The Essentials of Spirituality

by Felix Adler

The doctrine, then, that every man possesses indefeasible worth is the basis of public morality, and at the same time the moral principle by which our private relations to our fellow-men are regulated. What does it mean to ascribe indefeasible worth to every man? It means, for instance, that human beings may not be hunted and killed in sport as hunters kill birds or other game; that human beings may not be devoured for food as they have been by cannibals or sometimes by men in starvation camps when hard pressed by hunger; that human beings may not be forced to work without pay, or in any way treated as mere tools or instruments for the satisfaction of the desires of others. This, and more to the same purpose, is implied in the ascription of indefeasible worth to every man. Moreover, on the same principle, it follows that it is morally wrong to deprive another of the property which he needs for his livelihood or for the expression of his personality, and to blast the reputation of another—thereby destroying what may be called his social existence. And it also follows that a society is morally most imperfect, the conditions of which are such that many lives are indirectly sacrificed because of the lack of sufficient food, and that many persons are deprived of their property through cunning and fraud. The life of animals we do take, and whatever secret compunction we may have in the matter, the most confirmed vegetarian will not regard himself in the light of a cannibal when he partakes of animal food. The liberty of animals we do abridge without scruple; we harness horses to our carriages, regardless of what may be their inclinations, and we do not regard ourselves as slaveholders when we thus use them. Why is there this enormous distinction between animals and men? Are the Hottentots so greatly elevated above the animal level; are the lowest classes of negroes so much superior in intelligence to animals? Have the black race and the brown race any claim to be treated as the equals of the white? Among white men themselves is there not a similar difference between inferiors and superiors? Such questions naturally suggest themselves; and they have been asked at all times. It seems obvious that value should be ascribed to those who possess genius or even talent, or at least average intelligence; but why should value be ascribed to every human being just because he wears the human form?

The positive belief in human worth on which is based the belief in human equality, so far as it has rooted itself in the world at all, we owe to religion, and more particularly to the Hebrew and Christian religions. The Hebrew Bible says: "In the image of God did He create man"—it is this God-likeness that to the Hebrew mind attests the worth of man. As some of the great masters on completing a painting have placed a miniature portrait of themselves by way of signature below their work, so the great World-Artist when He had created the human soul stamped it with the likeness of Himself to attest its divine origin. And the greatest of the Hebrew thinkers conceived of this dignity as belonging to all human beings alike, irrespective of race or creed. In practice, however, the idea of equal human worth was more or less limited to the Chosen People. At least, to keep within the bounds of the artistic simile, the members of the Hebrew people were regarded as first-proof copies, and other men as somewhat dim and less perfect duplicates.

In the Christian religion a new idea was introduced. The belief in the worth of man was founded on the doctrine of redemption. The sacrifice of atonement had been offered up for the benefit of all persons who chose to avail themselves of it. Christ had come to save the Gentile as well as the Jew, the bond as well as the free, men, women and children of every race, living under every sky, of every color of skin and degree of intelligence. The sacred respect which we owe to every human being is due from this point of view to the circumstance that every human being is a possible beneficiary of the Atonement. For him too—as the theological phrase is—Christ died upon the cross. But in Christianity too we find that the idea of brotherhood, of equal worth, universal as it is in theory, in practice came to be considerably restricted. It did not really extend to all human beings as such; it did not extend to those who refused to be the beneficiaries of the act of atonement. In reality, it applied only to Christians or to those who were not averse to receiving the Christian faith. The theological formulation of the fundamental idea which we are discussing, therefore, is beset by two difficulties: it is limited in application, and it is based on theological conceptions. As soon as these theological conceptions are relinquished, the doctrine of equality is in danger of being abandoned.

In 1776, the founders of the American Republic undertook to supply a new and a secular foundation for this doctrine. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal." In other words, he put forth the astonishing proposition that human equality is self-evident. Many of us would incline to the opinion that the opposite is self-evident, that the inequalities which subsist between men are so palpable that we cannot overlook them. If, however, we inquire what led Jefferson to this statement, we shall find that, at the time when the Declaration of Independence was written, there existed a basis of fact that gave color to his assumption. The population of the United Colonies was small—only about three millions—and on the whole homogeneous. The great majority of the people were agriculturists, pursuing the same occupations and on the whole exhibiting the same traits. They were all, or almost all, of vigorous stock, capable of self-government, jealous of their rights, independent in spirit. At that particular time, the points of similarity and equality among the members of the American Colonies far outweighed the points of dissimilarity. It was, then, to a certain extent on facts of experience, and not entirely on the hypothesis of the eighteenth century philosophy, that Jefferson's famous proclamation rested.

Since Jefferson's day the facts have markedly changed. We have passed beyond the agricultural stage, and have entered the stage of industrial development. The occupations of our citizens have become greatly diversified. Large bodies of foreign immigrants have come to us. If we survey the conditions of American life at present, we are strongly impressed with the differences that exist between the various strata of our population: differences in mental ability, differences in vital energy, differences in the point of culture attained, differences in capacity to rise. As a consequence, the Declaration of Independence is treated by many as an obsolete document, and its assertions as mere bombast and rhetoric; unjustly so, because the truth which it attempts to convey is valid, though the form in which the truth is expressed and the grounds on which it is put are no longer adequate.

We have arrived, then, at this pass: the theological foundation for the doctrine of human equality has failed or is failing us; the facts to which the Declaration of Independence appealed have altered. Are we, then, to give up the belief in human equality—that priceless postulate of the moral law, the basis alike of democracy and of private morality? At times it seems to us that the world is almost ready to do so. Nietzsche in Germany puts it forth as a philosophic principle that humanity exists not for the democratic purpose of securing the highest development of all, but for the aristocratic purpose of producing a race of supermen, an elite of strong, forceful, "leonine" beings. And in his doctrine that the many exist as a kind of pedestal for the grandeur of the few, he finds support the world over. Men are but too ready in this age, when the energies of the strong have been unfettered and moral restraints have become weakened, to put Nietzche's doctrine into practice too. From the Congo we hear appalling accounts of the cruelty of civilized men in their dealings with the uncivilized. Rubber and ivory, it appears, must be obtained in large quantities to secure a handsome profit on investments that have been made in those regions. Railroads must be built to make the supply of rubber and of ivory accessible. In consequence, a system of forced labor, of virtual slavery, has been imposed on the miserable natives in order to make the building of these railroads possible. Human life has not been spared, for human life in the Congo is as dust in the balance when weighed against the profits from rubber. Punitive expeditions have been organized (in other words, wholesale slaughter has been resorted to), in order to coerce the reluctant natives to bring in their supplies more punctually. The wives and daughters of the natives have been seized, brutally chained, and detained as hostages in order to influence their husbands and fathers to a more ready obedience. The story of the Congo reads like an incredible nightmare; the civilized world is aghast at the partial revelations of it which have been published. From Armenia we hear similar stories of ruthless contempt for human life and merciless outrage. With Kishineff and Siberia in mind, we need not comment on the conditions that exist in Russia. In the United States, the heartrending circumstances that accompany negro lynchings, the conditions in the sweated industries, and the widespread evil of child labor show us clearly enough how little the doctrine of the intrinsic and indefeasible worth of man has as yet become the property of even the most advanced nations. In the face of all these odds on the other side, in the face of these confederate forces working the world over for the abasement of man, how urgent is the appeal to rescue and fortify the doctrine, to make it effectual, first in our own conduct and then in that of others! And on what tenable foundations can we rest it, that it may become operative?

First, as to its meaning. It does not mean equality of gifts, or equality of mental energy, or equality in any of the traits that lead to successful careers. It means equality in the sense that each is the vehicle of some talent, however small, the bearer of some gift, however seemingly inconsiderable, which in the sum total of humanity's development is needed; that each one in his place and with his gift, however insignificant in appearance, is in fact indispensable.

And what is the reason for ascribing such worth to human beings? The sole reason is, that the moral law enjoins us to do so. Before ever we have discovered whether a man has worth in him or not, the moral law enjoins us to ascribe it to him, to treat him as if he had it, to see in him the light of the possibilities which he has never made good and which he never wholly will make good: and thus, and thus only, shall we bring to light, in part at least, the precious things in his nature, the existence of which we can only divine. The moral law is wholly misunderstood if it be founded on the actual worth or value of men, for none of us has great worth or value. The moral law is a law for the eliciting of possibilities. Briefly put, it enjoins that we shall invest others with a garment of light, that we shall ascribe worth to others and to ourselves, in order that they and we may become worthy. This is the spiritual basis of the doctrine of equality; this is the spiritual conception which should regulate our attitude toward our neighbors.

And yet if there were no evidence at all to support our faith in human goodness, our faith, however vigorous at first, would soon decline, and hope and courage might utterly desert us. If men on nearer acquaintance turned out to be, as some pessimists have represented them to be, hard egotists, ingrates, slanderers, backbiters, envious, incapable of generous admirations, sodden in sensuality, knaves devoid of scruple; if experience indeed bore out this sweeping impeachment, if especially the so-called masses of mankind were hopelessly delivered over to the sway of brutal instincts, of superstition and folly; the faith of which I speak might justly be termed mere fatuousness, and the rule of acting on the assumption that men are better than they appear would turn out a blind delusion. But the striking fact is, that as soon as we act on the principle of looking for the latent good in others, we are rewarded by finding far more than we had any reason to expect.

Take as an instance the masses of the poor and ignorant, upon whom we are so apt to pass sweeping judgments, as Carlyle did when he said that the population of England was forty millions— mostly fools. The experience of those who have had to do with popular education does not corroborate this rash condemnation. There is hardly a child in our public schools that is not found to possess mental power of some sort, if only we possess the right method of calling it out. The new education is new and significant just because it has succeeded in devising methods for gaining access to the latent mental power, and thus reaching what had been supposed to be non-existent. Every so-called educational campaign in the field of politics brings out the same truth. The capacity for hard thinking and sound judgment which resides in the working class is surprising to us, only because in our preposterous pride we had supposed them to be baked of different clay than we are. In the matter of artistic endowment, too, what wonderful discoveries do we constantly make among poor children, even among children that come from the lowest dregs of society! What fine fancy, what prompt response to the appeal of the beautiful, in spite of all the debasing inheritance!