Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. Footnotes are located at the end of the chapters. Italics are represented thus _italic_. AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE PRESENTED IN ITS MAIN OUTLINES BY FELIX ADLER D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America PREFACE This book records a philosophy of life growing out of the experience of a lifetime. The convictions put in it are not dogmatic, for dogma is the conviction of one man imposed authoritatively upon others. The convictions herein expounded are submitted to those who search, as the writer has searched, for light on the problems of life, in order that they may compare their experience with his, and their interpretations of their experience with his interpretation.[1] It is a great hope that some of the readers of this book may find the general world-view expounded congenial, and for them also real and true. It is believed that others may find the practical suggestions as to the conduct of life in which the theory issues helpful in part, if not in whole, as many of us accept from the teachings of the Stoics, or of other thinkers, practical precepts, without on that account adopting the philosophy from which these precepts are derived. The book is divided into four parts: the first an autobiographical introduction describing the various stations on the road by which the author arrived at his present position, and offering incidental appreciations and appraisements of the Hebrew religion, of Emerson, of the ethics of the Gospels, of Socialism and of other social reform movements. The second part expounds the philosophical theory. The third part contains the applications of the theory to the more strictly personal life, under the captions of the Three Shadows of Sickness, Sorrow and Sin, and also to the principal so-called Rights to Life, Property, Reputation. The fourth part applies the theory to the social institutions, to the Family, the Vocation, the State, the International Society, and the Church, these institutions being considered as an expanding series through which the individual is to pass on his pilgrimage in the direction of the supreme spiritual end. The principal problems considered are: