Alfred Adler

“ Through his mother Adler was cousin of Henry de Worms, first Baron Pirbright [q. v. Suppl. II] . His elder brother, Marcus Nathan (1837–1910) , was vice-president of the Institute of Actuaries and a founder of the Royal Statistical and London Mathematical Societies. Brought to London in June 1845, when his father became chief rabbi of England, Adler was sent to University College School and University College, London. After a brilliant career there he graduated B.A. at London University in 1859. He preached his first sermon at the consecration of the Swansea synagogue in September 1859. ”

“ Information carefully collected showed Adler that, in spite of all the wrongs he had done his workmen, nothing was going to happen to him—that there was in fact no power on earth which could do him harm. ”

“ Ferdinand would reach the goal of his own desires, not yet extinct, for distant travels, dangerous expeditions and expensive tastes.
"Only let him be grown up," the father thought, "then I will sell the mill and we will go out into the world together; he will enjoy himself, and I shall look on and see that he comes to no harm."
As a human being cannot give to others more than he himself possesses, Adler gave to his son [209] an iron constitution, selfish propensities, money, and an unbounded desire for enjoyment. He developed no higher instincts in him. ”

“ Another of Ferdinand's friends joined in the conversation.
"What do you have to throw in the Adlers' teeth?"
"Not much; only that the father is a sweater and the son a loafer, and that between the two they do more harm than good."
Public opinion seemed to be summed up in these words from a man of personal courage. Adler's friends were silent, the other guests embarrassed, and the more sensitive took their hats to leave the room. At that moment the door was flung wide open and Ferdinand hurried in, accompanied by one of his friends. ”

“ It has helped even by its mythological embodiment of a transcendental idea to place the individual more firmly on his feet. It has emphasized the inner springs of conduct; it has given prominence to certain principal virtues of the private life; but, like every product of the mind and aspirations of man, it exhibits the limitations of the time and of the social conditions under which it arose. The conditions have since changed. Society has become infinitely more complex, and in consequence new moral problems have forced themselves upon men’s attention ”

“ He will thus be led to face in thought the limits of what is finitely attainable, not only by him as an individual scientist, but by physical science in general. And in proportion as his spiritual nature is energetic it will then assert itself all the more resiliently after this defeat, and turn in a new direction, and towards another kind of truth, the truth which is discovered in the realm of will, in the sphere of intercourse with fellow human beings. The propædeutic result of science with respect to ethical personality is the training of the more complex mental faculties. ”

“ At any rate the capital point to which we were led up was that science puts her foot on terra firma in a restricted area, without reference to what lies beyond, while if we are to proceed in ethics at all, we must begin with some ideal plan of the whole, since in ethics we are not interpreting a foreign nature, but act upon natures similar to our own; and since, in the case of conduct, there is no such partial concurrence of the rational and irrational as in physics, no one of the so-called moral modes of behavior being moral when taken separately. ”

“ He must have young people to amuse himself with; and my amusement is—work!"
On the day following the fair the old mill-owner was, as usual, making the round of all the workshops and offices. Many of his employés had been in the town, and there was much gossip about the joke Ferdinand had played upon the neighbourhood. It was said that he had bought up all the dinners at the hotel, and that every nobleman had to bow to him before he could obtain anything to eat or to drink. At first Adler laughed, but when he had reckoned up what this joke was likely to cost him his face became sullen. ”

“ Adler shuddered and was silent. Ferdinand began to speak in a low voice and with pauses:
"I had to ... father ... I had to. Everyone spoke against us, the nobility, the newspapers, even the waiters. They were saying that I was squandering the money while you sweated the workpeople. Before long they would have spat in our faces."
"Do not exert yourself," whispered the doctor.
The old man listened with the greatest astonishment and sorrow. His thick lips were parted.
"Save me ... father...!" cried Ferdinand with raised voice. "I have promised ten thousand roubles to the doctor." ”

“ Adler whistled through his teeth with impatience. The absence of the doctor made a very unpleasant impression on him. At last, about noon, he was informed that the doctor had arrived. The old man quickly left the house. In passing the room where Ferdinand was still sleeping off the effects of his drinking bout, he beat a tattoo on the door with his stick, but got no answer. There was a large crowd outside Gosławski's cottage, for hardly anyone had gone to church. ”

“ Did not Ferdinand even surpass them? Under the influence of these letters, sketched in the excitement of first impressions, the habit of dreaming came back to this sternly realistic mind. At times he distinctly visualized what he read, investing it with an almost poetic fancy, but the vision fled before the rhythmic throb of the engines and power-looms. Adler had only one longing, one hope and faith—to [211] amass a million, sell his mill, and go away with his son to see the world. ”

“ Adler died of heart failure on 18 July 1911 at his residence, 6 Craven Hill, London, and was buried at the Willesden Jewish cemetery. He married in September 1867 Rachel, elder daughter of Solomon Joseph, who survived him till 9 Jan. 1912. Of his two daughters, the elder, Nettie, was elected member of the London county council. ”

“ Now, in putting the matter in this way, we incurred the danger of seeming to concentrate attention on the individual as a detached being, we seemed to have him only in mind, though it is true, in respect to what is intrinsic in him, the irreducible ethical unit which he essentially is. We must, therefore, constantly remind ourselves that the ethical unit, while unique, is at the same time an inseparable member of a society of differentiated units; that its very distinctiveness consists in injecting, as it were, streams148 of dynamic energy into its fellow-beings. ”

“ He walked up and down the room with long strides, breathing hard.
"Let us go into the garden," he proposed. "Johann, take a bottle of hock into the summer-house."
The pleasant coolness in the summer-house near the pond, the freshness of the wind rustling in the trees, and perhaps the glass of good wine, gradually soothed Adler. Pastor Boehme looked at him over the rim of his gold spectacles, and seeing him in a better mood, resolved to return to the attack.
"Well," he said, clinking his glass against Adler's, "a man who keeps such excellent wine as this cannot have a bad heart. ”

“ We build not only our world, but our universe. The ethical principle is not a working hypothesis, like those provisionally used in science. It is the outgrowth of the functional finalities. It is a postulate. The specific moral laws, or expressions of the ethical principle indeed, are changeable, being the product of the principle with the varying empirical conditions of human society. The fundamental principle is unchangeable.
The consciousness of universal interrelation is not to be described as mystical consciousness. The identity of the self remains intact ”

“ This did not astonish the pastor and his wife. A young man would naturally prefer the society of a young girl. Soon after Adler and his son returned home, and Ferdinand informed his father that he would have to go to Warsaw the next day. ”

“ The commercial mind is neither benevolent nor malevolent—as little as science is. It seems at times to be beneficent; at other times it seems to be almost fiendish—as in the case of the atrocities perpetrated on the Congo. It is not fiendish, it is simply ethically neutral or blind.
From this series of reflections, certain conclusions may be drawn as to fundamental points of view relating to international law. The main principle is respect for the total personality of peoples, recognition of them as potential members of the spiritual body of mankind. ”

“ Philosophy is nothing but knowledge of the world systematised into a world-conception. It will hardly be sufficient to make the "common conscience" the corner stone of any society devoted to the elevation of morality. Not only would it be difficult to ascertain what that "common conscience" at present is, but, in addition, we can be assured that the "common conscience" is constantly changing.
Ethics as a science means philosophical ethics; and Professor Adler's ethics is, in fact, the expression of a philosophy. ”

“ But the pastor had got into his cart without his overcoat, and was driving out of the gateway.
"He is a madman," Adler observed to himself. He was not angry with the pastor, who frequently treated him to such scenes.
"These learned people always have a screw loose in their heads," he reflected, looking after the dust raised by the pastor's britzka. "If I were a learned man and had Boehme's income, Ferdinand would now be toiling in a technical college. It is a good thing he is not learned, either." ”

“ As a metaphysician he is a follower of Kant, rather than of Comte, but makes no positive affirmation on the subject of God and immortality; he admits only the existence of an unknowable noumenon, of an ultimate reality which lies behind all appearances, and is responsible for the harmony of the world. So long as divergence in matters of belief continues to become increasingly great, Mr. Adler regards it as necessary to concentrate attention on the moral law itself, apart from any theory of its origin or justification. ”

“ Ethical energy, on the contrary, is determined by the very opposite tendency; a tendency, it is true, never more than tentatively effectuated under finite conditions. And because the energy is unique, it points toward a unique, irreducible, hence substantive entity in man, from which it springs. This entity is itself incognizable, yet the effect it produces requires that it be postulated. The category of substance, which is almost disappearing from science, is to be reinstalled in ethics. Ethics cannot dispense with it. ”

“ It is the great datum of ethics, of which ethical theory must give an account. All other data or problems that have been thrust into the foreground—freedom of the will, responsibility, altruistic self-sacrifice—are secondary, in the sense that they depend for their solution on a right conception of man as end per se. As possessing worth on his own account he is an ethical unit. Only as a member of the infinite spiritual universe does he possess the two-fold attributes implied in worth—inviolability with respect to outsiders and indefeasible, intrinsic preciousness. ”

“ But if he found a man to be honest he would become his friend for good or ill. For people with bad character or no character at all he had a profound contempt.
Young Adler had met this formidable judge several times, but had never talked to him, as there had been no opportunity. Zapora neither sought nor avoided him; his friends knew, however, that when he spoke of "that fool," he [260] meant Ferdinand, and the more experienced felt sure that the two men would meet sooner or later in the narrow sphere of provincial life, and that Adler would then hear a few bitter home-truths. ”

“ Ethics is a system of relations. The ethical point of view consists in seeing the relation between the offending person and ourselves as it ought to be, in seeing with perfect objectivity the kind of conduct ideally required by the relation on both sides, seeing it and thereby assisting the other to see it. But we shall never succeed in doing this until we purge from our thoughts and speech every trace of private irritation. If we can point out to the one who has gone wrong how he has hurt another, and has spiritually hurt himself ”

“ Our Lord not only sacrificed Himself, but taught and improved men. Ferdinand is your son in the flesh, and mine in the spirit. In spite of his gifts and good qualities, he does not carry out the injunctions to work which were laid upon man when he was driven from Paradise." [197]
"Johann!" shouted Adler.
The footman instantly appeared.
"The engine is going too fast; tell them to slacken down! It's always like that when I am out of the way."
The footman disappeared, and the pastor continued, undismayed:
"Your son does not work, but wastes the powers of body and mind given him by the Creator. ”

“ I do not wish, in speaking of an ethical, invisible, and unimaginable entity, to derive the postulation of this conception from science. The ethical concept transcends wholly the field of sensible experience. It is not discovered by way of analogy. It is frankly and overtly supersensible. It is not exemplified in the effects it produces in the world of volition as the most nearly metaphysical concepts of science are exemplified in the field of phenomena by the recurrences or uniformities which they serve to account for. ”

“ Each ethical unit, at its station, would be at once the producer and the recipient of the totality of life.44
It is apparent from what has been said that the superlative, sublime thing, freedom, is not realizable except in an infinite world. And hence that the supreme end to be realized by man as a finite being cannot be the full release of unique power in himself. But neither can the end be approximation. In so serious a business as a philosophy of life we ought not to play with words, nor delude ourselves with the implication of proximity seemingly contained in the word approximation. ”