An ethical philosophy of life presented in its main outlines — Themes and Context

ive spirit among workingmen.

I must, however, pause at this point to explain how the development described led me to separation from the Hebrew religion, the religion in which I was born, and to the service of which as a Jewish minister it was expected that I should devote my life.

[1] In view of the writer’s connection with the Ethical Culture Societies it is fitting to state expressly that the philosophical positions herein set forth are not to be taken as an official pronouncement on behalf of the Ethical Culture Movement. The Ethical Societies as such have no official philosophy. _See_ Book IV, Chapter 9.

[2] Though I must at once mention the first great error which accompanied the true insight, the shadow which went alongside of the light, namely, my understanding of the above principle mainly in a negative sense. My ethics was largely what may be called non-violation ethics.

[3] The relation of chastity to the birth of the idea of personality among the Hebrews I have touched upon elsewhere. The Hebrew people abhorred promiscuity, or the dishonoring of oneself by indiscriminate mingling. It is instructive that this did not stand in the way of polygamy. Those persons whom the Hebrew received, so to speak, into the sphere of his personality, did not imperil his sense of personal intactness. And personal intactness seems to have been the determining motive in the severe attitude taken toward prostitution. The fact that the worship of other gods, the worst of crimes in the eyes of the Hebrew legislator, was described as “whoring after other gods” is particularly significant. The sacred, sensitive self, the holy thing whatever it might be, which the Hebrew discovered within his own sex experience, was thereafter attributed also to others, and especially to those who had the same aversion to promiscuity as he. Hence perhaps the limited ascription of holiness to members of the Hebrew people.

[4] Pantheism has always seemed to me the least satisfactory of theological or ethical solutions. The system of thought which will be found later on in this volume may have a certain superficial resemblance to Pantheism, but in reality is as far from it in origin and purpose as pole from pole.

[5] There are also passages in books that have the same revolutionizing effect (Cf. the passage quoted from St. Paul in St. Augustine’s “Confessions”). However, it is curious to observe that the effect brought about may be quite out of proportion to the cause. The book or the passage may prove to be of inferior value, so far as its subject is concerned, and may yet serve suddenly to call attention to the subject itself, and give rise to trains of thought that eventually go far beyond the impetus that set them in motion. “Ripeness,” says Shakespeare, “is everything,”—ripeness to receive the impetus. Relatedness to the state of mind of the recipient is the decisive factor, and this accounts for the astounding changes that result.

The separation was not violent. There was no sudden wrenching off. There were none of those painful struggles which many others have had to undergo when breaking away from the faith of their fathers. It was all a gradual, smooth transition, the unfolding of a seed that had long been planted. I have never felt the bitterness often characteristic of the radical, nor his vengeful impulse to retaliate upon those who had imposed the yoke of dogmas upon his soul. I had never worn the yoke. I had never been in bondage. I had been gently guided. And consequently the wine did not turn into vinegar, the love into hate. The truth is, I was hardly aware of the change that had taken place until it was fairly consummated. One day I awoke, and found that I had traveled into a new country. The landscape was different; the faces I encountered were different; and looking casually into a mental mirror, as it were, I perceived that I too had become different. And I was sure also that I had gained, not lost, that into my new spiritual home I had taken with me, not indeed the images of my gods, like Æneas, fleeing from Troy, but something for which those images had stood, and which in other ways would remain for me a permanent possession.

It has been said that the science of today lives only in so far as it supersedes the science of yesterday. Whatever may be true of science (and the statement is certainly not true without large qualifications—the science of Newton and Darwin has not been “superseded”—and it may even come to pass that outreachings of a more ancient science frustrated at the time will hereafter be taken up anew with fairer results than formerly were attainable), in religion at all events there is no such thing as the bare substitution of the new for the old. The religions of the past, at least the more advanced religions, are not simply to be cast on the scrap heap, or treated as exploded superstitions. There is in all of them a certain fund of truth which may not be allowed to perish, but should be rescued out of the wreck.

On the other hand, even the most advanced religions contain a large admixture of error, survivals of primitive taboos, mythological elements having their root in polytheism, while the very truths which I have just admitted to be infinitely precious require to be restated so as to fit them into a larger synthesis.

It is not easy to define my attitude toward the Old Masters, I mean the Old Masters in religion, the incomparably great religious teachers of the past, who tower above us like giants. My attitude is one of profoundest reverence—toward the Hebrew prophets and Jesus especially. The Hebrew religion first sounded the distinctively spiritual note. Zoroaster had emphasized the struggle of the powers of Light and the powers of Darkness, but the conception of light in his system remained to a considerable extent materialistic. Buddha emphasized Enlightenment in the sense of escape from Illusion, and in conjunction with it sympathy for all who remain under the spell of illusion. Confucius endeavored to walk, and taught his followers to walk, with equipoise in the Middle Path; he emphasized what he thought to be the cosmic principle of balance or equilibrium. Plato, taking his stand on the highest terrestrial platform, caught, or believed himself to have caught, sight of transcendental beauty as the ultimate principle in things. But the prophets of Israel assigned to the ethical principle the highest rank in man’s life and in the world at large. The best thing in man, they declared, is his moral personality; and the best thing in the world, the supreme and controlling principle, is the moral power that pervades it.

The predominance of the ethical principle in religion dates from the prophets of Israel. The religious development of the human race took a new turn in their sublime predications, and I for one am certainly conscious of having drawn my first draught of moral inspiration from their writings.[6]

But nevertheless I found myself compelled to separate from the religion of Israel. Now why was it necessary for me to take this step? Why not continue along the path first blazed by the Hebrew prophets—smoothing it perhaps and widening it? Why not separate the dross from the gold, the error from the truth, explicating what is implicit in that truth, and adapting it to the needs and conditions of the modern age? The answer is that the truth contained in the Hebrew, and as I shall presently show, in the Christian religion, is not capable of such adaptation. It claims finality. I have mentioned that there is an element of permanent value in both the Hebrew and the Christian religion, and that it should be restated and fitted into a larger synthesis. But this is impossible unless the Hebrew or Christian setting be broken, unless the element to be preserved is taken out of its context, and treated freshly and with perfect freedom. A religion like the two I am concerned with is a determinate thing. It is a closed circle of thoughts and beliefs. It is capable of a certain degree of change but not of indefinite change. The limits of change are determined by its leading conceptions—the monotheistic idea in the one case, and the centrality of the figure of Christ in the other. Abandon these, and the boundaries by which the religion is circumscribed are passed.

The great religious teachers are men who see the spiritual landscape from a certain point of view, including whatever is visible from their station, excluding whatever is not. The religion which they originate is thus both inclusive and sharply exclusive. What they see with their rapt eyes they describe with a trenchancy and fitness never thereafter to be equaled.[7] But in order to progress in religion it is necessary to advance toward a different station, to reach a different, a higher eminence, and from that to look forth anew upon the spiritual landscape, comprehending the outlook of one’s predecessors in a new perspective, seeing what they saw and much besides.

Religious growth may also be compared to the growth of a tree. To expect that development shall continue along the Hebrew or Christian lines is like expecting that a tree will continue to develop along one of its branches. There is a limit beyond which the extension of a branch cannot go. Then growth must show itself in the putting forth of a new branch.

But let me now state with somewhat greater particularity the reasons that compelled me to depart from the faith of Israel, and to leave my early religious home, cherishing pious memories of it, but nevertheless firmly set in my course towards new horizons.[8]

1. The difficulty created by the claim that Israel is an elect people, that it stands in a peculiar relation to the Deity. This claim, at the time when it was put forth, was neither arrogant nor unfounded. It was not arrogant because the mission was understood to be a heavy burden not a privilege: or if a privilege at all, then the tragic privilege of martyrdom, a martyrdom continued through generations. And the claim was not unfounded or preposterous at the time when it was put forth because the Hebrews were in reality the only people who conceived of morality in terms of holiness. It was not absurd for them to assert their mission to be the teachers of mankind in respect to the spiritual interpretation of morality, since there was something, and that something infinitely important, which they actually had to teach. Moral thinking and moral practices of course had existed from immemorial times everywhere, but the conception of morality as divine in its source, as spiritual in its inmost essence,—this immense idea was the offspring of the Hebrew mind. On the other hand, I asked myself, has not the task of Israel in this respect been accomplished? Have not its Scriptures become the common property of the civilized nations? And does not that teacher mistake his office who attempts to maintain his magisterial authority after his pupils have come to man’s estate, and are capable of original contributions? The “nations” are not to be looked upon in the light of mere pupils. The ethical message of Israel so far as it is sane is universalistic. It is founded on the conviction that there is a moral nature in every human being, and that the moral nature is a spiritual nature. And if this be so, then the utterances, the insights, the new visions with which the spiritual nature is pregnant, cannot be supposed to be restricted to members of the Jewish people. If the teaching function is to be maintained it must be exercised by all who have the gift. If there is to be an elect body (a dangerous conception, the meaning of which is to be carefully defined), it must consist of gentiles and Jews, of men of every race and condition in whom the spiritual nature is more awakened than in others, peculiarly vivid, pressing towards utterance.

2. Aside from the spiritual interpretation of morality, the mission of the Jewish people has been said to consist in holding aloft the standard of pure monotheism as against trinitarianism. But pure monotheism is a philosophy rather than a religion. Taken by itself it is too pure, too empty of content to serve the purposes of a living faith. The attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, etc., ascribed to Deity are highly abstract, too abstruse to be even thinkable, save indirectly, and they certainly fail to touch the heart. As a matter of fact it was the image of the Father projected upon the background of these abstractions, that made the object of Jewish piety. Jahweh is the heavenly spouse; Israel is to be his faithful earthly spouse. The Children of Israel are pre-eminently his children. Other nations likewise are his children,—some children of wrath to be cast out and destroyed like the rebellious son in Deuteronomy, others to be eventually gathered into the patriarchal household. But this view comes back to the same general conception of the relations of Israel to other nations which has just been discussed. Moreover, the Father image, as representing the divine life in the world, even when extended so as to include all mankind on equal terms, is open to a serious objection.[9]

3. If, nevertheless, the Jews have a mission, is it perhaps this: to rehabilitate the prophetic ideal of social justice? Is it not social justice that the world is crying for today? Were not the prophets of Israel the great preachers of righteousness in the sense of social justice? Did they not affirm that religion consists in justice and in its concomitant mercifulness, but above all in justice? Did not Isaiah say: “When ye come to tread my courts, who has demanded this of you? Go wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil that is in your hands. Cease to do evil; learn to do good.” And later on, “That ye let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke.” These are solemn, marvelous words assuredly! They have been ringing down through the ages, and still find their echo in our hearts. And yet the justice idea of the prophets is inadequate to serve the purpose of social reconstruction today. To go back to it would mean repristination, not renovation. It is sound as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It is negative, rather than positive; it is based on the idea of non-violation. What we require today is a positive conception, and this implies a positive definition of that holy thing in man that is to be treated as inviolable. To the mind of the prophets justice meant chiefly resistance to oppression, since oppression is the most palpable exemplification of the forbidden violation. The prophets in their outlook on the external relations of their people stood for the weak, the oppressed, against the strong, the oppressor. They stood for their own weak little nation, the Belgium of those days, against the two over-mighty empires, Egypt and Assyria, that bordered it on either side. In the internal affairs of Israel they espoused the cause of the weak against the rich and strong: “Woe unto them that add house to house and field to field, that grind the faces of the poor.” Ever and ever again the same note resounds, the same intense, passionately indignant feeling against violation in the form of oppression. But this aspect of justice, as I have said, is the negative aspect,—inestimably important, but insufficient. Where oppression does not occur, have the claims of justice ceased? Is there not something even greater than mere non-infringement, greater than mercifulness or kindness, which in justice we owe to the personality of our fellows, namely, to aid in the development of their personality? Righteousness, yes, by all means,—but does the righteousness of the prophets of Israel exhaust or begin to exhaust the content of that vast idea?

The universalistic ethical idea in the Hebrew religion is bound up with and bound down by racial restrictions. The issue between monotheism and trinitarianism is no longer a vital issue of our day. The Father image as the symbol of Deity raises expectations which experience does not confirm. The ideal of social justice as conceived by the prophets of Israel is a valid but incomplete expression of what is implied in social justice. These are weighty considerations that make it difficult to retain the belief in the elect character attributed to the people of Israel. There is one other, of very deep-reaching importance, that must be noticed. An elect people is supposed to be an exemplary people, one that sets a moral example which other nations are expected to copy. But it has become more and more clear to me that the value of example in the moral life has been overestimated and misunderstood. No individual, for instance, can really serve as an example to others so as to be copied by them. The circumstances are always somewhat different, the natures are different, and the obligations, finely examined, are never quite the same. In fact, the best that anyone can do for another by his example is to stimulate him to express with consummate fidelity his different nature in his own different way. I do not of course deny that there are certain uniformities, chiefly negative, in moral conduct, but I have come to think that the ethical quality of moral acts consists in the points in which they differ rather than in those in which they agree. The ideally ethical act, to my mind, is the most completely individualized act.

And what is true of individuals is no less true of peoples. No people can really be exemplary for other peoples, and in this sense elect. Every people possesses a character of its own to which it is to give expression in ways which I shall indicate in the last part of this work. But the way rightly adopted by one nation cannot be a law or a model for its sister nations. If the ideal of the modern Zionists were realized, if the Jews were to return to Palestine, to speak once more the language of the Bible, to cultivate their distinctive gifts, they would not therefore produce a pattern which could be copied in Japan, or among the 400 millions of China, or in the United States, or among the Slavic or Latin peoples.

In concluding these reflections, I may not conceal from myself or from others that the objection to the function of exemplariness, if sustained, affects at the root both the theology and the ethics of the past. If no individual can be in the strict sense an example to others, neither can an individual Deity be an example to be copied by men, neither can Christ be the perfect exemplar to be imitated. There can be no single perfect exemplar. Virtues that bear the same name are not therefore the same virtues. Often it is only the name that is the same, not the substance; and where they are in a broad way the same, yet there remains a difference of accent. The natures of men are unlike. Their moral destiny is to work out the unlikeness of each in harmony with that of the others. The moral equivalence of men, rather than their moral equality, is for me the expression of the fundamental moral relation.[10]