conclusion to which a half-truth such as 
 is that of the Fatherhood idea drives. The best indi- 
 cation that the Fatherhood idea as a basis of brother- 
 hood is only a half-truth lies in the fact that it is seK- 
 contradictory. It seeks brotherhood at the start, but 
 at the end it repels it. "He that is not for us is against 
 us" is the conclusion to which every religious ethical 
 movement has come, the moment it digs down to meta- 
 physical rock for its foundation. Only those who are 
 like each other can fraternize. 
 
 An ethics so grounded must become exclusive. Such 
 was the case with the Jewish Ethical System founded 
 on a patriarchal origin. By it, all relations with the 
 gentile who stood without the communion were re- 
 stricted. The wine he touched became impure; and 
 even the dishes he ate from needed purification. The 
 inherent weakness of the Religious Ethical Movement 
 is its exclusiveness — an exclusiveneas which manifests 
 itself chiefly in seeking a basis for ethical conduct, and 
 in not being satisfied with conduct alone. 
 
 Carlyle was not altogether wrong when he called the 
 Christian Socialists mystics. They insisted on a meta- 
 physical foundation for ethical fellowship, instead of 
 giving indefeasible value to ethical conduct regardless 
 of its foundation. The hair-splitting disputant has 
 ever been the most intolerant bigot. It may be rightly 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 15 
 
 charged that the thinking man, the philosopher who 
 looks for final causes, finds it much harder to live in 
 ethical fellowship than the ordinary unsophisticated 
 man who, when satisfied with his fellow's conduct, does 
 not probe to learn its credentials. 
 
 Maurice starts his practical work in offsetting 
 Chartism by appealing to the Fatherhood idea. He 
 next tries to put brotherhood into practice through the 
 formation of cooperative associations and finally finding 
 it necessary to prepare men for brotherhood, he estab- 
 lishes a workingmen's college. This was the scope of 
 Maurice's activity. The scheme was a noble one. In 
 the whole-hearted enthusiasm with which it was en- 
 tered upon, it has rarely been equaled. The ground, 
 however, upon which the scheme was based was insuf- 
 ficient to buoy up this enthusiasm and with the death of 
 its leaders, the movement for a time slumbered. When 
 Christian Socialism was revived it was in a somewhat 
 new setting. 
 
 (II) The New Christian Socialists 
 
 The activity of Maurice and Kingsley in behalf of 
 industrial reform along the lines laid down by Christian 
 Ethics ended in the establishment of a "Workingmen's 
 College" — an acknowledgment that by education alone 
 were men to be equipped for industrial cooperation. 
 This was evidently the conviction of the early Christian 
 Socialists — a conviction to which they arrived in con- 
 sequence of the failure of many of the cooperative 
 associations. But failure was proof to them not that 
 the principle of cooperation had failed, but that the 
 men who entered into it had failings which must first 
 be done away with through education, before the prin- 
 ciple could be applied successfully. 
 
16 Three Types of PradicaZ Ethical Movements 
 
 Here Maurice and his associates left off. It was not 
 from this point, however, that the new Christian 
 Socialists took up the work, after the temporary lull 
 which the Crimean War had put upon all social activ- 
 ity. Ifot long after Maurice's death, Christian Social- 
 ism shook off its slumber and there began a second 
 period of Christian Socialist activity. In every reli- 
 gious movement, we find, first, a period which is given 
 over to the setting forth of principles ; second, a period 
 of disputation which brings out the essence and the 
 contradiction of the principles set forth in the first 
 period. In accordance with this historic truth, the 
 second period of Christian Socialism is a period of dis- 
 putation, during the course of which, the essence and 
 the diflSculties of the principles enunciated by Maurice 
 are strongly contrasted. It thus manifests two opposing 
 views set forth by two opposing parties. Broadly speak- 
 ing, these two opposing parties are represented by two 
 organizations, the Guild of St. Matthew and the Chris- 
 tian Social Union. 
 
 Both these organizations have in common with each 
 other and with the Christian Socialism of Maurice, the 
 protest against the inhumanity and against the selfish- 
 ness of the times. They have in common also the belief 
 that Christian teaching alone is the lever by which the 
 social degradation of the times can be rolled away. But 
 they fail to grasp the significance of the educational 
 movement in which Maurice's work ended, and they 
 entirely neglected it. 
 
 The Guild of St. Matthew and the Christian Social 
 Union fall into differences over the practical signifi- 
 cance of God's Fatherhood as taught by Christ, and over 
 the meaning and emphasis which Christ put upon his 
 doctrines. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement lY 
 
 (a) The Guild of 8t. Matthew 
 
 The Guild, which was founded in 1877 by the Kev. 
 Steward D. Headlam, a pupil of Maurice, identifies 
 Christ's teachings with the teachings of Socialism. 
 He claims that Christ's Kingdom of God is an earthly 
 kingdom and that his reforms were such as are those 
 which Socialism promises to inaugurate: the doing 
 away with diseases and untimely deaths that are the 
 direct outcome of social and economic conditions. Ex- 
 cluding the views of some Socialists upon religion and 
 marriage, the program of the Guild is identical with 
 those of the economic Socialists. They point out that 
 "The works of Christ were all distinctly secular, social- 
 istic works — ^works for health against disease, works 
 restoring beauty and harmony and pleasure where there 
 had been ugliness and discord and misery — works tak- 
 ing care to see that the people were properly fed, works 
 subduing nature to human good, works showing that 
 mirth and joy have a true place in our life here, works 
 also showing that premature death has no place here." ^ 
 
 The Guild of St. Matthew allied itself as far as pos- 
 sible with the Fabian Society which Thomas Davidson 
 founded in London in 1883 but which he abandoned 
 when its program became socialistic. The Guild of 
 St. Matthew and the Fabian Society wage a common 
 war upon society as it is constituted to-day. As allies, 
 the Guild offers its platform to the Socialistic orators 
 and speakers of the Fabian Society, and the Fabian 
 Society opens its Fabian Tracts to the pen of the Gnild. 
 ISTever was the insight of Maurice into human needs 
 more clearly revealed when he chose the name Chris- 
 tian Socialism for his movement, than it was by this 
 union of a Christian organization with a purely Social- 
 > S. D. Headlam — Otiristian Socialism. 
 
18 Three Types of Practical Ethical Mmements 
 
 istic organization. For this union proves that there was 
 something intrinsically valuable in the life of Christ 
 by which both Socialists and Christians were alike at- 
 tracted, no matter what their separate beliefs may have 
 been in regard to the church doctrines that were built 
 upon that simple life. 
 
 There are certain human relations that are unhesi- 
 tatingly approved or condemned by all parties, so that 
 even a child is judge of them and discerns the right 
 and wrong. These are the ordinary dealings between 
 man and man, which conscience in each case approves 
 or disapproves. In the humblest walks of life, in the 
 simple unsophisticated cobbler, we often find the purest 
 forms of moral life. And we find pure forms of moral 
 life among the lowly, assuredly not because nature has 
 made it easy for them to live the moral life — for she 
 has not provided abundantly for them and has not 
 made unnecessary the fierce struggle for existence which 
 has turned almost everywhere men into brutes. The 
 sweat of the simple man's toil and his long hours of 
 labor are indications that competition and hardships 
 are not absent. But purity is here a sort of natural 
 product — as natural a concomitant of life as the blosr 
 som is of the plant's growth. Such was the life of 
 Christ in every particular. We hear of no academic 
 debates between Christian and Socialist questioning 
 and defending the value of Christ's acts. And the acts 
 which Christ performed and which every simple man 
 daily perfoi^s'in the course of his life, in his vocation 
 and amidst his pleasures, in his family and in his com- 
 munal life, are the acts that comprise by far the greatest 
 portion of every man's human life. 
 
 Such acts have unquestioned value. The philoso- 
 pher's stone alone causes the ripple in the calm waters 
 of life where these acts abound; and the confused reflec- 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 19 
 
 tions, that come from the surface thus rippled, do not 
 enable us to recognize the good from the bad. It seems 
 as if it requires intellectual greatness to discern human 
 littleness. Indeed, Mephistophelian intellectual acumen 
 is often guilty of stirring up drowsy human brutish- 
 ness. In the sphere of conduct it is more true than 
 elsewhere that Thought sunders and that Life unites. 
 
 iKTowhere is this more clearly seen than in the conse- 
 quences flowing from the life of Christ as compared 
 with those flowing from his supposed metaphysical 
 thoughts. The life of Christ has united millions and 
 passed muster for two thousand years through the test 
 of various ethical systems, while the supposed thoughts 
 of Christ, belabored with metaphysical formulae accu- 
 mulating for centuries, have separated millions and have 
 never received the sanction of other ethical systems. 
 The advent of the Church with its dogma and rules has 
 heaped confusion upon confusion. Christian and 
 Socialist are never more united than in their approval 
 of life; never more at variance than on questions of 
 dogma. 
 
 How blind we must be to fail to see that the approval 
 which everybody's conscience. Socialists' as well as 
 Christians', gives to the life of Christ, is an approval of 
 his mere "Good Will towards Man" ; and that whenever 
 universal conscience approves the simple life of the 
 simple man, the element in that life that calls forth 
 approval is the good-will that it manifests. 
 
 Metaphysical analysis that seeks the ground and 
 basis of the good will is the stone that confuses the 
 calm waters, and cleaves their unbroken surface into 
 lashing and warring parts. In the ethical movement 
 which we are studying we have a further illustration 
 of this historic truth. "Christian Socialists arg agreed 
 in their antagonism to individual greed and .injustice; 
 
20 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 in personal and sympatketic devotion to tke welfare 
 of the people; the parting of the ways is as to the real 
 basis on which modem industry shall organize itself." ^ 
 When thought seeks for bases upon which to 
 ground pure simple good will, it acts its metaphysical 
 role and accomplishes nothing. This is particularly 
 true of the work of the Guild in metaphysical regions. 
 The Guild of St. Matthew, seeking a basis for its ethics, 
 finds that the real basis on which to organize is to be 
 found in the Church Catechism and the Prayer Book. 
 The Guild purposes: 1. "To get rid of the existing 
 prejudice against the Church, her sacraments and doc- 
 trines, and to endeavor to justify God to the people. 
 2. To promote frequent and reverent worship in the 
 Holy Communion and a better observance of the teach- 
 ing of the Church of England. 3. To promote the study 
 of social and political questions in the light of the 
 Incarnation." 
 
 In putting forth such a program, the Guild 
 delving into metaphysical speculation, reaped the 
 inevitable consequences. A program such as this, 
 divides. It does not unite. It seems to have an ax 
 of its own to grind instead of a desire to grind the com- 
 mon axe. The basis on which it sets out to establish 
 the brotherhood principle of Hillel and the good-will of 
 Christ is far too narrow to support such principle. It 
 ends naturally in intolerance of all systems that en- 
 deavor to establish the same principle on another basis. 
 "Christian Socialists," says the manifesto issued by 
 the Guild of St. Matthew, "know no outlying spheres or 
 districts. . . . Every thought of individualism and 
 isolation is spiritual treason." 
 
 Such intolerance destroys the very principle of good- 
 will which it seeks to establish. It strives to whip men 
 
 ' Eev. J. Clifford — in Fabian SooiaHat Seriet No. 1, p. 31. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 21 
 
 into line not for the living out together of the good-will 
 principle but only for the acceptance of its own dogmas. 
 It tries to establish altruism by an example of egoism. 
 For as George Santayana says, "Intolerance itself is 
 also a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intoler- 
 antly is to share it." Such action may be excusable in 
 Socialism which makes no claim to be primarily an 
 ethical movement, but in Christian Socialism, which 
 stands primarily for ethical life, intolerance can find 
 no excuse ; and yet the writings of the Guild members 
 show abundant evidence of it, particularly with regard 
 to economic questions. "We Christian Socialists," 
 writes the founder of the Guild, "maintain that the 
 reform calling for access to the land in the country 
 (and taking away of the land from their present owners 
 and distributing it among the workers) is demanded by 
 justice and we maintain not only that it can be carried 
 out in consistence with the highest morality but that 
 morality is impossible without it." 
 
 This is exactly the Socialistic cry — ^the cry that the 
 landowner is a robber. The Christian Socialists of the 
 Guild of St. Matthew, like the economic socialists of 
 the Fabian Society, classify society into beggars, robbers 
 and workers. "If you want a rough description of the 
 object of the Christian Socialists," writes Kev. Steward 
 D. Headlam of the Society, "I should say that it was 
 to bring about the time when all shall work and when 
 the robbers shall be utterly abolished. A follower of 
 Christ is to be an out-and-out fighter against poverty." 
 
 How different this species of Christian Socialism 
 which the Guild teaches, is from that of the Christiau 
 Socialism of Maurice! The Christian Socialism of 
 Maurice not even in its most ardent moments stooped 
 to the calling of names ; while the Guild of St. Matthew 
 resorts to this practice without the least suspicion of 
 
22 Three Types of Practical Eihicd Movements 
 
 being itself guilty of uncliristiaii conduct. And yet, the 
 Guild of St. Matthew, whose founder, the Kev. S. D. 
 Headlam, was a pupil of Maurice, insists that the Guild 
 "came into being to develop the teachings of Maurice 
 and other English theologians of 1848, convinced that 
 their faith was to be found in the Church Catechism 
 and the Prayer Book." ^ 
 
 This is no great departure from the doctrine of 
 Maurice. It is, as N'oel says, a development of the 
 metaphysical principle of Maurice who was the philoso- 
 pher of Christian Socialism. It is the logical outcome 
 of Maurice's position that the Church "ought to make 
 men understand and feel how impossible it is to fra- 
 ternize except in Christ and that the only true basis of 
 human brotherhood is the acceptance of a common 
 Father and a common Savior." This means, that the 
 good-will of Christ, exhibited in life, is not possible 
 except upon a metaphysical basis, upon which it is 
 supposed to rest — ^namely, upon the basis of God's 
 Fatherhood, of Christ's Incarnation, Passion and 
 Eesurrection. From this it follows naturally, as 
 Headlam says, that every baptized person is bound by 
 the catechism to treat every other baptized person abso- 
 lutely as a brother. 
 
 But every unbaptized brother is not included in the 
 community. This has been the verdict of history in 
 regard to all ethical systems that sought a ground for 
 brotherhood and found it in the principle of likeness. 
 "He that is not of us is against us," is the unvaried out- 
 come of such a system. Its corollary is intolerance. 
 If you cannot accept our catechism, we cannot include 
 you in our fellowship, even though you accept our 
 Bible. 
 
 The founder of the Guild and the avowed successor 
 
 'Oonraa Noel — ^In Guild af St. Matthew. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 23 
 
 of Maurice complains bitterly that every horrible 
 Calvinistic doctrine can be taught now in our Board 
 Schools. "It is certainly not for those who value true 
 manly religion," he writes, "to allow a compromise 
 which includes the Bible and excludes the Catechism." 
 Simple good-will is forgotten in the all-absorbing inter- 
 est of finding a basis for it. 
 
 The social principle inherent in the good-will is 
 negated by the platform upon which men sought to rest 
 it. The vestment is considered more valuable than 
 the principle which it clothes; and thus finally we lose 
 sight of the essence and fraternize not on the simple 
 principle but on some metaphysical basis for it. That 
 Catholic piriest, who replied to the accusation of har- 
 boring one that was guilty of all human vices, by 
 saying, "Shall I make her an infidel also?" acted con- 
 sistently along this line. 
 
 The Guild of St. Matthew thus fails where Maurice's 
 school failed, and for the same reason. It has not 
 exerted an influence like to that of Maurice and the 
 earlier Christian Socialists; but this difference in in- 
 fluence shows itself not because their doctrines were 
 unlike each other; on the contrary, their bases were 
 nearly identical. The difference in results is due to 
 the fact that the degree of influence is proportional to 
 the life one leads, and not to the thought one preaches. 
 The life of Maurice, not his thought, was responsible 
 for his influence. The lives of the Guild members, good 
 lives though they were, did not measure up to the 
 grandeur of the earlier Christian Socialists and their 
 corresponding influence was thus less visible. 
 
 (b) The Christian Social Union 
 
 The Christian Social Union which represents the 
 other phase of the revised Christian Socialism was 
 
24 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 founded in 1889 by Bishop Westcott who had also heen 
 a pupil of Maurice at Cambridge. It numbers among 
 its members the dominant portion of the English clergy, 
 and exerts therefore considerable influence. It has 
 established a considerable number of branches through- 
 out England, chief of which are the Oxford and the 
 London branches. The former, through its organ the 
 Econoinic Review is its most effective mouthpiece. 
 
 The objects for which the Christian Social Union 
 was organized are set forth as follows : 
 
 1. To claim for Christian Law, the ultimate author- 
 ity to rule social practice. 
 
 3. To study in common how to apply the moral truths 
 and principles of Christianity to the social and economic 
 difficulties of the times. 
 
 3. To present Christ in practical life as the liviag 
 Master and King, the Enemy of wrong and selfishness, 
 the Power of righteousness and love. 
 
 The principles by which the Christian Social TJnion 
 expects to attain these ends are set forth thus: 
 
 1. In Jesus Christ, God is the father of aU men, and 
 all men are brothers. 
 
 3. God is the sole possessor of the earth and its full- 
 ness; men are the stewards of God's boimties. 
 
 3. Labor, being the exercise of body, mind and spirit, 
 in the broadening and elevating of human life, it is the 
 duty of every man to labor diligently. 
 
 4. Labor, as thus defined should be the standard of 
 social worth. 
 
 5. When the divinely iatended opportunity to labor 
 is given to all men, one great cause of the present wide- 
 spread suffering and destitution will be removed. 
 
 More briefly stated, the guiding principles, the basic 
 supports of the moral good which it is the object of the 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 25 
 
 Union to attain, are the FatheAood of God, tlie stew- 
 ardship of man and the dignity of labor — principles 
 first definitely enunciated by Maurice. 
 
 The Union is conservative in regard to Socialism, 
 and manifests a tendency against its economic teaching. 
 It takes, however, no definite stand; but wavers and 
 oscillates to find a middle path between Individualism 
 and Socialism. "The truth of individual hedonism — 
 the truth that each single individual claims by an in- 
 eradicable instinct his own self-realization, his own 
 happiness, Christianity recognizes ; each man is to come 
 into possession of his own life; he is to 'save his life.' 
 The truth again of the older Utilitarianism — ^that each 
 man counts one and no man more than one, is at the 
 heart of Christianity." ^ 
 
 In the practical field the Christian Social Union 
 returned to Maurice's favorite scheme of cooperative 
 associations among workingmen. These now are very 
 considerable in number throughout the land, doing mil- 
 lions of dollars worth of business yearly. Cooperation 
 is the watchword of the positive practical program of 
 the Christian Social Union. "The Church," we are 
 told by Bishop Gore, "must be spiritually and physi- 
 cally a profit-sharing company. This means a stern 
 discouragement of the accumulation of wealth except 
 as held consciously in trust for the common good; a 
 strenuous opposition to the development of luxury; a 
 practical realization of the temper of contentment with 
 sufficient and wholesome food and lodgment, air and 
 clothing, work and leisure, and of the greater blessing 
 of giving as compared with receiving." 
 
 The Christian Social Union seeks voluntary instead 
 of forced cooperation, and is sure that only by the reli- 
 
 _ ' The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 154, Economio 
 ReMew, 1892. 
 
26 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 gious can such association be entered into. J. H. Noyes 
 puts the case in this way: "The non-religious party 
 has tried association under the lead of Owen and failed ; 
 the semi-religious party has tried it under the lead of 
 Fourier and failed ; the thoroughly religious party has 
 not tried it." ISTot till Maurice began his activities did 
 the thoroughly religious party as much as think that its 
 work lay along this line, and this thought has not even 
 yet quite prevailed among the clergy. 
 
 But while it is easy for all Christian sects to accept 
 the general doctrine of cooperation, it is not so easy 
 to determine the extent to which cooperative association 
 is to go. This is far from being agreed upon. Two 
 alternatives present themselves: the voluntary associa- 
 tions of which Maurice was the exponent and for which 
 his times were not quite ripe, is one; and the coercive 
 associations which Socialism proposes and which would 
 be all embracing in their scope, is the other. The 
 Christian Social Union stands for the former ; the Gruild 
 of St. Matthew, for the latter. This point of differ- 
 ence is the source of much disputation. Each seeks 
 to justify its stand by appealing to the Bible for con- 
 firmation of its position. Biblical passages are sought 
 out, making for the abolition of private property and 
 are brandished in the face of those who stand for it; 
 and these in their turn bring other biblical passages to 
 bear witness to their point of view. 
 
 The main point of contention is the status of private 
 property according to Jesus. The passages chiefly 
 quoted for private property are : 
 
 "Who made me a ruler or divider over you ?" 
 
 "Take heed and keep yourselves from, all covetous- 
 ness, for man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
 of the things which he possesseth." 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 27 
 
 The opponents of private property bring forward : 
 
 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." 
 
 "Sell all thou hast and follow me." 
 
 "If any shall not work, neither shall he eat." 
 
 "Who planteth a vineyard and eateth not the fruit 
 thereof; or who feedeth a flock and eateth not the 
 milk of the flock?" 
 
 This debate leads nowhere and fails to clarify the 
 situation ; for it proves neither alternative by the very 
 fact that it proves both. The good-will principle on 
 which Christ lived his life is not confined by any pre- 
 conceived theories on private property or on other — 
 worldliness. The life principle is essentially an active 
 principle, not a hesitating, weighing, doubting activity. 
 Life lives; thought tarries. The searching behind this 
 living principle for its prop has ever been a disappoint- 
 ing search. The metaphysics to which it has given rise 
 has ever failed to stand on its own feet and so it has 
 always been seeking a prop for itself ; and this prop has 
 in turn sought another. Each in its turn has served as a 
 hindrance to the very principle which it endeavored to 
 support. 
 
 The Christian Social Union, of all the phases of the 
 Christian Social Movement, has been least guilty of 
 this inefficacious search for a ground of morality. Its 
 statements on the social problems of the times and their 
 ethical settings are correspondingly less objectionable. 
 These statements command for this very reason uni- 
 versal approval just as the good-will principle com- 
 mands it, simply because the ideas set forth in regard 
 to the care for public health and safety, the relation of 
 employer and employee, superior and inferior, buyer 
 and seller, public official and citizenship are expansions 
 and illustrations of that principle and not preconceived 
 
28 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 theories in back of it. This thought is thus expressed 
 by Eamsden Balmforth.^ "The moral progress of the 
 individual depends not on the adoption of any special 
 theological or metaphysical belief, but on that natural 
 expansion and development of the faculties which grad- 
 ually freeing the mind from error, gives clearer vision 
 and deeper insight into the difficulties which burden our 
 human life." 
 
 It has always been found that whenever we remove 
 our attention from life and direct it to the search of its 
 cause we actually see more dimly the very life we seek to 
 illumine, and the dimness is proportional to the inten- 
 .sity of our groping in its preconceived substratum. 
 Even the Christian Social Union, when it touches this 
 hidden field loses the luster which its doctrines else- 
 where possess. Note, for instance, the narrow view of 
 life's activity into which Bishop Gore drops from the 
 broad vista described above, the moment the social re- 
 former becomes the theologian. He desires to see, he 
 says, "a body of celibate men living without any other 
 life-vows than those of their baptism" and these "would 
 surely be calculated to make men see how holy and 
 happy a thing is Christian life when it can free itself 
 from entanglements." 
 
 The point of importance lies right here. Once free 
 from the entanglements that tie down the good-will, and 
 that do not give it free scope by burdening it with pre- 
 conceptions, and your morality will shine by its own 
 true light. Celibacy, in so far as it rests on precon- 
 ceptions, is itself an entanglement that hinders because 
 it narrows life's impulse; and as for baptism, how often 
 in past times was failure to have been baptized a hin- 
 drance to social fellowship and a limit beyond which 
 
 1 See The New Reformation and its Relation to Moral and Social 
 Problemt, p. 69. 
 
The Religious EtJdcaZ Movement 29 
 
 tJie good-will in civic life could not extend! At tHs 
 very day are not all sorts of discrimination practiced 
 even in high circles merely on the strength of the pre- 
 conceived metaphysical and logical implications of bap- 
 tism, and are not preferences shown in these implica- 
 tions? Theology even implicates God in this weak- 
 ness; for its conception of a limbo makes God him- 
 self share this human feeling. 
 
 A still more striking example of the result of burden- 
 ing the good-will with theological grounds and of rest- 
 ing cooperation on religious bases is found in the fact 
 that the very exercise of the good-will is often not 
 valued unless it be exercised by those who are included 
 in the fellowship. A prominent minister of the Church 
 of England writes, "The danger of the age is that 
 of following where He points the way without faith 
 in Him. Men are willing to accept His teaching 
 if they may treat Him as they do Socrates or Hillel. 
 We must not fall into this snare." ^ See how the 
 metaphysical presumption is of more value than is the 
 living out of the good-will ! 
 
 This weakness of Christian Socialism comes out again 
 in its attitude towards education. From Maurice down, 
 the Churchman has invariably taken a stand against 
 the State's direction of education; for he fears that 
 if the State undertakes it, "cherished convictions will 
 be trampled upon." If the Church is assigned to take 
 charge of it, the money will be well spent, whereas if 
 the State does it, "the money will be taken to support a 
 sect." Therefore we are advised to "let government 
 which is a machine working with as little humanity 
 as possible, stay in its own province and teach secular 
 education, while the Christian Church consecrates its 
 strength and grace to perfect and crown all instructions 
 
 ' John Clifford — Jesus Christ and Modem Social Life. 
 
30 Three Types of PrcudicaZ Ethical Movements 
 
 by bringing the Children to Christ that He may bless 
 them." 1 
 
 True it is that Christian Socialism endeavors to re- 
 form from within, and yet despite the fact that re- 
 form comes from within and through fellowship, the 
 Christian finds it hard to do the reforming, even though 
 it is claimed that he has an immense advantage over 
 other social reformers in the clear knowledge of God 
 as revealed in Jesus Christ. This is only apparently 
 an advantage; actually it is a disadvantage; for Chris- 
 tianity allows into its reform movement — a movement 
 which works from within and through fraternization — 
 only those who enter from behind — ^for only those who 
 accept the background upon which its morality rests 
 are included in the reform and to those alone does fel- 
 lowship extend. 
 
 (Ill) The Present Status of Christian Socialism 
 
 (a) The Christian Socialist Fellowship 
 
 We have so far discussed the Religions Ethical Move- 
 ment by considering its aspect as presented by Christian 
 Socialism. We have seen the weak spot of that move- 
 ment, and we have attributed this weakness to the 
 failure of the original Christian Socialist Movement 
 under Maurice and of its two offshoots, the Guild of 
 St. Matthew and the Christian Social Union, to accept 
 the good-will as in itself sufficient to ground an ethics 
 on. The attempt of Maurice had for its object to 
 christianize Socialism and to socialize Christianity. 
 We may safely say that he succeeded in great measure 
 in socializing Christianity. The church, after his work 
 
 > John Clifford — Jeaua Chriat and Modern Social Life. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 31 
 
 was done, no longer presented sucli sights as the hunting 
 parson who was dead to the economic needs of his 
 starving factory parishioners. Gradually through his 
 efforts, churchmen as a third estate standing aloof from 
 the lowest social class, disappeared. He failed, however, 
 to make much headway in christianizing Socialism. 
 
 More and more as the economic conditions became 
 acuter, economic Socialism and not Christianity be- 
 came the resort of the working people. We hear it said 
 now that "Socialism is Christianity's most formidable 
 rival." ^ To come to terms with this rival was the 
 aim of the Guild of St. Matthew; to ward it off, was 
 in the main the aim of the Christian Social Union. 
 
 Success depended largely upon the power of the con- 
 tending forces to draw the common people to their teach- 
 ing; and the form which the contest took was a rivalry 
 between the Church and the Socialist Meeting Hall to 
 get and hold an audience. The Church and the Socialist 
 Meeting both made a bid for a large attendance, and, 
 judging by results, the Church lost. 
 
 The next move was an aggressive campaign by the 
 victors to capture the Church. This campaign is con- 
 ducted at present by an organization that has adopted 
 the name "Christian Socialist Fellowship." What a 
 strange reversal Christian Socialism has suffered during 
 the half century since its foundation! In 1848 the 
 Church started to capture Socialism; in 1908 we find 
 an organized attempt of Socialism to capture the 
 Church. 
 
 This movement is mainly an American movement, 
 extending chiefly throughout New England. Under the 
 name of "The Christian Socialist Fellowship," the 
 movement proposes "To permeate churches, denomina- 
 tions and other religious institutions with the social 
 
 >T. C. HaU. 
 
32 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 message of Jesus." This seems an open affront to 
 the Church. The very depository of the doctrines of 
 Jesus is by this statement of the Christian Socialist 
 Fellowship declared, as it were, by "innuendo," to be 
 empty of them. 
 
 The Christian Socialist Fellowship is indeed only 
 a counter move of Socialists to capture the Church 
 for Socialism. To accomplish this it ignores the basic 
 theological conception of Christianity and like the 
 Guild of St. Matthew takes a stand upon those biblical 
 passages in which Jesus expresses Socialistic doctrines. 
 Unlike the English organization, it puts no emphasis 
 upon ceremonials or rituals and offers fellowship to 
 all who are ready to join with it in bringing about the 
 Socialistic regime. 
 
 The constitution of the Fellowship goes on to state 
 that the object of the movement is: "To show that 
 Socialism is the necessary economic expression of the 
 Christian life; to end the class struggle by establishing 
 industrial democracy and to hasten the reign of justice 
 and brotherhood upon earth." "We believe," says the 
 manifesto issued in 1908, "that the present social 
 system, based as it is on the sin of covetousness, makes 
 the ethical life as inculcated by religion impracticable, 
 and should give way to a social system founded on the 
 Golden Rule and the Eoyal Law of the Kingdom of 
 God, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' which, 
 realized under the cooperative commonwealth of So- 
 cialism, will create an environment favorable to the 
 practice of religious life." 
 
 If the Christian Socialist Movement is decreasing in 
 efficiency and is being replaced by a Socialism often 
 making claim to be a religion, may not its disappearance 
 as an active force be due just to the fact that its undei^ 
 lying basis, its search for "a centre" as Maurice put 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 33 
 
 it, wMcli would afford a "ground for men to stand 
 upon" has proven too narrow a plank to hold all men ? 
 It is of necessity constrained to give way to a move- 
 ment, which, without regard to any metaphysical back- 
 ground, does afford such foothold to all. 
 
 We may not agree with those who proclaim Socialism 
 a religion, but we must agree with the spirit of it 
 which, forsaking a limited centre and a short radius, 
 invites all to cooperate in behalf of an end, no matter 
 how they differ in regard to a beginning. 
 
 The point which the Fellowship has in common with 
 the original Christian Socialism, is its stand that the 
 Christian life as lived by Jesus is the only way to solve 
 the present social difficulties. By quoting the words of 
 Christ in favor of Socialism, the Christian Social Fel- 
 lowship hopes to win the Church to Socialism. The 
 point of difference between the Christian Socialism of 
 Maurice and that of the Fellowship is that the former 
 hoped to win Socialism to Christian life and thus to 
 solve the economic and industrial problems, whereas 
 the latter hoped to win Christianity to Socialism and 
 in this way to solve these same problems. 
 
 In this one respect Socialism is stronger than the 
 religious movement. It is more inclusive than the 
 latter. "If uniting into one great movement all the 
 strange elements of humanity, subduing all racial and 
 religious hatred and distrust were the only achievement 
 of the Socialist movement, I should confidently assert 
 its claim to be counted among the greatest spiritual 
 forces of the world," ^ says John Spargo. "The spirit 
 of Socialism," says he, "cries out : 
 
 '1 am Eeligion and the church I build, 
 Stands on the sacred flesh with passion packed; 
 
 ^ J. Spargo — The Spiritual Significance of Modern SociaUem, p. 30. 
 
34 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 In me, the ancient gospels are fulfilled — 
 
 In me the symbol rises into fact.' " ^ 
 
 If brotherhood and solidarity are the bases of social 
 life, we must indeed confess that Socialism has more 
 inner potency toward it than religion; for it gives 
 greater promise of solidarity than religion at present 
 gives. But solidarity and brotherhood are only partial 
 and, therefore, defective tests of social life. The very 
 effort and partial success of Socialism in the guise of 
 the Christian Socialist Fellowship to capture the church, 
 is evidence of its greater inclusiveness. That it makes 
 the attempt to do so, is again evidence that it is free 
 from the exclusiveness which is so prominent in the 
 Church. "The Christiaji Socialist Fellowship," says 
 John Spargo, "is, in fact, not a Christian Socialist 
 organization at all. For there are Jews among its mem- 
 bership and even agnostics and atheists." ^ 
 
 Because it is not hampered by the short radius that 
 incloses in its circumference of fellowship only men 
 of certain beliefs, it is more likely to win in the long run, 
 the adherence which seems so futile and elusive a task 
 to Christian Socialism. "God's view, strange to say," 
 says Sir Oliver Lodge, "must be more akin to that of the 
 plain man than to that of the philosopher or statis- 
 tician." 
 
 (b) Christian Socialism from the University Chair 
 
 It is, indeed, an encouraging sign, and one that prom- 
 ises to do much toward settling the social and industrial 
 problems, to hear the voice of theologians raised in sym- 
 pathetic note with the movements for general improve- 
 ment. While few venture to identify the church activi- 
 
 1 John Spargo — The Spiritual Significance of Modem Socialism D 26 
 ' Amer. Journal Sociology, vol, 15. » f • 
 
The Beligiaus Ethical Movement 35 
 
 ties with municipal problems such as improved housing, 
 or sewers, or recreation centers, and breathing spaces for 
 the poor ; or with industrial problems, such as problems 
 of the living wage, employer's liability and state-insur- 
 ance; or with the economic problems, such as the price 
 of the necessities of life and the cost of transportation, 
 the greater number of churchmen view these move- 
 ments with hearty approval, even though on the ground 
 that the Church is a spiritual organization they do not 
 commit it to supporting them. 
 
 While the church has not enlisted in these positive re- 
 forms because they are outside of its sphere of activity, 
 it takes, however, a very decided stand against a social 
 order which is nothing more than a "competitive com- 
 mercial industrialism, with profits as incentive to action, 
 and private possession of the productive tools and oppor- 
 tunity as its goal." ^ The cry against this social order 
 is quite loud, and it is fittingly the cry of the church ; 
 for the church claims dominion over the spirit, and it is 
 the grasping spirit that prompts and maintains this con- 
 dition. In antagonism to greed, in sympathetic devo- 
 tion to the welfare of people the church is to-day doing 
 valuable service. All this, as a modern church program, 
 dates from Maurice. 
 
 What specific form this program of social reform is 
 to take is the bone of contention and a difficult task 
 no less for the churchmen who occupy university chairs 
 than for statesmen. Some, when confronted with the 
 immensity of the problem, say that the church is com- 
 mitted to no specific program, that the establishment of 
 the Kingdom of God is the only church program, that 
 "there is disappointment in store for the man who looks 
 to Jesus for specific teachings as to reforms," ^ that 
 
 ' HaU — Social Sahitiona in the Light of Christian Ethics, p. 47. 
 ' Shaller Matthews — The Social TeacMmg oj Jesus. 
 
36 TJiree^ Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 "sociology and political economy were just as far outside 
 of Lis range of thought as organic chemistry or the geog- 
 raphy of America." ^ 
 
 And yet we cannot merely proclaim an ideal in order 
 to advance it. "We must have a specific program to act 
 as a lever that will lift society even a short way 
 toward the ideal. Indeed our remoteness from the 
 Kingdom is due largely to uncertainty over the next 
 step that leads towards it. Can we positively say that 
 Socialism is that next step ? If we could, we would by 
 this time have realized it just as we have realized the 
 abolition of slavery. Socialism has surely been agitated 
 for as long a time as was abolition. 
 
 Indeed, a program viewed merely as an end, is 
 neither good nor bad. For a program is a path or a 
 method by which an end is arrived at, and is good or 
 bad not in itself, but relatively to that end alone. This 
 is implied in the statement of Jesus: "Why caUest 
 thou me good — ^none is good save the Father that sent 
 me." The meaning of this can be grasped significantly 
 only as applying to the distinction between an end and 
 the spirit that manifests itseK in achieving that end. 
 Any program as an end is neither good nor bad. To 
 the spirit that realizes and achieves the program, and 
 to it alone, properly belong the terms good and bad. 
 The spirit and the end which it realizes, are one and the 
 same reality. 
 
 Likewise it is with any social and political program. 
 Our municipalities are now debating the commission 
 plan of government. Are we sure that its adoption will 
 evoke nobility of spirit ? Is it not just as likely to evoke 
 more subtle craftiness in evading restrictions to selfish 
 greed, which the commission form of government is 
 intended to abolish ? Are we so sure that a small Board 
 
 ' W. Eauscheubuscli — Christianity and the Social Crisis, p. 47. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 37 
 
 of Education will te better than tlie present large one, or 
 that the recall of judges will benefit the masses ? The 
 agitation for a change is not prompted by the certainty 
 that the new form will be better. Rather it is prompted 
 by the knowledge that the present is bad and by the hope 
 that the trial of the new will lead to a better. 
 
 Experience is experiment. Experiment even in 
 physical science never indicates beforehand the nature 
 of the result ; much less can it indicate in social science 
 the reflex effect that the result will have upon the spirit 
 that prompts the experiment. To watch and wait for 
 this effect is a costly and often a dangerous procedure. 
 National solidarity is not easily set into motion to 
 remedy a wrong step once taken; and those of us who 
 are so absorbed in the social solidarity that we refuse 
 to put our foot forward unless our neighbors put their 
 feet forward at the same time, find the approaching 
 march toward the Kingdom slower than the snail's 
 pace.^ 
 
 It is along the line of a detached spontaneity of life, 
 now and then reaching a high level in the field of ethics, 
 that contemporary discussions of social problems from 
 the religious point of view proceed. These discussions 
 come mainly from the Theological Chairs of our uni- 
 versities, and would that the voices that are engaged in 
 
 1 One of the great men of this age, Thomas Davidson, whom I had 
 the good fortune to know, fully convinced of the sloth that lies in 
 solidarity, however It may be with its strength, refused to be ham- 
 pered by the cumbersomeness of social solidarity and lived his own 
 life of the spirit. So free, so humane, so social, yet so spontaneous 
 was his life that, like the life of Jesus, it did not submit to classi- 
 Bcation. Some called him an individualist ; others, a socialist ; others, 
 a single taxer ; still others, an anarchist. To all these his answer 
 was, "I am too much of an individualist to be a socialist, and too 
 much of a socialist to be an anarchist." He lived the life of the 
 spirit. He did not wait for mass movement to put into motion any 
 program. "As a follower of Jesus," he "stood committed to neither 
 Socialism nor individualism" ; he was neither for nor against trades 
 unions, neither the foe of the rich man nor of the poor man as such. 
 He simply lived ; and his life was the revelation of Spirit. His life 
 was one illustration of the good-will and he readily joined with 
 others who likewise lived it. 
 
38 Three. Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 them were as clear in the delivery of their message as 
 they are in genuine sympathy and in enthusiastic readi- 
 ness to guide the public in its effort to solve the long 
 standing social problems! The trend of these discus- 
 sions is towards a better grasp of the meaning of social 
 life and to a fuller elucidation of its concept. 
 
 What the concept social involves, the university men 
 maintain, is best taught by Jesus. This is the burden of 
 the ethics of the chair. The prevailing opinion is that 
 it does not imply economic socialism. But the negation 
 of economic socialism does not mean the exclusion of 
 a social attitude and the reign of selfish individualism. 
 The concepts social and individual are commonly con- 
 sidered mutually exclusive. It is an error to consider 
 them so. Socialists most frequently fall into this error, 
 an error due no doubt to the all-absorbing importance 
 which the economic life has for them. Because the 
 vocational life uses up so much of our time, the pur- 
 suit of a livelihood dominates all other pursuits and 
 seems to them unsocial if it is not conducted in the 
 manner of the old time hunting expeditions, fitted out 
 with dogs, horses, tally-ho, etc., and if the products 
 are not similarly shared in common. The concept in- 
 dividual is thus confounded with selfishness, and the 
 concept social with altruism. 
 
 The object of the Christian Socialism of the Univer- 
 sity Theological Chairs is to show the fallacy of such 
 suppositions. It shows that the life of Jesus did not 
 admit of any classification. It aims at harmonizing 
 socialism and individualism. To understand the solu- 
 tion of the problem as offered by the University Theo- 
 logians we must analyze the philosophy of Maurice's 
 ethics, from which they all take their start. The Chris- 
 tian Socialism of Maurice implied that the individual- 
 ism of Jesus is necessarily social j that individualism 
 
The Religums Ethical Movement 39 
 
 is an inner natural necessity whicli is exhibited in the 
 endeavor of each to preserve and to conserve his being. 
 Yet this inner necessity is supplemented by an outer 
 metaphysical social fact — the descent from a common 
 Father. 
 
 Maurice and all his followers seek to harmonize these 
 two elemental and primal facts, one psychologic and 
 internal, the other objective and physical. His method 
 of harmonizing is to give emphasis and great importance 
 to the objective factor. He thinks that by pressing for- 
 ward the Fatherhood idea with its consequent brother- 
 hood of man, the subjective conatus in suo esse perse- 
 verare will become reflective and through the sub- 
 conscious family tie, brotherhood will possibly prevail 
 upon the inner principle to give up the pursuit of the 
 extreme individualism which that principle implies. 
 
 For the selfishness of individualism is nothing else 
 than the extreme to which the fear of destruction 
 prompts the inner nature of the individual to go. "An 
 economy vdth a surplus tends to make us social; an 
 economy of deficit arouses conflict and gives a dominance 
 to pain reactions. The problem of Social advance is 
 thus on its material side to keep out conditions of deflcit 
 and to get within the realm of surplus. On its psychic 
 side, however, the problem is to keep our social nature 
 dominant and to suppress the fear reactions that nature 
 has implanted." ^ 
 
 The objective external factor, the Fatherhood idea, 
 physically understood, is intended to suppress and domi- 
 nate the subjective and internal factor. This is the un- 
 derlying idea of the whole Religious Ethical Move- 
 ment. But the logic of this position is not clear until 
 we are shown the modus operandi whereby the domina- 
 tion of the one over the other will take place. 
 
 "Patten — The Social Basis of ReUgion, p. 219. 
 
40 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 In exhibiting the working out of this process of dom- 
 ination we have the history of Religion, and of Chris- 
 tianity as the evolved Religion. Originally domination 
 was to be effected through fear instilled by the physical 
 superiority of the external factor. This proved too weak 
 for any lasting domination and the compelling force in 
 the Fatherhood idea was changed from fear to love. 
 Love was to stop the inner endeavor after security from 
 going to the ultimate limits that alone insure absolute 
 security of continued existence. Love was to shear the 
 innate individualism of its selfishness. Upon this is 
 built the conception of the Christian Religion. We 
 have thus far the ontological fact of Fatherhood which 
 is mystically conceived as the Logos ; but its compelling 
 force having failed, there was superadded another com- 
 pelling force, that of the power of love. 
 
 There is yet nothing necessarily social in a world 
 constituted of individuals, who, through the dominating 
 conceptions of Fatherhood and Love, are to strip them- 
 selves of the selfishness which the full development of 
 their inner nature as conatus in siu) esse perseverare 
 would imply. For the concept love is not necessarily 
 a concept of the social relation. The social relation 
 involves reciprocal love; whereas the concept love may 
 be unreciprocal, and thus fall short of the concept social. 
 Love from the Father towards the individual may well 
 exist together with an unrequited love from the in- 
 dividual towards the Father and vice versa as was the 
 case with Aristotle's God. 
 
 The love relation is, in other words, not necessarily 
 a social relation until it operates reciprocally. Unre- 
 quited love is not only not a social relation, but is often 
 the very spring from which rise up the most unsocial 
 acts. This is evidenced not only by persons afflicted 
 with jealousy, but also by the Lord Yahveh who in his 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 41 
 
 wrath threatens all manner of punishment upon those 
 ■who shall he guilty of setting up idols and graven im- 
 ages. The jealousy thus aroused in Tahveh gives vent 
 to numerous bursts of threats against the people who 
 chance to prefer another. (See Leviticus, Chap. 26.) 
 The most unsocial acts are here hurled by the Lord 
 against his chosen people for his unreciprocated love. 
 The idea here presented is not merely a conceptualistic 
 idea having no corresponding relation in the facts of 
 life but is most vitally and most actually a relation of 
 facts of life. 
 
 The metaphysicians of the Church perceived this 
 well enough and mended the concept love, which in 
 itself falls short of the concept social, by the conception 
 of an all-embracing atmosphere of love, mystically con- 
 ceived as the Holy Ghost, and by the conception of the 
 forgiven life, again mystically conceived as the Christ. 
 Thus the social structure of the religious idea is com- 
 pleted. For making life social and for the conquest 
 of selfishness which individualism logically implies when 
 it is interpreted Spinozistically as a conatus in suo 
 esse perseverare, there is needed first, the authority of 
 an external principle, that of Fatherhood ; second, there 
 is needed an all-embracing principle, that of Spirit; 
 and thirdly, there is needed a mediating or reciprocal 
 principle, that of the Christ. 
 
 "The most difficult of all religious concepts to social- 
 ize is that of God." ^ Fatherhood by itself dominates 
 through fear and is in so far unsocial. The Holy Spirit 
 is therefore invoked to reduce the external Fatherhood 
 and the internal individualistic principle to a common 
 denominator, and the reciprocal principle, Love, is to 
 mediate between them. 
 
 The forgiven life is the most important social element 
 
 ' Patten — The Social Basis of BeUgion, p. 234. 
 
42 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 of the entire religious conception. When therefore the 
 Christian Socialist of the Chair says, "The basis for 
 a Christian ethics is the forgiven life, working itself 
 out in a transformation of all ideals," ^ he puts his 
 finger on that element of the religious conception which 
 is the essence of the social life. This conception is the 
 essential one in any social scheme. It must lie in 
 back of all acts of the individual to be truly social 
 according to Christianity. That the Christian Church 
 has failed to see it more often than not, is being fear- 
 lessly pointed out by the contemporary Christian So- 
 cialists. To apply to our industrial and economic prob- 
 lems the concept of the forgiven life and reciprocal love 
 as the most essential principle in Christian Ethics is 
 the solution offered by the most learned theologians of 
 today. 
 
 The Professors of Christian Ethics declaim against 
 emphasizing any other factor in religious life, and yet 
 they themselves fail to see clearly, that the other factor 
 which stands for an unsocial tendency is precisely that 
 authoritative external conception of Fatherhood which 
 in itself, as Patten well says, is the most difficult con- 
 cept to socialize and which they refuse to abandon as a 
 ground principle. All conceptions of the social life 
 that involve as a presupposition and as an offset to 
 individualism the conception of Eatherhood are, in so 
 far, confused. Maurice who laid so much stress upon it 
 in his social work failed to differentiate clearly from 
 it the conception and function of Jesus as the reciprocal 
 Love, which alone renders life social. The result was 
 that he often confounded the essential with the unessen- 
 tial, and that he made himself necessarily sectarian and 
 unsocial in the very effort to be social and to teach the 
 social spirit. That this confoimding was the undoing 
 
 '■ Hall — History of Ethics within Organized Cliristianity, p. 6. 
 
The Beligiows Ethical Movement 43 
 
 of his hopes may fairly be judged by the shifting 
 of his best efforts from one to another phase of social 
 work, as if blindly and merely instinctively feeling 
 his way towards the true conception of the social 
 life. 
 
 His immediate successors, in common with him, saw 
 the necessity of finding a basis for social life, but no 
 more clearly than he, did they see its location. Perhaps 
 they felt their bearings a little better; for they, espe- 
 cially the Christian Social Union proved somewhat 
 nearer right. But this nearer approach to the social 
 essence was due not to any clear sight of it, nor to 
 any firm grasp of it in consequence of this clear vision. 
 Rather was it due to the negative virtue of failing 
 to emphasize what they nevertheless presupposed in 
 common with Maurice, namely the fatherhood concep- 
 tion vidth the resulting theological superstructure. 
 
 Jl^ot even now is the distinction between Fatherhood 
 and brotherhood clearly indicated by Religious Ethical 
 writers. We hear much said about the Fatherhood of 
 God and the consequent brotherhood of men, as if we 
 were to imply that all men are necessarily social 
 (brothers) because of their common Father. This lays 
 emphasis upon the unsocial element in order to point out 
 and develop the social life. Perhaps to say, "I and 
 my Father are not one," will more truly serve a social 
 purpose than to say, "I and my Father are one." Jesus, 
 when he became philosophic, proved his Jewish descent. 
 No Greek with his philosophic acumen would have 
 identified an ontological extecmal entity, with a prin- 
 ciple that serves as the reciprocal relating activity be- 
 tween it and other entities. 
 
 This confusion of principles which originally can be 
 thus traced to Jesus has come down the ages and was 
 repeated again and again. At the present time we are 
 
44 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 just beginning to untangle the knot and to allay the 
 confusion. It is this genuine effort on the part of 
 Christian men to straighten out doctrines long con- 
 founded, that is producing to-day such seething unrest 
 in the Church. Men speak of the present as a crisis 
 in religion, and attribute it rightly to the free discus- 
 sion all around of principles and doctrines long taken 
 for granted in the religious world. "The present crisis 
 of the Christian religion is due to the fact that what 
 Jesus took for granted, and what he taught, and what 
 he was — all three of these primal Christian forces, have 
 been attacked with a vigor, a skill, and an effectiveness 
 never before known in the history of Christianity." ^ 
 Not until we distinguish clearly between what Jesus 
 took for granted and what he taught ; and not until we 
 eliminate what he took for granted from his times, and 
 from what he taught, that which he actually was — 
 reciprocal love, will we make progress in social ethics. 
 Little progress in social ethics can be expected from 
 the religious teachers until they stress and reverence 
 the principle of reciprocal love which is the very essence 
 of the life of Jesus. 
 
 At present we are struck and amazed by the hopeless 
 doubt of writers and preachers on Christian ethics as to 
 whether Jesus taught socialism or individualism, as 
 to whether his was an economic program or an ethical 
 program, as to whether his kingdom was of this world 
 or of another. His very doctrines are unknown and 
 must be discovered anew. 
 
 As members of a religion we accept in our changed 
 environment what he accepted from his totally different 
 environment; as scientists we reject the very things 
 which as churchmen we accept. As parishioners we 
 listen with our heart's approval to his ethical teaching 
 
 'Ambrose W. Vernon — Hibiert Journal, vol. 9, p. 58. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 45 
 
 and as business men we violate them on the slender ex- 
 cuse that Jesus taught under a different economic and 
 industrial system from ours and therefore we cannot 
 apply his teachings to our business. What he actually 
 was apart from what he accepted from his environment 
 and apart from his deeds, we scarcely can claim clearly 
 to know. 
 
 Eeligious ethics is thus fettered at the outset with 
 an unsocial element because it looks for brotherhood in 
 the conception of Fatherhood. But can men be brothers 
 without a common Father? The answer is they must 
 be brothers regardless of Fatherhood. This is the main 
 thesis that has so far been negatively implied in the 
 analysis of Christian Socialism. Upon what positive 
 basis this thesis rests must be deferred for a later 
 chapter. 
 
 In adopting as the social formula the idea of the 
 brotherhood of men, because of the Fatherhood of God, 
 Christian Socialism strikes an analogy from biologic 
 life, and forgets that biologic brotherhood does not 
 mean social brotherhood, though we should very much 
 like it to mean that. It forgets that brotherhood used 
 in the social discussions means merely, reciprocal love 
 or good-will. 
 
 To seek an answer to the question why men should 
 be social and why they should trim off the edges of 
 selfishness which their natural tendency towards ab- 
 solute self-preservation unfolds, is no doubt a bit of 
 philosophical curiosity that minds rightly indulge in. 
 Very often, however, not curiosity but intellectual pride 
 prompts the search ad infinitum of a why for every 
 what. Many theological formulae and concepts were 
 confessedly so conceived. They were devised to answer 
 the pagan questions and the pagan objections to the 
 Christian world order. 
 
46 Three Types of Pradicdl Ethical Movements 
 
 Likewise the modem religious ethical movements 
 both Jewish and Christian face the present industrial 
 and social crisis not with the calmness that the philo- 
 sophical curiosity which alone leads to knowledge would 
 require, but with the suddenness that the heat of battle 
 evokes and intellectual pride dictates. Why should 
 not men pursue their own ends ? you ask. Because men 
 are social animals. Why should they be social and not 
 pursue their own ends? Because they are brothers, 
 being children of one God. This is the answer which the 
 Eeligious Ethical Movement gives. It is an answer 
 that rests on certain metaphysical conceptions. Little 
 wonder that it is thus impossible to be moral unless 
 your metaphysics is straight. 
 
 But to have a metaphysics of any sort is a personal 
 predilection. Therefore to establish brotherhood the 
 predilection of some must be taken away, and forcibly 
 too, if not peaceably. History bears evidence of this at 
 every step. Once force enters, good-will passes out by 
 the opposite door; and with its departure, the door 
 to social life is closed. 
 
 Kant's conception of a moral life, both social and 
 individual, upon no preconceived notions, is the sound- 
 est bit of social philosophy so far spoken. Instead of 
 being the ground of social life, the Kingdom of God is 
 the consequence of it. "Yes," says the Socialist, "that 
 is just what we say. Introduce the Socialist state and 
 the Kingdom of God will follow upon it." But the 
 Socialist is no more consistent in his attitude towards 
 private property by coercively entering upon its posses- 
 sion, than is the stand taken by the theologian in making 
 certain prerequisites the ground for social fellowship. 
 The one makes the Kingdom the source of the social 
 order ; the other makes it the end. "One God will come 
 with the economic system. The unifying forces are 
 
The Belicfious Ethical Mov&meni 47 
 
 delayed by argument and controversy." ^ Such are the 
 alternatives which have confronted men. 
 
 But the Kingdom is neither beginning nor end. It 
 is just where Jesus had often put it. It is more analo- 
 gous to a means, yet not identical with it. It is the 
 active energy of the good-will and reciprocal love. Be- 
 ginning and end are static conditions. The social order 
 is active energy. It asks no "whys" or "wherefores" ; it 
 simply manifests itself. This is the life of the true 
 Jesus, the true social reformer. 
 
 The objective practical ideal of the Christian Social- 
 ist is the manifestation of this life in cooperation. 
 How fine! When we ask him why cooperation is the 
 ideal of the practical life, intellectual pride compels 
 him to answer : Because we are children of one Father. 
 "The Social movement," says Shailer Matthews, "is 
 irreligious. ... It eliminates a personal God from 
 morals and the Jesus whom it honors is but a com- 
 panion of Socrates." 
 
 It is evident that by such attitude theologians are 
 bound to draw a circle about those who are to be con- 
 sidered brothers, and to exclude all outside of it. The 
 religious ethics cannot therefore be a solution of the 
 social problems. It cannot be true that "Society is by 
 nature Christian," unless by Christian is meant the 
 ethical Jesus, the Jesus minus what he had accepted 
 from his environment, and minus his eschatological 
 and metaphysical doctrines. "For it was not his say- 
 ings but Himself that Jesus wanted men to follow." 
 
 The ideas of Jesus were not metaphysical ones that 
 were gotten up by intellectual pride to support his 
 ethics; they were expressions of human sympathy; and 
 his fight against the systems of his day was entered 
 into just because they beclouded these expressions of 
 
 ^ Patten — The Social Basis of Beligion, p. 234. 
 
48 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 it. "The main quarrel Jesus had with the religious 
 life of his day, was with the pharisaic conception of 
 God as law-giver, and of the religious life as obedience 
 to an outward legislation and of the Kingdom of God 
 as the success of a selfish temporal and ecclesiastical 
 organization." ^ 
 
 If you accept this Jesus as the only true Jesus, then 
 it is no longer necessary to use the word Christian as 
 a characterization of society, for the adjective implies 
 and makes a distinction; it narrows the social circum- 
 ference; and by creating the distinction, it destroys 
 the very conception of universal brotherhood which it 
 is its ideal to found. 
 
 Christian Socialism in each of its several stages 
 falls short just here. It introduces all the conceptions 
 that are implied by the adjective Christian and, in so 
 far as it does this, it falls short of the heights attained 
 by the ethical Jesus. The metaphysical Jesus comes 
 nowhere up to him. 
 
 The misfortune is that since the Christian era it has 
 been the metaphysical and not the ethical Jesus that 
 has been busy establishing the Kingdom. It is from 
 the metaphysical Jesus that Christianity takes its rise. 
 All Christian ethics bears the stamp of this origin. All 
 its efforts at social and economic reform are tinged with 
 it. All denominational institutions such as sectarian 
 orphan asylums, and denominational social settlements 
 and Y. M. C. A.'s are affected by it. In short we may 
 truly say with T. C. Hall, "Out of Christian ex- 
 perience we may expect a body of conduct distinctly 
 bearing the marks of the origin. iN"© speculative system 
 of ethics can therefore satisfy the Christian heart and 
 conscience, when (note these words) it takes no account 
 
 1 Hall — Historu of BtJidos, p. 177. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 49 
 
 of what to tlie Christian believer is the supreme reality 
 of his experience." ^ 
 
 The Christian Socialism of the Chair no less than its 
 predecessors bears the marks of its origin. True, it is 
 more ready to give up all ceremonial forms and rites 
 as non-essentials of Christian ethics, but it clings tena- 
 ciously to the presuppositions — to the Tatherhood idea, 
 as a basis of social ethics. For the Catholic formula 
 "extra, ecclesiam nulla salus/' religious ethics sub- 
 stitutes "extra paternitatem nulla salus." 
 
 Social conduct refuses to be hedged in either by the 
 authority of the Church or of the Father. The Ethics 
 of the Chair strikes the true note when it emphasizes 
 the loving spirit of the ethical Jesus. But when it 
 digresses to the metaphysical Jesus it falls into the error 
 of former Christian Socialists, and leads to confusion. 
 Contemporary Christian Socialism therefore needs 
 clearer vision. 
 
 Is it any wonder, when the learned are confounded 
 and perplexed by the social concept, that the ignorant 
 manifest the perplexity by the manner of their lives? 
 Is it any wonder that the Christian business men do 
 not live socially in business, when, although well con- 
 vinced of the existence of Church and God, the terror 
 that these once struck no longer frightens; and when 
 the loving God who replaced the God of terror is con- 
 fusedly conceived in a trinity whose limits are not 
 clearly defined, but whose essence embraces both social 
 and unsocial elements ? Is it any wonder that under this 
 confused state of the social concept the business man in 
 his natural dread of perishing, somewhat further insures 
 his existecQce by artificially raising the prices of food- 
 stuffs and by turning such innovations as storage houses 
 
 1 HaU — History 0} Ethics, p. 6. 
 
50 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 (whose advent was hailed as an omen of the dawn of a 
 lower cost of living through the preservation of perish- 
 able foodstuffs) into a means of raising prices through 
 cornering markets and through doling out the product 
 with as slow a hand as will insure the large return which 
 an apparent scarcity forces from the needy ? Is it any 
 wonder that the collective bargaining of trades unionism 
 which some years ago was a mighty factor for good in 
 combating the evils of the capitalistic trusts, has turned, 
 the moment it has become conscious of its solidarity, 
 into a system as exacting as the one combated? 
 
 The one is no more social than the other. The 
 solidarity of large organizations of employees, working 
 together for certain ends, is not necessarily any more 
 social than is the similar solidarity of capitalistic mag- 
 nates who work together for their own ends. Solidarity 
 is mistaken for sociality. If the sugar trust artificially 
 limits the output of sugar to get larger returns for itself, 
 we condemn its solidarity ; if the labor trust artificially 
 limits the supply of labor in order to force upon the 
 employer, let us not say higher wages or shorter hours, 
 but an unworthy laborer, one who is abusive and vile 
 in the shop, are we to hesitate to condemn its solidarity 
 as unsocial simply because it comprises a larger group ? 
 Solidarity does not mean social life any more than does 
 selfish individualism. We wrongly identify solidarity 
 with social life, because we fail to discriminate the 
 distinctive factors of social ethics. 
 
 We sing the praises of utilitarian ethics, with its 
 greatest good to the greatest number on the one hand; 
 and on the other, we shout loudly for the rights of the 
 minority. Some time ago we identified brotherhood 
 with the social concept. The tendency to-day is to iden- 
 tify the social concept with solidarity. "The first pos- 
 tulate of the Christian Socialist — the ethical basis of 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 51 
 
 modem social movements — is the solidarity of the 
 race." ^ 
 
 But here we confront the same old prohlem as to 
 what constitutes a race. It is a conventional term of 
 undefined boundaries, and these we often define to suit 
 our selfish ends. As Eoyce says: "The earliest Social 
 problem of humanity is also the most recent problem. 
 This is the problem of dealing with the men who seem 
 to us somehow very widely different from ourselves 
 in physical constitution, in temperament, in all their 
 deeper nature, so that we are tempted to think of them 
 as natural strangers to our souls." ^ 
 
 The temptation to think of differences as aver- 
 sions is the ingrained fault of all systems that base 
 ethics upon solidarity or likeness of one kind or another. 
 It is bound to end in unsociability and in a spirit of 
 persecution. High types of men of all stations of life 
 fall into it. It seems unavoidable, for it is due to their 
 starting point. Perhaps there is no higher type of men 
 than those who occupy the theological chairs of our uni- 
 versities. Yet, they unavoidably become unsocial in 
 their doctrines. 
 
 This cannot be accidental. It must be germane to 
 their attitude towards life. When a teacher who in one 
 place nobly says: "A Christianity that prefers plans 
 of salvation to salvation itself, that raises definitions of 
 the 'natures' of Jesus above moral surrender to the 
 joy-giving Savior, has always bred the spirit of perse- 
 cution," * says in another place that "The unity of 
 believers, is the new social order," * and that "Worth 
 does not lie in the mere fact that a man is a man," ® 
 we have a bias that is traceable to some fountain- 
 
 > p. Monroe — English atid AmericoM Ohrietian Socialism. 
 
 ^ Eoyce — Race Questions and Other Americam, Pro'blems, p. 5. 
 
 ' Shaller Matthews — The Ctospel and the Modern Man. 
 
 * Shaller Matthews — The Church and the Changing Order, p. 86. 
 
 ' Shaller Matthews — The Social Oospel. 
 
52 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 head. When from the man who says : "In loyalty to the 
 gospel lies the hope of the church," we also hear: "I 
 cannot see in ethical teaching pure and simple, whether 
 it be in ethical culture societies or in evangelical pulpits, 
 any greater hope than in a hopelessly outgrown literal- 
 ism and anti-scientific conservatism," ^ we are up 
 against a fundamental stumbling block. 
 
 The man who starts with a doctrine that all men are 
 brothers because they come from the same Father, 
 soon makes a distinction between the brothers. "We 
 have to distinguish sharply," says Shailer Matthews, 
 "between two possible conceptions of the divine sonship. 
 On the one hand there is the conception according to 
 which all men are the sons of God in that they were 
 created by him, possess moral attributes and are capable 
 of rising to nobility in self-sacrifice and devotion — in 
 a word, in that they possess simply by virtue of their 
 humanity an ineradicable likeness to Grod . . . On the 
 other hand, there is the more intensive conception of 
 sonship . . . which uses the word to express the more 
 intimate and responsive relation with God actually 
 enjoyed by those who are seeking noble ends, who are 
 consciously seeking moral strength from prayer, who 
 in a personal sense, love God while seeking to keep his 
 commandments and who through this personal contact 
 with God, gain a new character which, while possessed 
 of the same powers as before, is yet fuller of the divine 
 likeness . . . The second and more restricted use of 
 sonship was the one adopted by Jesus. Jesus reserved 
 this t«rm to the relations of those persons who were 
 members of the Kingdom of God — ^who, to use the 
 Johannine expression, have been bom anew. To extend 
 the use of these terms of Jesus to all mankind, is to 
 confound what was in his mind a possible condition 
 ' Shailer Matthews — The Chwrch and the Changing Ord&r, p. 89. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movement 53 
 
 with that which was real only in the case of far too 
 small a number . . . Promises made to those who in 
 this deeper sense pray to their Father are not to be 
 transferred to those who will not so pray." ^ 
 
 This brings out clearly the point insisted upon so 
 often. 1^0 matter how moral you may be, if you are not 
 of my church you shall not get the preferment. This 
 is the philosophy of likeness. It rates ethical conduct 
 below religious conformity, and the performance of 
 duty below the saying of prayers.^ These ideas pro- 
 ceed from the University Theological Chairs. It is 
 needless to say that they represent the highest thought 
 of the Religious Ethical Movement. They are full of 
 excellent thought in regard to their attitude to the 
 social problems of the day, but when they seek to ground 
 their morals in religion they fall far below their ethical 
 utterances. The problem which we have to solve, the 
 problem of clipping the selfish wings of individualism, 
 and of making the social dominate it, can not be met by 
 churchmen, no matter how well-meaning they may be. 
 
 ' Shailer Matthews — The Social Teachings of Jesus, pp. 63-67. 
 ^ Shailer Matthews — The Gospel and the Modem Man, p. 287. 
 
OHAPTEE II 
 
 THE SOCIAL ETHICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 (I) The History of the Movement 
 (a) Its Inspirers and Pione&rs 
 
 THE Eeligious EtMcal MoYement which, began in 
 England in 1848, had for its immediate purpose 
 the establishment of a better understanding be- 
 tween the clergy and the people. It battled against the 
 attitude of indifference which the former maintained 
 toward the latter upon all matters that were most vital 
 in this world's life, the attitude to their vocation, to 
 their health, to their economic and social needs. The 
 movement from this point of view was a grand success, 
 for it did bring about a change in this attitude. By 
 1875 the clergy had been brought together with the 
 laboring classes and this mainly through the efforts of 
 the Christian Socialists. The social horizon had been 
 thereby widened and the economic and industrial condi- 
 tions were perhaps somewhat better than they had been 
 before. But in its most ultimate purpose of changing 
 by an appeal to brotherhood in God, the misery, the pov- 
 erty, the unsanitary and dangerous habitations to which 
 the new industrial conditions had given rise, Christian 
 Socialism had utterly failed. 
 
 The home life and its surroundings, the needs for 
 leisure and recreation of the great masses of working 
 people, were yet a sealed book to the educated and upper 
 
 64 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 55 
 
 classes. The failure of Christian Socialism in this 
 sphere was due, as we have seen, partly to the narrow 
 limits which the Religious Ethical Movements placed 
 upon a brotherhood that necessarily drew its solidarity 
 from the acknowledgment of the Fatherhood of God, 
 and partly to the inadequacy of the knowledge which the 
 middle and upper classes of society had concerning the 
 home life and the social loneliness of the industrial 
 classes, thrown together though these were in the same 
 big cities and intertwined as their lives were in the 
 same industrial system. 
 
 True, Kingsley in "Cheap Clothes and ISTasty" and 
 in "Alton Locke" had done much to spread knowledge 
 of the life of the working classes, but people generally 
 made allowances for the play of his poetic imagination 
 as they always do in fiction, and therefore they largely 
 discounted the force of his works. "The schemes of 
 Christian Socialism, their co-operative enterprises were 
 wrecked on the shallows of spiritual defect, their own ig- 
 norance and the want of moral and intellectual prepara- 
 tion of the working classes." ^ What was needed was 
 concrete cold statistical facts about the social conditions 
 of the masses from actual touch with them. There was 
 need of something like Booth's "In Darkest England" 
 to give vital force to a reform movement, and that 
 Christian Socialism was unable to produce. 
 
 Whoever succeeded in revealing the social con- 
 ditions and read them aright would be most likely to 
 ascertain the causes of the social evil, of crime and of 
 poverty. To be sure. Socialism was at that very time 
 engaged in opening up the problem of poverty by attack- 
 ing the generally accepted doctrine of the Manchester 
 School of Economists, that poverty is an unavoidable 
 factor in municipal life, and that therefore it must be 
 
 ' C. E. Henderson. 
 
56 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 patiently borne. Tlie Socialists brought home to the 
 world the fact that if it is true that poverty is unavoid- 
 able then the consequences that follow upon the heels of 
 poverty — ^hardships, disease and crimes — must likewise 
 be tolerated, since poverty is a prime cause of the 
 greater percentage of these. 
 
 The Socialists, especially the Christian Socialists of 
 the Guild of St. Matthew, who were closely affiliated 
 with Fabian Socialism, thereupon tried to give a new 
 meaning to the Biblical passage, "The poor ye have 
 always with you." They endeavored to show that Jesus 
 meant this to be taken as a state due entirely to human 
 injustice and not as an everlasting accompaniment of 
 life. 
 
 The Manchester School on the other hand looked upon 
 poverty as an eternal fact. Even Professor Giddings 
 held that "At all times a portion of mankind must be 
 relatively useless to the community and for that reason 
 relatively poor and their greatest possible utilization 
 and compensation depend upon their being held for the 
 while in practical subjection to other individuals or to 
 the commonwealth." ^ 
 
 With such view of poverty, remedies are useless. The 
 best that could be done with poverty was to state its case 
 coldly : and with such cold statement the economic theory 
 of Ricardo was satisfied. Its redemptive word was 
 laissez faire. It follows naturally from this view that 
 each social class occupied a certain fixed position in 
 society. To belong to a certain class, thus implied of 
 necessity, to be honored and respected or to be scorned 
 and detested. This is the natural conclusion dravm 
 from the Ricardian view of society. 
 
 In offsetting this view and in doing away with the 
 scorn and coldness of class against class and in mitigat- 
 
 > Giddings — Philanthropy and Social Progress. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 57 
 
 ing the feeling of the class ostracism whicli accompanied 
 poverty, the Christian Socialists were partly successful, 
 but the method they employed was inadequate to the re- 
 quirement of post-Darwinian times. Their method was 
 purely a priori. They lacked a detailed acquaintance 
 with the condition of the poor which accurate investiga- 
 tion alone could afford. They were not scientific. They 
 employed deductive reasoning on the social evils even 
 after Darwin's theory of evolution had been firmly 
 grasped, and therefore they fell into errors. 
 
 Nor were the upper and educated classes equipped 
 with better methods. 
 
 Though the submerged tenth had been shunned by 
 the educated and upper classes, these latter had never- 
 theless been laboriously theorizing and constructing 
 theoretical legislation on the problem of poverty and on 
 the economic and industrial phenomena which they 
 were looking at only from the surface. The real phe- 
 nomena were veiled from their view by their social 
 aloofness from the very masses whose conditions were 
 either a very great puzzle to them or else a thing taken 
 for granted as natural, in accordance with the Biblical 
 teaching in regard to the poor. 
 
 During the latter part of the 19th century, a move- 
 ment arose which was free from the defects that crippled 
 the efficiency of the ethical movement of the middle of 
 the century. It threw off the limits which the Religious 
 Ethical Movement put upon fellowship, and got into 
 close touch with the working classes, by living as nearly 
 as possible their life. This movement is the Social 
 Ethical Movement. It was scientific and yet not pos- 
 sessed of the laboratory coldness. It started like its 
 predecessor, in England ; and owed its initial impetus to 
 the teaching of such men as Thomas Hill Green, J. E. 
 Green, and J. Euskin. It was a university movement 
 
58 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 rather thaja a clmrch movement, altliougli chiirclimen 
 were its pioneers. 
 
 Inspired by John Eichard Green, Edward Denison in 
 1867, a truly heroic type of man began to assail the 
 hydra of ignorance, filth and vice of the crowded section 
 of East London. He hired small quarters in the densest 
 place and patiently studied the conditions of bis chosen 
 surroundings. Wherever he could, he helped. Where 
 the state functions were not enforced owing to the inac- 
 tivity of officials, he prodded the lax inspectors and 
 forced results from them by the sheer weight of his per- 
 sonality. But like a pioneer, he stood alone, and fight- 
 ing without the added strength which the social force of 
 even a decrepit institution affords, he succumbed to an 
 early death. 
 
 He was followed in 1875 by Arnold Toynbee, a pupil 
 of Euskin at Oxford. Toynbee, it has been said, would 
 have founded a Church Order had he lived in the Middle 
 Ages, for his was an inspiring personality, the warmth 
 of which radiated through those who touched it and 
 passed on to others beyond them. He entered whole- 
 heartedly into whatever he undertook; whether it was 
 building a road under Euskin's direction or teaching 
 history to those who were destined for the Indian Ser- 
 vice, earnest application marked his efforts. In 1875 
 he spent the summer vacation in Whitechapel, one of the 
 most thickly settled and one of the most miserable 
 districts of London. Whitechapel was in the parsonage 
 of S. A. Bamett, and to him Toynbee turned for assis- 
 tance and information. He made a strong impression 
 upon Canon Bamett whose help and encouragement 
 he secured. His influence was soon felt throughout the 
 district. He became the friend of his neighbors, per- 
 ceived their condition, and turned his attention to the 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 59 
 
 industrial and economic theories of tlie day, with a Adew 
 of correcting from first hand knowledge theories whose 
 foundations were not laid upon actual experience with 
 the laboring classes. 
 
 Toynbee introduced a new formulation into plans for 
 social amelioration, which differed from that of the 
 Christian Socialists. The latter stj-ove to turn industrial 
 civilization to a recognition of the fact that the central 
 pivots of that civilization were God and man, and that 
 all else, profits, prices, rents, hours of labor, were 
 secondary and dependent upon the theory of the relation 
 of man to God. Maurice and Kingsley, the founders 
 of Christian Socialism, were of the a priori type of re- 
 formers. They applied to the problems which arose 
 from the industrial revolution, a theory which had its 
 origin in the Bible and not in the phenomena of the life 
 of the workers, whose struggles they little knew. 
 Maurice, for instance, summed up the evils of the times 
 in the word "Competition" and the remedy in the word 
 "Association" — a remedy which he drew from his re- 
 ligious belief in the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 Denison and Toynbee, the founders of the Social 
 Ethical Movement, were, on the other hand, of the a 
 posteriori type of reformers. Imbued with the scientific 
 spirit of investigation, they took up their residence 
 close to the subjects of investigation, in the poorest 
 quarters of the City, and in this way got into first hand 
 acquaintance with the facts of the social problems. As 
 a result of his investigations Toynbee thus summed up 
 the social situation : "The welfare of the producer was 
 as much a matter of interest to the consumer as the 
 price of the product." 
 
 This is a new way of stating the case, and it rested 
 on sound investigation of industrial affairs. Again and 
 
60 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 again has this open avowal of the social interrelations 
 been corroborated through sad experiences. The infec- 
 tious diseases of the sweatshop garment maker have 
 been carried to the homes of the ladies of fashion who, 
 though somewhat concerned over the prices of their 
 garments, had not been very much disturbed over the 
 welfare of the worker. Social solidarity of rich and 
 poor has been brought home to the millionaire's palace 
 by the diseases that are the result of social conditions ; 
 and this solidarity was stated not in terms of the relation 
 between man and God, but in terms of man to man. 
 
 The Social Ethical Movement sets forth the relation 
 of man to man in the industrial order as essentially a 
 reciprocal relation, which it is futile and even suicidal 
 for wealth and education to ignore. The intensive study 
 of social phenomena which the new movement made 
 possible, has revealed much more strongly than it had 
 hitherto been possible to reveal, how vitally connected 
 all men, regardless of rank or station, really are. 
 
 The Religious Ethical Movement and the Social 
 Ethical Movement have no doubt the same ultimate 
 goal, but their methods are different. Nor must it be 
 supposed that the Social Ethical Movement, because 
 its method is scientific, therefore looks coldly upon the 
 facts and rests with merely stating them. The pioneers 
 of the Social Ethical Movement, Denison and Toynbee, 
 were like Maurice and Kingsley, ardently bent upon 
 doing away with the evils about them ; they directed all 
 the energy of their lives towards changing the conditions 
 and diverting thp causes that are responsible for human 
 misery. It is this latter attitude, rather than their 
 intensive a posteriori investigations, that makes their 
 movement an ethical movement. The new Social 
 Ethical Movement is at once an ethical movement and 
 a scientific movement. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 61 
 
 Historically it traces its descent back to the Working- 
 men's College founded by Maurice after the failure of 
 his co-operative schema From the idea of a Working- 
 men's College, sprang the idea of University Extension, 
 and from the idea of University Extension, it was but 
 a short step to University Settlements. 
 
 (b) Its InstitutioTudization 
 
 The initial stage of a reform movement is marked by 
 the personal enthusiasm of its prime movers. What 
 such movement lacks at its incipiency in clear formula- 
 tion of its doctrines, it more than makes good in the 
 whole-hearted devotion of its adherents to the cause and 
 supplies energy enough for a time to enthuse their 
 successors. 
 
 With such devotion were the foundations of the 
 Social Ethical Movement laid out by Edward Denison 
 in 1867, and by Arnold Toynbee in 1875, that their 
 individual efforts among the poor during the summer 
 vacations quickly inspired others to follow. "Toynbee's 
 share of the movement," we are told by Mrs. Bamett, 
 "was at Oxford, where with a subtle force of personality, 
 he attracted original or earnest minds of all degrees, 
 and turned their thoughts or faces towards the East End 
 and its problems." 
 
 Denison and Toynbee fought out single-handed their 
 convictions in regard to social reforms, and the work 
 was too much for them. Even though their sojourn in 
 Whitechapel was but for a few weeks during tiie vaca- 
 tion, their strength was sapped and they succumbed 
 after a brief period of activity. 
 
 Their individual efforts were, however, supplanted 
 by concerted efforts. With the commencement of con- 
 certed efforts at reform we may date the period of the 
 
62 Thre& Types of Practiced Ethical Movements 
 
 institutionalization of the Social Ethical Movement. 
 And in this institutionalization, the Social Ethical 
 Movement simply foUovred the trend of the times. 
 
 This is an age of combination and centralization. 
 Capital and lahor have both centralized and organized 
 their activities. Philanthropists have followed the line 
 pursued by the capitalists and the laborers. They have 
 pooled their resources. The Settlement with its head 
 workers and residents is simply a manifestation of the 
 same tendency carried over to the purposes of ethical 
 propaganda. It is a collective attempt to improve life 
 by improving its conditions. 
 
 The term Settlement is a significant name for the 
 Social Ethical Movement. Historically, the term is 
 applied to a group of men who leave their home and take 
 up their abode away out on the frontiers of civilization, 
 and live a life quite different from that to which they 
 were accustomed. It is exactly in this sense that the 
 term is used in the Social Ethical Movement. It desig- 
 nates a group of men who migrate from the comforts of 
 their homes, situated on clean streets amidst a cultured 
 neighborhood, and who take up their new homes amidst 
 dirty streets and uncultured neighbors, because they 
 are impelled "to eliminate by disregarding them, the 
 unreal and arti^cial barriers of class and station and to 
 work together for mutual good as one community on the 
 basis that the real good of the individual and of society 
 must be one." ^ 
 
 The chief organizers and foimulators of the Settle- 
 ment movement in England have been Canon and Mrs. 
 S. A. Bamett, the founders of Toynbee Hall, the 
 first Settlement. In America, Stanton Coit and Jane 
 Addams stand out most prominently. 
 
 ' H. Q. Starr — Settlements and the Church's Duty, p. 4. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 63 
 
 How the individual efforts of Denison and Toynbee 
 were converted into collective efforts and hov? their 
 brief duration through the vacation season became a 
 permanent vocational pursuit is thus told by Mrs. Bar- 
 nett: "In June 1883, we were told that some men at 
 Cambridge were wishful to do something for the poor. 
 Mr. Bamett was asked to suggest some way. He wrote 
 a letter suggesting that men might hire a house, where 
 they could come for short or long periods, and, living in 
 an industrial quarter, learn to 'sup sorrow with the 
 poor.' That letter founded Toynbee Hall." ^ 
 
 Canon Bamett suggested a concerted plan of attack 
 upon social conditions in Whitechapel, of which parish 
 he was vicar, and it was taken up. Ever since 1872, he 
 had been enlisting young Oxford men in practical re- 
 search along the lines of social problems. Funds were 
 procured, a building was erected and the first social 
 institution whose object was ethical reform became 
 a fact by the end of 1884. In honor of Toynbee, whose 
 death occurred in 1883, it was named Toynbee Hall. 
 
 Toynbee Hall was an association of educated, well 
 meaning men who migrated from wealthy families and 
 healthy surroundings and took up their abode amidst 
 the poverty-stricken, unsanitary and socially diseased 
 communities of the East End of London vdth the object 
 of mitigating or of removing the causes that are respon- 
 sible for such communities. 
 
 Toynbee Hall, according to one of its reports, is "an 
 association of persons, with different opinions, and 
 different tastes ; its unity is that of variety ; its methods 
 are spiritual rather than material; it aims at permea- 
 tion, rather than at conversion ; and its trust is in friends 
 linked to friends rather than in organization." This 
 
 'Bamett — Towards Social Reform, p. 246-247. 
 
64 Three Types af Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 is the first institution of its kind ; an association of peo- 
 ple based on their differences, and having for its object 
 the recognition and appreciation of differences in others. 
 
 Toynbee Hall has become the pattern of Social Settle- 
 ments throughout Europe and America. Its idea is that 
 the solidarity of human kind is manifested by the re- 
 ciprocal functioning of its parts; that the settlers gain 
 from their neighborhood as much as their neighborhood 
 gains from them. The Settlement stands for fellowship 
 despite the differences that exist among men in regard to 
 nationality, religion and race. "It must be grounded 
 in a philosophy whose foundation is the solidarity of 
 the human race, a philosophy which will not waver, 
 when the race happens to be represented by a drunken 
 woman or an idiot boy." ^ 
 
 In the application of this philosophy, a knowledge of 
 the causes that produce social ills must necessarily be 
 sought out, and these social ills must be shown to be the 
 natural consequence brought upon society by society's 
 neglect of its members. Investigation of social condi- 
 tions became the first move of the Settlement. 
 
 This specific attitude as applied to social phenomena 
 spread with wonderful rapidity. Within two years after 
 the opening of Toynbee Hall, the movement was trans- 
 planted to America, where, with the founding by 
 Stanton Ooit of the ITeighborhood Guild in 1887 in 
 Forsyth Street, and of the Hull House in 1889, by Jane 
 Addams, there began a career of Settlement planting 
 that promises to fulfiU the wish of Stanton Ooit for a 
 Settlement to each 10,000 of the population. We seem 
 now to be approaching Euskin's idea of having an over- 
 seer or bishop over every hundred families of the State 
 who shall have care of their interest and conduct. Set- 
 tlements have not been confined to cities alone. Socially 
 
 ' Jane Addams. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 65 
 
 isolated mountainous communities have had their needs 
 for social centers satisfied. Hundreds of Settlements 
 now exist in England and in the United States, whose 
 studies have resulted in bringing to light facts which 
 furnish the material for a new social science, and for 
 more intelligent legislation upon the problems of con- 
 gestion, lighting, sanitation and the social evil. 
 
 The Settlements have moreover assumed and in part 
 tried to fulfill the social needs for recreation, associa- 
 tion and education of the impoverished community 
 wherein they are located, and thereby applied either a 
 harmless vent for, or an effective check to the forces 
 causing the social evils of our time- This work was so 
 highly appreciated, that the city authorities have taken 
 over much of it, and now the public purse pays for a 
 great deal of social work that was formerly paid for by 
 private individuals. A city now acknowledges as its own 
 the function of providing recreation for its inhabitants. 
 With recreation piers on the water fronts, with play- 
 grounds in the parks, with game rooms, club rooms, 
 literary clubs, athletic associations, libraries and penny 
 banks in our schools, the function of the privately main- 
 tained Settlements have nearly all been shouldered by 
 the State. If the system of the resident workers as a 
 peculiar feature of the Settlements is yet impracticable 
 in the schools, at least an approach to it is recommended 
 in the form of visiting teachers, who will perform in 
 large measure the function of resident and visiting 
 nurses. Eecreation centers on the roofs of tenement 
 houses are now strongly urged upon the community. 
 The need for association and adult education is likewise 
 being supplied by the city through clubs, evening schools 
 and lecture centers. All these functions now assumed by 
 the public, trace their origin to Toynbee Hall. 
 
 The Settlement has, with the handing over to the 
 
66 Threes Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 city of a great part of its function, almost made itself 
 a useless institution, which it promises soon to become. 
 But this is the surest indication that it was founded on 
 the soundest human needs, and has met them in the 
 safest manner. 
 
 There are two classes of people who feel the need 
 of Settlements : those who establish them, and those for 
 whom they are intended. The need that is felt on the 
 part of those who found them is splendidly analyzed by 
 Jane Addams of Hull House, the most philosophic ex- 
 ponent of the Social Ethical Movement, in her article 
 on the Subjective N'eeds of Settlements. She groups 
 them under three heads : "The first contains the desire 
 to make the entire social organism democratic, to extend 
 democracy beyond its political expression; the second 
 is the impulse to share the race life and to bring as much 
 as possible of social energy and the accumulation of 
 civilization to those portions of the race which have 
 little; the third springs from a certain renaissance of 
 Christianity, a movement towards its early humani- 
 tarian aspects." These are the impulses which drive 
 a Bamett or a Stanton Ooit or a Jane Addams to found 
 a Settlement. 
 
 On the other hand, those for whom they are intended, 
 the dwellers in neighborhoods that lack the opportuni- 
 ties which the full development of life requires, feel a 
 strong need for something which to them is undefined, 
 perhaps because their uncultivated powers are unable 
 to define it; but the need is nevertheless there and is 
 felt. Briefly, this need which the poverty-stricken 
 dwellers of the congested neighborhoods feel, may be 
 summed up in this sentence : they feel the need for social 
 justice, without which their development is stimted. 
 They feel their desire for the beautiful stunted by the 
 ugly sights about them; their longing for education 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 67 
 
 suppressed by tlie long hours of toil that leave no energy 
 for intellectual labor; their social instinct is checked 
 by their loneliness in the very midst of a seething 
 throng of human beings. All these needs, which are ex- 
 pressions of the pent-up energy of their inmost nature 
 seeking for self-espansion, are choked by the social in- 
 justice of the times. Their subjective necessity for the 
 Social Settlement is the feeling that there is a larger 
 and more desirable life from which they are shut out. 
 The Settlement supplies that larger and more desirable 
 life which the lowest in the slum feel a longing for. 
 
 We thus see there is a need for Settlements, felt both 
 by the Settlement worker and by the dweller in neigh- 
 borhoods which are unfavorable for his development; 
 and that need is reciprocal. The slum-dweller on the 
 one hand feels that his life is but a fraction of what life 
 might be and mean. The settlement worker, on the 
 other hand, feels, as Jane Addams says, the social in- 
 justice involved in refusing to share social life with 
 the people whose political life we put on a level with 
 our own, and desires to set matters right on this score. 
 He also feels that niggardly nature has been less kind 
 to the slum-dweller than to him, and the moral impulse 
 comes upon him to make good from his own fuller store 
 of culture and civilization, what circumstances havQ 
 been so chary in bestowing upon his fellow. HSs life 
 though fuller is not the complete life unless it takes into 
 accoimt the stunted lives of the crowded sections of the 
 city. There is a mutual need felt; and this mutual 
 need finds objective expression in the establishment of 
 Social Settlements. 
 
 The Social Settlement's marvelous growth bears 
 witness to the needs which it fulfills. It satisfies the 
 clearly defined longings of the patrons or founders and 
 the ill-defined longings of those who are packed in the 
 
68 Thre& Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 tenement house sections of the cities. The Settlement 
 is the cement that binds together the rich and the poor. 
 It is the bridge by which communion between these 
 classes is made possible. 
 
 The slum-dweller must surely possess an active moral 
 conscience to resist the pressure that tends to burst 
 the social fetters violently asunder, and to release from 
 their prison longings that seek such worthy fulfillment 
 as is implied in the desire for recreation and culture. 
 Indeed, the State, largely through the influence of the 
 Settlement, has come to let up in the severity of its 
 punishment for violations of social restrictions. The 
 young rowdy and the hooligan are first paroled, then 
 placed into a reformatory or given an indeterminate 
 sentence, mainly because the State assumes that the 
 offender was so hampered by his social environment 
 that it holds itself partially responsible and so prefers 
 to mitigate the offender's punishment. The State 
 virtually punishes itself by the risk which it thus incurs 
 in letting the culprit go free. 
 
 The Settlement exists to set right, in part, the wrongs 
 which social injustice brings about. It aims to give 
 the pent-up spirit a chance to expand. Its social rooms 
 and reading rooms, its musicals and dances, its clubs 
 and societies, its art exhibits and lectures, its gymna- 
 siums and baths, its libraries and classes, its industrial 
 museums, its labor centers and its manual training 
 shops are all so many artificial vents through which the 
 pent-up energy might be set free and afterwards ex- 
 pand naturally. 
 
 The Settlement, in playing the part of a vent for the 
 imprisoned human nature, serves, in fact, at the same 
 time, as a prop and support of the State. Many a strike 
 that would have caused violent disruption in the com- 
 munity has been settled through the agency of the 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 69 
 
 Settlement wliicli was enabled to mitigate the threat- 
 ened violence only because it had won the trust of the 
 people through its services in behalf of their inner 
 longing to expand and through its efforts in behalf of 
 outer freedom. 
 
 The trust won by the Settlement was the fruit of 
 years of patient waiting. The neighborhood does not 
 soon flock to the Settlement ; for a friend is not easily 
 made. Mistrust must first be rooted out; for when 
 years of suffering from social injustice have hardened 
 sufferers who had been often betrayed by those who 
 posed as their leaders, it is no easy matter to win their 
 confidence. The first idea the Settlement evokes in the 
 mind of an East Side mother is that the Settlement is 
 a missionary movement aiming to win away her chil- 
 dren from the religion of their parents. The East Side 
 father again looks upon the Settlement as a capitalist's 
 scheme for softening the righteous anger of the poor. 
 He fears lest a secret impulse may be lurking behind the 
 sacrifices which the Settlement workers make in his 
 behalf. All these prejudices must be overcome, and it 
 requires tact and patience to overcome them. 
 
 Originally the Settlement started with no definite 
 program. It had no clear cut plan of satisfying the 
 needs that it came into existence to satisfy. It relied 
 on the personality of the Settlement workers to adopt 
 any plan that circumstances approved. No beliefs, 
 whether political or religious, were expressed. The life 
 of the worker alone, not his opinion or his creed, was 
 to be a guiding light. By examples of personal and 
 domestic cleanliness, of gentlemanly politeness and 
 inner sincerity the dweller in the neighborhood was to 
 be attracted as to a shining light and be lifted up. Re- 
 markably near are we in this to the naive attitude of 
 Jesus. Here again Jane Addams touches the soul of the 
 
70 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 movement in the statement of its principles just as she 
 personally surpasses in living them out. She says: 
 "His [Jesus's] teaching had no dogma to mark it off 
 from truth and action in general. He himself called it 
 a revelation — a life." 
 
 The Settlements that exemplified this principle 
 elicited the hest that was in tiie neighborhood, and 
 found that in a short time, the neighborhood itseM fur- 
 nished the workers and freed the Settlements from their 
 dependence upon Universities for their leaders. Such, 
 for instance, was the case with the University Settle- 
 ment in New York shortly after its first decade of ex- 
 istence. This is proof of healthy vigor, a vigor which 
 ceases as soon as the Settlement ceases to evince the 
 adaptability which Jesus employed in dealing with 
 individuals. 
 
 There is so much that is vivid and captivating in a. 
 movement at its incipiency, and we so feel ourselves 
 part of the living force that stirs it on, and so whole- 
 heartedly do we imagine that we are contributing 
 towards its furtherance, that our activity in its behalf 
 knows no fatigue. At this stage of the movement, we 
 find the cooperative principle most nobly exemplified, 
 and genuine democracy the prevailing form of govern- 
 ment. In the launching of something new, whether it 
 be the formation of a religious order, or the organization 
 of a benevolent society or of a labor union, or the erec- 
 tion of a new church or hospital or the establishment 
 of a summer camp, we are sure to find a hearty coopera- 
 tion and enthusiasm that surmounts all difficulties and 
 carries the work to completion.^ The numbers that 
 
 1 Several clubs of an Educational Society on the Lower Hast Side of 
 New York desired to open a summer bome for its poor members, and 
 finding a deserted house in the outskirts of Staten Island that was 
 suitable but impracticable because of the use it had been put to 
 (the previous occupant had housed his goats and chickens in it and 
 the floors were inches thick with a deposit of years), nevertheless 
 rented the place. The manner in which the obstacles were Bur- 
 
The Social Ethical Movement Yl 
 
 engage in it may be few or many, but each counts him- 
 self a vital factor, not a dead tool in tbe process. This 
 self-esteem is highly important. 
 
 (c) The Danger Involved in Intstitutionalization 
 
 This spirit of cooperation characterizes the pre-insti- 
 tutional stage of a movement, before it has settled down 
 to a fixed program and before it has set up precedent 
 as an image of worship. When the institutional stage 
 sets in, a new spirit also enters. At the present time we 
 shower so much praise upon nicely organized move- 
 ments; we so readily support the machine-like charity 
 that works "scientifically" and the machine-like school 
 that works to any prescribed "method" which its spon- 
 sors claim is related to some psychological principle, 
 that it behooves us to call attention, by way of contrast, 
 to the spirit operative in the pre-institutional stage of 
 a movement. 
 
 The established institutional systems, with their or- 
 ganization and mechanism are fondly clung to, because 
 they are scientific — and it is stylish nowadays to be 
 scientific. We overlook the fact that the term scientific 
 applies not to a mere status, not to a mere arrangement 
 of parts in an organism. The mere arrangement is an 
 SBsthetic fact, which properly entitles an institution, or 
 an organization to be called beautiful, but not neces- 
 sarily scientific. The term scientific applies to the 
 functioning spirit, and not to arrangement of parts. 
 
 We very often confuse function with arrangement 
 of parts. This is mainly the case in institutions. A 
 
 mountea, Is an Indication of the spirit that prerailed. On Saturdays 
 and Sundays, all the young men went to Stateu Island ; some brought 
 brooms, brushes and soap ; others, shovels and pails and started to 
 clean the Augean stables. Every one did something and that will- 
 ingly. One lame young man of about twenty-five gave splendid proof 
 of how the defect In his legs was rectified In his arms by scraping 
 and scrubbing a floor to the cleanliness of a newly planed board. 
 
72 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 gradation of officers of an institution whose functions 
 are prescribed to an iota, may be a beautiful arrange- 
 ment, but cannot by any means be considered a scien- 
 tific operation of function. Our desire that the beautiful 
 arrangement should work scientifically is certainly a 
 commendable one, but we forget that what perhaps 
 ought to be "idealiter" does not necessarily have to be 
 "realitetr." (See Kant on this point.) The prescribed 
 duties of every worker in an institution, even if car- 
 ried out correctly by every individual in a machine^ 
 like way, do not make the operations scientific, any 
 more than a machine can be said to be scientific. 
 
 Its science lies in the individual who devised the 
 machine, not in any parts of it. That institution is 
 scientific whose individual functionaries, from highest 
 to lowest, not only function their own parts properly, 
 but comprehend the function of every other in the sys- 
 tem, and can, when required, step into any place and 
 perform its function. The spirit of the functioning 
 method and not the mere mechanical functioning of 
 parts constitutes the scientific attitude. To be scien- 
 tific is thus to be organic as opposed to being mechan- 
 ical. This attitude gives vitality to a movement; its 
 workers are truly cooperative, and not mere wheels 
 screwed into place and ever ready to get out of gear 
 the moment the fastenings work loose. 
 
 Scientific is thus a term applied to the attitude we 
 hold towards an object. It is not a term applied to an 
 object. One must see a total view from each part, of 
 the object, before he can be said to have a scientific view 
 of it. Likewise an Institution, if it is looked at as an 
 object, may be beautiful in its arrangement or in the 
 functioning of its parts, but as such, it cannot be said 
 to be scientific. An Institution is scientific only when 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 73 
 
 the orderly arrangement of its parts functions accord- 
 ing to the methods of the organic spirit. As an organ- 
 ism, it is scientific only if there is willing and not forced 
 cooperation, and this is possible only when each views 
 his operation from the total point of view. 
 
 Now it is precisely this attitude that characterizes 
 the early stage of a movement, and gives life and hope 
 to it. And it is precisely the absence of this spirit that 
 characterizes the later stage of a movement and makes 
 it formal and stiff and as stolidly routine in its func- 
 tioning as are the daily prayers counted oS the beads 
 of a monk. 
 
 The Settlement idea is so fascinating, that it has 
 spread to kindred movements, and it is impossible to 
 treat of the Settlement without taking them into con- 
 sideration. These kindred institutions are the chari- 
 table and the educational institutions. Strange to say, 
 however, what the latter have caught of the Settlement 
 idea is not its organic spirit but its mechanical arrange- 
 ment of parts, and consequently we witness in these 
 institutions a crystallization into a dead formalism 
 which was far from the intent of the founders of the 
 Settlement idea. This formalism has had a reflex in- 
 fluence upon the Settleanemt, and now we behold under 
 our very eyes the three institutions which are closely 
 allied to one another becoming mechanicalized. Let 
 us observe the process going on at present in each of 
 these allied institutions. 
 
 Our public schools have already reached the institu- 
 tional stage, and are referred to as the "system," mean- 
 ing the aesthetic characteristics which mark the orderly 
 arrangements of parts. They are lauded highly for 
 their "scientific" character. Their achievements, 
 especially in their own reports, are often gloriously 
 
74 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 "colored" and the color-blind laity marvel at tlie beauty, 
 mistaking, in their ignorance, the aesthetic arrangement 
 of parts for their vital organic functioning. 
 
 Of the many institutions whose purpose is the better- 
 ment of social conditions, the schools were the first to 
 become institutionalized. Rousseau and Pestalozzi as 
 pioneers tried to make them vital. Their efforts bore 
 noble fruit, and therefore they were imitated aud imi- 
 tated until their very imitation came to be worshipped 
 as "method." 
 
 It is "methods" by which our Universities proceed 
 to institutionalize the schools. Strange evolution this ! 
 Because some methods, used by certain persons, were 
 fruitful, therefore their methods, used by any person, 
 must be fruitful. This is the logic by which schools 
 are institutionalized and education made a "science." 
 
 Not that there is no value in method; but we forget 
 that its value lies in the spirit in which it is employed, 
 and not in the tactics of presentation; that not in the 
 mere order and arrangements of the points of a lesson 
 is found its scientific aspect, but rather in the person- 
 ality that makes use of, and vitalizes this order and 
 arrangement. 
 
 The harshness of institutionalism is painfully illus- 
 trated in the operation of the compulsory education 
 act. 'No doubt, the highest ethical considerations 
 prompt its promotion as well as that of all child-welfare 
 movements. Yet legislative acts are very often mistaken 
 in the particular mode in which they seek to gain that 
 welfare. The compulsory education law is certainly in 
 general a good act, but it often works untold hardships 
 in its particular applications, and then brings no good 
 to the child whom it was intended to benefit, simply 
 because we take the law by itself without considering 
 its relation to the school curriculum. Very frequently, 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 75 
 
 for the want of a few months to make up the legal age 
 for obtaining a work certificate, a boy is prevented from 
 coming to the assistance of his widowed mother and 
 helpless younger brothers and sisters. Will three or 
 four months' detention in school equip him with so 
 much additional powers as to compensate him and his 
 dependent family for the loss of his financial help? 
 No one who knows the inner workings of our school 
 system can honestly say "yes." 
 
 It is often argued that the mother by keeping him 
 in school shows her motherliness and is thereby acting 
 from the highest moral principles in so identifying her 
 life with the life of her hopeful son as to suffer tem- 
 porary want in his behalf. Splendid moral training. 
 The theory is unchallengeable ; but to make the practice 
 worthy of the theory, the efficiency of the school must 
 be taken into consideration. If the school were an 
 organic and vital institution whose curriculum and 
 spirit were not formal and stiff but life-breathing and 
 life-giving, we should then say: "What a pity it is to 
 tear a young boy away from it ! It is the duty of the 
 mother who needs his aid to make financial sacrifices 
 in his behalf and keep him in school longer. It is the 
 duty of the State to be rigoristic in the application of 
 the compulsory education law, and to see that the 
 schooling is not shortened; for by staying in school 
 to the legal limit, the boy would thus be compensated 
 in many ways for the financial loss which his mother 
 would sustain." But we fail to take into consideration 
 the efficiency of the school, and we make exertions to 
 square a splendid ethical theory and an institutional 
 practice — two things which are incommensurable. 
 
 The moment we do so, we institutionaliiie ethics and 
 detract from its efficiency. We fail to see the relative 
 value of things and become hard-hearted although we 
 desire to be sympathetic. The compulsory education 
 
76 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 act -when rigidly applied as it is in New York State, 
 where discretionary power is withheld from the 
 school authorities, works great hardships, which are 
 not warranted by the state of efficiency of our schools. 
 In view of this lack of eifficiency, what we need is dis- 
 cretionary power resting with the immediate superiors 
 of the boy or girl, who know the conditions both of the 
 pupil and of the school, to increase or to decrease the 
 legal age limit for leaving school. 
 
 We trust a magistrate to give an indeterminate 
 sentence and to parole, why not trust a school official 
 with similar discretion in regard to work certificates? 
 Is not this failure an open confession that our school 
 officials are untrustworthy; that they will abuse their 
 trust? If trustworthy personality is so little in the 
 saddle here, what a commentary upon our schools! 
 
 Rigidity even of a good law is unethical. It ignores 
 relative values, and thus puts a false stamp upon things. 
 "A good custom may corrupt the world." Rigoristic 
 ethics can be applied only to individualistic and per- 
 sonal conduct, to conduct self-imposed and not to that 
 of a social group. Such an autonomic ethics, when 
 applied by an individual to his daily life, guides him to 
 act socially and to consider the relative value of his 
 every act and to choose that one which is most in 
 harmony with the demands of life's best interests. 
 Rigoristic individualistic ethics is thus in harmony with 
 the principles of Jesus. 
 
 Rigoristic social ethics often goes contrary to His 
 teachings and to one's best judgment in particular 
 cases. It makes one untrue to the requirements of the 
 best impulses and thoughts that are in him in order 
 that he may be true to the strictures of a social claim. 
 
 Take the illustration cited above. Social rigor 
 requires the boy who lacks a few months of being 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 77 
 
 fourteen years old to stay in school althougli his help 
 is needed immediately. It requires the mother to deny 
 necessities to herself and to her other children on the 
 ground that in so doing she is acting from a higher 
 ethical principle. It requires the school official who is 
 best qualified to decide the relative merits of the con- 
 flicting ethical principles to suppress his best judgment 
 in order to conform to a social demand whose rigor goes 
 counter to his conscience in the very act of his comply- 
 ing with its strictness. Here is the self-contradiction of 
 social .conduct that adopts a rigoristic stand which has 
 place only in an individualistic ethics. 
 
 Charity likewise has become institutionalized and 
 with like results. The art of giving has become the 
 science of withholding. It has been given a beautiful 
 form. A "case" is referred to a certain "department" 
 and the reference blank, filled out according to formula, 
 proceeds down the proper channels much as the cash- 
 carriers in a department store are whisked along their 
 proper paths until they reach their destination. The 
 system is perfectly beautiful; but by thus mechan- 
 izing charity its vitality departs. The philanthropist 
 who gives through an impersonal institution is one 
 of the greatest losers by de-personalizing himself. 
 The ethics of a charitable act consists in the reciprocal 
 benefit derived from it both by the giver and the re- 
 ceiver. By becoming an impersonal party to the act 
 of charity, the philanthropist weakens and perhaps to- 
 tally loses the significance of the charitable relation to 
 himself and to the beneficiary. In charitable institu- 
 tions we have another example of the process of institu- 
 tionalization. It is the process of removing personality 
 as a factor in a social movement. And the machine that 
 is thus created, eats up the greater half of the oil which 
 it was intended to transport and to apply as a babn. 
 
78 Three Types af Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 We are now witnessing the institutionalization 
 of the Settlement. The spirit of the pioneer is fast 
 giving way to the mere systematizer and codifier. With 
 the exception of Miss Addams, the Bametts, and of a 
 number of others, the Settlement worker has become a 
 professionalist whose vocation is figured out in cash 
 value and in terms of mechanical results. The subjec- 
 tive impulse towards Settlement work no longer is the 
 primary motive force. 
 
 The public is impressed by figures and figuring. 
 Figuring classes and attendances therefore becomes aa 
 important part of the head-worker's efforts. It is 
 absurd, this manner of showing the effectiveness of a 
 Settlement Movement, to stand with tick-watch in hand 
 and click every time a person enters through one door 
 and goes out through another. In this, the Settlement 
 is copying the school where we measure the effectiveness 
 of classes and lectures by attendances and by audiences. 
 It is show that we look for, and not genuine result 
 which, in a way, is not measurable. 
 
 This way of appraising breeds hypocrisy and dete- 
 riorates our morals instead of enhancing them. Our 
 schools and our Settlements are now measuring their 
 success by figures just as our newspapers do by their 
 circulation. Figures are easily manipulated. One of 
 the worst evils of our evening schools was the "padding 
 of the attendance reports" — an evil that sprang 
 directly from our false way of judging the success of 
 the teacher by the attendance he can roll up. One must 
 be acquainted with the inside workings of an institu- 
 tion to feel the heinousness of the evil of employing a 
 false measure of value to the efficiency of social energy. 
 It is then only that the discrepancy between the reality 
 and the statements of the annual report becomes exas- 
 perating. 
 
TJve Social Ethical Movement Y9 
 
 Of course, all this does not detract from the value of 
 the Settlement idea, as long as the principles that 
 underlie it are sound; but the evil of institutionalism 
 to which the Settlement is especially open, frustrates the 
 purpose for which it stands. 
 
 The writer has been engaged for about ten years in 
 the immediate neighborhood of New York's largest 
 Settlement and has not been able to note one marked 
 improvement during all these years, either in the exter- 
 nal appearance of the gutters piled with paper, garbage 
 and rubbish or in the personal cleanliness of thousands 
 of boys under observation or in their reverence and 
 respect for parents and elders. 
 
 The desire which the Settlement shows of drawing 
 large crowds within its walls and of thus piling up 
 figures in the annual report, prompts the workers to 
 fraternize on a level with the immature minds of the 
 young, and to hold them by catering to them on a lower 
 plane — a familiarity which does not make for reverence. 
 
 The same difficulty now confronts the Public 
 Schools which are crazed with artificially stimulated 
 athletics. How in the midst of play between superiors 
 and inferiors we may preserve the respect which is due 
 from one to the other, is our great problem. The 
 average teacher is not able to meet the situation, 
 mainly because the schools are now steeped in insti- 
 tutionalism. 
 
 Can the Settlement be freed of institutionalism? 
 The solution lies in the power there is in the supporters 
 of Settlements, in those who finance them, to take active 
 part in the work of the Settlements, and in not standing 
 aloof, while a professional worker does the work and 
 makes reports to satisfy the supporter upon whose good- 
 will he is dependent. If the Settlement is not to be^ 
 come a crystallized, dead form that bears witness, 
 
80 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 merely through its physical features, of the life that 
 once reigned in it, the supporters of Settlements must, 
 in large measure, enlist themselves and not merely their 
 money in the work. It is life, not money, that counts 
 in a movement. 
 
 The life that dominates the Settlement is in the per- 
 sonalities that control it. This is so self-evident that it 
 seems superfluous to mention it. But v?hen one views 
 the history of the Settlements not from annual reports 
 that they issue, but from actual observation of their 
 work and influence, and when he finds that there now 
 goes on a process of slow crystallization into a mere 
 Institution not possessed of that vitality which is rightly 
 attributed to life alone, it is time to call attention to 
 the vitalizing principle in the movement. 
 
 The sudden growth of Settlements all over the land 
 has created a demand for Settlement workers and many 
 respond who are not prompted to enter the field by the 
 need for it which they find in themselves or in the 
 neighborhood, but often only by the remuneration which 
 it furnishes. Professional Settlement workers sprang 
 up who call and compete for positions and care not 
 much whether they are fitted to supply the need that is 
 felt for the Settlement. 
 
 Under such guidance, Settlements are institutional- 
 ized. A routine program and prospectus is followed, 
 that fails to mould character — a task which should be 
 the chief object of a Settlement's aims. 
 
 In an ethical movement the object is character- 
 making. The Settlement founder should realize that 
 this is the aim for which the Settlement is founded 
 and that he fails to live up to the situation if he loses 
 sight of character-building. He becomes a mere wor- 
 shiper of an idea. Such idea-worshiper is as little 
 moral as the mumbler of prayers is religious. As 
 
The Social Ethical Mov&ment 81 
 
 Professor Dewey says: "The question finally at stake 
 in any genuinely moral situation is: What shall the 
 agent be? What sort of character shall he assume?" ^ 
 
 Unless one feels that he is serving a need — either 
 his own subjective need or the objective need of the 
 neighborhood, he is not justified in entering the move- 
 ment. The philanthropist who gives money-service 
 does not supply the need. He gives impersonal charity, 
 but he falls far short of supplying the need for which a 
 Settlement stands. Settlements need the services of 
 their supporters just as much as they need their money, 
 and are badly off unless they get such service. How 
 majestically a character like Jane Addams or Canon 
 and Mrs. Bamett looms up by comparison with the 
 mere financial supporter of a Settlement or with the 
 average paid worker ! 
 
 The institutional stage betokens a decline in the 
 Settlement as an effective moral agency. The Settle- 
 ment is the personality of the worker, not the program 
 of activity. The same is true of a school. Institu- 
 tionalize a school, plan out and fix the program for 
 every minute of the day, and bind the teacher to it, 
 then the machinery which you thus create frustrates 
 the very purpose of the school. 
 
 It is more than mere coincidence that the institu- 
 tional school is at present assuming the function of the 
 institutional Settlement and is taking over most, if not 
 all, of its activities. Institutions are rivals and tend 
 to swallow each other up ; personalities are living souls 
 that strengthen each other by eliciting the good that lies 
 hidden in each other. 
 
 If the Settlement serves a genuine need, then it will 
 resist absorption by the institutional school. Hull 
 House, as long as Jane Addams lives to direct it, and 
 
 •Dewey — Logic, p. 210. 
 
82 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 Toynbee Hall under the guidance of the Bametts will 
 not be absorbed even should all of their activities be 
 assumed by the public institutions. There, personality 
 lives and reigns. No program, but living spirit domi- 
 nates. Most truly Mrs. Bamett says : "A Settlement's 
 distinguishing feature is the absence of program, and 
 the presence of men and women who recognize the 
 obligations of citizenship." ^ 
 
 The argument made for personal enlistment in re- 
 form movements rather than for the impersonal pecu- 
 niary enlistment which mates for institutionalization, 
 calls for supplementation. Whatever be the institution 
 which one supports — ^whether educational, charitable, 
 or social — the ethics of such support lies in the reflex 
 effect which the supported one has upon the supporter; 
 it lies in the kind of man which the giving of the aid to 
 the movement makes of the giver. In other words, an 
 act is ethically valuable if it works both ways — on the 
 agent as well as on the beneficiary. Perhaps the in- 
 trinsic value of the social deed li^ in its reflex effect 
 more than in its direct effect upon the recipient. If 
 this truth be fully realized, the present-day impersonal 
 attitude of the supporters of educational, charitable and 
 social movements — an attitude that is largely respon- 
 sible for their institutionalization, — dulls some of the 
 luster which has hitherto shone round the word philan- 
 thropist. 
 
 A movement must be organized to become efficient; 
 yet bare organization lacks vitality. It has momentum, 
 but not living inspiration. It has the same kiad of 
 power which dead mass has, but which lacks the energy 
 of some active principle. Many a worn-out institution 
 possesses still some influence long after it has ceased to 
 fulfill its purpose, simply because of the momentum 
 ^ NineteentU Century Magamine, December, 1897. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 83 
 
 which it has received at the start from the energy of 
 some potent personality. A movement may have its 
 value even after it has been institutionalized. This is 
 the case veith the school and with charity organizations. 
 But the value it then possesses is but a fraction of the 
 value it had when it was a living fountain of inspira- 
 tion. Its present value comes from what it does for 
 the recipient; its former value came from what it also 
 did for the promoter of the movement. At present it 
 has mere momentum affecting another, whereas, in its 
 initial stage, the movement had also active energy and 
 affected the agent as well. 
 
 (II) Its Immanent Idea 
 
 The Religious Ethical Movement endeavors to 
 christianize our industrial and economic life. To do 
 this means to apply to industrial pursuits the ethics of 
 our private life. The Social Ethical Movement endeav- 
 ors to universalize culture -and comforts in the interests 
 of human solidarity. The Religious Ethical Movement 
 is an appeal to the captains of industry to stop the 
 injustice which produces economic and industrial ine- 
 qualities; the Social Ethical Movement is an appeal 
 to the industrial toilers to take advantage of the oppor- 
 tunities for refinement afforded by the Settlements and 
 to learn from them the beauties of culture as well as the 
 home comforts which personality requires, and by these 
 means to rise to the social level of the captains of 
 industry. 
 
 This view is based on the assumption that, while 
 wealth is an artificial means of creating class distinc- 
 tion, culture is a natural means of offsetting it. Cul- 
 ture is the balance scale of wealth. The social standing 
 of the captains of industry rests on their wealth. The 
 social standing of the masses must rest on culture. 
 
84 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 This is tke theory upon which the Social Ethical Move- 
 ment purposes to bring about social solidarity. If 
 human solidarity has been somewhat split upon the 
 rocky mass of wealth which the industrial revolution of 
 the 19th century has enabled the captains of industry to 
 heap up, the rift so made is to be surmounted by the 
 refining influences of culture. 
 
 The Settlement thus stands for the blessings of cul- 
 ture. Christian Socialism and the Settlement are at 
 one in their object. Both seek peace between workers 
 and employers. They differ, however, in the means 
 they use. Christian Socialism pleads with the latter to 
 be gracious towards the former; the Settlement pleads 
 with the former to rise to the standard of life of the 
 latter. This must not be taken as literally but 
 generally true as an estimate of the functions of the two 
 institutions. 
 
 Nor must the Settlement be thought of as altogether 
 a meek dove of peace; for on occasions, when it has 
 found the captains of industry unyielding to the pleas 
 of justice, it boldly enlisted on the side of labor in its 
 war against capital. But such alliance it entered into 
 only when justice clearly was on the side of labor or 
 of civic welfare. And so, when the strife was settled, 
 the Settlement was held in greater esteem by both 
 parties. In the words of Bamett, it "has tended to 
 mitigate class suspicions, and helped to inspire local 
 government with a higher spirit." 
 
 The relation between the two movements here con- 
 sidered may be thus summed up : The Eeligious Move- 
 ment seeks through the application of Christian morals 
 to business to spread among the workers the culture 
 and comforts which the employers now have ; the Social 
 Movement seeks through universalizing culture and 
 comforts to improve the moral life of the workers — a 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 85 
 
 life which at present is not moral. The argument of the 
 former runs thus: "Religious living will throw open 
 to all the possibility of obtaining culture and comforts ; 
 therefore live religiously." The argument of the latter 
 runs: "The spread of culture and comforts will make 
 men more moral ; therefore establish Settlements which 
 shall be centers of culture and patterns of necessary 
 personal and home comforts." 
 
 Whatever be their agreement as to ends, they differ 
 as to means. The means employed by the Keligious 
 Ethical Movement have already been stated and we 
 have found how impossible these means were of attain- 
 ing the end. We must now examine the Social Ethical 
 Movement, and ascertain whether the principles upon 
 which the Settlement rests are any more valuable as a 
 means to the attainment of the end. 
 
 The primary principle upon which the Settlement 
 rests is that there is something common to all men, as 
 men. This common something is the bond of solidarity. 
 It alone is sufficient to unite men. The Settlement 
 maintains that no other bonds are necessary; in fact, 
 if there exist any other bonds they are a hindrance to 
 universal brotherhood. Religious bonds separate ; racial 
 bonds separate ; national bonds separate. They separate 
 the groups so bound from others that are not so bound. 
 
 The basis of solidarity is reached by eliminating 
 from human society all accidental acquisitions. 
 Wealth, rank, and birth, and even culture that takes 
 pride in itself, fall by the wayside in the process of 
 elimination; for all these make rents in the solidarity 
 of the social rock. Igaore all differences between men 
 and you will come to the element common to them. 
 And you will find that this common element is the one 
 thing that is noblest in all men. 
 
 Now what remains after these differences are sub- 
 
86 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 tracted is simply the fact of human form. Human form 
 is thus the basis of human solidarity. Upon this basis, 
 the idiot boy, the negro mammy, the boorish man, the 
 free-thinker are enfranchised into social fellowship. 
 
 The view here presented has at least this in its favor : 
 The common is not an accidental element, but a natural 
 possession of all men. It is this fact that the human 
 form is the basis of human solidarity, which makes the 
 Social Ethical Movement so universal, and gives it so 
 wide a platform to stand on. The Settlement here has 
 a tremendous advantage over the Church. In the words 
 of Graham Taylor, "It appeals to the essential religious 
 nature without insistence upon divisive tenet or eccle- 
 siastic preference upon which it is the prerogative of 
 the churches to insist." The Settlement draws to itself 
 therefore people who possess differences ; but it says that 
 these differences are accidental, and non-essential. What 
 is essential is the possession of that common something 
 which every human being possesses by virtue of his 
 being human. 
 
 The Settlement thus fraternizes on the basis of the 
 human form which all men are endowed with. The 
 idiot boy is as welcome as the genius ; the ignorant, un- 
 mannered immigrant, as the cultured and gentlemanly 
 native citizen. The Settlement is thoroughly demo- 
 cratic. Through it, democracy is spread far beyond 
 the political sphere. "The social and educational 
 activities of a Settlement," says Jane Addams, "are 
 but differing manifestations of the attempt to socialize 
 democracy, as is the existence of the Settlement itself." 
 On this bare basis of social solidarity, namely, the 
 common possession of a human form, the Settlement 
 builds a social structure into which no material is 
 allowed to enter that will in any way split this 
 solidarity. It adds all that refines and uplifts — culture 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 87 
 
 and simple comforts ; but such culture must not be self- 
 conscious. Culture that takes pride in itself makes a 
 rent in the social structure. Culture that is humble 
 is noble and refining. 
 
 "The Settlement is an effort to add the social 
 function to democracy," says Jane Addams. It en- 
 deavors to straighten out the inequality that still exists 
 in the vocational, in the social, and in the religious 
 worlds; and it purposes to do this by emphasizing 
 what is common in men. "We must accentuate the 
 likenesses," she says, "and ignore the differences which 
 are found among the people whom the Settlement con- 
 stantly brings into juxtaposition." This accentuation 
 of likenesses is its great ethical pride. Yet it is hardly 
 clear as to what is meant by accentuating likenesses. 
 
 We are told that "all that is noblest in life is common 
 to men as men." Now if we lay emphasis on the com- 
 mon, we come to the empty human form; if we lay 
 emphasis on the noblest we come to culture and art. 
 For art and culture are presumably, in the intent of 
 the Settlement, the noblest in life. Judging by the 
 actual practice of Settlements, such is apparently the 
 conclusion. Almost all Settlement activities are artis- 
 tic and cultural. Its other activities, its gymnasium, 
 baths, playroom, etc., are merely drawing cards, tem- 
 porary sweets from which the youth is soon to be 
 weaned and then trained to the permanent goods, cul- 
 ture and art. 
 
 ]!^ow culture and art, as the noblest in life, are by 
 no means common ; nor are they means of arriving at a 
 common human element as a basis for solidarity. 
 Culture and art, even more than wealth, make distinc- 
 tions among human beings. They create differences of 
 taste and differences of appreciation, which, though 
 nobler, are as real differences as are those brought about 
 
88 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 by wealtih, race and religion. Culture and art thus fail 
 as the bases of human solidarity ; and the common ele- 
 ment that the Settlement seeks as its ground of soli- 
 darity, is once again reduced to the mere possession of 
 human form. It is hard to reconcile the process of 
 eliminating differences and of simultaneously stimu- 
 lating and instigating art and culture. The Settlement, 
 ia attempting to do this, virtually tries to suppress 
 differences with one hand and with the other to empha- 
 size what it chooses to call tendencies to likeness but 
 which are nevertheless most profound sources of differ- 
 ences. 
 
 In this movement as in the Eeligious Ethical Move- 
 ment we fall into the error of emphasizing likeness, and 
 find that we have no clear conception of what we mean 
 by likeness. The Settlement strips men and women of 
 all differences; and when they are thus stripped, it 
 says : "Lo and behold, they are alike." 
 
 We have here naked form, a pure Platonic concept; 
 and in order to put substance and life into it, we imme- 
 diately proceed to reclothe it but with garments that 
 shall reveal no differences. These garments, art and 
 culture are presumably to clothe all in such fashion as 
 to make us unable to discern one being from another. 
 In this way the solidarity of the race is to be estab- 
 lished. 
 
 But art and culture are neither common garments 
 of all souls; nor can they, if made general apparel, 
 hide differences. They would, in fact, most loudly pro- 
 claim differences among beings; for culture evokes, 
 rather than eliminates differences. 
 
 The theory that culture is a social force which may 
 be employed to counteract the unsocial force of wealth, 
 is a theory fraught with no unmixed danger. The 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 89 
 
 danger of this theory lies in the idea that differences are 
 unsocial forces and must be eliminated. Culture is 
 therefore called into the field as a mangle to smooth out 
 the ruffles which differences beget. Now there are two 
 fundamental errors here : first, the assumption that dif- 
 ferences are unsocial forces is an erroneous assumption ; 
 second, the theory that culture eliminates differences is 
 a false theory. As to the first of these, I must defer 
 discussion to the last chapter; as to the second, it may 
 truly be said that culture evokes differences of thought, 
 of appreciation, and of action. It is certainly far from 
 reducing all men to a dead level. The very interaction 
 of experiences that comes from intercourse between 
 peoples has a tendency to elicit differences much in the 
 way that the same bow passing over strings of different 
 tension produces different tones. The Settlement is 
 the mart where different opinions are exchanged but 
 not necessarily eliminated. The intercourse of human 
 beings in the Settlement effects toleration, but not as- 
 similation. This is a highly desirable effect ; far more 
 desirable than the elimination of the differences would 
 be. Indeed the peculiar merit which culture possesses, 
 is that it gives its possessor that tolerance of differences 
 which may afterwards become the basis of an ethical 
 life. 
 
 The culture that comes from the interaction of ex- 
 periences is largely responsible for the spirit of tolera- 
 tion which we find in Settlements. Indeed, toleration 
 is the great contribution to social ethics which the 
 Settlement movement has made. As Jane Addams has 
 it, "We are learning that a standard of social ethics is 
 not attained by traveling a sequestered byway, but by 
 mixing on the thronged and common road where all 
 must turn out for one another, and at least see the size 
 
90 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 of one another's burdens. . . . We realize, too, that 
 social perspective and sanity of judgment come only 
 from contact with social experience; that such contact 
 is the surest corrective of opinions concerning the social 
 order and concerning efforts, however humble, for its 
 improvement." ^ But tolerance of differences is quite 
 another matter from elimination of differences. 
 
 No better proof of the effect of Settlement culture 
 as a divisive force can be adduced, than the schism it 
 creates in families. There are critics of the Settlements 
 who look upon the movement from a different per- 
 spective and so get a different view from that obtained 
 by the Settlement worker. They are the large class 
 of immigrants whom the Settlement has not been able 
 to attract, whose children have, however, drunk fully 
 of the culture offered by the Settlement. These immi- 
 grants accuse the Settlement of breaking up the home, 
 of making a schism in the family through the very in- 
 troduction of culture. The younger members of the 
 family after having imbibed this culture, forthwith set 
 themselves up as judges of right and wrong, in reli- 
 gious doctrines, and in social manners ; and by foisting 
 upon the less receptive minds of their elders ideas which 
 the Settlement has implanted, the foster children of the 
 Settlement family beget unhealing breaches in the nat- 
 ural family. Here is an instance of the separation 
 which the Settlement causes in its very effort to unite, 
 through the efficacy of culture. 
 
 This result, which the Settlement workers least 
 looked for, is no doubt the effect of the mistaken notion 
 that culture eliminates differences and is the basis of 
 solidarity among mankind. The Settlement's claim 
 that culture offsets the artificial differences which 
 wealth and rank beget, may be fully allowed, without 
 
 1 Democracy ani Social Ethics, p. 7. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 91 
 
 our allowing tlie other claim that it removes all differ- 
 ences whatever, or that it is a basis of solidarity. 
 
 The criticism here set forth, that the Settlement dis- 
 rupts the family, is met with the claim that the Settle- 
 ment is itself a family, a larger and more important 
 family than any single family in its neighborhood'. 
 "By virtue of certain advantages— educational, finan- 
 cial or otherwise, the Settlement family is able to be 
 neighborly in a wider and more effective way than any 
 other families in Settlement neig'hborhoods." ^ 
 
 Whatever we may think of the claim that the Settle- 
 ment is a family, we cannot put this artificial family 
 on a par with the natural family. In the natural family 
 the Settlement does often cause breaks, and for these 
 breaks it is poor amends to claim that it unites other 
 families that are drawn to the Settlement into a larger 
 family. 
 
 To sum up: An analysis of the primary principle 
 upon which the Settlement seeks its basis of solidarity, 
 leaves us with naught but human form — a pure Pla- 
 tonic image — as the basis of fellowship; and, more- 
 over, the moment the Settlement tries to clothe that pure 
 form, it brings forth garments that emphasize distinc- 
 tion. 
 
 There is a second principle for which the Settlement 
 stands, which we come next to set forth. The Settle- 
 ment viewed as a body of active residents giving the 
 best that is in them to their less fortunate neighbors, 
 hates paternalism as befitting only private morality, and 
 endeavors to foster another principle — the principle of 
 social morality. The prevailing note of the Settlement 
 worker is, "Democratize Society," just as the prevailing 
 note of the Christian Socialist was, "Christianize 
 Society." Next after his efforts to meet in social fel- 
 
 > Mary K. SimklioTltch. 
 
92 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 lowship all human beings, the Settlement worker stands 
 out for social efforts to bring about social good. This 
 is his second great doctrine. 
 
 With regard to the laboring man, the Settlement 
 stands for his salvation by experience, even though in 
 this way suffering and pain may be his portion, rather 
 than for salvation by paternal guidance along a path 
 strewn with happiness. As regards the philanthropist, 
 it cares not for his paternalism but for his cooperation 
 in making his paternalism unnecessary. Private moral- 
 ity without social morality is not the demand of the 
 time. "To attain individual morality," says Jane 
 Addams, "in an age demanding social morality, to pride 
 one's seK on the results of personal effort when the time 
 demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to appre- 
 hend the situation. To perform too many good deeds 
 may be to lose the power of recognizing good in others ; 
 to be too absorbed in carrying out a personal plan of im- 
 provement may be to fail to catch the great moral lesson 
 which our times offer." ^ Similarly Prof. Dewey 
 says, "If the vice of the ordinary egoist, is to neglect 
 the interests of others, the vice of the social leader, of 
 the reformer, of the philanthropist and of the 
 specialist in every worthy cause of science or art or 
 politics, is to seek ends which promote the social wel- 
 fare in ways which fail to engage the active interest 
 and cooperation of others." ^ 
 
 The Social Ethical Movement with its underlying 
 idea of the unity of life, propounds, as part and parcel 
 of its ethical philosophy, a newer standard of morality 
 — a social standard as over against the older individ- 
 ualistic standard. The distinction here aimed at is 
 that the latter standard was satisfied with right conduct 
 
 • Jane Addams — Democracy and Social Ethict. 
 = John Dewey — EtJiics, p. 303. 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 93 
 
 by the individual, with the taking care of the "person 
 under your own hat," while the social standard is 
 missionary in character, and is not satisfied with taking 
 care of the "person under your own hat," but demands 
 that each should see to it that every one shall be able 
 to take care of the "person under his own hat." It is, 
 in other words, democratic; whereas the individualistic 
 ethics is monarchical. 
 
 Jane Addams in her book Democracy and Social 
 Ethics, points out very clearly this difference in stand- 
 ard, by an illustration drawn from the great Pullman 
 strike. She shows that the President of the company 
 had the noblest of motives in constructing his model 
 town and in managing it in a model but yet in an indi- 
 vidualistic way, and so he thought himself wronged and 
 was sorely vexed when rebellion broke out. She blames 
 this philanthropic President for not having applied a 
 social standard of morality and for not having seen to 
 it that the inhabitants of the model town who were his 
 employees were reared even by repeated failure to a 
 democratic life — to a true democracy. The same view 
 is expressed by Professor Hall, who says "Bad govern- 
 ment that is training men for maturity is better than 
 good government that leaves the large proportion con- 
 tented Children." ^ The only heretic in the Social 
 Ethical Movement, we are told by Mrs. Sim- 
 khovitch, the Head Worker of Greenwich House, ISTew 
 York, is he who does not believe in democracy. "The 
 only cure for democracy is more democracy." This is 
 a cry commonly heard nowadays, and is probably the 
 first fruit of the Social Ethical Movement. 
 
 Democracy is to be established everywhere. In the 
 clubs at Settlements we see a precocious twelve-year-old 
 youngster, with gavel in hand, guide the destinies of 
 
 " Hall — Social Solutions in the Light of Christian Bthics, p. 171. 
 
94 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 his club, in accordancje with the laws made by an elec- 
 torate constituted of boys of his own age. He imposes 
 fines and suspensions — a veritable future judge. Thus 
 we are teaching him to be independent. The schools in 
 this, as in other matters, ape the Settlements. The 
 School City is being preached as a substitute for the 
 methods of discipline in vogue in our schools. At 
 the Child's Welfare Exhibit, in New York, one placard 
 shown was a picture of a "Supreme Court in session in 
 one of the school cities" ; another, that of a Senate of 
 boys; and still another, of a "House of girls," all in 
 great solemnity debating some question. 
 
 When one looks at these pictures one feels as if the 
 millennium has come. It seems as if the children are 
 teaching their elders the democratic ideals. Assuredly, 
 "And a Child shall lead them" has already come true. 
 
 Can it really be true that the cure for democracy is 
 more democracy? How strangely the historic pendu- 
 lum swings ! N'ot so long ago the cry of the Manchester 
 School of Economists was : The cure for individualism 
 is more individualism — the cure for competition, more 
 competition; the cure for selfish greed, more greed. 
 ISTow the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, 
 and the slogan is more democracy. 
 
 We seem to be impatient until we reach the extreme 
 of a movement, and then finding that Aristotle's state- 
 ment in regard to extremes is verified, we turn back to 
 correct the errors; but we keep on correcting until we 
 wonder whether, like the much-darned stocking, the 
 thing we are mending is the same thing we started out 
 to mend. We started to mend individualism and we 
 altered into democracy. 
 
 The Social Ethical Movement of which the Social 
 Settlement is the physical expression, represents one 
 extreme end of the cosmic pendulum's swing; and at 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 95 
 
 this end of tlie swing we preacL. democracy even for 
 children; for are not children human and are not all 
 human forms similar? Why then should democracy 
 be limited at all ? Away with the limits ; more of de- 
 mocracy, and still more and fear not the consequences ; 
 for the very failures will ultimately neutralize one 
 another. 
 
 Under this reign of universal democracy, how rapidly 
 experiences succeed each other. And what are the 
 consequences ? The present day newsboy of thirteen has 
 probably encountered all the experiences of a mature 
 man of half a century ago. We are greedy of experi- 
 ences, and we hasten on the kaleidoscope. Our schools 
 which, according to our educators, are fitting our chil- 
 dren for life, are here again at one with the Settlements 
 and they are certainly hurrying the processes. In the 
 purely mental processes as well as in the physical 
 processes this haste goes on. The Courses of Study are 
 overcrowded. For must we not clothe the naked human 
 forms, and clothe them all alike with culture and art, 
 lest there might arise differences in life? And does 
 life according to this view mean anything else than the 
 process of clothing the naked human forms with cul- 
 ture and art ? By no means. And so we are urged to 
 prepare for life, and to hurry to live. The more rapidly 
 we can make the wheels of experience turn, the better. 
 
 See what effect this doctrine has in actual practice on 
 the School, an institution allied to the Settlement, and 
 note what important bearing this has in the construction 
 of Courses of Study. Take, for instance, the subject of 
 arithmetic. During the past fifteen years, the arith- 
 metical processes have dropped the grades of difficulty 
 which formerly were attributed to them, and the very 
 youngest child is now taught them all at once. Frac- 
 tions, decimals, percentage, all are given in mild doses 
 
96 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 to the child in the fourth year. Hasten, hasten, lest 
 the child, (at fourteen) may leave school in his fifth 
 year and not have had the experiences. 
 
 Consequently the boy, who graduates today from a 
 public school, has had a whiff of everything that the 
 college boy has had. He has even been a weather 
 prophet, making charts and determining the course of 
 winds; he makes airships; he sends wireless messages 
 and telegrams; he follows the ball-games with the en- 
 thusiasm of the "fans." He has experienced at four- 
 teen the excitements of the tournaments and the athletic 
 meets. The only experience he needs to round out the 
 gamut of life's store of experiences is the experience 
 of marriage. "The school should give the graduate a 
 wife," I once heard a principal of a school say, "and he 
 will be fully equipped." 
 
 In this haste to prepare for "life" the Settlements 
 take the lead. I know of a case where the head worker 
 of a Settlement had a reading circle with boys of twelve 
 years of age in which the book read was Darwin's 
 Origin of Species. 
 
 In back of all these various activities lies the notion 
 that the young boy or girl is capable of all the experi- 
 ences that the grown up man or woman experiences, 
 simply on the strength of his possessing the human 
 form, which must be clothed with similar clothes lest 
 differences might creep in, and with differences the 
 inequalities which beget economic and iadustrial 
 injustice. 
 
 It is not the variety and multiplicity of the Settle- 
 ment's activity that is here criticised, but its Tinderlying 
 basis and its object of keeping men alike to insure 
 human solidarity. In so far as its spread of culture 
 and art has a purpose, it may be said to be the offsetting 
 of the artificial differences produced by wealth, race and 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 9Y 
 
 religion, through the universalizing of culture and art. 
 As for the activities of the Settlement apart from its 
 purpose, there is no doubt of their great value, but for a 
 different reason from that assigned by the Settlement. 
 Blindly as it were, the Settlement through the unlimited 
 scope of its vcork, through its setting aside of the limits 
 within which fellowship is to be fostered, performs a 
 mission and renders a service which the Religious 
 Ethical Movement utterly failed to equal. 
 
 Another pivotal idea of the movement is that there 
 is an "absolute unity of the race" embodied in the idea 
 of a Settlement. Its philosophic foundation is equality 
 of the human race — that all differences are artificial 
 barriers. These the Settlement has come to pull dovra 
 and to point out instead the unity of life. Its formula 
 may be expressed as follows: "The common bond that 
 joins mankind is the similarity of the experiences 
 which life of itself involves." 
 
 In the literature dealing with Social Settlements, 
 we find this notion approximately expressed. "Toynbee 
 Hall stands for the way of Life." ^ A Settlement "is 
 an attempt to express the meaning of life in terms of 
 life itself." ^ "All its effort in securing labor legislation 
 is valuable largely in proportion as it can make both the 
 working man and the rest of the community conscious 
 of solidarity, and it insists upon similarities rather than 
 differences." ^ 
 
 To express this unity of life and to nurture it, and 
 to present the total and not a partial view of life, the 
 Settlement shuts out all differences that divide men. 
 It therefore is non-sectarian, non-political and co-edu- 
 cational. Its attitude towards all comers is, "Hail, 
 fellow, well met." 
 
 ' C. H. Montgomery — BiVUography of Settlements, p. 55. 
 
 * Jane Addams, in Amer. Acad, of Pol. Science, Vol. 13, p. 326. 
 
 'Ibid., p. 342. 
 
98 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movfements 
 
 The idea that all genuine life is alike, is the very 
 doctrine that was uppermost in the latter half of the 
 18th century. The Social Ethical Movement has sim- 
 ply adapted this doctrine to social problems just as the 
 revolutionary movements of that period adapted it to 
 political problems. For a long time this doctrine vyas 
 unchallenged. Not until political organizations based 
 upon it failed to give satisfaction, vs^as it even ques- 
 tioned. Today it is confidently denied as a political 
 doctrine. However, social reform still rests upon it, 
 and to social problems it is applied with a sureness 
 that rivals its application to political problems in the 
 18th century. 
 
 The Social Settlement launches out to teach the simi- 
 larity of life as enthusiastically as did the 18th century 
 movement. But it emphasizes the notion of similarity 
 not as the 18th century movement did by conceiving 
 life as similarly constituted on its subjective side, but 
 by conceiving life as it ought to be constituted on its 
 objective side, as a similarity of opportunity for all lives. 
 Its method harmonizes with its basic principle. It 
 endeavors to point out the solidarity of life, by em- 
 phasizing the points of agreement. What is meant by 
 this unity of life, by this way of life? Behind the 
 Social Ethical Movement lies the idea that the common 
 element running through life is the universal shrinking 
 from suffering and the universal pursuit of enjoyment. 
 Its main aim then is to minister to and support these 
 tendencies which all men have in common. Suffering, 
 it endeavors by all means to suppress; enjoyment, to 
 encourage and to put on a higher level. 
 
 And so it organizes to fight for legislation against 
 child labor with its accompanying horrors. It allies 
 itself with trades unions against the employers of labor 
 in order that a shortening of hours and an increase of 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 99 
 
 wages may be brought about. It ministers to the in- 
 stinct for pleasure by providing cozy isocial rooms 
 where the poor may be free from the discomfort of a 
 crowded two-room home. It provides good entertain- 
 ments and thus fights the inducements to low forms 
 of pleasure so alluringly held out in crowded sections of 
 the city. This is the program of the Social Ethical 
 Movement — a program conceived in accordance with 
 the view that life in its universal shrinking from 
 suffering and in its universal pursuit of happiness is for 
 the vast majority of human beings, one and the same. 
 
 The activity of the Settlement is therefore as broad 
 as life. No one scheme suffices to define it. Graham 
 Taylor tells us that "It is not a church, but it is a 
 helper of all churches. It is not a charity, but aids in 
 the glorification and mutual helpfulness of all chari- 
 table agencies. It is not a school, but it is in tributary 
 sympathy with the public schools, to which it will give 
 up any part of its work that they will take up. It is 
 non-partisan, but has been a rallying point whence 
 the balance of political power has been effectually 
 wielded in aldermanic and legislative elections for 
 nearly a decade. It is not an exclusive social circle, 
 but aspires to be a center and a source of the best social 
 life and the highest civic patriotism. It is not a class- 
 conscious group, but refusing to be classified strives to 
 interpret classes to each other, and to mediate for a 
 just industrial peace." 
 
 A movement that refuses to be classified reminds us 
 of the acts of Jesus, which also defied classification. 
 Viewed from the sphere of its varied activities we are 
 here in touch with life itself, with life not yet institu- 
 tionalized and fettered, with life guided by conscience 
 alone. ISTo fixed program is instituted. Life guided 
 by the scruples of conscience is the only program ad- 
 
100 Three Types of Practical Mthical Movements 
 
 hered to. To quote Jane Addams once more: "The 
 residents of a Settlement are actuated not by a vague 
 desire to do good which may distinguish the philanthro- 
 pist, not by the thirst for data and analysis of the situa- 
 tion which so often distinguishes the 'sociologist,' but 
 by the more intimate and human desire, that the work- 
 ingman, quite aside from the question of the un- 
 employed or the minimum wage, shall have secured 
 to him powers of life and enjoyment after he has pains- 
 takingly earned his subsistence; that he shall have an 
 opportunity to develop those higher moral and intellec- 
 tual qualities upon which depend the free aspects and 
 values of living. Thus a settlement finds itself more 
 and more working towards legal enactment not only on 
 behalf of working people and not only in co-operation 
 with them but with every member of the community 
 who is susceptible to the moral appeal." 
 
 Thus the guiding threads of the Settlement's activities 
 are the changing demands of life. At one time the 
 Settlement may find itself establishing culture classes; 
 the very next year it may find it better to give them up 
 and establish classes for English to foreigners; it may 
 next abandon these for clubs ; and these again for west- 
 em agricultural settlements. Such for instance has 
 been the program of the Educational Alliance in ISTew 
 York which, though not strictly a Settlement because it 
 has not resident workers, is yet classed as a Settlement 
 because in every other respect it does Settlement work. 
 
 This shifting activity is characteristic of life and of 
 living reform movements. There is no one principle 
 that can catch and detain it. No one formula can ex- 
 press it. Ear from being a sign of weakness, the un- 
 fixed program of the Settlement is its surest sign of 
 life and strength. The Settlement that knows when to 
 cease a certain activity and assume another, instead 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 101 
 
 of competing with the public educational institutions 
 after these have assumed the work, is a wide awake 
 Settlement. 
 
 A survey of the Social Ethical Movement has revealed 
 the following points : The Settlement's main purpose is 
 to establish the solidarity of the human race. It pro- 
 poses to do this : 1. By universalizing culture and art ; 
 3. By carrying this out not in a paternalistic, but in a 
 democratic way; 3. By pursuing a democratic method, 
 because there is a unity of life that runs through all 
 human beings who, prompted by this unity of life, 
 are best able to work out their own salvation. Splendid 
 as this theory offhand seems, we must bear in mind 
 that there is a weakness in the Settlement Movement, 
 which militates against its permanence; not a weak- 
 ness in its principle of universal fellowship, but in 
 its basis of fellowship, and in the aim of its activity. 
 This hidden weakness often comes to the surface in 
 ,the manifestation of strange and unexpected results 
 from the activities of the Settlement Movement. 
 
 For instance, in order to teach the solidarity of 
 life through culture and art, the Settlement finds itself 
 somehow constrained to teach it by pointing out con- 
 trasts. In fact, its whole method of procedure is to 
 bring clearly to the attention of the neighborhood the 
 difference between the Settlement building and the 
 neighboring houses ; the Settlement way of doing things 
 and the way in which the homes in the neighborhood 
 do them. The Settlement is established to be the com- 
 mon home of the neighborhood — a larger home, one of 
 which families, as well as individuals, are constituents. 
 The frequenters of the Settlement are expected to draw 
 lessons from the contrast between the common home 
 and the private home. To the youth who enters the Set- 
 tlement building, the latter seems indeed an island 
 
102 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 amidst a vaat sea with apparently all the differences that 
 obtain between two such natural bodies brought out in a 
 striking contrast. The Settlement is clean and light and 
 warm. The thousands of homes surrounding it are 
 neither clean nor light nor warm. The faces at home are 
 care-worn; those in the Settlemeut radiant with con- 
 tentment. The similarity of life on which the ethics of 
 the Social Movement rests, is conspicuously absent in 
 this contrast. Certainly so far as the material side of 
 life is concerned, the separateness of life and not its 
 solidarity is brought out. Nor is the similarity on the 
 spiritual side of life evident. When one reads the pam- 
 phlet of the Greenwich House Settlement describing 
 the spiritual life of one of the Alleys in its neighbor- 
 hood, he cannot but feel the vast differences that mark 
 the forms of human life. If spiritual life consists in 
 moral conduct, surely we have very little similarity 
 between that of the Greenwich House and that of its 
 neighbors. Efforts at finding similarity are futile 
 unless perhaps the efforts at finding similarity in the 
 mere constitution of the so-called mental faculties, i. e., 
 the power that expresses itself in iJiinking, in mani- 
 festing emotion and in exercising volition. Nor are 
 these spiritual forces by any manner of means so simi- 
 lar in individuals as to warrant us in affirming the 
 similarity of life. Men's intellectual capacities cer- 
 tainly differ. So do their emotional natures and like- 
 wise their ability to achieve things. When we disregard 
 degrees of intellectual, volitional and emotional attain- 
 ments, what is universal in the possession of these 
 powers? How the mere possession of these powers, 
 marked though their contrasts are, can be a principle 
 of social union among men, is hard to see. At any rate 
 the mere fact that the Settlement brings out striking 
 contrasts between it and its neighborhood interferes 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 103 
 
 no little with its identification with the life of the neigh- 
 borhood. 
 
 A second instance of a weakness which the Settle- 
 ment derives from its basic principle of likeness is its 
 over-emphasis of the value of democracy as a method. 
 I say democracy as a method and not as a principle. 
 The two are not identical. The Social Ethical Move- 
 ment does not rest on the idea of democracy as a prin- 
 ciple, but on democracy as a method, which is a very 
 different thing. And the idea of carrying out its activi- 
 ties in a democratic way, the Settlement derives from 
 the notion of human form as a principle of likeness 
 upon which to base social solidarity through a culture 
 achieved democratically. Democracy as a principle 
 may give rise to methods that may not be democratic 
 and may nevertheless carry out the social principle 
 perfectly well, by taking cognizance of such notions as 
 superior, equal and inferior. This is actually the case 
 with the Pure Ethical Movement. But the idea of 
 democracy as a method which the Social Ethical Move- 
 ment so strongly emphasizes, an idea not resting on 
 democracy as a principle, gives rise as we have seen, 
 to such absurd practices as are found in the hastening 
 processes of our school curricula and in the farcical 
 self-government makeshifts in Settlements. 
 
 The principle of the unity or the similarity 
 of life, which can mean only the universal shrinking 
 from pain and the pursuit of happiness, requires that 
 politically the opportunities to avoid suffering and to 
 pursue the agreeable shall not be disturbed in the in- 
 terests of one class to the detriment of another by the 
 governmental agency. This is the only sense in which 
 the 18th century doctrine of equality remains true 
 today. As a social principle it has been interpreted 
 to mean that the highest in life which a community is 
 
104 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 capable of cannot be realized unless the conditions are 
 made favorable for it. The Social Ethical Movement, 
 therefore has labored for making these conditions as 
 favorable as possible. Its labor along this line con- 
 stitutes the Settlement's civic activities. Its ethical 
 insight here is sound; and it works along with other 
 ethical movements in this direction. For that very rea- 
 son its civic activities do not distinguish it from other 
 ethical movements. What is genuinely ethical is iden- 
 tical in all movements and refuses to be classified by it- 
 self just as the life of Jesus resists classification simply 
 because his acts are above that of a single class and 
 belong to all classes. Only what falls below the purely 
 ethical plane assumes a distinctive character which can 
 be classified; but at once it also develops some contra- 
 dictory nature revealing a dialectical principle at work 
 in its midst. We have found this true in the Eeligious 
 Ethical Movement and in the Social Ethical Movement, 
 where, for instance, to establish solidarity we employ as 
 a method, culture democratically diffused. We have 
 seen how inadequate this method is. 
 
 How strange a world this must be, wherein you must 
 resort to pointing out differences, if you desire to bring 
 about an appreciation of unity ! Can anything be more 
 indicative of the Hegelian dialectic of reality's flight 
 to an opposite, than this attitude of the Social Ethical 
 Movement ? 
 
 To siun up: The idea immanent in the Settlement 
 Movement is at variance with the actual work of the 
 Settlement. The activities of the Settlement may be 
 grouped under three heads ; the cultural, the recreational 
 and the civic. The immanent idea is that culture and 
 art tend to solidarity and these are therefore made the 
 main propaganda, with results surprisingly startling 
 because of their opposite effects. The secondary activi- 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 105 
 
 ties of the Settlement, gymnasium, baths, game-room, 
 are mere vents to allow pent up instincts their regulated 
 discharges which are thereby made less violent and 
 harmless. The remaining activities of the Settlement, 
 the civic efforts towards public improvements are based 
 upon the idea that since the best that is in life cannot 
 be brought out under such unfavorable conditions, a 
 change of conditions is imperative. 
 
 These three elements in the Settlement work, cul- 
 tural recreational and civic, comprise in general all 
 the activities of the Settlement. Of these the ground 
 for the last is most truly a sound ethical principle; the 
 ground for the second is non-ethical ; the ground for the 
 first cannot be made an ethical principle at all. It is 
 in failing to see this that the Settlement may be said to- 
 fall short as an ethical movement. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PTJEB ETHICAL MOVEMENT ^ 
 
 (I) Us History 
 
 BY The Pure Ethical Movement, I understand 
 a movement which debars both religious dogma 
 and material well-being as absolute essentials to 
 ethical life. Such a movement has existed as an idea 
 time and again in the world's history, and is therefore 
 nothing new; but it has rarely crystallized into and 
 found expression in a concrete physical form. 
 
 Whenever, in the world's history, the Will was given 
 prominence over the Intellect, whenever the concept 
 Action was esteemed higher than the concept Being, 
 whenever man was emphasized rather than his world 
 around him, we found this movement received articulate 
 shape. Such occasions were found in the life of Soc^ 
 rates, in the lives of the Stoics and in the doctrines of 
 Kant in regard to the practical life. 
 
 These emphases upon actual . living are not without 
 historic connection. Each of them can be interpreted 
 in the light of the peculiarity of the time which forced 
 to the front the emphasis upon man and his conduct. 
 The Socratic movement is part of the sophistic move- 
 ment reacting upon and rebelling against the rest of 
 it; the Stoic movement finds its explanation in being 
 
 'As was said In the Preface (see page Till, the word "pure" Is 
 here used in Its technical signification and does not at all imply that 
 the Ethical Culture Societies regard their members as "purer" people 
 than others. 
 
 106 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 107 
 
 regarded as an offset to the blasted nationalistic idea of 
 the Greek City States; the Kantian movement finds its 
 rationale in the bankruptcy of the scientific explana- 
 tion of the totality of the phenomena of life. Likewise 
 the Pure Ethical Movement, with its emphasis upon 
 learning to do the right, has its historic connection. 
 
 The Pure Ethical Movement which has found crys- 
 tallization in the Ethical Culture Societies is, from the 
 intellectual point of view in its general phase, the 
 offspring of the Kantian movement and closely con- 
 nected with it. More particularly, and from the prac- 
 tical point of view, it is an attempt to rescue the re- 
 ligious life from the wreck which occurred when the 
 church dogmas were shattered by the revolutionary 
 movement started by Darwin. 
 
 From the negative point of view, we have in the words 
 of Dr. Eelix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Move- 
 ment, its ground stated thus: "To understand the Eth- 
 ical Movement it is indispensable to bear in mind the 
 evils which it seeks to counteract. These evils are chiefly 
 materialism and moral skepticism, a skepticism which, 
 nourished by the crumbling of ancient creeds, has at- 
 tacked the very springs of moral endeavor, has pro*- 
 duced in the minds of many, a feeling as if there were 
 nothing great any more worth living for, and as if life 
 had been utterly emptied of all its nobler content." ^ 
 
 The moral confusion which was engendered by the 
 skepticism for which the evolutionary movement was in 
 the main responsible, manifested itself in the complete 
 abandonment of life to commercial and industrial ma- 
 terialism. Scientific inventions aggravated the abuse to 
 which such an abandonment led, and religion was help- 
 less. Christian Socialism made no impression and the 
 Social Movement of the present day simply tends to 
 
 ^EtMcal Becori, Vol. 1, p. 2. 
 
108 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 spread among the nmltitudes, the material comforts and 
 the semi-materialistio refinements under which com- 
 mercialism and industrialism hide when surfeited with 
 self-indulgence. 
 
 Amidst such circumstances when heads were turned 
 by money-making schemes, and when in the dizziness of 
 the whirl they were unable to see clearly the paths of 
 duty, a stern prophet-like call was required to awaken 
 the confused moral sense. A pure ethical movement 
 alone bore promise of success in dealing with these 
 conditions. And the first function of such a movement 
 was to sift that which was moral from that which was 
 religious in the sense commonly accepted by the multi- 
 tude. It was necessary to point out the sense in which 
 the terms ethical and religious were identifiable, and 
 in what sense they differed. This was absolutely essen- 
 tial in order to rescue the moral life from the disrepute 
 into which religion had fallen through the shattering 
 of old beliefs by the Darwinian doctrine. It was Felix 
 Adler who undertook this task and became the founder 
 of a pure ethical movement, for such the Society for 
 Ethical Culture is. 
 
 Felix Adler had been brought up by his father with 
 the intention of filling the post of Eabbi in the estab- 
 lished order of things. It was expected that he would 
 propound from the pulpit the customary beliefs which 
 the established order required. 
 
 But the bread had been in the meantime leavened. 
 The yeast which had been deposited in 1859 was gradu- 
 ally making itself felt. First the old notions about life 
 suffered decomposition ; then the astronomic and cosmic 
 notions underwent a change; lastly through the stimu- 
 lus of anthropologic investigations, through the com- 
 parative study of primitive races and their customs, and 
 through the higher criticism of the Bible, religious ideas 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 109 
 
 also were upheaved. The whole world was thus affected 
 by the evolutionary doctrine. The eternal and exist- 
 ing order was no longer eternal. Being was not. Be- 
 coming was. Heraclitus was triumphant. Never before 
 had change, movement, activity, received such tremen- 
 dous emphasis. The decade and a half after 1859, 
 witnessed an extensive seething; and the existing reli- 
 gious organizations were confronted with the alternative 
 of turning their backs upon this world-movement, and 
 stolidly ignoring it in its entirety, or of going along 
 with it and picking up in its paths the gems that it 
 found by the wayside. 
 
 Thus the Pure Ethical Movement sprang from a sense 
 of the insufficiency of the customary religious ideas to 
 meet the ethical needs which the new conditions of the 
 new times required. The new industrial conditions had 
 given a tremendous incentive to the worship of wealth, 
 and to this new Moloch were sacrificed young children 
 and women with a recklessness which might well have 
 inspired the ancient Moloch with envy. The followers 
 of the new god were devotees of the existing religions 
 who were little held back by their faith from offering a 
 daily holocaust to their new deity. 
 
 We have already studied the Eeligious Ethical Move- 
 ment of Maurice and Kingsley which had attempted to 
 combat and stem this rising tide of wealth worshippers. 
 In so far as it was successful it was by way of creating 
 a better acquaintanceship between the spiritual shep- 
 herds and their lay sheep ; it did not allay the ravenous 
 appetite for wealth. The newly awakened interest of 
 the clergy in the life of the laity was the one good result 
 which it effected. 
 
 Now the ready ear which the laity thus offered to the 
 instructions of the clergy was counseled to listen to the 
 distant past, a past utterly unlike their own present. 
 
110 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 And just about this time, when the finger of the clergy 
 was pointing to the past, with the advice that it he made 
 a guide to the future, the past itself became discredited. 
 The scientific interpretations which it just at this time 
 received gave a new meaning to that past, and stripped 
 it of all the holiness which the clergy were then claim- 
 LQg for it.'^ 
 
 Many people thus began to feel the insufficiency of the 
 church and its dogmas to rehabilitate the moral life. 
 Science had taken issue with the church in regard to 
 the very dogmas whereon the church rested its authority, 
 and had completely conquered. And now that the 
 church authority was no longer binding, the problem 
 of finding a substitute for it was keenly felt by thinking 
 men and women. Morality which had formerly its 
 foundation in religion either must be fixed upon a 
 foundation of its own, or else it must disappear before 
 the general onslaught of science upon the crude notions 
 and dogmas of the past. "To-day," says the founder 
 of the Ethical Movement, "a wave of skeptical opinion is 
 passing over the masses of tbe people in all civilized 
 countries, so that the number is exceedingly large of 
 those who have neither the idealism of science and art to 
 support them, nor are willing and able to accept the 
 current creeds and who are therefore allowed simply to 
 drift as best they may, wholly uncared for on the moral 
 or spiritual side of their natures. The question there- 
 fore arises whether some effort should not be made to 
 build up the moral life of those whom the church has 
 ceased to influence, to develop the moral instincts of 
 children, to fortify the character of the young against 
 the temptations of intemperance and licentiousness, 
 to cherish the love of justice and the capacity of 
 self-sacrifice." ^ "The motive that prompted the forma- 
 
 ' A counter-attack upon the theory of evolution led by W. J. Bryan, 
 a layman m science, Is at the present time beine launched 
 " Ttie Forum, Vol. 16, p. 386. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 111 
 
 tion of the Society, was the desire for an institution, 
 which for its members should take the place of a 
 church." ^ 
 
 There were new times and new needs. The ethical 
 needs of the times were twofold : first, a new ethics must 
 be evoked to deal with the new industrial conditions; 
 secondly, in view of the now scientifically disparaged 
 past, the ethical guiding-finger must point to a religion 
 of the future rather thau to one of the past. 
 
 The whole of life needed a readjustment. The in- 
 dustrial as well as the spiritual life of man must be re- 
 interpreted, and this the Ethical Culture Movement 
 undertook to accomplish. The needs which gave rise to 
 'the Ethical Movement are thus specified by its founder : 
 "In the first place, there is the need of founding religion 
 upon a basis of intellectual truth. The second reason 
 why an independent movement for ethical culture is 
 necessary is, that we need to give men a clearer under- 
 standing of applied ethics, a better insight into the 
 specific duties of life, a finer and more comprehensive 
 scheme of moral practice ... A third reason why an 
 ethical movement and ethical societies are needed, is that 
 they are needed to supply that stimulus and energy 
 to the will which is so indispensable . . . Fourthly, 
 ethical societies are needed for the sake of the children. 
 It is time that men of advanced opinions should have 
 the courage to teach their children what they themselves 
 believe to be true. And lastly the purpose of an ethical 
 movement is that out of it may spring an ethical belief 
 with regard to the world, a moral optimism, a belief that 
 the universe is making for righteousness, that there is 
 a good tendency in things."/*^ 
 
 The Society which seit before itself this task was 
 founded in 1876. The waning enthusiasm after a brief 
 
 ^ Felix Adler — Twenty Years of the Bthical Movement. 
 
 ' Felix Adler — The Need of a 2fev> Moral Movement in BeUgion. 
 
112 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 brilliant beginning of the Religious Ethical Movement 
 whose main task was similar, taught the new Society a 
 lesson of modesty and it set forth with humble ambitions. 
 It had no ready-made code of ethics which was to be a 
 talisman for all occasions. Rather, in the spirit of the 
 new scientific impulse throbbing at the time, was it to 
 search out the ethics of each occasion, studying what 
 conduct the highest ideal required as new problems 
 arose. "An Ethical Society," says Felix Adler, "is 
 primarily a society of men and women associated to- 
 gether for a study of the problems of the higher life, 
 for the discovery of those new points of duty by which 
 the received code of ethics needs to be supplemented 
 and enlarged." ^ 
 
 The Ethical Culture Movement is not a popular move- 
 ment, even though it claims to be a religious movement. 
 Religious movements are, generally speaking, popular 
 movements, i. e., they appeal to the heart of people 
 through principles that are, at any rate in the in- 
 cipieney of these movements, intellectually very simple. 
 The Ethical Movement is rather a movement for the 
 more thoughtful type. It aims to gather into societies 
 men and women who think on moral problems, and who 
 are willing to live out in their daily life the phases of 
 right living which their intellectual efforts have revealed 
 unto them. "A Society for Ethical Culture will attempt 
 to be a community within the community, illustrating a 
 higher righteousness among themselves, adopting laws 
 and modes of social living for which the community at 
 large is not yet ripe. They will thus attempt to build 
 a refuge for the ideal in the midst of surrounding real- 
 ism. The members of such a society will never be slack 
 in their efforts for the reform of otiiers, but the prinei- 
 
 > Unitarian Review, 1885. 
 
±ne rwre mtMcal Movement 113 
 
 pie of complete and radical self-reform in and by asso- 
 ciation will be their distinctive watchword." ^ 
 
 Yet, at the outset, the Ethical Culture Movement had 
 to answer this important question: Can morality be 
 founded on a pedestal of its own ? The formation of the 
 Ethical Culture Society was in fact the material ex- 
 pression of such a belief. It was a bold move and was 
 at first openly attacked by the churches as atheistic and 
 irreligious. From these attacks it defended itself with 
 dignity and clearness, establishing its religious character 
 by pointing out that the appeals of religious movements 
 in the past have been most effective when made to the 
 ethical principles which they contained; that what is 
 valuable and lasting in every religion is the ethical ele- 
 ment in each ; that all else in each is changeable and tem- 
 porary. The Ethical Culture Movement simply lays 
 hold of this ethical principle in religion and strongly 
 emphasizes it to the neglect of all that is perishable, in- 
 different or hostile to ethical development. 
 
 Viewed in the light of the great evolutionary move- 
 ment of the last quarter of the 19th century, the Ethical 
 Culture Movement is thus first of all a religious move- 
 ment going along with the current of things; secondly, 
 it purposes as it goes along to pick up all the gems it 
 finds strewn in the path by other movements ; thirdly, 
 acknowledging its religious character, it maintains that 
 what is really vital in religion, are the ethical gems 
 which each of the great religions in the onward course 
 of events has polished and refined; fourthly, it firmly 
 adheres to this alone: that of all the gems on the road, 
 tlje purest and the best is the worth in the individual 
 man and woman ; fifthly, that no matter how soiled this 
 gem might be from lying in the bypaths of the great 
 
 ' Felix Adlei — The Need tor a Nev> Moral Movement in Beligion, 
 
114 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 highway of life, the gem must always be seen amidst the 
 dirt and mud, must be picked up and polished. This 
 last is an injunction which is especially dear and pecu- 
 liar to those who walk in the ranks of the Ethical Cul- 
 ture Movement. It is obedience to this injunction 
 which at once distinguishes them from the others who 
 are also pressing forward on the evolutionary highway. 
 
 The Ethical Culture Movement stoops to pick up 
 the human gems, and thus asserts in this one respect, its 
 independence of the evolutionary process. The Ethical 
 Culturists differ from the scientists who form a part of 
 the throng in as much as the latter simply jot down in 
 their note books: "I have seen this, and that and the 
 other thing," but do not stop to pick them up, to clean 
 them and to take them along. 
 
 The Ethical Culture Movement may be defined as a 
 religious evolutionary movement whose goal is alto- 
 gether in the future. And here we may note the radical 
 way in which it differs from the other ethical move- 
 ments. The Religious Movement has a goal in the past, 
 and its aim is to bring the present back to that past 
 goal. The world according to it seems to be running 
 away from its goal the further it travels on in time. 
 To halt, as it were, the onward rush of time and to turn 
 it to the past, is in the main its cherished hope. The 
 Pure Ethical Movement, on the other hand, has no 
 goal in the past. It looks solely to the future. 
 
 It is a religious movement in that it attributes wortli 
 or holiness to humanity. This it has in common with 
 other religions ; but it is at the same time differentiated 
 from them in as much as unlike them it attributes 
 worth to humanity, not through grace, as Catholicism 
 in the main does; not through merit as Protestantism in 
 the main does; but rather in the spirit of the Hebrew 
 fiat: Holy shalt thou be. And it differs even from the 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 115 
 
 Hebrew notion, in as much aa it assigns wortli or holi- 
 ness unconditionally, without any whys and wherefores. 
 The Hebrew notion does undertake the justification of 
 such assignment. According to the latter man is holy 
 because he is created in the image of God. But this 
 reason for assigning holiness to man has also been the 
 occasion for refusing the ascription of holiness to those 
 whom, for one reason or another, it suited the rest of 
 mankind to keep in subjection. The negro, it was often 
 argued, was not a holy being. He was not of the 
 human race; not made in the image of God. The 
 Ethical Culture Movement drops entirely the cause of 
 holiness, because any cause for assigning holiness may 
 be, and in the past has been, a cause for refusing it to an 
 unfavored group. 
 
 As an evolutionary movement it looks upon the past 
 events as of no more intrinsic value than the events 
 of the present or of the future. It jots the sights down 
 in its note book much in the spirit of the scientist who 
 writes down his data. As facts, it cherishes one set no 
 more and no less than it cherishes another set of facts. 
 It treats all alike. 
 
 On the other hand, it is unlike the evolutionary move- 
 ment which conceives human objects as marching along 
 with time each one indifferent to all the rest except as 
 an objeeti of curiosity to the others, or as a means to 
 furthering its own existence at the cost of the others. 
 The Ethical Movement looks upon them as an ideal 
 order — an order in which each has a certain specific 
 value which is necessary to the complete whole. 
 
 A practical reform movement which rests upon prin- 
 ciples as abstract as are those of the Ethical Culture 
 Movement cannot aim at mushroom growth. It cannot 
 multiply as rapidly as can those movements that have 
 their goal in the immediate present, as for instance is 
 
116 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 the case with the Social Ethical Movement. And so 
 we find that while Social Settlements though somewhat 
 younger than Ethical Culture Societies, have increased 
 with marvelous speed in city and town, Ethical Culture 
 Societies increase but slowly and with much more 
 deliberation than the Social Settlements. 
 
 The formation of Ethical Culture Societies depends 
 largely upon the presence of men who are available as 
 leaders of Ethical Societies; men who shall be able to 
 interpret the present in terms of the future, in terms 
 of an ideal that has not yet been. Naturally such men 
 make their appearance at infrequent intervals of time 
 and consequently Ethical Societies are expectantly few. 
 Since the foundation of the New York Ethical Culture 
 Society in 1876, there have been formed a few other 
 Societies in the United States and in England. Chi- 
 cago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, and Bos- 
 ton have one society each ; l^Tew York has two ; London 
 has many. Germany, Switzerland, France, and Austria 
 have at least one each. These various societies were 
 organized as soon as leaders were available. The 
 parent society in ISTew York has been the school in 
 which the leaders of most of the societies served their 
 apprenticeship. 
 
 Besides being knit together by a bond of ethical fel- 
 lowship, all the societies are united by a governing body 
 composed of the Union of Ethical Leaders. The So- 
 cieties form a sort of confederacy, in which each society, 
 while independent in the management of its own affairs, 
 is nevertheless subject to the decisions which the United 
 Societies in their annual convention of delegates see 
 fit to enact. 
 
 In this respect the Ethical Culture Societies differ 
 from the Social Settlements : the former are, the latter 
 are not, organically related to one another. The former 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement llY 
 
 seem to build for the future and are therefore bound 
 to build more deliberately and solidly ; the latter build 
 for the present and are therefore not so circumspect. 
 
 Though thus distinguished from the other practical 
 movements, the Pure Ethical Movement does not ex- 
 clude their activities. It is opposed only to their theo- 
 retical assumptions, but not to their practice. Indeed, 
 it embodies all of that and goes beyond it, taking some- 
 v?hat the part of a general and guiding practical art 
 amidst the particular practices of the ethical movements 
 and thus bears the same relation to all other practical 
 movements, that metaphysics bears to the special 
 sciences. 
 
 Professor Adler distinguishes the Ethical Culture 
 Movement from the others as follows: "The movement 
 for the elevation of the working classes is inspired and 
 sustained by profound moral feelings. How can an 
 Ethical Society remain an indifferent spectator of such a 
 struggle? But at the same time the Ethical Society 
 cannot merge itself with any of the special movements 
 for social reform. First, because it directs its efforts 
 to the cultivation of personal as well as of social ethics. 
 And of such efforts there is special need at a time when 
 social aims are in the foreground. The very splendor 
 and vastness of these aims tend to withdraw attention 
 from the narrower but no less sacred field of private 
 duty. The efforts to regenerate society must spring out 
 of the whole character. The new social ethics must rest 
 on the foundations of private morality. Secondly, every 
 movement which is conducted in the interest of a special 
 reform is of necessity occupied with many practical 
 measures, which of themselves have no ethical signifi- 
 cance whatever, but are important as minor ends sub- 
 sidiary to the main end. Experience shows that the 
 prominence necessarily assumed by these practical meas- 
 
118 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 ■axes, tends to obscure the liigli moral end itseK._ There 
 is needed a distinct movement for the definition of 
 ethical ends, for the clarification of ethical ideals. And 
 such a movement, the ethical movement is designed to 
 be. It remains in contact with the living questions of 
 the day, but it does not suffer itself to be drawn into 
 the whirlpool of agitation. It seeks to embrace every 
 special movement for reform within its scope and yet 
 to stand above them all. It tests and tries all personal 
 and social aims whatsoever. It seeks to refresh in the 
 minds of men the consciousness of the infinity of the 
 moral ideal, an ideal which all the practical reform 
 movements of our time, if their wildest hopes were 
 realized, would still fail to satisfy." ' 
 
 , " 1 
 
 (II) Its Method of Reform 
 
 There are three methods of reform that are generally 
 propounded to-day. First, to reform by education; 
 second, to reform by removing the causes that give rise 
 to the ills requiring reform ; third, to reform by legisla- 
 tive acts. 
 
 The last of these is the method generally favored by 
 political statesmen who, thinking entirely in terms of 
 national sovereignty, attribute national weaknesses to 
 national policies, and lay the abuses to which the indus- 
 trial order is subject, especially the highly artificial 
 prices of necessaries, to the system of protection or to 
 the wanton way in which national resources were given 
 away and squandered, or to governmental failure to 
 regulate the charge for the transportation of conunodi- 
 ties, or to its failure to properly supervise the cold- 
 storage of food products. 
 
 These failures are great social wrongs, and the states- 
 
 I The Ethical Record, 1889, pp. 153-154. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 119 
 
 man's method is to deal witli them by legal enactments. 
 A\legislative fiat is the Aladdin's lamp that will do onr 
 wishes. "The popular remedy for had morals, social 
 sins, and all kinds of human dereliction is an act of the 
 legislature." ^ And this view is held despite the evi- 
 dence to the contrary, which such a measure as the 
 Sherman Law so clearly adduces in the United 
 States. This law, intended as a weapon to destroy 
 the abuses to which vast corporate interests are prone, 
 has been during the past twenty years the fostering 
 mother of gigantic corporations. The anarchic ten- 
 dencies we witness nowadays throughout the country, 
 are due in large measure to the people's distrust of 
 reforms by legislative fiat. 
 
 This method is a remnant of the eighteenth century 
 doctrine that all ills are caused by governmental exac- 
 tions and oppressions, and would not exist if the indi- 
 vidual were simply left alone. This is the theory of the 
 school of Rousseau. It is the governmental meddle- 
 someness that is to blame for ills from which mankind 
 suffers. It is this meddlesomeness that has lifted the 
 lid off that fateful box from which flew all mortal suf- 
 fering. "Don't meddle, leave the individual alone," is 
 thus the watchword of individualism. 
 
 ISTow if public woes are thus made by governmental 
 fiat, why cannot public good also be created by govern- 
 mental fiat ? This is precisely the position of Socialism. 
 For at the bottom of Socialism lies the implied principle 
 that the .Social Whole through its mouthpiece, the gov- 
 ernmental agency, can dispel social and economic dis- 
 eases by a statutory law. The government can resolve to 
 buy or confiscate all industrial machinery and apply 
 it to the economic uses of the Social Whole, and through 
 such an application all ills will be gathered together 
 
 1 Franklin Pierce, In Political MoraUty. 
 
120 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 from the lemgth and breadtli of the land and again be 
 shut up in Pandora's box, and mankind will suffer no 
 more. 
 
 Thus the eighteenth century Individualism, and the 
 nineteenth century Socialism draw their roots from the 
 same sod, from the omnipotence of the governmental 
 agency. The former laying social ills to government, 
 at once leaps forward to the thought, that the creator 
 of ill can also be the creator of good. Socialism as a 
 political party rests entirely on this doctrine. The 
 political statesman and the political socialist have thus 
 the same method of reform, a method which has had 
 years of trial and numerous failures. 
 
 The second method of reform, that of removing the 
 causes responsible for the social ills, is the method 
 mainly favored by the Social Ethical Movement. The 
 theory underlying this method is that social ills are a 
 social product for which society as a whole is responsi- 
 ble and not the individual criminal who commits them. 
 The wayward girl, the depraved youth, the drunken 
 husband, and even the hardened criminal, it is claimed, 
 are merely the executive functionaries of the silent leg- 
 islation which society is all the time unconsciously 
 enacting by making no provisions to offset the natural 
 bent or tendencies of human individuals. 
 
 Only racial characteristics, it is urged, are manifest- 
 ing themselves in the individuals whom society pursues 
 and punishes for crimes which not they, but inherited 
 racial experiences are really responsible for. Were jus- 
 tice justly meted out, the race rather than the indi- 
 vidual, would thus have been brought before the bar. 
 The thief, whether he be the pick-pocket, or the youth 
 who makes away with coal from the railroad yard or 
 with lead-pipe from vacant houses is exercising not a 
 vicious but a racial propensity which in times gone by 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 121 
 
 were perfectly legitimate and if carried out successfully 
 were marks of commend(able skill. The gangster's 
 prowliugs are merely the cropping out once again of the 
 adventurous spirit of his ancestors. They are but forag- 
 ing expeditions on a smaller scale, which the race in the 
 past carried out on a large scale. 
 
 These youths are not to he condemned; on the con- 
 trary, they are the doers of deeds, the exponents of 
 action, and the promising leaders of men, as compared 
 with the goody-goodies who are inactive sheep waiting 
 to be driven or led. All that these abortive heroes re- 
 quire is a redirection of their active propensity and not 
 repression or punishment at the hands of society. 
 
 This theory has been directly responsible for several 
 reforms — for the children's court, for the parole or 
 probationary system, for the suspended sentence. Its 
 method of redirecting the pent-up energies of youth, 
 which now and then are wont to give way to explosive 
 bursts harmful to the social order, has established the 
 many gymnasiums, play-centers, recreation centers, 
 game-rooms, dancing classes, etc., all of which are 
 merely precautionary safety valves which society is 
 advised to set up in increasing numbers throughout the 
 land. 
 
 Other social ills such as the street-walker's profes- 
 sion are laid at the door of the lack of privacy which 
 the overcrowded tenements beget; and the destructive 
 diseases, tuberculosis and typhoid whose contagious 
 nature warrants their being classed as social diseases, 
 are attributed to the unsanitary housings of the poor. 
 The tenement house law, which is the child of the Social 
 Ethical Movement, is the remedy applied in these cases 
 with great success. 
 
 That this method of dealing with social ills has ac- 
 complished much good cannot be gainsaid. But it has 
 
122 Three Types of PracticaJ, Ethical Movements 
 
 these great shortcomings. First, it tries to reform the 
 mass without reforming the individual, and second the 
 causal theory upon which its explanation of social ills 
 rests is entirely too mechanical, and results iu becloud- 
 ing responsibility. It is the materialistic theory of 
 reality applied to social phenomena. The theory that 
 it is inherited racial characteristics that are working 
 in the individual who commits wrongs upon society, 
 leaves society only with remedial and not with exem- 
 plary or punitive defences against criminality; for the 
 individual is in no way responsible. He is according to 
 this theory totally the product of a materialistic monism, 
 for which Haeckel in modem times so strenuously 
 fights. How can a materialistic theory of life step forth 
 as the champion of a cause whose main welfare is di- 
 rected against industrial and commercial materialism? 
 How can materialism fight materialism ? How can one 
 call upon the devil to cast out devils ? 
 
 The view here presented is one which results from 
 following to its conclusion the partial truth which the 
 Social Ethical Movement sees regarding the relation of 
 social conditions to social crimes. It is not intended by 
 the presentation here set forth, to charge the Social 
 Ethical Movement with being materialistic. Nothing 
 can be further from the truth. One has but to point to 
 such exponents of the Settlement Movement as Toyn- 
 bee. Woods, Taylor and Jane Addams to refute any 
 such charge. Indeed the designation, ethical, as applied 
 to the Social Settlement Movement in this Chapter, 
 implies the very opposite of a materialistic conception 
 of reality. The Settlement Movement takes, however, 
 only a short-sighted view and proclaims but a partial 
 truth when it makes social sins the product solely of 
 social conditions. The need of a social metaphysics to 
 check up and correct the partial truths which social 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 123 
 
 reform movements put forth from time to time, is ap- 
 parent from the conclusions which follow a logical 
 deduction of the premises set forth in their theories. 
 
 The social reformer fails to see this broader relation 
 to things, because he is so completely engrossed in his 
 particular reform that his field of vision becomes ex- 
 tremely narrow. Professor Adler puts the case splen- 
 didly when he says: "The narrow-minded reformer, 
 who puts a moral idol in the place of a moral ideal, who 
 erects into the object towards which all his enthusiasm 
 goes, some particular reform, such as the single-tax or 
 socialism, or public parks, or a model school, the man in 
 short, who strives for a good instead of striving for 
 goodness, possesses a virtue which, as Emerson has said 
 so painfully resembles vice." ^ 
 
 This is seen clearly when we follow up into details, 
 the theory of any particular reform movement. The 
 Settlement Movement is at bottom an indictment of 
 the home. It deals with masses and not with 
 individuals. It arrays itself against those institu- 
 tions from which the masses sprang. It says in fact: 
 "Tour homes are poor social centers; your mothers 
 and fathers are unfit for their parental duties; come 
 therefore to us, ye boys and girls, youths and maidens, 
 we will establish better social centers for you and in 
 these new homes we will be your foster parents." 
 
 It may be that the existing homes are defective, and 
 that parents are unable to fulfill the duties of parent- 
 hood; yet it is at least very doubtful whether in the 
 large group-home of the Settlement with its numer- 
 ous progeny, any better oversight and personal super- 
 vision can be devised for the individual, than in the 
 average home with its comparatively few charges. Is 
 it likely that where supervision and tender thought for 
 'F. Adler — Eatentiala of Spirituality. 
 
124 Three Types of Practical Ethical, Movements 
 
 a few children fail in the home, they will succeed 
 when directed over many in the Settlement? Will 
 work upon groups be successful where work upon indi- 
 viduals is not? When we cannot move the unit are we 
 likely to move the mass? 
 
 The Social Ethical Movement is mistaken in its 
 method because it undertakes what is not possible to 
 achieve. It looks for quick results. It is a movement 
 of the present and builds mainly for the present. This 
 statement needs some amplification, if it is not to be 
 misunderstood. It is true, no doubt, that all ethical 
 movements start with a past and look forward toward 
 that future to which the words of Robert Burns shall 
 apply: 
 
 "It's coming yet, for a' that. 
 That man to man, the world o'er. 
 
 Shall brothers be for a' that." 
 
 It is furthermore true that all ethical movements strive 
 to actualize that future in the immediate present. Yet 
 there is such a difference of emphasis laid upon the 
 time elements by the different ethical movements aa 
 to justify a characterization of these movements ac- 
 cording to their emphasis of and outlook upon the tem- 
 poral relation. Accordingly we may roughly distinguish 
 the three practical ethical movements by pointing out 
 that the Religious Ethical Movement has its eye, as 
 well as its foundations, mainly on the past; the Social 
 Ethical Movement has its eyes mainly on the present; 
 the Pure Ethical Movement mainly on the future. This 
 emphasis upon the future is not generally insisted on by 
 the Social Ethical Movement with sufficient force. 
 
 Lastly there is the method of reform through edu- 
 cation. It is the method which the Pure Ethical Move- 
 ment pursues to the utmost detail. It aims to see life as 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 125 
 
 a whole, as well as the particular mosaics which com- 
 pose it. "The method of propaganda," says Prof. Adler, 
 "is for the teachers, the leaders, to see clearly the scheme 
 of right living and to make others see it, to be aglow 
 with moral passion and to kindle in others the same fire ; 
 to be in earnest and to infect others with the same 
 earnestness." ^ 
 
 Of course this method is long and tedious. But it 
 is the method which follows from the conception of its 
 ideal — the ideal whose abiding place is ever in the 
 future. The method is slow because it has all eternity 
 before it in which to operate. The only sin, therefore, 
 lies in inactivity; not in the slowness of the process 
 of the method. It must never cease to operate. Its 
 application lasts as long as life lasts. 
 
 The scheme of the Pure Ethical Movement embraces 
 this fully. It employs in part the methods of the pre- 
 vious movements. It does not exclude them. It incor- 
 porates them; but only incidentally. Its primary 
 method is the method of education. 
 
 The Ethical Culture Movement has been the pioneer 
 movement in the use of this method, and has constantly 
 kept ahead of other educational movements. It has 
 been a leader in this field ; and the State educational in- 
 stitutions have followed in its wake. 
 
 The educational program of the Ethical Culture So- 
 ciety embraces the kindergarten, the elementary, the 
 high school courses and the normal department. These 
 are of the very highest efficiency. The pupils are se- 
 lected from the well-to-do and from the poor in equal 
 numbers. The classes are of a size which permits of 
 the personal influence of the teacher. The courses 
 embrace manual and physical training as well as the 
 fine arts, in addition to the three K's. Furthermore, 
 
 1 The Reform, VoL 16, p. 386. 
 
126 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 in this one respect is tlie educational course of the 
 Ethical Culture Movement peculiar to the Ethical Cul- 
 ture Society: it provides for regular direct ethical in- 
 struction instead of the irregular and occasional ethical 
 lessons that are given in other educational institutions 
 as circumstances call for them. The Ethical Society 
 thus provides educational courses for childhood and for 
 youth. In its all-embracing scope, it provides also for 
 infancy through its Child Nature Classes conducted by 
 the Woman's Auxiliary of the Ethical Culture Society. 
 Another important feature of the activities of the So- 
 ciety is its Sunday Meeting where, from its platform, it 
 provides a series of lectures for the mature man. The 
 subjects treated are either the problems of the day as 
 they arise, or the great general problems of life. The 
 activities of the society embrace also a Sunday School 
 and Settlement work. 
 
 The scope of its method is thus as wide as are the edu- 
 cational requirements of infancy, childhood, youth and 
 manhood. It pursues its task with thoroughness and 
 zeal for the moral well-being of its members. 
 
 Surely, the movement that lays so much stress on 
 education as a method of ethical reform must have some 
 particular view in regard to the efficiency of education 
 as a moral lever. The Ethical Movement maintains that 
 "It is only necessary to hold the rule of right-doing 
 before a man, and that if it is really right, he will ac- 
 cept it, whether he believes the theory of it or not. The 
 appeal to conscience is direct and the response of con- 
 science is immediate." ■*■ An ethical movement therefore 
 holds up to clear view the paths of moral duty, in the 
 hope that the vision of the right will lead to the per- 
 formance of the right. 
 
 A doctrine such as this has been advocated by the 
 
 1 Felix Adler, In The Open Court, Vol. 1, p. 600. 
 
TAe Pure Ethical Momment 127 
 
 noblest ethical thinkers of all times. It was the view 
 of Socrates and of Plato in ancient, and of Spinoza in 
 more recent times. Spinoza placed the blame for moral 
 delinquency on the confused idea of what was right. It 
 is this confusion that enslaves us, and the only means 
 of freeing ourselves from bondage is to work for the 
 possession of what he calls adequate ideas. The Ethical 
 Movement agrees with this view completely. It holds 
 that "One of the greatest sources of disorder at the pres- 
 ent time, is uncertainty as to the standard, lack of a 
 clear perception of the line of duty, absence of moral 
 light. We need light on the great social problems of 
 the day ; we need to see far more distinctly than we do, 
 what are the duties of employers to employees, and 
 conversely ; we need to see far more distinctly than we 
 do what ought of right to be the relation of the social 
 classes, and also what ought of right to be the relations 
 of men and women to one another, now that women 
 claim — and properly claim equality of opportunity 
 with men." ^ 
 
 There is at least this difference between the Spin- 
 ozistic cry for more light and the Ethical cry for more 
 light. The former seeks a general light ; the latter seeks 
 particular brands that were fired by the general light 
 of the ethical ideal. A general sunlight is useless 
 precisely because the sunlight is not able to enter into 
 and light up the twists and turns of life's passageways. 
 Spinoza and Kant both offered a sunlight ; but a general 
 stationary light helps us little, be it ever so bright. A 
 tallow candle carried along as you walk through the 
 labyrinth of life's paths is of far more service. The 
 Ethical Movement seeks to furnish such particular 
 lights, first kindling them in the general flame of the 
 ethical ideal. 
 
 " Felix Adler, in The Religion oj Diitv, pp. 197-198. 
 
128 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 The Ethical Movement is thus an educational move- 
 ment, a movement that endeavors to see in each par- 
 ticular occasion, the light shining from its great lumin- 
 ating ideal and in the light of this ideal to work out the 
 path of duty the particular occasion requires. This it 
 expects and justly expects from its reliance on the effi- 
 cacy of clear knowledge in the field of conduct. 
 
 Its method of social reform is through individual re- 
 form, and through the co-operation of all individuals, 
 non-members as well as members, whose standard of 
 morals and manners of life are of the type similar to 
 that of its members. It seeks proper means to proper 
 ends. ISTot the ends alone, but the means as well must 
 be right to satisfy its requirements. At every particular 
 step the universal ideal must throw its light. 
 
 A method such this does not make a loud stir and 
 noise in the world. It rather chooses to burrow its roots 
 deep in the human breast, than to raise any branches 
 not firmly fixed which the least gust of life's passions 
 causes to be overthrown for want of solid support. 
 It is slow but sure. It does not attempt, as do the Settle- 
 ment and the Public School, to give their boys a taste 
 of everything as quickly as possible and then to proclaim 
 them fit for life. 
 
 Life is something not for which, but in which the 
 child, the youth and the adult are to be educated, and the 
 process of education goes on with life, l^ot a pre- 
 mature, quick witted youngster, ever-ready with repar- 
 tee, aging quickly into a dull, half-spent manhood is 
 the aim, but a slowly ripening youth whose virile sap 
 does not dry up with maturity of years. 
 
 And this wise method is the device of wise leadership. 
 Yes, in the care with which the Ethical Societies choose 
 their leaders, is the method employed by the movement, 
 realized to its full extent. The highest qualities are 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 129 
 
 essential for ethical leadership; for more depends upon 
 the leader than upon the movement. Faith in person- 
 ality rather than in institutions has been the principle 
 upon which the growth of Ethical Societies depends. 
 The propagation of the movement awaits the appearance 
 of leaders. This is perhaps the main reason why the 
 Ethical Culture Movement has not been institutional- 
 ized although younger ethical movements have passed 
 into the institutional stage. Gradually some definite 
 scheme of educating members for ethical leadership will 
 be worked out by the Society. Whatever that may be, 
 let it be hoped that it will be in the lines of the thor- 
 oughness so far signalizing the methods of the Society 
 in all its other work. 
 
 (Ill) Its Philosophical Implications 
 (a) Its Attitude toward Reality 
 
 The distinctive feature of the Pure Ethical Move- 
 ment lies in the locus of the ethical ideal. Deriving 
 its inspiration from that ideal, it plants its basis on the 
 knowledge, the love and the practice of the right. It 
 disclaims all preconceived religious dogmas and philo- 
 sophical theories. Alone the study and the practice of 
 the right are its basis of union among its members. 
 
 This principle of right living without consulting the 
 oracles of the past as to what the right consists in, re- 
 ceives more emphasis in the writings and lectures of the 
 Ethical Culture Society than does any other. The 
 Ethical Culture Movement has burnt the bridges be- 
 hind it, and looks towards the future for its guiding 
 thread. The Pure Ethical Movement thus rests upon 
 an ideal that has never yet been; for its ideal is an 
 ideal of the future. 
 
130 Thre& Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 This ideal of the future is to be clearly differentiated 
 from, and not confused with the Christian's "King- 
 dom," and the Hebrew's "Future World." The latter 
 are viewed as states of society in which perfection wiU 
 finally be reached. A point of time wiU come when the 
 ideal will be completely realized. Whatever activity 
 may go on in that "Kingdom" and in that period of 
 time, wherein the "Future World" is bounded, it will 
 not be the activity which consists in the upward strug- 
 gle to make mankind better than it is and nature less 
 niggardly in bestowing her gifts. It is to these ends 
 that, according to the Religious Ethical Movement, the 
 present life is devoted ; the future life is for the enjoy- 
 ment of the products of the present struggle.. 
 
 The future "Kingdom" will not be one of struggle, 
 even though the struggle be one making for progress. 
 AH of this world's struggles is a propaedeutic for the 
 ease and comfort of the "Kingdom" to come. The only 
 activity conceivable, then, is that which is involved in 
 basking in the divine radiance and in singing incessant 
 Hosannas. For the religious notions of the future are 
 capable of being fully realized and will at some future 
 time be experienced as an immediate present experi- 
 ence. 
 
 There is not the slightest doubt to the religious mind 
 that that future will be a present; nay, it already en- 
 dures through the present; for was it not already truly 
 realized in the past ? Yes, the ideal had an existence in 
 the past ; it even now has an existence in the future, and 
 simply waits for the present to come up to it and to 
 enjoy it. The future life has as sure an existence now 
 at this very moment, as has my immediate present. It 
 is simply waiting for us. Those of us who shall reach 
 it will enjoy its blessings with as much relish as the 
 pious Hebrews wiU enjoy the Leviathan and the Shore 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 131 
 
 Habor, those patient monsters which are protracting 
 their six thousand years' existence for the great day. 
 The Christian's "Future Kingdom" has just as certain 
 an existence to-day as have these traditional monsters 
 that were, according to the Talmud, gotten ready for 
 the final day during the first six days of creation. Such 
 is the ideal of the future conceived by the Eeligious 
 Ethical Movement. 
 
 The ideal of the Pure Ethical Movement, an ideal 
 whose locus is in the future, is a radically different 
 ideal. As an ideal whose locus is in the future, it has 
 not now, nor can it ever have the immediacy of a present 
 existence. It must always retain this locus, remain a 
 mere future, a mere potentiality, ever drawing mankind 
 on to further and further efforts towards its approxima- 
 tion. And only an. approximation, a remote approxima- 
 tion to the ideal is at best ever possible; never its com- 
 plete realization. There is ever an outlook to a beyond, 
 to a better state than, that already attained. This out- 
 look, this vision constantly beckons to our energies, ex- 
 horting us to struggle on to a further realization and a. 
 still further realization without end. The more we at- 
 tain of the ideal, the more we become aware of the 
 remainder that is not yet attained. 
 
 In the line of conduct, we have from this considera- 
 tion of the ethical ideal an analogue of Socrates's splen- 
 did interpretation of the Delphic Oracle. As wisdom 
 consists in a comprehension of the limitations of our 
 knowledge, so ethical insight into the nature of the ideal 
 consists not in the taking of stock of what has already 
 been realized of the Ethical Ideal, but in the awe- 
 inspiring conviction that so much of it still remains 
 unrealized. 
 
 Only at the peril of our souls do we say to any 
 realized portion of our ideal, "Stay, thou art so fair." 
 
132 Three Types of Practiced Ethical Movements 
 
 For tlie nature of the Ethical Ideal is such that it can 
 never find itself expressed in a present experience, for 
 it is never of the present, but alv^ays of the future. We 
 may progress towards it ; but we cannot touch it, for it 
 does not possess the inunediacy of a present that would 
 make any intimate union with it possible for one mo- 
 ment. 
 
 The Ethical Ideal cannot therefore give that satis- 
 faction which the Beatific Vision gives to the saints, nor 
 is it desirable that it should do this. The Beatific Vision 
 surfeits the faculties of the soul just as gluttony sur- 
 feits the faculties of sense. Both cause us to grip the 
 present moment, to beg it to remain, that we may feast 
 upon it. In the end they both equally paralyze the 
 spirit. Gluttony paralyzes the senses; the Beatific 
 Vision palsies the soul so that it is good for nothing else 
 except the singing of Hallelujahs. 
 
 Only by such strong contrasts can we fully learn the 
 true value of an ideal that lies totally in the future, 
 and of which we can realize but a very small fragment 
 in each present moment. 
 
 Such a theory is a remarkable departure from the 
 ideals that have been propounded in bygone days. The 
 existing religions have their ideal in the past; the 
 religion of the Ethical Culture Society has its ideal in 
 the future. This is what is so strikingly new in the 
 Pure Ethical Movement. 
 
 The thought that an ideal placed in the future should 
 yet be endowed with the potency of operating in the 
 present, neither the philosopher nor the theologian is 
 willing to accept. Ideals whether religious or philo- 
 sophical that were devised in the past, have been of two 
 kinds: 1. The religious ideal whose embodiment and 
 realization existed at one time in the temporal order 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 133 
 
 of the past. 2. The philosophic ideal which has an 
 eternal existence but is completely outside of the tem- 
 poral order. The ideal of the Ethical Culture Move- 
 ment differs from these types in that it has not found 
 its highest realization in the past, and in that it is 
 not placed outside of the temporal order. It is there- 
 fore a complete innovation, and as such it has been 
 subject to the attacks and criticisms from both the older 
 types. 
 
 The Pure Ethical Movement takes, nevertheless, a 
 cautious step in regard to theological and philosophical 
 principles. It does not intend to antagonize them but 
 it does intend to ignore them. And this is just what 
 neither the theologian nor the philosopher will permit. 
 Each wants to be reckoned with. To be ignored is to 
 be slighted and prompts to an attack. 
 
 The theologian's attack is directed against the indif- 
 ference with which the Ethical Culturist looks upon 
 what to him is primary — that ideal which was realized 
 in the past; the face-to-face communion between God 
 and man, when once and for all there was revealed what 
 reality is. How can such a momentous past be beheld 
 with indifference ? Where else can ethics draw inspira- 
 tion from, if not from this past? To ignore this won- 
 drous past is to the theologian to be irreligious ; and to 
 be irreligious is to be unethical. 
 
 The theologian attacks the Ethical Culture Movement 
 on the ground that an ethics cannot be founded on an 
 ideal that has never been embodied, and that rests on 
 no foundation, but hangs, as it were, in the air by a 
 thread tied to the future. Such an ideal cannot ac- 
 complish results. It has no compulsive power. It is, 
 if anything, an attractive picture; biit not a rigoristic 
 driving force. Only religion furnishes such an ideal. 
 
134 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 Ethics without religion cannot exist. This is the point 
 of the theological argument and this is its criticism 
 of the Ethical Culture Movement. 
 
 The philosopher likewise sees difficulties in the new 
 movement which he presses for clarification. There are 
 two kindred difficulties which the philosopher presses 
 forward. One difficulty is mooted by the philosophical 
 idealist; the other by the philosophical realist and the 
 pragmatist. The idealist's criticism of the Pure Ethical 
 Movement is aimed mainly against the stand which the 
 Pure Ethical Movement takes in regard to what is ulti- 
 mately real. To the question of ultimate reality the 
 Pure Ethical Movement takes an indifferent attitude; 
 but the philosophical idealist looks upon this question as 
 of primary importance; and like the theologian, makes 
 his ethical practice spring from his conception of ulti- 
 mate reality. His reasoning runs thus: To emphasize 
 right conduct is very well; but right conduct depends 
 upon right knowledge of what is real. To neglect the 
 investigation of what is real is to neglect the guide to 
 the right. Hence you cannot have an ethics without a 
 conception of what constitutes reality. The second 
 philosophical objection to the attitude of the Pure 
 Ethical Movement, comes from the realist and the prag- 
 matist, and is directed against the claim of the Ethical 
 Movement that no theory of right conduct, but the prac- 
 tice of right conduct is the essential thing in an ethical 
 movement. It is directed against the position taken by 
 Professor Adler when he says : "Our bond of union is 
 not a common doctrine but a common practice." ^ 
 
 But to the philosopher, the practice of the right 
 without a theory of the right seems incomprehensible. 
 To him the two cannot be so far separated as the Pure 
 Ethical Movement separates them. The realist and the 
 
 ^International Journal oj BtMcs, V. 1. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 135 
 
 pragmatist, who do not worry about the ultimate nature 
 of reality deny the possibility of practicing the right 
 without a theory of the right. Theory is but the act 
 in idea, and practice is nothing more than the idea 
 crystallized into act. Theory and practice go every- 
 where together. "Theory," says Professor Dewey, "is 
 the cross section of the given state of action in order 
 to know the conduct that should be; practice is the 
 realization of the idea thus gained; it is theory in 
 action." ^ 
 
 The position of the theologian and of the philosopher 
 is essentially the same in regard to the attitude of the 
 Ethical Movement toward reality. Against this atti- 
 tude they make common cause. Only there is this dif- 
 ference to be noted between the theologian and the 
 philosopher: The former says that what constitutes 
 reality must be found by the present exercise of reason 
 or ascertained in and through daily experience; the 
 latter says that what constitutes reality is found in 
 faith, faith in the fact that there was an act of revela- 
 tion of reality. 
 
 At the very launching of the Ethical Culture Move- 
 ment, it thus became necessary to defend it against 
 the theologian's charge that on the one hand the new 
 movement is irreligious in taking no cognizance of 
 the holy past, and that on the other hand it is fantas- 
 tic and flighty in grounding its base in the future. 
 It had to defend both its negative attitude towards the 
 ideal of the past, and its positive teaching in regard 
 to its ideal of the future. 
 
 It denied at once that its indifference to particular 
 religious beliefs is an irreligious attitude. It is true 
 that the Ethical Culture Movement does not concern it- 
 self with theories of Being in any shape ; that it disre- 
 ^InternaUonal Journal o] Ethics, Vol. 1, p. 203. 
 
136 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 gards even the theory of the existence of a Supreme 
 Being, and seeks to divorce conduct from theory com- 
 pletely. Yet these facts do not warrajit the theologian 
 in launching against the movement the charge that it is 
 irreligious. They warrant merely the belief that there 
 is a misconception as to the meaning of religion. 
 
 Indeed, the Ethical Movement forthwith proceeded to 
 define its own conception of religion. It distinguishes 
 the concept religion from the concept morality. Mo- 
 rality consists in "obedience to the principle of unity, 
 which reveals itself as the primary principle of 
 ethics." ^ Religion is grounded in this conception of 
 morality and draws strength from it. "Religion is that 
 sense of duty which comes after obedience to the prin- 
 ciple of unity." ^ The Ethical Movement thus takes a 
 higher view of religion than the theological view takes. 
 The ethical view implies that we must first be moral and 
 then we will have the genuine religious feeling which 
 comes only after the moral experience. It looks upon 
 religious experience as a feeling of genuine satisfaction 
 which is obtained after one has gone through the purg- 
 ing which every moral achievement effects. 
 
 It is absurd to criticise such a conception as irreli- 
 gious. In fact this is not only not a negative attitude 
 towards religion, but a genuinely positive attitude 
 towards it; it strictly enjoins us to go through the purg- 
 ing moral flame ; and thereby it also directs towards the 
 religious state of mind. 
 
 That this is a better method of finding religion help- 
 ful than is the theological method, history itself indi- 
 cates. To how many has religion, understood in the old 
 way, been a moral cleansing ? Have not the staunchest 
 believers in the holy past been the most ferocious ex- 
 ponents of brotherly hate ? Has the conception of a re- 
 
 > Felix Adler, In UnitaHan Review, 1885. 
 
 ' ma. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 137 
 
 vealed past been a sufScieBt restraining hand upon the 
 exercise of wrong conduct, and an impelling force 
 towards the exercise of right conduct ? Look at history 
 and you have a negative answer at every step of advanc- 
 ing time. Right conduct must he based on a principle 
 other than the existence of a divine past. If the result 
 of the old method has been unsatisfactory why not try a 
 new method ? First remove the hate, and then perhaps 
 you may find yourself religious. 
 
 Its positive attitude towards an ideal of the future 
 which the theologians thought chimerical, it defends 
 on scientific grounds. Familiarity with the past, which 
 scientific investigation haB brought about^ rendered 
 that past less august, and less compelling as an ethical 
 force. All past is of the same value for this compelling 
 purpose, and equally fruitless. Evolutionary theories 
 have brought low the cherished deities that sat on high. 
 Ideals of the past have become past idols that are 
 shattered by the very throngs that worshipped them. 
 An ideal, to be an ideal must be out of reach of pol- 
 luting hands, and such place is found only in the fu- 
 ture. There alone does sacredness lie. It is to the 
 star of the future that our wagon must be hitched. 
 The moral ideal can rest nowhere else. In its past 
 location it was not revered. A light that is behind does 
 not serve as a proper guide. A light must be towards 
 the front, forward, in the future; and this, the ethical 
 ideal attempts to be. 
 
 More difficult is it to give an answer to the philo- 
 sophical criticisms of the Pure Ethical Movement. An 
 argument ad hominem does not apply so well here. 
 The Platonic claim that right conduct derives its 
 warrant from a knowledge of what is real, a claim 
 which idealists ever since Plato's day have repeated, can- 
 not according to Prof. Adler be a valid claim, for the 
 
138 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 nature of reality has never been universally established 
 and is no 'more universally accepted now than are the 
 various religious dogmas. To await the discovery of 
 the constitution of reality before we are to act morally 
 is of course out of the question. The nature of reality 
 may never b« established. What are we to do mean- 
 while ? The Ethical Culturist answers : We are to act 
 regardless of what the real may be, and guide ourselves 
 by an ideal that we ourselves create. He says to the 
 philosopher: You demand a theory for right conduct. 
 Very well. Such a theory will reveal itself in the course 
 of conduct. First, act; and the action will show you 
 what is right and wrong in theory. The theory will be 
 forthcoming in the course of action. In the course of 
 such action we shall find the ideal becoming more and 
 more real. Reality is not something that is. It is 
 something that becomes. The real is made real; not 
 found such. Moral conduct is the anvil upon whidi 
 the real is beaten out of the ideal. Every act of ours 
 fashions a bit of reality. We know somewhat more as 
 to what constitutes reality after every moral experience 
 of our lives. The nature of reality cannot be precon- 
 ceived. Its conception follows upon activity. 
 
 For verification of this doctrine the ethical view 
 invites the idealist to search among his own experiences. 
 No doubt you find "eye-openers" in every moral act. 
 These "eye-openers" are the bits of reality which your 
 moral conduct beats out of the situation in which you 
 find yourself confronted with an obstacle. The real 
 is that which satisfies the demands of a situation. This 
 is exactly the position of the pragmatist in regard to 
 tiTith. The Ethical Movement and the Pragmatic 
 Movement are at one on this point: Reality is ham- 
 mered out of a situation. 
 
 This is as far as they go together. The pragmatist 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 139 
 
 changes his reality witli changes in situations; the 
 ethicist sees danger in a reality that vacillates. The 
 times require nothing so much as a rigoristio ethics. 
 The ideal which we see loom up at every step of our 
 conduct, the great ideal of the future which in each act 
 we fashion into reality and which on all occasions we 
 either promote or thwart— this is the iron law, the 
 rigor of the moral law, from which we cannot escape. 
 Every situation reveals the same truth. The prag- 
 matist's truth is different. It is not universal. Truth 
 shifts according to the shifts in the situation. No 
 universal ideal looms up for the pragmatist on all occa- 
 sions. One particular truth is all he sees and is satis- 
 fied with, in each situation. 
 
 The pragmatist's doctrine that theory belongs to a 
 definite situation, and is true if it satisfies the require- 
 ments of that situation, must be clearly differentiated 
 from the ethical doctrine that the ideal is to be wrought 
 into the real in every situation, and that the value of 
 an act is tested by the magnitude of the ideal that has 
 been thus realized. The pragmatist's "situation" may 
 be looked upon as an equation of one unknown term. 
 The X of the "situation" is the theory which satisfies 
 the terms of the equation, and its truth is determinable 
 with regard to that "situation" and no other, just as the 
 value of X in one equation may be different from its 
 value in another equation. The ethical theory is some- 
 thing more permanent than that. It is an absolute X, 
 an eternal non-changeable quantity ascertainable, to be 
 sure, like the truth of the pragmatist in the heat of the 
 conduct which a "situation" requires, but it is not only 
 to be applicable to that particular "situation," it must 
 immediately be applied to another "situation" and to 
 still another without end. Where the pragmatist's "sit- 
 uation" may be considered as a simple equation, that of 
 
140 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 the pure ethicist may be considered as a simultaneous or 
 a quadratic equation ; the X not only suits a particular 
 equation but all the equations. For a rigoristic ethics 
 the pragmatic movement will never do. 
 
 The Ethical Movement puts up a clear defense, 
 first against the theologian's scorn of an ethics that is 
 not grounded upon the will of God as manifested in the 
 past; second, against the idealistic philosopher's con- 
 tention that it is impossible to have an ethics without a 
 theory of reality antedating it; third, it differentiates 
 itself from the pragmatic philosopher's doctrine that the 
 theory of the right manifests itself variously in particu- 
 lar situations. Its differences from the past are clear, 
 and the movement is in every sense a new movement. It 
 has introduced a new ideal — an ideal in line with evo- 
 lutionary science and yet above it. 
 
 (b) The Value of Such an Attitude to Reality 
 
 It is then in the new location of the ideal that the 
 Pure Ethical Movement differs from other practical 
 movements. Now let us inquire after the value of such a 
 location. We may estimate the value of this ideal that 
 has its sanctuary in the future, by analyzing the effect it 
 has upon the ordinary man, upon the sinner, upon the 
 saint and upon the social whole. And the effects of such 
 an ideal upon these we may compare with the effects of 
 the older ideals upon them. 
 
 The ordinary mortal in the light of the older ideals 
 was of the sheep type, possessed of no creativeness or 
 spontaneity. There was no need of any; for is not 
 God in his heaven? All's then well with the world. 
 Such is the attitude which the old ideals stimulated. 
 "The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want" is typical 
 of the stand taken by the commonalty. It oasts the bur- 
 
T}i& Pure Ethical Movement 141 
 
 den upon its ideal and then folds its arms. This type 
 simply basks in the light of its ideal, and why not ? To 
 bask in the sunlight is the proper thing to do, when 
 perfection already exists and has existed through all the 
 past. Prayer and prescribed rites are thus the only 
 substitutes for energetic labor in cases of distress. 
 
 All this is the logical outcome of the ideal of the 
 past. It failed to evoke spontaneous energy in human 
 hearts. A guiding hand had always to be stretched out 
 before there could be active work from the vast mass of 
 the people. The new ideal offers no such sinecures, nor 
 such delusive hopes. The ordinary man is himseK 
 goaded on by it, to put forth efforts to realize that 
 which is not yet. He cannot dare sit by the wayside and 
 wait. The ideal is in the future ; and to make it present 
 is part of his eternal task. Prayers are here no sub- 
 stitute for effort. In the light of the new ideal, the 
 ordinary man who rested on his oars under the old 
 ideals and watched the few sturdy ones put forth their 
 sturdy strokes, is enjoined to pull at his own oars; to 
 consider himseK in his own eyes a sovereign soul whose 
 active cooperation is indispensable in the ever-present 
 task of making the ideal, which is always in the future, 
 partially fulfill itself in the present. 
 
 The logic of the new ideal demands a new adjust- 
 ment from the complacent throngs who merely follow 
 the paths beaten out for them by the few of the heroic 
 type. The new ideal acts as a stimulant to the ordinary 
 mortal, where the older one was satisfied with his mere 
 complacency. In the light of the new ideal, he feels 
 pressing upon him a task which he, as well as the 
 greatest of mortals, can perform, if not quite ade- 
 quately, yet to a measurable degree. He feels himself 
 a common not in the midst of peers but amidst other 
 commons. The old ideals were the aristocratic ones. 
 
142 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 There were always a favored few, favored by grace 
 or by a covenant, who bad the advantage at the court 
 of the ideal. The new ideal is democratic. In its 
 presence all feel of equal rank. Thus there is a more 
 encouraging outlook opened by the ideal that resides 
 in the future. 
 
 Secondly the treatment which the penitent sinner has 
 received in the light of the old ideals is one that evokes 
 in us not unmixed feelings of approval. We indeed 
 share the joy of the master to whom the stray sheep 
 has returned; but at the same time we fe«l that the 
 caressings which are bestowed by the master upon the 
 strayed sheep are out of all proportion to the complacent 
 indifference with which the sheep that had not strayed 
 are treated. From them obedience is demanded as a 
 matter of course; and so no extra favors need be show- 
 ered upon them. Only the over-active ones, those that 
 run amuck once in a while and cause some damage, 
 only those who make a noise in the world and become 
 the leaders perhaps of terrorizing bands, need to be 
 caressed and patted and pandered and bribed to stay in 
 the fold and not be inclined to run away again. The 
 penitent sinner, the strayed sheep that has returned, 
 has under the old ideal been treated better than the 
 saints, the sheep that have ever followed the path that 
 leads home. 
 
 Wo wonder then that a saint, goaded on by the in- 
 justice which partiality to the penitent sinner involves 
 exclaimed, "I wish I had sinned as that penitent had, 
 provided also, I could have done penance such as he 
 has done." Why should it be so ? Does not such dis- 
 crimination smack of injustice to the ever faithful? 
 When we read in the Bible the passages that deal with 
 this problem, are not our feelings of approval of the 
 divine compassion mingled with a sense of injustice 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 143 
 
 done to those wlio have never needed the divine com- 
 passion? Should the penitent fare better than the 
 saint? There seems something insincere, something 
 that savors of mere coaxing and even of moral bribery 
 in the principle that the repentant sinner is to be more 
 highly honored than the unfallen saint. 
 
 Still, in the light of the old ideals, the fact of sin 
 remains nevertheless. It remains a hidden stain vehich 
 might at any time be brought to light by the sovereign 
 who for the present chooses to hide it. We can very 
 well imagine the penitent not being quite at ease in the 
 company of the never-fallen righteous and not quite 
 feeling on a par with the other good people, who are 
 standing before their God. Can the righteous feel 
 that perfect justice is done in thus blotting out of sin, as 
 if it had not been a fact recorded in time? May not 
 the saints logically expect that the ideal of the past time 
 should not blot out a deed committed in past time? 
 No, the old ideal seems unjust and seems to contradict 
 itself in its treatment of the penitent. 
 
 How does the penitent fare under the new ideal? 
 He is treated as one who sees the light for the first 
 time; not as one who having seen it turned his back 
 on it; for there was no light except the one that he 
 chose to kindle. He is a new recruit among the ranks 
 of those who actively realize the ideal. His past fail- 
 ings are not recorded; they are not even potentially 
 existent, and so cannot be over him as the sword of 
 Damocles to smite him should he ever fail again. He 
 does not need to feel uneasy in the presence of the ideal 
 which he is now serving, for the ideal has no memory 
 to make comparisons between him and the other saints, 
 or to recall his former defections or to tax him 
 with them in case of a second defection; he is not in 
 the presence of some potentate who at any time might 
 
144 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 recall to him his former sins. Ifor is he pandered by 
 profuse kindnesses; for the new ideal is not a store^ 
 house whence he may receive more or less from the 
 storekeeper. He is himself the source of power. The 
 harvest must be gathered by each one himself and each 
 gets what he earns; no more, nor less. Surely this is 
 more equable than where the penitent receives more 
 than the saint. Here, the ideal is the field of his opera- 
 tions and depends upon him for realization. To the 
 repentant sinner, what an incentive it is to exert his 
 energy in the face of an ideal which is in the future and 
 beckons to him to employ his autonomous sovereignty 
 in lending a hand to fulfill and realize the ideal at least 
 partially, l^o such incentive is comprehensible in the 
 face of an ideal that already has existence. 
 
 And thirdly, the saint, how does he fare ? The saint 
 and the penitent differ from the ordinary man in being 
 rigorously active and not complacently passive in 
 achieving something. Under the old ideals, their 
 achievements, their prodigious efforts are like the child's 
 exertion about a little task which the parent sets before 
 it for the amusement and delight of its sire, who looks 
 on the labor of the child and thinks what a trifling 
 task it would be for himself to accomplish. Yet he does 
 not do the task himself. He gets joy out of the puny 
 efforts of the child. It is not the fact that these at- 
 tempts of the child help to develop it, that prompts the 
 parent to set the task. His own enjoyment, he desires 
 to draw out of it. Something similar is the attitude 
 of the old ideals towards the efforts of the saints who 
 heave and toil before the eyes of their ideal. It is all 
 useless toil ; for if the accomplishment of the task were 
 desired, their perfect ideal could by a fiat, in the 
 twinkling of an eye, bring it about. The activity of 
 the saint is unintelligible to the ordinary complacent 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 145 
 
 mortal who watolies him laboriously toiling instead of 
 leaving to the "will of God to achieve, in an instant, 
 what requires centuries of human labor. 
 
 There is a radical difference in the attitude with 
 which, under the new ideal, the saint's efforts are 
 viewed. The work must be done by him, or it is not 
 done at all ; for there is no one else to do it. The world 
 depends on him for that task. He alone can do that 
 particular work. How significant — ^how indispensable 
 the saint thus becomes! No longer the child's play is 
 his effort. It is serious tragic work he is perform- 
 ing. He is creating. Something that is not, is being 
 wrought into something that is, and he is himself the 
 smith that does it. How hollow is the cry: "Why did 
 I not sin and then repent; for I would have shared 
 a greater reward?" Mankind under the new ideal 
 receives an importance which under the old ideals it 
 never had. 
 
 And fourthly, how does mankind as a whole fare in 
 the light of the new ideal ? Under the old ideals, man- 
 kind is simply an aggregate of individuals. The 
 Kingdom of God was for the glory of God. The 
 Kingdom is that state wherein this aggregate of 
 humanity will look up to the ideal and bow before it. 
 It involved very little of the organic relationship which 
 society is now, conceptually at least, intertwined in. 
 The Kingdom of God was simply this aggregate of 
 warring atoms beating their swords into plowshares and 
 not into cooperative machinery. The idea of coopera- 
 tion was not emphasized. In the light of the new ideal, 
 mankind is the social whole and the social whole in- 
 cludes the mankind of to-morrow as well. This social 
 whole, cooperating harmoniously together is the very- 
 ideal of the future. There is no other. The social 
 whole is prompted to greater exertion because the ideal 
 
146 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 is identified witli the large social wliole wMcli embraces 
 posterity in its scope. 
 
 The ideal is not something apart from the unity of 
 the whole thus broadly conceived. It is nothing but 
 that unity of the social body. To realize the ideal is, 
 then, for the social community identical with realizing 
 itself. Under the old order, where the identity is not 
 established between the ideal and the social whole, the 
 incentive to realize the social good was remote. "In 
 the race after eternity," said an Italian monk, "each 
 soul looks out for its own interest." There was no 
 inducement to work for the social good; or perhaps 
 the inducement to it came from the knowledge that it 
 meets with the approval of the creator — an ideal not 
 identified with the social good. The inducement to 
 charity, to political and economic justice, came not 
 from duty to the social whole, but from a divine com- 
 mand; and the divinity was something above and be- 
 yond that social whole whose good is sought for realiza- 
 tion. Such is not the IsTew Kingdom. In the New 
 Kingdom, each is sovereign. There need be no bowing 
 of the knees or singing of hallelujahs, for the ideal of 
 the future cannot possibly require it. 
 
 The ideal of the future is a rational ideal, justifying 
 itself at all points completely. There is nothing more 
 unsatisfactory and distressing in the old ideals, than 
 the palliatives which are applied to them to make them 
 measure up to the demands of advanced ethics and 
 progressive thought. Theologians have for centuries 
 worried their heads so that they might find some way of 
 patching up the flaws which the old structures con- 
 stantly reveal. To the philosophic mind, there always 
 creeps out a new flaw no matter how favorably the 
 theologian has tried to patch up defects. The new 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 147 
 
 ideal needs no palliatives and this is one of the most 
 encouraging signs of its rationality and strength. 
 
 To sum up : The ideal of the future opens up a hope 
 to mankind which no other ideal has opened. Of that 
 ideal all mankind are equally sharers, simply through 
 the fact that it lies in the future. This is of tremen- 
 dous importance. This simple fact takes from birth- 
 right all claims for preferment; and from covenanters 
 the distinction of being a chosen people, on whom the 
 priesthood of all mankind has forever been bestowed 
 as a heritage. Favoritism, cosmic favoritism was char- 
 acteristic of the ideals whose hey-day was in days 
 gone by. They lacked universality through their 
 favoritism. They were responsible for the adjectives 
 that divided the world into Jew and Gentile, into 
 Greek and barbarian. They were responsible for the 
 classes that divided a nation into aristocrat and 
 plebeian. The old ideals lacked rejuvenating power. 
 The fate of each human being was decided beforehand. 
 It was useless to attempt to rise out of one's caste. 
 There was no invigorating power in the ideal. There 
 was no new birth possible after one's birth had once 
 taken placa 
 
 The philosophic ideals have little to do with saints 
 or penitents. They are primarily the ideals to guide 
 the ordinary and to strengthen the sinner. How does 
 the influence which the ideal of the philosophic idealist 
 has over the sinner, compare with that which the 
 ethical ideal has over him? But two types of idealists 
 need be considered — the Platonic type and the Hegelian 
 type. The ideal of the former is an individualization 
 of a class. The ideal is, according to it, that individual 
 which is obtained through a process of generalization of 
 all the attributes that comprise a class of objects. It is 
 
148 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 general in regard to the attributes of the objects of the 
 class ; but per se it is an individuated being. There are 
 then as many Ideas or Ideals — ^for the two are identi- 
 fiable to Platonists — as there are classes of objects. 
 These ideals are perfect forms having an eternal exist- 
 ence and so are outside of time and space. Human 
 endeavor cannot in any way affect them ; nor can human 
 strivings reproduce them. Such reproduction, were it 
 possible, would bring into existence a second Ideal 
 similar in every respect to the first, for which there 
 would be no possible use. Fortunately, such perfect 
 reproduction is not possible, for reproduction in itseK 
 implies creation and the created cannot be eternal. 
 Neither the ordinary man nor the sinner is in any way 
 moved by an ideal which he cannot effect and which 
 cannot affect him. What incentive is there to realize 
 imperfectly that which already exists in perfect form ? 
 True, we, as a matter of fact, strive to reproduce as 
 nearly as possible the ideal ; but the incentive to strive 
 does not come from the ideal ; for if it did, that incentive 
 would affect all alike and all would strive to realize it. 
 There could therefore be no sinners in the world. An 
 ideal that already has an existence, is a contradictory 
 concept and is given direct blunt denial by the very 
 fact that there are sinners in the world. For it cannot 
 be a perfect ideal, if it tolerates the existence of beings 
 who fall short of the ordinary man's approach to the 
 ideal. The perfect that fails to make others perfect 
 is, in so far, not perfect. The Platonic ideal cannot be 
 a practical ideal ; for in practice it fails to make man- 
 kind approach it. It is a noetic ideal purely. The 
 ethical ideal must be a practical ideal. What use is 
 there for an ideal virtue existing as an individuated 
 concept of a class of virtuous acts, if that ideal virtue 
 cannot make others virtuous? The ethical ideal aims 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 149 
 
 to make men active creators of the ideal, and that the 
 Platonic type cannot do. 
 
 The second idealistic type is the Hegelian and is best 
 worked out by Bradley. According to this type, the 
 ideal is Absolute. Every individuated form is a par- 
 tial view of this Absolute, and so imperfect. Every act, 
 as a particular act, thus falls short of the Absolute act 
 and, as a partial act, is imperfect. But imperfect 
 though it is, it is an act of the Absolute. Its imperfec- 
 tion is not an imperfection from the Absolute's point 
 of view; for from the Absolute point of view the act 
 is a necessary act, and cannot be imperfect. Only 
 from the partial point of view can the act be called 
 imperfect. From this point of view, the sinner is a 
 necessary part of the Absolute and his sinful act is not 
 sinful from the Absolute's point of view, but from the 
 sinner's point of view alone. Thus also every error is 
 a partial truth. The degree of readjustment required 
 to make one act, as compared with another, measure up 
 to the Absolute, alone determines its value as good or 
 bad, as truth or error. While this is a highly plausible 
 view, yet there is this drawback to it: as a practical 
 ethics it fails in compelling the sinner to act in such 
 other way as wiU not necessitate so great a degree of 
 readjustment to bring his act up to the view-point of 
 an Absolute act. The crux of the matter lies here: Is 
 the Absolute an efficient force by means of which a 
 human soul will act in such a way as to require the 
 least amount of readjustment to make that act a perfect 
 act? I answer: The Absolute as an idea may be effi- 
 cient; but the Absolute, as existent, cannot be such; 
 for to the Absolute as existent, every wrong act is its 
 own act partially viewed. And no imperative can come 
 forth from an ideal that itself performs in general, 
 what it condemns in particular. The Absolute as total 
 
150 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 view-point may serve as an imperative, ordering the 
 realization in existential reality of what is expressed 
 in idea only. But the Absolute as an existent cannot 
 perform that function. 
 
 The ethical ideal makes the distinction between an 
 Absolute idea and Absolute reality, and can therefore 
 command the realization of this reality whose idea alone 
 as yet exists. 
 
 (IV) The Naiwe of the Ethical Ideal and Its 
 Historic Sowrces 
 
 The Pure Ethical Movement has thus far been dis- 
 cussed from the point of view of the locus of the ethical 
 ideal, wherein we found one of the distinctive features 
 of the Pure Ethical Movement. There is another dis- 
 tinctive feature of the Pure Ethical Movement which 
 now requires our attention. This is the nature of the 
 reality of the ethical ideal. 
 
 The reality of the ethical ideal is a hypothetical 
 reality. This, the very locus of the ethical ideal re- 
 quires; for what is in the future possesses merely 
 hypothetical reality. There is, however, a difference 
 between this hypothetical reality of the ethical ideal 
 and the inferential reality of the Kantian postulates 
 of the Summum Bonum. The latter is inferential and 
 possesses thereby greater claim to reality. It is not 
 hypothetical, despite the inferential origin, and does 
 not issue forth the categorical imperative. The 
 ethical ideal not only is hypothetical in character but 
 despite this peculiar character it nevertheless is the 
 source of the categorical imperative. 
 
 The ethical ideal differs, furthermore, from the 
 Kantian ethical theory in that the latter makes no pro- 
 vision for an ethical end, whereas the ethical ideal is 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 151 
 
 both beginning and end, source and object of ethical 
 conduct. In the language of Professor Adler, it is both 
 termirms a qiu) and temdnus ad quern of ethical life. 
 
 This ideal which is so different from other ethical 
 ideals is further characterized as being the organic 
 ideal. In taking the organism as its type, the Pure 
 Ethical Movement differs from all other ethical move- 
 ments. In the words of Prof. Adler: "ISTot altruism 
 with its so-called good of others for an aim, nor egoism 
 with its soi-disant good of self, nor the Kantian formula 
 with the mathematical notion of equality underlying it ; 
 not the evolutionary formula with its outlook on a gen- 
 eral happiness which cannot even be defined, but just the 
 idea of organism, in its spiritual sense, is, for me, the 
 beginning of ethics — the beginning and end." ^ 
 
 The ethical ideal as the organic ideal is one in 
 which each individual is both means and end of every 
 other individual. Prom such an ideal neither egoism 
 to the exclusion of altruism nor altruism to the exclu- 
 sion of egoism can derive absolute justification. Both 
 at once reside in it, and it reconciles them both. 
 
 The term organic, as applied to the ethical ideal, is 
 used not as a biologic term; it is a generic use of the 
 term that is intended here. The biologic use of it is a 
 derivative from that. The biologic organism is but an 
 imperfect approximation to the organic ideal. The 
 analogy of the ethical ideal to the biologic organism is 
 thus but partly correct. For very few parts of the 
 biologic organism are indispensable members of it. The 
 parts that are not indispensable are, therefore, mere 
 means and not ends of the system of parts. The ethical 
 organism consists only of indispensable members. Every 
 member thus becomes an end, as well as a means, of 
 every other member. The ethical ideal is thus the per- 
 
 '^ IntemaUonai Jowmai 0/ Ethics, Vol. 14, p. 279. 
 
152 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 feet organism, of which the biologic organism is a very 
 imperfect copy. 
 
 The organic ideal is a systean whose parts are mem- 
 bers of a democracy of spirits, each of which, because of 
 its intrinsic worth that renders it indispensable to all 
 the rest, is sovereign and subject at one and the same 
 time. 
 
 Such a system rests not upon merely satisfying needs 
 of others, but upon getting activity out of them — 
 that activity which is unique and peculiar to each. 
 To contribute to another's needs is indeed an injunction 
 of the ethical ideal ; but the contribution is not in the 
 form of charity. Where each is sovereign, charity is no 
 longer one of the supreme virtues, and does not count for 
 much. The greatest virtue consists in performing a sov- 
 ereign's function, in originating activity and not in pas^ 
 sively submitting to the impelling activity of others. It 
 is in this respect that the Ethical Culture Movement dif- 
 fers from every other movement. The former is essen- 
 tially active; the latter is essentially passive; activity 
 must first be imparted to it. This is splendidly seen in 
 the practice of daily life. "This is the difference," says 
 Prof. Adler, "between an ethical society and the peace 
 societies, the social reform societies, the educational 
 societies and the others — that they chiefly lay stress 
 upon what the government ought to do, or upon what 
 other people ought to do, or in general upon how the 
 world is to be set aright, while the ethical society, 
 mindful also of these demands, yet lays its chief stress 
 upon the question, what am I to do? How shall I set 
 the world right by setting myself right ?" ^ 
 
 From the implied sovereignty of each, which the 
 ethical ideal rests on, is derived this essential difference 
 between the Ethical Culture Movement and other move- 
 
 1 Twenty years oj the Ethical Movement. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 153 
 
 ments. A sovereign's function is to exercise good will 
 towards his subjects; and as each is in turn sovereign 
 the exercise of the good will by any agent is followed 
 by an immediate reaction of good will from his fellow 
 sovereigns towards the agent. Such relationship re- 
 quires that each should clearly perceive that unique 
 quality which is hypothetically credited to each of the 
 rest and potentially residing in it. 
 
 Such vision of the whole, and such insight into the 
 needs of each of the separate members of the whole, are 
 possible only on the hypothesis that each part possesses 
 an absolute knowledge not only of the needs of all the 
 rest, but also of the unique possibilities of each of the 
 other parts that constitute the organic whole. Each 
 part thus actively supplements every other part. In 
 order to supplement the rest, it must view clearly the 
 totality of which it is a part. Such insight is the high- 
 est possible function of the human individual. 
 
 Thus it has been with the world's greatest benefac- 
 tors. They were the spirits who saw clearly the world's 
 need, and identified themselves with it. They are the 
 Lincolns, the Mazzinis, the Galileos, the Savonarolas, 
 the Brunos who feel their time's cry and attempt to 
 fill it. They may lose their lives but what of that ? 
 
 "Whoso takes upon himself the world's life and his own 
 lays down 
 
 He, dying so, lives. 
 Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the wronged world's 
 weight 
 
 And puts it by. 
 It is well Avith him sufEering, though he face man's fate. 
 How should he die ?" — Smnbwme. 
 
 The feeling that one does act froni and through a 
 knowledge of the whole with which one identifies him- 
 self, is the genuine religious feeling. To act from such 
 
154 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movemerds 
 
 insight, one must first identify himself with the whole ; 
 one must he the whole; and according to the ethical 
 ideal each part must thus identify itself with the whole, 
 must consider itself the whole. 
 
 What is this ethical or organic ideal? The organic 
 ideal consists of an infinity of individuals, each pos- 
 sessed of such intrinsic worth as is absolutely indispen- 
 sable to all the rest. This worth, partaking of the 
 nature of the ethical ideal, must be, like it, hypothetical. 
 It is an assumption, and may not at all be evident in 
 any particular individual that comes into ethical rela- 
 tion with us; but it must be assumed to have a poten- 
 tial reality nevertheless. Since the worth of each indi- 
 vidual is indispensable to all the rest, it becomes neces- 
 sary for all the rest to elicit this worth or to make actual 
 what is assumed as merely potential. Each member, as 
 indispensable, as end, must therefore be comprehended 
 by every other member and likewise in itself compre- 
 hend all others. Each must mirror all the rest. 
 
 When each member of society shall have thus pos- 
 sessed himself of the intrinsic need of every other 
 member and shall have acted the sovereign function of 
 a Lincoln, then the organic ideal will be much nearer 
 realization than it is to-day. The organic ideal 
 consists of a community of sovereign spirits whom 
 those more remote from that ideal have hitherto in- 
 variably sent to martyrdom. 
 
 We have thus analyzed the organic ideal into a 
 system of monads not much unlike that of Leibnitz. 
 Each monad reflects all the rest and is reflected by them. 
 Each has an image of the whole. It is this image of 
 the whole constantly before the mind of each that con- 
 stitutes the ethical ideal. 
 
 It is easy to see what the ethical imperative of such 
 a system consists in. Act in such a way as to actualize 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 155 
 
 what is potentially inherent in each of the other parts 
 of the totality. This is its formula. Both egoism and 
 altruism are here involved and merged. It is the con- 
 duct that is based upon such an image of the whole 
 that constitutes moral conduct.. "The idea of an ulti- 
 mate unity reveals itself, as the primary principle of 
 ethics and explains at once the absolute authority im- 
 plied in the moral obligations and the relativity of the 
 specific moral commandments. It is the principle of 
 unity applied to human relations out of which all the 
 specific moral commands have grown; and this prin- 
 ciple variously understood according to such lights as 
 men had, has given rise to diversity in the moral theory 
 and practice of nations and races and will beget, let us 
 hope, still greater and happier diversity as the course 
 of evolution shall proceed." ^ Stating the case in an- 
 other form Dr. Adler expresses the same truth thus: 
 "An act is moral, not in proportion as it is standardized, 
 but as it is individualized, in the degree to which it is 
 unlike other moral acts though based on the same 
 fundamental principle, not in the degree to which it 
 resembles them." ^ 
 
 The ethical ideal consists of a system of parts each 
 of which is different from every other and yet essential 
 to it, and supplements the rest. This ideal in which 
 the whole is not complete without the least of its parts 
 and in which no part, can be dispensed with is inter- 
 preted ethically to mean that no human being is insig- 
 nificant. He is at the outset credited with an intrinsic 
 worth, with a quality which is absolutely necessary to 
 supplement that of all others. The least is as necessary 
 to the greatest as the greatest is to the least. 
 
 This becomes possible only when differences between 
 
 ' Felix Adler, in Unitarian Review, 1885. 
 
 ^ International Journal of EtMca, Vol. 20, p. 391. 
 
156 Tliree Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 individuals are emphasized, and likenesses overlooked. 
 Only vfhen differences are cherished, will differences in 
 religion, in color, in nationality, in vocation produce 
 no persecution, hatred or discrimination. "The or- 
 ganic idea lays the same stress on multiplicity as on 
 unity, on diversity as on likeness." ^ The importance 
 of this stress comes out more clearly, when we remem- 
 ber that the reform movements whose hasis is brother- 
 hood and likeness are limited in the scope of their fel- 
 lowship. There comes a point beyond which they see 
 differences ; and immediately fellowship stops short and 
 antipathy begins. The Ethical Culture Movement has 
 no such shortcoming. It is one of the essential charac- 
 teristics of the Ethical Culture Movement that it bases 
 morality upon differences rather than on similarities. 
 "Morality," says Adler, "is in essence a law for regu- 
 lating the attractions and overcoming the repulsions 
 between one human being and others." ^ These at- 
 tractions and repulsions have been too commonly 
 made dependent on the similarities that exist between 
 men; and so moral conduct and straight dealings, in 
 business, in social affairs, in political affairs extended 
 no wider than did the degree of similarity between 
 them. 
 
 The characteristics which designate men as similar 
 are purely arbitrary. At one period in history, only 
 those who belonged to a certain class and tribe were 
 similar, and all those outside of it were considered 
 enemies. The line of demarcation has indeed moved on, 
 but it is nevertheless even to-day arbitrarily located. 
 Whom we are to consider similar and whom dissimilar 
 to us, is at the present time just as arbitrary as in primi- 
 tive days, even though the line separates bigger masses 
 
 ' International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 20, p. 391. 
 ' Felix Adler — The Religion of Duty, p. 92. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 157 
 
 to-day than it did then. This only means that the 
 wars and the animosities are carried on between bigger 
 masses than was the case yesterday. The shifting of 
 the line of demarcation has not done away with wars, 
 nor is it likely to do so. Peace movements, and arbi- 
 tration movements are likely, after all, to be mere make- 
 shifts, so long as there remains an arbitrary dividing 
 line between people. On the basis of similarity be- 
 tween individuals there is certainly bound to be an 
 arbitrary division. And as moral relations are assumed 
 to be binding only within the line of demarcation and 
 not beyond it, can we wonder at the wantonness and 
 brutality which characterizes the clashes between two 
 parties separated by that artificial line of demarcation ? 
 
 The Ethical Cidture Movement starts with the notion 
 that there is a natural line of demarcation not alone be- 
 tween groups but between individuals. It draws that 
 line distinctly. It isolates each from the rest by a bar 
 and says: Cooperate despite these bars. The bars of 
 separation are numerous ; there are more than are ordi- 
 narily foreseen. Indeed there are infinite differences 
 just because there are infinite spiritual beings. Now en- 
 joins the Ethical Movement: Work together because 
 and for the sake of these very differences. 
 
 This is a new notion, one that has not up to this 
 time been tried out. The Ethical Movement, whose 
 ideal is the perfect cooperation of an all-embracing 
 system of monads each differing from the other, 
 is for the first time in the history of the 
 world working out the theory to its fullest conclusion. 
 It aims at new types of men, types fused in the melting 
 pot of human relations into which only differences 
 enter as ingredients and out of which there is expected 
 to emerge a higher type of manhood, a type resembling 
 what Nietzsche calls super-man. 
 
158 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 It is not, kowever, from Nietzsche that the Ethical 
 Movement derives the elements of its ideal. But he- 
 fore we proceed to trace the sources of the ethical 
 ideal let us sum up its component parts. There is first 
 the concept of a perfect or a spiritual organism; sec- 
 ond, the memhers or parts of this organism are 
 possessed of essential sovereignty ajid complement each 
 other ; third, this sovereignty resides in each member by 
 virtue of its being credited vpith an intrinsic inalienable 
 worth, a worth peculiar to that member alone and differ- 
 ing from the quality peculiar to every other member; 
 each member being thus marked by its owa characteris- 
 tic difference from every other member; fourth, the 
 characteristic of each is but potentially inherent in it, 
 and requires the eliciting activity of all the other mem- 
 bers to convert this potentiality into an actuality ; fifth, 
 the eliciting and the evoking of this latent quality into 
 actuality ia the aim of each member and the realization 
 of this aim is the end of the ethical ideal, which, when 
 attained, consists of a spiritual kingdom of the greatest 
 possible variety of members, thereby making the whole 
 richer and more sublime ; lastly this ideal operates with 
 rigor in all particular cases. 
 
 The mosaic of which the ethical ideal is constructed, 
 traces its several parts to various schools of philosophic 
 thought. The roots of the ethical ideal tap two great 
 philosophies, from which the ethical ideal derives no 
 little nourishment — the Leibnitzian and the Kantian 
 philosophies. One of the philosophical sources from 
 which the ethical ideal draws its content, is the Leib- 
 nitzian doctrine of monads. To this source the ethical 
 ideal owes one of its main concepts. Its group of 
 beings, each sovereign in itself and yet needing the 
 rest of the world both as fellow-sovereigns and fellow- 
 
The Pure Ethiccd Movement 159 
 
 subjects, is an analogue of the monad which, though 
 complete in itself, yet reflects the world about it. 
 
 There is much that is similar in the ethical ideal of 
 the Pure Ethical Movement, and the monadology of 
 Leibnitz: 1. The members of the ethical ideal are 
 unique, and therefore indispensable beings; and so also 
 are the monads. 2. The members of the ethical ideal 
 and the monads are each parts of a system, i. e., of a 
 Universe. 3. Both the members of the ethical ideal and 
 the monads visualize the unique individuality of the 
 other members of the Universe, in varying degrees of 
 clearness. 
 
 And yet the differences between the ethical ideal and 
 the monadology are just as clearly marked: 1. The 
 members of the ethical ideal, though they are each of 
 them indispensable, are nevertheless not self-sufficient; 
 whereas the monads of Leibnitz are in themselves 
 microcosms, and as such are seK-sufficient. 2. The 
 members of the ethical ideal are members whose ac- 
 tivity is inter-related with that of every other member, 
 in an effort to actualize the unique quality which each 
 visualizes in every other. The monads, however, pos- 
 sess no such functional activity; for they need it not, 
 since it is not incumbent upon any one of them to act 
 upon any other in this functional way. The activity 
 which each monad possesses is a visualizing activity, 
 which simply mirrors in itself every other monad. 
 
 3. The functional activity of the members of the ethical 
 ideal makes the ethical ideal primarily regulative; 
 whereas the sensory mirroring of the monads makes 
 of the monadology primarily a constitutive system. 
 
 4. The latter cannot therefore be the ground of an 
 ethics; the former cannot be anything but such a 
 ground. 
 
160 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 And so, though it has its roots in past systems, the 
 ethical ideal is not tied down to them. It has branched 
 off from them, and has made a real contribution to 
 ethical and philosophical truth. 
 
 Whatever differences there are between the ethical 
 member of the spiritual organism and the Leibnitzian 
 monad, come from the different functions which they 
 are intended to serve. 
 
 The Leibnitzian monad serves as a noetic concept, 
 evoked by Leibnitz to satisfy an intellectual and not a 
 practical problem. It partakes, therefore, of the placid 
 quietude which has characterized all the noetic concep- 
 tions of the past, from Plato's Ideas functioning as mute 
 patterns, to Aristotle's l^ous doing nothing but thinking 
 its dear self. To the noetic ideal, activity is something 
 foreign, foisted upon it, merely tolerated and to be 
 apologized for. Who, that reads Aristotle, does not feel 
 that activity is tabooed to his God, and that the world's 
 activity which derives its impetus from him, must be 
 apologetically explained ? What else than as an apology 
 does the beautiful figure of the beloved moving the lover 
 serve to Aristotle ?' It was the only way Aristotle could 
 creep out of the dilemma which was involved in his task 
 of harmonizing the Eleatie Being with the Heraclitean 
 Becoming. Leibnitz's preestablished harmony is but 
 another instance of the straits to which the intellectual 
 ideal is put, when it faces the practical problems. 
 Complete and perfect though the monad is, you can't 
 get motion out of it. It is omniscient; it mirrors the 
 universe; but it can do nothing. The harmony of its 
 acts with the acts of other monads was therefore some- 
 thing almost miraculous and was best explained on the 
 theory of a preestablished arrangement. The noetic 
 ideal does nothing, for indeed there is nothing for it 
 to do. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 161 
 
 The ethical ideal, on the contrary, is a practical 
 ideal. Activity is a basic and not an apologetic ingre»- 
 dient in its make-up. I^ay, here it is inactivity that 
 must be apologized for, and is invariably dearly paid 
 for. Self-activity, the sovereign function, is the very 
 essence of the organic ideal. It is not merely super- 
 added to the static Being of the intellectual ideal. 
 Each member of the organic ideal is thus credited with 
 the two-fold function of visualizing the universe of kin- 
 dred spirits, and of evoking the latent potencies they 
 each enclose. The former function alone is possible 
 to the Leibnitzian monad. 
 
 To the ethical ideal both functions are essential. 
 The vision of each individual spirit must be seen from 
 the view point of the Absolute, or as Professor Adler 
 would prefer to call it, from the view point of the 
 Universe which, according to him, is not a scientific 
 but an ethical conception. This visualizing is one of 
 the essential functions of the ethical monad. Its other 
 function follows from the vision which it thus sees. 
 This consists in eliciting that one quality which, as a 
 result of its vision, each monad sees as a priceless 
 possession in every other monad, a priceless thing 
 laboring to come to birth and needing every other 
 monad as a Socratic maieutic. The ethical ideal is a 
 practical ideal in that it assumes this second function, 
 which the noetic ideal of Leibnitz entirely neglects. 
 
 Herein lies the difference between the Leibnitzian 
 and the ethical ideals. The former is a purely con- 
 stitutive principle; the latter is also a regulative 
 principle. 
 
 Though at first glance the difference seems great 
 between the Leibnitzian monad that has no relation- 
 ship to other monads and the ethical monad which is 
 a spiritual self that needs all other spirits to supple*- 
 
162 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 ment it, yet this great difference quite disappears when 
 we reflect upon them from their constitutive priaciple 
 alone. The constitutive make-up of the ethical ideal 
 is identical with the Leibnitzian doctrine. 
 
 It is only in their regulative principle that they 
 differ; as constitutive ideals they are identical. Here 
 the common element in both the Leibnitzian and eth- 
 ical ideals comes to the front; nor must this be over- 
 looked. The vision that sees in each component mem- 
 ber of the society of spirits that constitute the Ideal 
 Universe, those intrinsic needs that must be supplied 
 to bring into realization what is unique therein — this 
 vision is no other than that possessed by the monad. 
 
 The agreement of the two systems from the consti- 
 tutive aspect extends to further details. What in the 
 ethical ideal appears as the unique intrinsic essence 
 of each monad by which it is differentiated from and 
 rendered indispensable to every other individual, ap- 
 pears iu the Leibnitzian scheme as differences in the 
 degrees of vision accredited to the different monads, 
 whereby each images the rest of the universe more or 
 less distinctly according to its power of vision. True, 
 the view is always a total view; but the picture ob- 
 served is blurred or clear according to the capacity of 
 the monad that mirrors the universe. It is the differ- 
 ences in their points of view and the clarity of their 
 vision that distinguish between different monads. And 
 so, that peculiarity which is hypothetically accredited 
 to each member of the organic ideal by virtue of which 
 it is different from every other member and yet abso- 
 lutely essential to all of them, this uniqueness is 
 identifiable with the different degrees of clearness of 
 vision which marked the characteristics of different 
 monads. 
 
 Yet each must see that which is latent in all. The 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 163 
 
 totality must thus be divined in a single vision and 
 thereby be intellectually svi^allowed up by the single 
 spirit. This is exactly the essence of the monad and 
 of the ethical ideal. The individual members of each 
 ideal embody in themselves the totality, and act from 
 the view-point of this totality. In their essentials, 
 therefore, the Leibnitzian and the Ethical constitutive 
 conceptions are one, and we may infer that the latter 
 is derived from the former. At any rate the similarity 
 of the two is evident. 
 
 Another source from which the ethical ideal draws 
 freely is the Kantian ethical doctrine. The regulative 
 or normative side of the ethical doctrine comes from 
 Kant. Erom this doctrine, the ethical ideal derives the 
 absolute rigor of the ethical imperative and the good- 
 will as the content of the moral act. Kant has two 
 tests of a moral act; one is the possibility of making 
 the act universal without self-contradiction; the other 
 is the manifestation of the good-will. The Ethical 
 .Movement likewise has two tests; one is the degree 
 to which the act tends to realize the spiritual organism ; 
 the other is the manifestation of the good-will. The 
 former is an objective, the latter a subjective test; 
 the former is determinable by the intellectual faculty; 
 the latter is so closely identified with the subjective 
 conscience that an observer can never be positive that 
 the good-will is present in and prompts the act which 
 he observes. Society, therefore, in most cases applies 
 the objective test to our acts, and leaves it to our inti- 
 mate friends, who alone best know our subjective 
 promptings and our habits, to apply the subjective test. 
 
 The Kantian and the Ethical Movement are thus at 
 one in their view of the tests of what constitutes a 
 moral act. Nevertheless the two systems, though 
 united in regard to the absolute rigor and the content 
 
164 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 of the moral law and in regard to the tests of a moral 
 act, yet differ in the bases from which they derive their 
 ethical formulse. The Kantian imperative has its 
 foundation in the universality and the necessity of the 
 moral ought regardless of any end of action ; the ethical 
 imperative has its foundation in the ethical ideal, both 
 as the source and end of action. 
 
 Now it is easy to see how the mere form of an act, 
 simply through its universality and necessity gives rise 
 to an imperative that is absolute. It is not so easy to 
 see how an ideal that is not a pure form of action but 
 contains also a content can issue a like imperative. 
 The answer lies probably in the fact that the ethical 
 ideal is an absolute end — an end which Kant sought, 
 but did not find. Now an absolute and universal end 
 of action can give rise to an absolute imperative just 
 as well as the universality of the mere form of the act 
 gives rise to the necessity of the act and hence to a 
 categorical imperative. The Kantian imperative, based 
 upon the mere form of the act, issues the command: 
 Act so that thy act may be made the norm of a univer- 
 sal act. It has no reference to an end. The ethical 
 imperative, with the added weight which comes from 
 the content or end of action issues the command: Act 
 iu such a way as to elicit the universal end; i, e., thy 
 end as well as the ends of others at the same time. 
 "So act," Prof. Adler says, "as to elicit what is auto- 
 telio (that is, mentally and morally unique) in the self 
 of others, and thereby develop what is autotelic in thy- 
 self is the formula which I should choose." ^ 
 
 The ethical ideal differs from the Kantian in that 
 the former has an end of action that gives rise to an 
 imperative ; the latter has no such end, and derives its 
 ethical formula from the pure form of the act. To the 
 
 ^International Journal of EtMea, Vol. 14, p. 279. 
 
The Pv/re Ethical Movement 165 
 
 question : "What sort of act fills the requirements of the 
 ethical formulas of Kant and of the Ethical Move- 
 ment ?" we get the same answer from both : "It is the act 
 which is characterized by the good-will." There is 
 nothing good, but the good-will, say both systems alike. 
 The connection holds not so much in regard to their 
 views of the metaphysical nature of the ethical ideal as 
 in regard to the form which they consider the ethical 
 ideal to operate under. The Kantian ideal operates 
 under the imperative of a purely formal law which is 
 self-imposed and is absolute because it is universal in 
 scopfe. The ethical ideal operates likewise under the 
 stimulus of an imperative which an ideal, that is at the 
 same time an absolute end, imposes upon us. 
 
 It is strange tbat the two movements, differing as 
 they do in regard to the doctrine of ends of action, 
 should yet harmonize in regard to the form and the 
 content of the moral act, and should apply the same test 
 to determine the morality of an act. This can be ac- 
 counted for either on the ground that the doctrine of 
 ends of action is, as Kant would have it, not a factor in 
 the moral act, or on the ground that the spiritual organ- 
 ism as an end, is only a more picturesque expression of 
 the universality of a moral act. Where the ends and 
 means coincide, as is the case in a system where each is 
 at the same time end and means, the mere form of the 
 act becomes the significant factor, and we are reduced 
 to the Kantian moral formula which is based on the 
 mere form of the act. Thus the likeness between the 
 two systems becomes yet still closer. 
 
 To Kant and to Leibnitz we thus trace the main 
 philosophic sources of the Ethical Movement. The 
 Pure Ethical Movement can thus be described as the 
 Kantian rigoristic unconditional categorical imperative 
 resting on the Ledbnitzian theory of monads. The 
 
166 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 Kantian influence is seem in the rigor of its injunctions, 
 in the content and test of a moral act. The Leib- 
 nitzian influence is visible in the doctrine of the sover- 
 eignty of the members, each of which is both end and 
 means of every other member. To be a member of the 
 ethical ideal each member must know the whole in its 
 severalty and mirror the whole in its entirety. From 
 Leibnitz, then, the ethical ideal derives its constitutive 
 principle; from Kant it derives its regulative or norma- 
 tive principle. 
 
 (V) What Hope for Practical Moral Reform Can We 
 Draw from the Ethical Ideal? 
 
 Can the Ethical Movement, grounded as it is on the 
 organic ideal, serve as a practical reform movement? 
 This is, of course, the most vital of all questions and 
 its most scientific answer depends upon a study of the 
 moral status of a community after, as compared with 
 before, an Ethical Society has been established in it. 
 Only such a comparison can reveal the efficiency of the 
 movement. It is, however, impossible to take such 
 cross sections of society except at very long intervals of 
 time; and then the cross sections so taken, are blurred 
 and confusing and can therefore give little light upon 
 our question. 
 
 We axe then left to the other alternative, that of 
 examining the scope of its ideal and of determining its 
 efficiency in an a priori manner. Such an examination 
 of the principle underlying the Ethical Movement, re- 
 veals at least no seK-contradictory doctrine as is the 
 case with the other practical movements. We find no 
 demand for brotherhood based upon a principle of like- 
 ness — a principle, the consequence of which is to recog- 
 nize no brotherhood where likeness is not established. 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 167 
 
 We find no njere fostering paternalism based upon an 
 ideal that is devoted to the present enjoyment of the 
 comforts and artistic luxuries of life — an aristocratic 
 ideal that divided mankind into those that give and 
 those that receive the present goods of life. 
 
 The ethical ideal calls for brotherhood and coopera- 
 tion just as the religious ideal and the social ideal do, 
 but it bases this call on the principle of the unique 
 differences that separate mankind. 
 
 Moral reform is, after all, realizable only through 
 educational methods ; and relies solely on the soundness 
 of the method employed. It depends for success upon 
 the clearness with which we can uphold the light. And 
 then the light will of itself effect the desired change in 
 conduct, so that conduct will adjust itself to it. To see 
 the light clearly, is therefore of prime importance. 
 
 To have a theory of truth thus becomes essential even 
 for an Ethical Movement. In spite of its protestations 
 against philosophical systems as sources of ethical 
 knowledge, the Ethical Movement does, after all, take 
 on a philosophical character. For it, like the philosoph- 
 ical systems which it condemns, aims at a total view- 
 point; and is, in so far, philosophical. It can find light 
 for ethical guidance, only by soaring up and bringing it 
 from its ideal. 
 
 If the Ethical Movement errs at all in denying that 
 it rests on a theory of truth, its error arises from the 
 locus of the ethical ideal which is in the non-existent 
 future. The ideals of the other movements are, as we 
 have seen, in the past or in the present. The fact that 
 the locus of the ethical ideal is thus different from that 
 of any other ideals, is mistaken for an absence of a 
 theory of truth. Because past theories have failed to 
 solve the ethical problems, the Ethical Movement denies 
 altogether the need of theories for the purpose of moral 
 
168 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 reform. It insists upon proper action regardless of 
 theories, simply because past theories have failed to 
 produce proper actions. It fails to see that they failed 
 not because of the existence, but because of the location 
 of their ideal. Because the future is absent in the sense 
 that it has never yet been, the Ethical Movement, whose 
 ideal is in the future, is apt to lead to the error of 
 confounding the absence with the total non-existence of 
 the principle on which ethical conduct is based. 
 
 This is not, however, a vital error. It has no conse- 
 quences that weaken its ethical doctrine. It is purely a 
 logical error, which the Ethical Movement corrects in 
 practice aud so neutralizes. In practice the Ethical 
 Movement has a theory of an ideal just as much as have 
 any of the philosophical systems before it. The loca- 
 tion of it in the future, it mistakes for its absence in 
 toto. 
 
 The Ethical Movement gives more promise of suc- 
 cessfully achieving moral reform, because it appeals to 
 and works upon individual's and not upon masses or 
 groups of individuals. The Eeligious Ethical Move- 
 ment makes its appeal to the individual for a certain 
 line of conduct simply on the ground that he belongs to 
 a certain group. It calls upon him as a Christian to 
 act so and so ; and as a Jew to act so and so. Naturally, 
 this line of conduct is limited by the adjective describ- 
 ing it, and is applicable only within these limits. This 
 is genuine group morality, and has been the sanction 
 of unethical conduct to all outside of that group. 
 
 There is present a strong tendency to emphasize 
 group morality over individual morality, and to dis- 
 count the latter in favor of the former. Jane Addams 
 is the chief exponent of this tendency. The new doc- 
 trine of group morality advocated by Miss Addams 
 differs from the old doctrine of group morality in this : 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 169 
 
 The latter did not even recognize any such thing as 
 individual morality — all conduct that was moral has 
 its origin in the group and its application was coex- 
 tensive with the group. It did not extend beyond it. 
 There was no such thing as immoral conduct towards 
 one who was outside of your group. The new doctrine 
 of group morality does make the distinction between 
 individual and group morality and does not, of course, 
 go to the extent of giving a free bill of ethical cleanli- 
 ness to all acts affecting those outside of one's own 
 group. The new view makes personal morality a mere 
 zero point in the scale of ethical conduct. Yourself to 
 live a moral life is not sufficient. You must go beyond, 
 and spur on others to act ethically. This is positive 
 morality as compared with the zero morality of the 
 individual right-doing. Personal right-doing becomes 
 immoral or, at any rate, unethical from the viewpoint of 
 the group morality. Group morality is thus contrasted 
 with individual morality. Jane Addams cites the con- 
 duct of the President of the Pullman Palace Car Com- 
 pany as an example of a high class of individual moral- 
 ity that fell so far short of being of the standard of 
 group morality that his conduct is called immoral. The 
 President of this Company devised various ways of 
 benefiting his employees. He built a town for them 
 amidst beautiful surroundings, and fitted it up with 
 splendid, comfortable dwellings ; he built houses, libra- 
 ries, social rooms. He paid them fair wages and did all 
 that in his power lay, to make them contented. Yet to 
 his surprise they went on strike and stirred up much 
 violence in return for all the philanthropy that was 
 shown them. And they were right, contends Miss Ad- 
 dams, because all the philanthropy of the benevolent 
 President was an exercise of mere individual morality, 
 whereas the times demanded social or group morality. 
 
170 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 What he should have done, was to have educated them 
 up to the point where their welfare and salvation would 
 have been a matter of their own and not of his creation. 
 He failed to do this, and in failing to vest them with 
 self-government and in maintaining instead a benevo- 
 lent paternalism, his conduct was immoral. 
 
 In the light of the ethical ideal, the distinction here 
 made between individual and group morality disap^ 
 pears. Morality, as a social concept, gives ethical value 
 only to those acts that elicit what is potential in others. 
 Only such acts are ethical; for morality consists in 
 eliciting the good-will of others. From this point of 
 view, there can be no distinction between individual 
 and group morality. The Social Ethical Movement, 
 of which Jane Addams is the chief standard-bearer, 
 to-day evidently has two standards of moral conduct, 
 one for the individual as individual, the other for the 
 individual as a member of a social group. It is difficult 
 to see what the ethical obligations of the individual as 
 individual apart from the social group may be. 
 
 That morality implies a social obligation at all times 
 and is not merely a goody-goody aloofness from society 
 is becoming more evident daily, in the political, eco- 
 nomic, and social spheres of life. In political life, this 
 is evidenced by the establishment of Bureaus of 
 Municipal Research, which attempt to force home the 
 fact that public office is a public trust. In lie eco- 
 nomic sphere, we hear of the recognition by employers 
 of the rights of employees to some form of recreation 
 during the day, and the consequent introduction into 
 some factories of a reading room, of a social room and 
 of a lunch room. This is simply the recognition of the 
 principle that human beings are not merely means but 
 also ends in themselves. 
 
 With a view to ascertaining how far employees are 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 171 
 
 means and to what extent they must be treated as eth- 
 ical ends, the Ethical Culture Society has recently 
 given birth to a Business Men's Group ^ whose object is 
 to study the proper relations between employers and 
 employees. The need for a better understanding of 
 this relation is becoming more and more general; and 
 it is seen that to fail to heed it, is to run the risk of 
 being condemned by the moral conscience. There is 
 no line of demarcation between individual and group 
 morality; for morality means the reciprocal rela- 
 tion between the individual and the group. The 
 duties of a man as a personality do not stop when 
 his duties as an employer begin. They are identical 
 in both relationships. They require, however, to be 
 worked out and applied under different circum- 
 stances; but this does not at all make group morality 
 different from individual morality. The ethical ideal 
 recognizes no such distinction. 
 
 Another need that ethical science feels to-day and 
 which the Ethical Movement supplies is a clear, definite 
 knowledge of what constitutes the Eight in the par- 
 ticular problems that confront us almost daily. Great 
 laxity in morals came about largely because the 
 old notions of morality had been exploded and, under 
 the influence of experimental science, an individualistic 
 standard had been set up. The inductive sciences 
 recently enthroned, were driving from the field all 
 deductive methods. This went on more rapidly in the 
 last quarter of the nineteenth century than ever before. 
 Faculty psychology was overthrown, and experimental 
 laboratory psychology was the fashion. In education, 
 the old memory methods were broken up and royal- 
 road methods were invented. All along the line, the 
 
 » See : "An Ethical Program for Business Men" In The Standard, 
 1921 ; also pp. 260-304 of Dr. Adler's book, An EtMcaZ PhUoaophy of 
 Life. 
 
172 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 same phenomena are visible. In ethics the new move- 
 ment gave rise to the comparative study of races and 
 set forth their moral notions. Anthropology produced 
 a weakening in the rigidity of the moral law. If the 
 moral law varied with the races of antiquity, why may 
 it not vary with individuals of to-day ? Science shows 
 the existence of various moral standards without any 
 compunctions of conscience. Indeed, to science, con- 
 science is merely the overpowering of the individual 
 by the racial experience. Where these racial experi- 
 ences were different from our own, the morals were 
 different and conscience was unhurt by acts which now 
 cause it to hide itself with shame. All this, the induc- 
 tive scientific investigations proved. And so the notion 
 spreads that there is no other investigation than the 
 inductive, that is worth anything. For by it we are 
 guided on with help of one particular to another par- 
 ticular experience. There is no universal experience 
 at all. Deduction starts with the universal experience 
 and this is impossible. Therefore deduction is impos- 
 sible. It is unscientific. This is the crucial position 
 in the logic of the situation. To rehabilitate a stronger 
 respect for morals, the individualistic stand which the 
 inductive processes employed, must be modified and 
 more rigoristic ethics must be substituted. Eigoristic 
 ethics is in general not obtainable by the experimental 
 procedure which comparative anthropology as a sci- 
 ence falls back on. 
 
 N^ow it is here that the Pure Ethical Movement 
 boldly grasps the bull by the horn, and says: Science 
 depends on the validity of the law of causation. The 
 law of causation must be absolutely accepted or you 
 can have no science. Not a single exception from its 
 operation is allowed. If the scientist accepts this, and 
 he must or he has no science that predicts consequences 
 
The Pure Eihical Movement 173 
 
 from the conditions, but mere probabilities, tben, lie 
 gives up his claim to experience as a basis for his work, 
 and starts instead with a universal which it is impos- 
 sible to experience. H)e starts with the absolute neces- 
 sity of the law of causation, and of such necessity there 
 can be no experience. Instead therefore of the par- 
 ticular experiences forming the basis of a general law, 
 the general law is the very basis of the science whereby 
 particular experiences are organized. This universality 
 of law is necessary in science. It is not a proof, but a 
 postulate of all proofs. 
 
 Likewise in morals, there is a law which imposes 
 itself upon all acts. It is the unifying principle in 
 conduct just as the law of causation is the basis of 
 science. This unifying principle is beyond experience' 
 just as the law of causation is beyond experience. It 
 is a postulate of thought, and cannot be experienced. 
 Its reality is not, however, thereby impaired. It is 
 the reality that forever stands aloof from experience. 
 Nay, this reality gives validity to the reality that is 
 experienced, just as the law of causation which is not 
 experienced gives validity to the particular sciences 
 which deal with experience. This law is not crystal- 
 lized into any content. It remains form forever. 
 Herein the Pure Ethical Movement differs from the 
 Keligious Ethical Movement which assumes a unity 
 endowed with certain attributes and with a content. 
 This crystallized content then becomes the only content 
 and conformity to this content is a test of morality 
 and salvation. 
 
 The Pure Ethical Movement gives no content to its 
 principle of unity and therefore admits an infinite 
 variety of contents under it. It is thoroughly demo- 
 cratic. And herein lies the hope of moral reform. On 
 the one hand, there must be a rigidity of the moral law 
 
174 TJiree Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 which shall dispel from conduct individual caprice and 
 its sequel, anarchy ; and on the other hand, there must 
 be established a moral democracy under whose regime 
 the meanest spirit shall feel himself a sovereign law- 
 giver amidst fellow sovereigns. The Pure Ethical 
 Movement furnishes both these conditions of moral life. 
 In this movement, therefore, rests the hope of the 
 moral reform of our social order, and from the estab- 
 lishment of Ethical Societies in increasing numbers 
 may be expected the conquest of those institutions 
 which are at present the greatest hindrance of moral 
 reform, namely, the materialistic journalism and the 
 materialistic educational systems of the present time — 
 the two agencies which, if constituted on an ethical 
 rather than on a materialistic basis would be the most 
 potent protagonists of social reform. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EELIGIOUS ETHICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 Abbott, L. : GhristioMty and Social Problems. 
 
 Adderley, J. : LooMng Upward. 
 
 Balmforth, Kamsden: The New Beformation and Its Re- 
 lation to Moral and Social ProWems. 
 
 B'arnett, S. A. : Practical Socialism,. 
 
 Bariy, W. : Thoughts on Christian Doctrine. 
 
 Bax, B. : Essays in Socialism. 
 
 Blatchford, E. : Qod and My Neighbor. 
 
 Brentano, L. : Die Christliche Soziale Bewegung in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Brooks, J. G. : The Conflict Between Private Monopoly and 
 Good Citizenship. 
 
 Clifford, J. : Jesus Christ and Modern Social Life; Socialism 
 and the Teaching of Christ. 
 
 Dearmer, B. : Christian Socialism. 
 
 Discipiilus: The Socialism of Jesus. 
 
 Fabian Tracts. 
 
 Girdlestone, E. D. : Society Classified. 
 
 GHadden: Tools and the Man. 
 
 Gore, C. : The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 Hall, T. C. : History of Ethics within Organized Chris- 
 tianity; Social Solutions in the Light of Christian 
 Ethics. 
 
 Harrison, F. : National and Social Problems. 
 
 Haw, G. : No Boom to Live. 
 
 Headlam, S. D. : Christian Socialisnv; The Laws of Eter- 
 nal Life. 
 
 Herron, G. D. : The Christian Society. 
 
 Hicks, E. L. : The Ethics of Socialism. 
 
 175 
 
176 Three Types of Practical Ethical Movements 
 
 Hillquit, M. : History of Socialism in V. 8. 
 
 Hogan: The Fathers of the Ghwch and Socialism. 
 
 Holyoake, G. J. : History of Cooperation. 
 
 Hughes, T. : Life of Maurice; Tracts on Christian Social- 
 ism. 
 
 Kaufman, M. : Christian Socialism,; Chas. King^ley — So- 
 cialist. 
 
 Matthew, S.: The Social Teaching of Jesus; The Social 
 Gospel; The Church and the Changing Order; The 
 Gospel and Modem Man. 
 
 Maurice, F. D. : The Kingdom, of Christ; Administrative 
 Beform; The Ground and Ohject of Hope for Man- 
 Jcind; The Lordfs Frwyar; Social Morality; Workmen 
 and the Franchise; Social Morality. 
 
 Maurice: Life of F. D. Maurice. 
 
 Manning, H. W. : Sermons. 
 
 Monroe, P. : English and American Christian Socialism. 
 
 Mazzini : Essays; God and the People. 
 
 Nash, H. S. : Genesis of the Social Conscience. 
 
 Noel, Conrad: Guild of St. Matthew; The Labor Party. 
 
 Page, E. D. : Morals in Business. 
 
 Patten, S. N. : The Social Basis of Religion. 
 
 Peabody, F. G. : An Approach to the Social Question; 
 Jesus Christ and the Social Question. 
 
 Eauschenbusch, W". : Christianity and Social Crisis. 
 
 Eoyce, J. : Race Questions and Other American Prohlems. 
 
 Santayana, G. : Life of Reason. 
 
 Seligman, E. E. A.: The Economic Interpretation of His- 
 tory; Owen and the Christian Socialists. 
 
 Somerville, D. : Christianity and the State. 
 
 Spargo, J.: The Spiritual Significance of Modern Social- 
 ism,; Christian Socialism in America. 
 
 Strong, J.: Religious Movements for Social Betterment; 
 The Next Great Awakening. 
 
 Stubbs, C. W. : Village Politics; A Creed for Christian So- 
 cialism; Chas. Eingsley. 
 
 Wedgewood, J. : F. D. Maurice. 
 
 Westcott: The Incarnation; Socialism; Christus Consum- 
 mator; The Cooperative Ideal. 
 
 Woodworth, A. 0. : Christian Socialism in England. 
 
The Religious Ethical Movemerd 177 
 
 Periodioals 
 
 Amer. Catholic Quarterly 
 
 Review. 
 The Biblical World. 
 Christian Socialism. 
 Commonwealth (The) 
 Church Family Newspaper. 
 Church Quarterly Beview. 
 The Dawn. 
 Economic Beview (Organ of 
 
 Ckristian Social Union). 
 
 Grande Beview. 
 Hibbert Journal. 
 Journal d. Economistes. 
 New Century Beview 
 New Quarterly Magazine, 
 Politics for the People. 
 Political Science. 
 Beview d. deux Mondes 
 Reformer {The). 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOCIAL ETHICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 Addams, Jane: Democracy and Social Ethics; The Ohjec- 
 tive Value of a Social Bettlemewt; Philanthropy and 
 Social Progress; Newer Ideals of Peace. 
 
 Booth : In Darkest England. 
 
 Coit, Stanton: Neighborhood Guilds. 
 
 Gavit, J. P.: Bihliography of College, Social and Univer- 
 sity Settlements. 
 
 Henderson: The Social Spirit in America; Practical So- 
 ciology; Social Settlements. 
 
 Hull House : Maps and Papers. 
 
 Montague, F. C. : Arnold Toynbee. 
 
 Montgomery, 0. W. : Bihliography of Social Settlements. 
 
 Starr, G. : Settlements and the Church's Duty. 
 
 Toynbee, A. : Industrial Revolution. 
 
 Periodicals 
 
 Andover Review. Current Literature. 
 
 American Journal of Sod- Dial. 
 
 ology. Electric Magazine. 
 Annals American Academy/. Ethical Record. 
 Arena. Cunton's Magazine. 
 Atlantic Monthly. Harpet^s Bazar. 
 Biblical World. Harper's Magazine. 
 Canadian Magazine, 1897. Harvard Theological Re- 
 Catholic World. view. 
 Charities Review. HiUhert Journal. 
 Chautauqua. Independent. 
 Contemporary Review. International Journal of 
 Craftsman. Ethics. 
 
 178 
 
The Social Ethical Movement 
 
 179 
 
 Living Age. 
 Macmillan's Magazine. 
 Municipal Affairs. 
 Music. 
 Nation, The. 
 
 National Conference of 
 Charities and Corrections. 
 New Church Review. 
 New England Magazine. 
 19th Century Magazine^ 
 North American. 
 QutlooTc. 
 Overland. 
 
 Putnam's Magazine. 
 
 Quarterly Journal of Eco- 
 nomics. 
 
 Reform Church Review. 
 
 Review of Reviews. 
 
 Science. 
 
 Scribner's. 
 
 Survey. 
 
 University of Chicago Maga- 
 zine. 
 
 University Record. 
 
 Westminster Review. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PUEE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 Adler, F. : The Need of a New Moral Movement in Be- 
 ligion; The Freedom of Public Worship; The Distinc- 
 tive Aims of the Ethical Culture School; The Fov/r 
 Types of Suffering; The Spiritual Meaning of Mar- 
 riage; The Essentials of Spirituaiiiy; The Religion 
 of Duty; Life and Destiny; A Protest Against the Rus- 
 sian Treaty; Ma/rriage and Divorce; Moham,m,ed; The 
 Recent Persecution of the Jews; Creed and Deed; The 
 World Crisis and its Meaning, D. Appleton & Co., 1915; 
 An Ethical Philosophy of Life, D. Appleton & Co., 1918. 
 
 Brooks, R. C. : Corruption in American Politics. 
 
 Martin, A. W. : The World's Great Religions. 
 
 Pierce, F. : Political Morality. 
 
 Salter, W. M. : The First Anniversary of the Society for 
 Ethical Culture; Ethical Religion, Little B'rown. & Co., 
 1889. 
 
 Sheldon, W. L. : Meaning of the Ethical Movement. 
 
 Society for Ethical Culture: Dedication of the Meeting 
 Mouse; Twenty Years of the Ethical Movement. 
 
 Periodical Literature 
 
 American Historical Association, Report, 1903. 
 
 Anherican Journal Sociology, 13. 
 
 Annal American Academy, 82, 29, 25. 
 
 Charities, 15, 18, 19, 20. 
 
 Contemporary B., 64. 
 
 Current Literature, 40, 43. 
 
 Ethical Record. 
 
 180 
 
The Pure Ethical Movement 181 
 
 Forum, 16. 
 
 Harvard University Philos. 
 
 Hibbert Journal, 7; 596. 
 
 Independent, Vol. 58, 62. 
 
 Inter. Journal Ethics, 10. 
 
 North American Review, 13.6. 
 
 19th Century, 4. 
 
 Open Court, 1, 11, 15. 
 
 Outlook, 82, 86. 
 
 Philosophical Review, 1. 
 
 Popular Science Monthly, 45. 
 
 Psychological Review, 3. 
 
 T/ie Standard. 
 
 Survey, 22. 
 
 r/ie ^ifetcaZ iJecortZ, Vol. 1, 2, 1888, 1890. 
 
 Westminster Review, 159. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Addams, J., 63, 64, 66, 67, 69, 
 81, 86, 87, 89, 93, 100, 168, 
 169, 170. 
 
 Adier, F., 107, 108, 117, 123, 
 125, 137, 151, 152, 161, 164. 
 
 Aristotle, 40, 94. 
 
 Barnett, S. A., 58, 61, 62, 63, 
 
 66, 81, 82, 84. 
 Business Men's Group, 171 
 
 Carlyle, T., 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14. 
 
 Catechism, 23. 
 
 Chartism, 6, 7, 15. 
 
 Christ, 19, 21, 41. 
 
 Christian Social Fellowship, 31, 
 
 32, 33, 34. 
 
 Christian- Social Union, 16, 23, 
 
 27, 31, 43. 
 Christian Socialism, 9, 10, 11, 
 
 12, 15, 16, 20, 21, 23, 29, 30, 
 
 33, 42, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 84. 
 Coit, S., 63, 66. 
 
 Darwin, C, 4, 107. 
 Davidson, T., 17, 37. 
 Deniaon, E., 58, 59, 60, 61, 63. 
 Dewey, J., 81. 
 
 Ethical Culture Society, 107, 
 111, 112 113, 114, 115, 116, 
 125, 127, 128, 129, 133, 156, 
 157, 166, 168. 
 
 Ethical Leaders, 115. 
 
 Fabian Society, 17, 21, 56. 
 Fatherhood, 9, 41. 
 Feudalism, 4. 
 Fourier, 26. 
 
 Giddings, 56. 
 Gore, 25, 28. 
 Green, T. H., 57, 58. 
 Guild of St. Matthew, 16, 17, 
 20, 21, 23, 31, 56. 
 
 Eaeckel, 122. 
 
 HaU, T. C, 93. 
 
 Headlam, S. D., 17, 21, 22. 
 
 Hebrew Ethics, 115. 
 
 Holy Ghost, 41. 
 
 Hull House, 64. 
 
 Kant, E., 107, 127, 150, 163, 
 
 164, 165, 166. 
 Kingsley, C, 6, 7, 15, 55, 59, 
 
 60, 109. 
 
 Leibnitz, 159, 160, 165, 166. 
 Ludlow, 7. 
 
 Manchester Economists, 55, 56, 
 94. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 
 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 
 24, 25, 26, 38, 39, 59, 60, 109. 
 
 Mazzini, 7. 
 
 Monadology, 159. 
 
 Neighborhood Guild, 64. 
 
 Owen, R., 26. 
 
 Parson, Lot, 7. 
 
 Patten, 39. 
 
 Pestalozzi, 74. 
 
 Plato, 4, 138. 
 
 Pontics for the People, 7, 8, 9. 
 
 183 
 
184 
 
 Index 
 
 Pragmatism, 138, 139. 
 Pvire Ethical Movement, 107, 
 124, 129, 140, 150, 151, 173. 
 
 Beligious Ethical Moyement, 3, 
 60, 83, 84, 97, 109, 124, 173. 
 Eicardo, 11, 56. 
 Eousseau, 74, 119. 
 Eoyce, J., 51. 
 Buskin, 3, 58, 64. 
 
 Santayana, 21. 
 
 Social Ethical Movement, 57, 
 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 83, 84, 
 94, 99, 104, 116, 120, 121, 
 124, 170. 
 
 Socialism, 6, 8, 17, 18, 21, 25, 
 
 33, 36, 46, 56, 119 
 Spargo, J., 34. 
 Spinoza, B., 127. 
 
 Taylor, G., 86, 99. 
 
 Toynbee, A., 58, 59, 60, 61, 63. 
 
 Toynbee Hall, 62, 63, 64, 65. 
 
 Universe, The, 161. 
 University Extension, 61. 
 University Settlement, 61. 
 
 Workingmen's College, 12, 15, 
 60, 61. 
 
 Yahveh, 40, 41.