Life and Destiny — Felix Adler
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Title : Life and destiny Author : Felix Adler Release date : August 23, 2018 [eBook #57752] Most recently updated: January 24, 2021 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57752 Credits : Produced by Turgut Dincer, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) *** START OF London : WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1913 CONTENTS PAGE The Meaning of Life 3 Religion 17 Immortality 31 Moral Ideals 37 Love and Marriage 53 Higher Life 65 Spiritual Progress 81 Suffering and Consolation 89 Ethical Outlook 105 PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE Dr. Felix Adler, from whose Addresses the following gems of thought are extracted, is widely known in the United States as an impassioned preacher, a distinguished scholar, and a leading citizen. He founded in 1876, in the City of New York, the first Ethical Society, of which he is still the much-beloved inspirer and guide. Since that date the Ethical Movement inaugurated by Dr. Adler has taken root in many lands, and an International Union of Ethical Societies has been called into being, of which he is President. According to him, the three fundamental tenets of the Ethical Movement are “the supremacy of the moral end of life above all other ends, the sufficiency of man for the pursuit of that end, and the increase of moral truth to be expected from loyalty in this pursuit.” In this volume connected excerpts bearing on the more intimate side of life, as apprehended by the author, are offered to the reader. Here Dr. Adler reveals himself not only as some one who has explored the deeper recesses of the human heart, but his words prove him to be of the long line of poets and prophets who have contributed to purify and elevate humanity. This small work appears destined by its form and content to be a religious and ethical classic, to be placed on the book-shelf alongside of À Kempis’s “Imitation of Christ,” Pascal’s “Thoughts,” and Emerson’s “Essays”. Whoever craves for self-knowledge, reveres his deeper self, and seeks to be captain of his own soul, will feel that these pages offer him precious and sympathetic counsel. In conclusion, the Publishers desire to express their grateful thanks to Dr. Adler for permission to issue this popular edition, and to state that they are entirely responsible for the few omissions in the text. THE MEANING OF LIFE There are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond. We are here—no matter who put us here, or how we came here—to fulfil a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged. We are here to make mind master of matter, soul of sense. We do so by overriding pain, not by weakly capitulating to it. When we are smitten by the rod of affliction do not let us sit still, but rather get to work as fast as we can. In action lies our salvation. But it must be remembered that only a great aim, one which remains valid, irrespective of our private griefs, is competent in the critical moments to put us into action and to sustain us in action. The thought that extreme suffering is a key which unlocks life’s deepest and truest meanings is the final rejoinder to the plea on behalf of suicide. It is a thought which, when fully apprehended, is calculated to give peace to every troubled soul. The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power which testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which impels us to regard others as other selves—this fact comes home to us even more forcibly in sorrow than in joy. It is thrown into clearest relief on the background of pain. In the glow of achievement we are apt to be full of a false self-importance. But in moments of weakness we realise, through contrast, the infinitely superior strength of the power whose very humble organs and ministers we are. It is then we come to understand that, isolated from it, we are nothing; at one with it, identified with it, we participate in its eternal nature, in its resistless course. There are two terms of the series of progress which we should always keep before us. The one is the starting-point, and the other the final goal. The former is the cave man; the latter is the divine man. We know in a measure what sort of being the cave man was. Instructed by anthropologists, we know how poor and mean were the beginnings of humanity on earth. But of that other term of progress—the goal of progress, the divine man of whom the cave man was the germ, the first rough draft—of the man who is to be, our notions are vague. He rises before us, indeed, in a vision of glory, but his shape is nebulous. And the result of progress is just this, that it makes us more and more able to define the outlines of that shape, to draw sharply and finely the noble lineaments of that face; that it makes us more and more able to see the divine, the perfect man, the only begotten son of all the spirits of the myriads of the generations of men—the man that is to be, the perfection of our imperfection. The perfect man has never yet appeared on earth. The perfect man is an apparition of light and beauty rising in the boundless infinite, an ideal to be more and more clothed with particularity. The purpose for which we exist is to help to create the perfect man, to incarnate him more and more in ourselves and in others. That the lofty form of man may be wholly disengaged from the encompassing clay, that the traces of ou