The upshot of it was that I now possessed a second object, namely, the laborer, to whom I could apply my non-violation ethics. I had always felt an instinctive, idealizing reverence for women, and this had its influence in the first practical outcome of the philosophy of life with which I started on my career. I would go out as the minister of a new religious evangel. Instead of preaching the individual God, I was to stir men up to enact the Moral Law; and to enact the Moral Law meant at that time primarily to influence the young men with whom I came into contact to reverence womanhood, and to keep inviolate the sacred thing, woman’s honor. And now I had a second arrow in my quiver. I was to go out to help to arouse the conscience of the wealthy, the advantaged, the educated classes, to a sense of their guilt in violating the human personality of the laborer. My mother had often sent me as a child on errands of charity, and had always impressed upon me the duty of respecting the dignity of the poor while ministering sympathetically to their needs. I was prepared by this youthful training to resent the indignity offered to the personality of the laborer, as well as the suffering endured by him in consequence of existing conditions. Accordingly, on returning from abroad, my first action consisted in founding among men of my own or nearly my own age a little society which we ambitiously called a Union for the Higher Life, based on three tacit assumptions: sex purity, the principle of devoting the surplus of one’s income beyond that required for one’s own genuine needs to the elevation of the working class, and thirdly, continued intellectual development. A second practical enterprise attempted was the establishment of a co-operative printing shop. This having failed because of the selfishness actuating the members, the Workingman’s School was founded, with the avowed object of creating a truly co-operative spirit among workingmen. I must, however, pause at this point to explain how the development described led me to separation from the Hebrew religion, the religion in which I was born, and to the service of which as a Jewish minister it was expected that I should devote my life. FOOTNOTES: [1] In view of the writer’s connection with the Ethical Culture Societies it is fitting to state expressly that the philosophical positions herein set forth are not to be taken as an official pronouncement on behalf of the Ethical Culture Movement. The Ethical Societies as such have no official philosophy. _See_ Book IV, Chapter 9. [2] Though I must at once mention the first great error which accompanied the true insight, the shadow which went alongside of the light, namely, my understanding of the above principle mainly in a negative sense. My ethics was largely what may be called non-violation ethics.