We are builders of that City,—
All our joys and all our groans
Help to rear its shining ramparts;
All our lives are building-stones.
* * * * *
What that plan may be we know not.[136]
How the seat of Justice high,
How the City of our vision
Will appear to mortal eye,—
That no mortal eye can picture,
That no mortal tongue can tell.
We can barely dream the glories
Of the Future's citadel."
[136] The italics are ours.
How great an importance is attributed to this song by the leaders of the ethical movement may be learned from Mr. Salter's opinion of it. Mr. Salter says in criticising Unitarianism:
"Not from Unitarianism, not from Christianity, has come the song that best utters and almost chants this thought [of an ideal fellowship]. It is from Felix Adler, upon whom, I sometimes think, more than upon any other man of our day, the mantle and prophetic spirit of Channing have fallen, and whose words, I almost believe, are those which Jesus himself would utter, should he come and put his solemn thought and passion into the language of to-day."
Agnosticism is in our opinion no sound basis upon which to erect ethics. The unknowable is like quicksand, it gives way under our feet. The ethics of agnosticism must necessarily become mysticism. The ethereal dreams of mysticists need no solid basis, they hover in the air. Mr. Spencer who for some reason or other tried to escape the consequences of his agnosticism in the ethical field, adopted Utilitarianism, basing his moral maxims not upon the unknowable, as consistency would require, but upon the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
Professor Adler is not a Spencerian agnostic and here lies the strength of his ethics. Although he does not attain to a clear and scientific conception of the origin and natural growth of morality, he sounds no uncertain voice with regard to the Happiness Principle. He has on several occasions, like his great master Kant, uncompromisingly rejected any Hedonism or Eudæmonism. Among all societies aspiring to foster moral ideals, the societies for ethical culture are distinguished for their seriousness and ardor; and there can be no doubt about the cause: it is the spirit of Professor Adler's zeal not to give way to a hedonistic conception of ethics.