I began with Kantianism, which is predominantly individualistic, and I found that in dealing with the problems of the family, with the labor question, and in the attempt to reach an ideal of democracy beyond the materialistic conception of it which is at present current—I was introducing into my initial sketch elements incompatible with individualism, and necessitating formulation in social terms. And since I retained and stressed the notion of personality, I had to seek a way of interpreting the term Social spiritually, as Kant had undertaken to interpret the term individual spiritually. I certainly could not fall in with Darwinism or other evolutionary interpretations of sociality, inasmuch as they all leave out the concept of inviolable personality, the indefeasible factor in my ethical thinking. These things are here alluded to in order to emphasize the influence of the public Sunday addresses delivered by me regularly for more than forty years in stimulating, I had almost said forcing, my ethical growth. To care for anyone else enough to make his problem one’s own is ever the beginning of one’s real ethical development. To care for a group of people in the sense of being challenged to suggest to them ideas and ways of behavior that shall really be of use to them in the storm and stress of life, is the most searching incentive to self-development imaginable. It is more powerful than the desire to get truth for one’s own sake. The closet philosopher may be serious enough in his search for truth, and he may succeed in constructing a symmetrical system which at the time seems complete. Will it stand wear and tear? Will it in the bitter moments of his life hold together? If not, he has failed; but then he only is the loser, it is only his ship that has gone down. But the situation is different when a company of people venture with you on the same voyage, and trust to you as in a way their pilot. The challenge that comes from the expectant eyes of those who are in trouble, of those whose relations to their friends or the members of their family have become tangled, the challenge that comes from the larger public towards which every public speaker has a certain ethical duty—all these challenges press home the question: are the things that you believe true, so true that you may confidently expect them to be confirmed by the experience of those who in some measure depend upon you? Are they genuinely of use?