FELIX ADLER
Felix Adler, lecturer and writer on moral and ethical subjects, was born in Alzey, Germany, in 1851. He received the degree A.B. from Columbia University, and continued his studies at Berlin and at the University of Heidelberg. From 1874 to 1876 he was professor of Hebrew at Cornell University. Since 1902 he has been professor of political and social ethics at Columbia. He has produced numerous works on moral and ethical topics. In 1915 there was published his book, “The World Crisis and its Meaning,” the third chapter of which is here quoted in part.Adler’s keen interest in international ethics has been expressed in several addresses delivered before the New York Society of Ethical Culture, which was founded by him in 1876. Among other things he pleads for altruism among the nations, and truthfulness, and believes in a purified nationalism instead of anti- or inter-nationalism.
Felix Adler, lecturer and writer on moral and ethical subjects, was born in Alzey, Germany, in 1851. He received the degree A.B. from Columbia University, and continued his studies at Berlin and at the University of Heidelberg. From 1874 to 1876 he was professor of Hebrew at Cornell University. Since 1902 he has been professor of political and social ethics at Columbia. He has produced numerous works on moral and ethical topics. In 1915 there was published his book, “The World Crisis and its Meaning,” the third chapter of which is here quoted in part.
Adler’s keen interest in international ethics has been expressed in several addresses delivered before the New York Society of Ethical Culture, which was founded by him in 1876. Among other things he pleads for altruism among the nations, and truthfulness, and believes in a purified nationalism instead of anti- or inter-nationalism.
The American ideal is that of the uncommon quality latent in the common man. Necessarily it is an ethical ideal, a spiritual ideal; otherwise it would be nonsense. For, taking men as they are, they are assuredly not equal. The differences between them, on the contrary, are glaring. The common man is not uncommonly fine spiritually, but rather, seen from the outside, “uncommonly” common. It is therefore an ethical instinct that has turned the people toward this ethical conception.
It is true that in Germany and in England, side by side with the efficiency and the mastery ideals, there has always existed this same spiritual or religious ideal; side by side with the stratification and entitulation of men, the labelling of them as lower and higher, as empirically better or worse, there has always been the recognition that men are equal,—equal, that is to say, in church, but not outside, equal in the hereafter, but not in this life. If we would fathom the real depth and inner significance of the democratic ideal as it slumbers or dreams in the heart of America, rather than as yet explicit, we must say that it is an ideal which seeks to overcome this very dualism, seeks to take the spiritual conception of human equality out of the church and put it into the market place, to take it from far off celestial realms for realization upon this earth. For men are not equal in the empirical sense; they are equal only in the spiritual sense, equal only in the sense that the margin of achievement of which any person is capable, be it wide or narrow, is infinitesimal compared with his infinite spiritual possibilities.
It is because of this subconscious ethical motive that there is this generous air of expectation in America, that we are always wondering what will happen next, or who will happen next. Will another Emerson come along? Will another Lincoln come along? We do not know. But this we know, that the greatest lusters of our past already tend to fade in our memory, not because we are irreverent, but becausenothing that the past has accomplished can content us; because we are looking for greatness beyond greatness, truth beyond truth ever yet spoken. The Germans have a legend that in their hour of need an ancient emperor will arise out of the tomb where he slumbers to stretch his protecting hand over the Fatherland. We Americans, too, have the belief that, if ever such an hour comes for us, there will arise spirits clothed in human flesh amongst us sufficient for our need, but spirits that will come, as it were, out of the future to meet our advancing host and lead it, not ghosts out of the storied past. For America differs from all other nations in that it derives its inspiration from the future. Every other people has some culture, some civilization, handed down from the past, of which it is the custodian, and which it seeks to develop. The American people have no such single tradition. They are dedicated, not to the preservation of what has been, but to the creation of what never has been. They are the prophets of the future, not the priests of the past.
I have spoken above of ideals, of what is fine in a nation, of fine tendencies. The idea which a people has of itself, like the idea which an individual has of himself, often does not tally with the reality. If we look at the realities of American life,—and, on the principle ofcorruptio optimi pessima, we should be prepared for what we see,—we are dismayed to observe in actual practice what seems like a monstrous caricature,—not democracy, but plutocracy; kings expelled and the petty political bosses in their stead; merciless exploitation of the economically weak,—a precipitate reduction of wages, for instance, at the first signs of approaching depression, in advance of what is required,—instead of respect for the sacred personality of human beings, the utmost disrespect. Certainly the nation needs strong and persistent ethical teaching in order to make it aware of its better self and of what is implied in the political institutions which it has founded.
But ethical teaching alone will not suffice. It must be admitted that a danger lurks in the idea of equality itself. The danger is that differences in refinement, in culture, in intellectualability and attainments are apt to be insufficiently emphasized; that the untutored, the uncultivated, the intellectually undeveloped, are apt presumptuously to put themselves on a par with those of superior development; and hence that superiority, failing to meet with recognition, will be discouraged and democracy tend to level men downward instead of upward. This will not be true so much of such moral excellence as appears in an Emerson or a Lincoln,—for there is that in the lowliest which responds to the manifestations of transcendent moral beauty,—but it will hold good of those minor superiorities that fall short of the highest in art and science and conduct, yet upon the fostering of which depends the eventual appearance of culture’s richest fruits.
In order to ward off this danger we must have a new and larger educational policy in our schools than has yet been put in practice. Vocational training in its broadest and deepest sense will be our greatest aid.
Democracy, the American democracy, is the St. Christopher. St. Christopher bore the Christ child on his shoulders as he stepped into the river, and the child was as light as a feather. But it became heavier and heavier as he entered the stream, until he was well nigh borne down by it. So we, in the heyday of 1776, stepped into the stream with the infant Democracy on our shoulders, and it was light as a feather’s weight; but it is becoming heavier and heavier the deeper we are getting into the stream—heavier and heavier. When we began, there were four or five millions. Now there are ninety millions. Heavier and heavier! And there are other millions coming. When we began we were a homogeneous people; now there are those twenty-three languages spoken in a single school. And with this vast multitude, and this heterogeneous population, we are trying the most difficult experiment that has ever been attempted in the world,—trying to invest with sovereignty the common man. There has been the sovereignty of kings, and now and then a king has done well. There has been the sovereignty of aristocracies, and now and then an English aristocracy or a Venetian aristocracy has done well—though never whollywell. And now we are imposing this most difficult task of government, which depends on the recognition of excellence in others, so that the best may rule in our behalf, on the shoulders of the multitude. These are our difficulties. But our difficulties are also our opportunities. This land is the Promised Land. It is that not only in the sense in which the word is commonly taken—that is to say, a haven for the disadvantaged of other countries, a land whither the oppressed may come to repair their fortunes and breathe freely and achieve material independence. That is but one side of the promise. In that sense the Anglo-American native population is the host, extending hospitality, the benefactor of the immigrants. But this is also the land of promise for the native population themselves, in order that they may be penetrated by the influence of what is best in the newcomers, in order that their too narrow horizon may be widened, in order that their stiffened mental bent may become more flexible; that festivity, pageant and song may be added to their life by the newcomers; that echoes of ancient prophecy may inspire the matter-of-fact, progressive movements, so-called, of our day.
America is the Wonderland, hid for ages in the secret of the sea, then revealed. At first, how abused! Spanish conquerors trampled it; it was the nesting place of buccaneers, adventurers, if also the home of the Puritans—bad men and good men side by side. Then for dreary centuries the home of slavery. Then the scene of prolonged strife. And now, on the surface, the stamping ground of vulgar plutocrats! And yet, in the hearts of the elect,—yes, and in the hearts of the masses, too,—inarticulate and dim, there has ever been present a fairer and nobler ideal, the ideal of a Republic built on the uncommon fineness in the common man! To live for that ideal is the true Americanism, the larger patriotism. To that ideal, not on the field of battle, as in Europe, but in the arduous toil of peace, let us be willing to give the “last full measure of devotion.”