THE BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION. 673 



any other individual the organization and initiatory success of 

 the association are due. He was made its first president, and pre- 

 sided over its deliberations for two years, being succeeded for a 

 like term by Mr. Z. Sidney Sampson. At the close of Mr. Sampson's 

 second term, in the fall of 1885, Dr. Lewis G. Janes was chosen 

 as his successor, and has been re-elected in each succeeding year. 



The association, which at first assumed the rather formidable 

 title of " The Association for the Promotion of Moral and Spirit- 

 ual Education," continuing for a time its Sunday morning meet- 

 ings at the Second Unitarian Church, met also in private parlors 

 on Friday evenings, and during its first season devoted its sessions 

 to the discussion of certain fundamental philosophical problems 

 and to the study of Herbert Spencer's work on The Study of So- 

 ciology. The doctrine of evolution, which, indeed, had entered 

 largely into the discussion of ethical topics in the previous studies 

 of the Sunday-school class, thus inspired and directed the work of 

 the association from its inception. Its members, often differing 

 in theology, in politics, and in speculative views, were agreed in 

 finding in the scientific method, especially as inspired and illu- 

 mined by the evolution idea, a common pou sto, on which they 

 could unite in fruitful study and discussion. 



From 1883 to 1885 the association continued its meetings in 

 private parlors, studying the natural evolution and ethical foun- 

 dations of the Oriental religions, with preliminary lectures on the 

 Origin of the Religious Idea, and Fetichism ; Confucianism, Brah- 

 manism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, the Religions of Ancient 

 Egypt, and the Hebrew Religion were thus reviewed during the 

 first season, several evenings being devoted to each topic. At one 

 meeting Prof. Charles D. B. Mills, of Syracuse, gave an interest- 

 ing lecture on Our Aryan Home, and at another Baboo Amrita 

 Lai Roy, now the editor of the Hindoo Magazine in Calcutta, de- 

 scribed the social and religious status of his people in India at 

 the present day. The work of the next season involved a similar 

 treatment of the Greek and Roman Religions, Primitive Chris- 

 tianity, Gnosticism, and Neo-Platonism. The lectures on Primi- 

 tive Christianity, which were delivered by Dr. Janes, were sub- 

 sequently compiled in book form and have had a considerable 

 sale. Other occasional lectures of this period were printed in the 

 Westminster Review, the Index, Boston Commonwealth, Unita- 

 rian Review, and elsewhere, thus reaching and creating a larger 

 public interest in the association and its work. As one of the re- 

 sults of its Oriental studies, the association obtained honorable 

 recognition abroad, and became the authorized recipient of the first 

 complete English translation of that monumental work, the great 

 epic poem of India, the Mahabharata, published, mainly for gra- 

 tuitous distribution, by the Datavya Bharata Karyalaya, at the 



