The Historical Study On The World Wide Ethical Society

The early period of the Republic of China was the summit of the development of the mass organizations. Detailed researches have been done on Ethical Research Society , Tao Yuan which were founded in the same period, dwelling on various aspects such as their ideologics, character, organization, schools and social function. However, the mainland scholars have paid little attention to the the World Wide Ethical Society (W.E.S) and most present arguments are not thorough and correct. Even in Taiwan, where W. E.S. is still active nowadays, most scholars tend to investigate its theories from the psychological aspect and there is no book on a thorough study of W.E.S.'s origin, organization, transition, theories, membership, activities and so on. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the true nature of W.E.S. through the investigation of its history of more than 80 years'development of W.E.S., its existance, its social influence, etc.This thesis includes the following parts: Chapter one is about the foundation of W.E.S., analyzing its background and founding process; Chapter two introduces its organization, aim and transition; Chapter three is the focus of this thesis, dwelling on the activities of W.E.S., including education, charity, rescue, industry, demonstration, speeches, editing and publishing books and periodicals; Chapter four investigates the theories of W.E.S. The core of those theories was Moral Theory, which was the combination of Jiang xi-zhang theories combining Confucian school, Taoiam, Christianity, Catholicism and Islam, and the usage of Chinese traditional morals to stop the civil war and find the new opportunities with Wang feng-yi's natural property and ethics theory; the following chaper, chaper five illustrates the complicated membership of W.E.S., including all trades as politics, industry, commerce, agriculture and army. WES also encouraged the independence of women who were seriously ignored before; the last chapter, chapter six, introduces the present activities of W.E.S. in the world and predicts its future development. On the whole, the development of W.E.S can be devided into five phases. They are establishment period (1921—1927), expansion period (1928—1932), flourishing period (1933—1945), declining period (1946—1949) and renaissance period (1949—). So it is safe to claim that the development of W.E.S coincides with the evolution of history.The study illustrates that W.E.S. differs with Ethical Research Society and Dao Yuan. W.E.S. has no tradition of folk religinon and its main activities are eduation, charity and rescue. Therefore, it is logical to classify it as a mass organization with folk religion.However,during the anti-Japanese war, W.E.S. helped the inventors and destroyed the benefit of our nation. Therefore, we should recoganize clearly the two sides of W.E.S., both its contribution and its flaws in history.All in all, the thorough and logical investigation made in this thesis is of great value for our recognization and revaluation of W.E.S.