The primary aim of the society should be, according to Mr. Adler, to reform the lives of its own members. He has founded: 1. A Sunday-school, where instruction is given in practical morality, in the history of the most important religions, and in the elements of the philosophy of religion; 2. A public kindergarten organized on the Froebel method; 3. A school, for working people’s children between the ages of three and nine.[117]
Is of a type destined to survive.
Mr. Adler’s following at first consisted of Jews; subsequently a number of people, without distinction of race, gathered about him. They are left entirely free in the matter of their personal beliefs, and are united only in an ardent desire for the regeneration of mankind. Every Sunday the faithful congregate, to listen to a discourse and then disperse; none but members of the society are permitted to join in the management of the institutions founded and maintained by the society. This religion, which is, à l’américaine, wholly practical, is acceptable to the philosopher; at bottom it is simply a great mutual aid temperance society. The only objection that can be urged against it is that it is somewhat prosaic, but it is certainly one of the forms of social activity which are destined to succeed ritualistic religions.
Antiquity of faith in socialism as a panacea.
Certain partisans of religious revival regard socialism as their last hope. Socialistic ideas ought, in their judgment, to give religion a fresh start and supply it with an impetus hitherto unknown. This conception wears an air of originality, but, as a matter of fact, it is quite the reverse of original. The great catholic religions, Buddhism and Christianity, were in the beginning socialistic, they preached universal partition of goods, and poverty; it was by means of so doing that they were in part enabled to spread with such rapidity. In reality the instant that the period of propagandism succeeded the period of struggle for permission to exist, these religions did everything within their power to become individualistic even at the expense of inconsistency; they ceased to promise equality on earth and relegated it to heaven or to Nirvâna.
Socialism unrealizable except by a select few.
Do we therefore believe that socialistic ideas will play no part in the future, and is it not conceivable that a certain mysticism might form an alliance with socialism, and both lend and borrow force by so doing? A mystical socialism is by no means unrealizable under certain conditions, and, far from constituting an obstacle to religious free-thought, it might become one of its most important manifestations. But what has hitherto rendered socialism impracticable and utopian is that it has aimed at subjugating the whole of mankind, rather than some small social group. What has been aimed at is state socialism; the case has been the same in the matter of religion. But systems of socialism and of religious doctrine must, in the future at least, be addressed to small groups and not to confused masses; must be made the basis of manifold and various associations in the bosom of society. As its most earnest partisans recognize, socialism presupposes for its success a certain average of virtue, that may well obtain among some hundreds of men but not among some millions. It endeavours to establish a sort of special providence, which would be quite incompetent to manage the affairs of the world but may well watch over the interests of a neighbourhood. Socialism aims more or less at playing the part of fate, at predetermining the destiny of the individual, at supplying each individual with a certain average amount of happiness which he can neither increase nor diminish. Socialism is the apotheosis of state interference, and the world in general is not disposed to worship it; its ideal is a life which is completely foreseen, insured, with the element of fortune and of hope left out, with the heights and the depths of human life levelled away—an existence somewhat utilitarian and uniform, regularly plotted off like the squares on a checker board, incapable of satisfying the ambitious desires of the mass of mankind. Socialism is to-day advocated by the rebels in society. Its success, however, would depend on the most peaceable, the most conservative, the most bourgeois people in the world; it supplies no sufficient outlet for the love of risk, of staking one’s everything, of playing for the height of fortune against the depth of misery, which is one of the essential factors of human progress.