[15] To ward off the most serious misunderstanding, I must remind every reader of the chapter on Social Reform, as well as on the Hebrew religion and on the ethics of the Gospels, that I am narrating the phases of my own development. I am not attempting to do justice to all that is excellent in those great religions and in these great social movements; I am trying to show at what points, despite those excellences, I myself felt compelled to diverge from them, to push beyond them. In regard to Socialism I recognize the immense service it has performed in awakening the conscience of modern society to the sufferings of the working class. And in pointing out the dangers of opportunism, the fallacy of provisionalism, I am speaking of dangers from which I felt that I must escape, not casting a slur on the noble personalities that have appeared in the field of social reform during my own time and among my friends and acquaintances. Such personalities, because of their inbred fineness, may be immune against tendencies which yet undeniably exist, and which therefore require to be explicitly apprehended. CHAPTER VI THE INFLUENCE OF MY VOCATION ON INNER DEVELOPMENT The present chapter deals with my inner development as I believe it to have been furthered by my connection with the Society for Ethical Culture. The functions intrusted to me in this connection were, first, various forms of so-called philanthropic activity. The effects of the experience gathered in them has been described in a preceding chapter; they may be summed up in the formula: littleness in the external results achieved, consciousness of moral danger to self. Secondly, the ministerial function of offering “edification” in public addresses to Sunday assemblies, the solemnizing of marriages, and the conducting of funeral services,—while in addition a large part of my vocational life consisted in the building up of an educational institution.[16] _The Public Addresses._ Edification, or building up, as I understood it, involved the profoundly difficult task of supplying a working philosophy of life without traveling into the field of metaphysics, teaching the practicable counterpart of a connected system of thought concerning the problems of life,—the system being so firmly knit as to make the appropriate feelings and impulses more or less natural to its exponent. In my case, not having fallen heir to such a system, the task of edification became doubly difficult. It meant from the beginning unceasing self-edification, with a view to edifying others.[17] Setting out with a general scheme along Kantian lines, I proceeded to fill in the outline in the course of my public teachings, with the result that the content filled in eventually disrupted the scheme, and compelled a thoroughgoing reconstruction. The Holiness conception had been my starting point. I never gave it up. I was attracted to Kant because he affirmed it. I broke with him because he does not make good his affirmation.