The early activity of these European centres led to the establishment of an international or ganization with a central station at Zurich where in September 1896 an International Con gress. was held which issued a representative manliest°. It is largely colored by a continental sense of the urgency of applying ethical prin ciples in the domain of social and political affairs. It announced its sympathy with the efforts of the populace to obtain a more human existence ; but recognized as an evil hardly less serious than the material need of the poor, the moral need which exists among the wealthy, whose integrity is often deeply imperiled by the discords in which the defects of the present industrial system involve them. It demanded that the social conflict should be carried on within the lines prescribed by morality, in the interest of society as a whole, and with a view to the final establishment of social peace. It declared for universal peace, and against mili tarism and the national egotism and jealously which precipitate war. Finally, it urged upon all ethical societies not simply to concern them selves with these practical issues, but to devote their utmost energy to the building up of a new ideal of life in harmony with the demands of tnodern enlightenment. This first international manifesto is still significant because it expresses the almost universal interest of ethicists in the social question, and their desire to bring theories, policies and measures of reform to the test of ethical principle; it expresses also their interest in promoting peace and an educa tion animated and unified by an ethical pur pose. It does not, however, lay the stress which .would to-day be laid upon the relation of the movement to modern liberalism, its frank acceptance of the spirit and results of modern science, and its repudiation of the supernatural, miraculous and priestly elements in religion; nor does it voice the deeper religious senous ness and spirituality of the movement. By some of the leaders this latter is very strongly emphasized; and some of the ethical societies are primarily churches for inspiration and guidance in the difficult effort to lead the good life. What effect the Great War will have on the international movement it is impossible to predict. So far it has crippled or handicapped the smaller societies. In England there has been a brave struggle to maintain them. Per haps after the war their great opportunity will come. In America they continue to move for ward.
While the inception of the ethical rnovement was due to the insight and prevision of Felix Adler, and its first powerful impact due to his attractive eloquence and personal power, its slow but steady growth is evidence that it met a deep and widespread need. It was fitly born on American soil; for a new ethical religion and ethical church for America had been defi nitely prophesied and sketched by Emerson in his latter essays on 'Worship' and 'The Sov ereignty of Ethics.' He had said: °The prog ress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals. . . . It accuses us that pure ethics is not now formulated and concreted into a cultus, a fraternity with assemblings. and holy days, with song and book, with brick and stone. . . . America shall introduce a pure religion. . . . There will be a new church founded on moral science ; at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters, science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry.° The development of ad vanced Unitarianism through Channing and Parker had been in this direction. It had two practical outcomes — the Free Religious Asso ciation, which still holds annual sessions ; and the Ethical Movement. As distinguished from the Free Religious Association, which ex pressed vaguely the libertarian tendencies of Emerson's thought, the Ethical Move ment gave effect to the positive and con struetive tendency which found clear utterance in his prophecy. Although this positive spirit was present in the religious society conducted in New York by Ottavius B.
Frothingham —who was wont to say, after he had retired and it had disbanded, that its legiti mate successor .was the Society for Ethical Culture— it was not until Felix Adler brought to the new movement at once an ethical out look and philosophy learned chiefly in the school of Kant, an impassioned Hebraic sense of religion as righteousness of life, and a prac tical sense of the urgency and ethical import of the great impending moral issues in the social, industrial and political world, that con ditions existed for the full birth of the new ethical religion.
The most distinctive feature of this new phase of religious development was that it did not propose to add to the religions of the past, in the way in which these had multiplied, namely, on the basis of differences of specula tive belief. Instead, it announced the basic im portance and the priority of the ethical factor in religion. It approached religion, not from the credal, but from the practical moral stand point ; and it saw, in a common affirmation of this priority and supremacy of virtue and the good life, a ground of union for people of vary ing philosophical convictions, or none. Following Emerson, it asserted that character and conduct condition creed and thought ; and that it is only by sowing a worthy character that men can reap a vital and meaningful creed. It contended that no certain and lasting basis of union can be found in anything so variable and personal as one's philosophical view of the world; and that no one should pledge his intellectual future by subscribing to-day to a creed which to morrow he may. outgrow. What a man thinks is the result of what he is — the outcome, there fore, of his action, his experience, his effort and his love, far more than it is the outcome of his deliberate thought and accumulated knowl edge. This position differed from that of the Comtian Positivists because theirs assumed a final, definite, and in some respects, very nega tive philosophy. The new movement allowed for the greatest individual differences in men's philosophical interpretation of life, save in the one tenet that all must acknowledge the sacred obligation imposed by man's moral nature to live the good life and to follow without swerv ing the dictates of duty according to the best light that is in each.
On the basis of this moral earnestness and this attitude of moral resolve men may safely and hopefully work backward into a philosophy and forward into a faith. Their philosophy and their theory of moral sanction may be what it will, theistic or pantheistic, materialistic or ideal istic; it may or may not issue in a faith in immortality, conditional or absolute. This is a personal concern, and the statements on such matters frequently made by the leaders of ethical societies who differ much in their philosophies, are merely expressions of personal conviction, and not made as in any way com mitting the societies. This is to make a clear distinction between the private and the public factors of religious belief ; and to find as the only possible basis for religious union, for those who would jealously guard their intel lectual integrity, a moral aim by which any man should be ashamed not to be bound.
The ethical movement has been criticized as lacking in imaginative color and appeal, and therefore unlikely to spread among the masses of the people. Perhaps Emerson was right in emphasizing the austerities of the new religion in its early protestant phases.' But at heart it is genial and passionately human. It has noth ing sensationally novel to offer; it does not compete with picturesque claimants like Theos ophy, Christian Science, Vedantism, etc., and it may be a fact that ((plain goodness,D morality," the beauty of will not yet draw many with their old-new evangel. And yet one finds among its adherents nothing less than a new type of the religious temperament, voicing a new imaginative sense of the hidden mysteries and wonders of the moral personality, the new unrevealed heights and depths of the moral life, the unrealized joyousness of devo tion to duty and to service.