Part 1

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LIFE AND DESTINY

BY

FELIX ADLER

AUTHOR OF “CREED AND DEED,” “MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE,” ETC.

LONDON: WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1913

CONTENTS

s PAGE

THE MEANING OF LIFE 3

RELIGION 17

IMMORTALITY 31

MORAL IDEALS 37

LOVE AND MARRIAGE 53

HIGHER LIFE 65

SPIRITUAL PROGRESS 81

SUFFERING AND CONSOLATION 89

ETHICAL OUTLOOK 105

PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE

_Dr. Felix Adler, from whose Addresses the following gems of thought are extracted, is widely known in the United States as an impassioned preacher, a distinguished scholar, and a leading citizen. He founded in 1876, in the City of New York, the first Ethical Society, of which he is still the much-beloved inspirer and guide. Since that date the Ethical Movement inaugurated by Dr. Adler has taken root in many lands, and an International Union of Ethical Societies has been called into being, of which he is President. According to him, the three fundamental tenets of the Ethical Movement are “the supremacy of the moral end of life above all other ends, the sufficiency of man for the pursuit of that end, and the increase of moral truth to be expected from loyalty in this pursuit.”_

_In this volume connected excerpts bearing on the more intimate side of life, as apprehended by the author, are offered to the reader. Here Dr. Adler reveals himself not only as some one who has explored the deeper recesses of the human heart, but his words prove him to be of the long line of poets and prophets who have contributed to purify and elevate humanity._

_This small work appears destined by its form and content to be a religious and ethical classic, to be placed on the book-shelf alongside of À Kempis’s “Imitation of Christ,” Pascal’s “Thoughts,” and Emerson’s “Essays”. Whoever craves for self-knowledge, reveres his deeper self, and seeks to be captain of his own soul, will feel that these pages offer him precious and sympathetic counsel._

_In conclusion, the Publishers desire to express their grateful thanks to Dr. Adler for permission to issue this popular edition, and to state that they are entirely responsible for the few omissions in the text._

THE MEANING OF LIFE

There are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond.

We are here--no matter who put us here, or how we came here--to fulfil a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged. We are here to make mind master of matter, soul of sense. We do so by overriding pain, not by weakly capitulating to it.

When we are smitten by the rod of affliction do not let us sit still, but rather get to work as fast as we can. In action lies our salvation. But it must be remembered that only a great aim, one which remains valid, irrespective of our private griefs, is competent in the critical moments to put us into action and to sustain us in action.

The thought that extreme suffering is a key which unlocks life’s deepest and truest meanings is the final rejoinder to the plea on behalf of suicide. It is a thought which, when fully apprehended, is calculated to give peace to every troubled soul.

The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power which testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which impels us to regard others as other selves--this fact comes home to us even more forcibly in sorrow than in joy. It is thrown into clearest relief on the background of pain.

In the glow of achievement we are apt to be full of a false self-importance. But in moments of weakness we realise, through contrast, the infinitely superior strength of the power whose very humble organs and ministers we are. It is then we come to understand that, isolated from it, we are nothing; at one with it, identified with it, we participate in its eternal nature, in its resistless course.

There are two terms of the series of progress which we should always keep before us. The one is the starting-point, and the other the final goal. The former is the cave man; the latter is the divine man. We know in a measure what sort of being the cave man was. Instructed by anthropologists, we know how poor and mean were the beginnings of humanity on earth. But of that other term of progress--the goal of progress, the divine man of whom the cave man was the germ, the first rough draft--of the man who is to be, our notions are vague. He rises before us, indeed, in a vision of glory, but his shape is nebulous. And the result of progress is just this, that it makes us more and more able to define the outlines of that shape, to draw sharply and finely the noble lineaments of that face; that it makes us more and more able to see the divine, the perfect man, the only begotten son of all the spirits of the myriads of the generations of men--the man that is to be, the perfection of our imperfection.

The perfect man has never yet appeared on earth. The perfect man is an apparition of light and beauty rising in the boundless infinite, an ideal to be more and more clothed with particularity. The purpose for which we exist is to help to create the perfect man, to incarnate him more and more in ourselves and in others.

That the lofty form of man may be wholly disengaged from the encompassing clay, that the traces of our bestial ancestry may be wholly purged from our nature, that our spirits may stand erect as our bodies already do--this, I think, is the end for which we exist.

Every man, however humble, is worthy of reverence because, in his limited sphere, he can be a beneficent, forward-working agent, he can help a little to create the perfect man. Every child is a possible avatar of the more perfect man. On every child the whole past lays its burdens, and of the outcome of its life the whole future is expectant.

The way to overcome dejection is to energise our nature vigorously. An eminent physician is quoted as saying: “I firmly believe that one-half of the confirmed invalids could be cured of their maladies if they were compelled to live busy and active lives, and had no time to fret over their miseries. The will has a wonderfully strong and direct influence over the body. Good work is the safeguard of health. The way to live well is to work well.” If this be true, even when the cause of the dejection is corporeal, how much more likely is it to be true where the cause is seated in the mind.

In cases of bereavement, what is it that can enable a man to weather the hurricane of grief which is apt to descend upon the soul immediately after a great loss; and what can enable him to live through the dead calm which is apt to succeed that first whirlwind of passionate desolation? It is the thought that the fight must still go on, because there are issues of infinite worth at stake; and that, though wounded and crippled, he must still bear his part in the fight until the end.

For singleness of purpose, I plead. This alone can give strength to our will, coherence to our life. Without it we drift; with it we steer. Let us have before us, whatever we do, a sovereign aim, but let us also make sure that it be a worthy aim, one that will purge the clay from our eyes, from our lips, from our brains, from our hearts.

A great man helps us by the standard which he erects. He never really is level with his own standard, and yet we do not therefore reject him. He helps us by what he earnestly tries for, and by what he suggests to us that we should try for; he helps us, not so much by what he achieves, as by what he reveals, by the insight which he gives us into the nature of good.

So far as the forward movement of the human race is concerned, it is the effort that counts, and not the attainment; the realm of time and space can never be the scene of complete realisation. The reward of the effort is the wider outlook upon the ultimate aim; the truer estimate of its character as infinite, and, along with this, the recognition of that infiniteness of our own nature which enables us to conceive of and aspire to such an aim.

Joy is a light which those who possess are bound to keep burning brightly for the sake of others as well as for their own sake. Every pure joy in the world is so much pure gain.

Cold and bare is youth without the glow of generous idealism. Contemptible is middle age without the sense of definite attachments and the willing acceptance of limitations. And ungracious and unlovely is old age if it be not illumined by the light of contemplation, if it be not fruitful in counsel.

Every vocation, even the lowliest, which we pursue in a spirit of entire sincerity, is a means of acquiring culture. The artisan may be, in his way, as truly a cultivated man as the artist or the scholar, for by culture I understand insight gained into all manner of activities through genuineness and thoroughness in one. To be cultivated is to see things in their relations.

Our daily avocation, whatever it be, if we cling to it closely enough, is sure to engender in us a new respect for reality, a new humility.

To put forth power in such a way as to be provocative of power in others is the ethical aim that should guide men in all vocations and in all their relations.

This fair earth, with its fir-clad hills, its snowy mountains, its sparkling seas, its azure vaults, and the holy light of the stars, is but a painted screen behind which lurks the true reality.

The beauty of this earth and all that is precious and great in this human life of ours is but a hint and a suggestion of an eternal fairness, an eternal rightness.

We need something of the virility of stoicism to grapple with the difficulties of life; we need to cultivate a large patience; an humble spirit that teaches us to be prepared for every loss, and to welcome every joy as an unlooked-for gain. There are a thousand pleasures in little things which we, with the petulance of children, daily spurn, because we cannot have all we ask for.

The question, Is life worth living? implies a species of blasphemy. The right question to ask is: Am I worthy of living? If I am not, I can make myself so. That is always in my power.

At bottom, the world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a joy that includes all the pain, includes it and transforms it and transcends it.

The Light of the World is a light that is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and transfigured.

RELIGION

Religion is a wizard, a sibyl. She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration. She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn. She faces death, and prophesies life.

Religion has been so eager to supply us with information concerning the universe outside of us, its origin and its destiny, because our life is linked with that of the universe, and our destiny is dependent on the destiny of the universe.

The dependence of man on outside forces which he cannot control is the point of departure of religion.

It is the moral element contained in it that alone gives value and dignity to a religion, and only in so far as its teachings serve to stimulate and purify our moral aspirations does it deserve to retain its ascendency over mankind.

“There is a time to act for the Lord by breaking his commandments” was a saying current among the ancient Hebrews. This means there is a time to act for religion by protesting against what passes for religion; there is a time to prepare the way for a larger morality by shattering the narrow forms of dogma whereby the progress of morality is hindered.

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.

The symbols of religion are ciphers of which the key is to be found in moral experience. It is in vain we pore over the ciphers unless we possess the key.

To understand the meaning of a great religious teacher we must find in our own life experiences somewhat akin to his. To selfish, unprincipled persons whose heart is wholly set on worldly ends, what meaning, for instance, can such utterances have as these? “You must become like little children if you would possess the kingdom of heaven;” “You must be willing to lose your life in order to save it;” “If you would be first you must consent to be last.” To the worldly-minded such words convey no sense whatever; they are, in fact, rank absurdity.

Of the origin of things we know nothing, and can know nothing. Perfection does not reveal itself to us as existent in the beginning; but as something that ought to be, something new which we are to help create. Somehow the secret of the universe is hidden in our breast. Somehow the destinies of the universe depend upon our exertions.

The Infinite, from which comes the impulse that leads us to activity, is not the highest Reason, but higher than reason; not the highest Goodness, but higher than goodness.

There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it takes, with us, the place of prayer. In this sense we say, “_Laborare est orare_.”

The essential faith is the product of effort and is sustained and clarified by effort.

What is the way to get a religion? We know, at all events, what cannot be the way. It cannot be to prostrate our intellects before the throne of authority; to bind the Samson within us, the human mind, and deliver him into the hands of the Philistines; to abjure our reason. Whatever religion we adopt must be consistent with the truths with which we have been enriched at the hands of science. It may be ultra-scientific--indeed, it must be; but it may not be anti-scientific.

But, on the other hand, we need to be equally warned against expecting too much from the intellect. One cannot attain religion merely by trying, in his closet, to think out the problems of the universe.

It is a mistake to approach the subject of religion from the point of view of philosophy. All really religious persons declare that religion is, primarily, a matter of experience. We must get a certain kind of experience, and then philosophic thinking will be of use to us in explicating what is implicated in that experience. But we must get the experience first.

The undulatory theory would not help any one to know what light is who had never seen light, and the chemical formula for water would not help any one to know what water is who had never tasted it. To know light one must see it; to know water one must taste it. So, too, philosophy will not help any one to know what religion is.

The experience of religion is not reserved for the initiated and elect, it is accessible to every one who chooses to have it.

The experience to which I refer is essentially moral experience. It may be described as a sense of subjection to imperious impulses which urge our finite nature toward infinite issues; a sense of propulsions which we can resist, but not disown; a sense of a power greater than ourselves, with which, nevertheless, in essence we are one; a sense, in times of moral stress, of channels opened by persistent effort, which let in a flood of rejuvenating energy and put us in command of unsuspected moral resources; a sense, finally, of the complicity of our life with the life of others, of living in them in no merely metaphorical signification of the word; of unity with all spiritual being whatsoever.

A religion which is to satisfy us must be a religion of progress. But we must be progressive ourselves if we are to have faith in progress. We must be constantly developing if we are to have faith in unbounded further development. And especially we must be progressing in a moral direction.

We should acquire the habit of taking stock from time to time of our moral possessions, of keeping faithful count of our net gains and losses. Do we, for instance, possess more fortitude, or less, in encountering unavoidable pain? Are we in better or worse control of our passions, of our tempers? Alas, that many of us, as we grow older, become more fretful and irascible, a greater trial and burden to our surroundings. Are we more broadly charitable in our judgment of others; more ready to make allowance for their faults, to bear with their shortcomings? Are we more or are we less devoted to the public ends of humanity? Does our idealism turn out to have been a mere ebullition of optimistic youth, a mere flash in the pan? Or does it grow wiser and warmer with the years? Does it burn with a steadier glow? Are we learning resignation, renunciation? It is by an honest answer given to such questions as these that we may decide whether we are progressing or retrograding.

When we have reached a certain stage of culture, genuine gratitude and the verbal expression of it are inconsistent. We can say thanks for the little gifts, the lesser favours. But when the gift is great, and the debt exceeding heavy, when we are full to overflowing with gratitude, then the words die upon our lips, and the only way to show our gratitude is by the use we make of the benefits we receive. For this reason, among others, the verbal expression of thanks to the Infinite Being in the form of prayer has always seemed to me a kind of desecration.

Because the Hebrew view of life is essentially the ethical view, therefore we still go back to the writings in which this view was first promulgated, and delight in them, as we do in no other scriptures in the world.

All of us are spiritually the heirs of the Hebrew prophets, including among them Jesus, the greatest of their number.

There are moral traits in all religions, but, as a rule, they are subordinated. Morality is subordinated to _beauty_ and _harmony_ in the Greek ideal. It is the accompaniment and consequence of _order_ in the Confucian scheme. It is but one form of the _brightness_ of things, as opposed to darkness and evil, in Zoroastrianism. But to the Hebrew thought, moral excellence is the supreme excellence to which every other species of excellence is tributary.

The Hebrew religion and its descendants are the only ethical religions, strictly speaking, because in the Hebrew religion the moral element is constitutive and sovereign.

That the moral “ought” cannot be explained as the product of physical causation, is the greatest contribution which the Hebrew people have made to the religious and moral history of mankind.

A new Easter Day will come for mankind, when a race of religious teachers shall arise, who will be consecrated for their work by a more adequate training and a deeper moral enthusiasm, whose word will again be mighty as of old to inform the conscience of nations, and who shall carry the glad tidings of a higher life to the ends of the earth.

IMMORTALITY

The dead are not dead if we have loved them truly. In our own lives we can give them a kind of immortality. Let us arise and take up the work they have left unfinished, and preserve intact the treasures they have won, and round out, if possible, the circuit of their being to the fulness of an ampler orbit in our own.

They that have left us are not afar; their presence is near and real, a silent and august companionship. In still hours of meditation, in the stress of action, in the midst of trials and temptations, we hear their voices whispering words of cheer or warning, and our deeds are, in a sense, their deeds, and our lives their lives.

So does the light of other days still shine in the bright-hued flowers that clothe our fields. So do they who have long since been gathered into the silent city of the dead still live in the deeds we do for their sake, in the earnest effort we put forth toward greater rectitude, patience, purity, under the influence of their unforgettable memories.

The conservation of moral energy is in a certain sense as true as the conservation of mechanical energy. We are not dust merely that returns to dust; we are not summer flies that bask in the sunshine of a passing day; we are not bounded in our influence by the narrow boundary of our years.

In aspiring to noble ends, the soul takes on something of the greatness of that which it truly admires.

The evident disparity between virtue and happiness has led men to take refuge in the thought of compensation hereafter, and the necessity of a future state in which the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished has been deduced from the very inequities and moral inconsistencies of our present experience. The argument in this specific form is worthless, but it is based, nevertheless, upon a capital truth--the truth, namely, that our moral ideal is destined to be realised, though we may not know _how_ it will be realised.

Vast possibilities suggest themselves to us of an order of existence wholly different from all that we have ever known; a gleam reaches the eye, as it were, from a far celestial land, and the crimson dawn of a Sun of Truth appears, to which the splendours of our earthly mornings are as obscurity.

MORAL IDEALS

As the light of morning strikes now one peak and then another, some being illuminated while others are in the shadow, so the light of the essential moral principle shines now upon one duty and then upon another, while others are in the shadow.

Let us religiously set apart times and seasons in which to gather up the fruits of action and to experience the reactions which should follow on action. The most valuable of these fruits is just the intensified appreciation of the disparity existing between our achievements and the goal, the clearer vision of the goal, the sublimer and truer conception of it.

In order to join vigorously in the moral work of the world I must believe that somehow the best I can accomplish will endure, will leave its trace on things, will aid the final consummation.

What is needed above all else, is to find a more secure basis for morality, now that the theological basis has slipped away; to rekindle the belief in the ideal, to bring into new prominence the unchanging truths, and to discover the new truths which men need for their moral guidance.

It is said that we live in order to make the world better, but this phrase is ambiguous. Often it is used as referring merely to an increase of the sum of human pleasure. And this would be an aim by no means comparable in grandeur and sublimity to that which Religion in the past has set up.

We live to unfold the unmanifested potentialities of the universe, so far as they are latent in man, who, as far as we know, is the highest product of the universe. We live to enhance mentality and morality in the world. A developed mentality and morality will of itself cure the evils of poverty, and ignorance and sin. It may bring pleasure in its train, or may not bring it--it matters not. Not the fool’s paradise of ease and enjoyment, but the heightened mentality and morality is the aim.