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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Transcendentalism in New England, by
+Octavius Brooks Frothingham
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Transcendentalism in New England
+       A History
+
+Author: Octavius Brooks Frothingham
+
+Release Date: February 17, 2012 [EBook #38907]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSCENDENTALISM IN NEW ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charlene Taylor, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe,
+Cathy Maxam, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+_Engd by H. B. Hall_
+
+(signature O. B. Frothingham)
+
+G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.]
+
+
+
+
+  TRANSCENDENTALISM
+
+  IN
+
+  NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+  _A HISTORY_
+
+
+  BY
+
+  OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM
+
+  _Author of "Life of Theodore Parker," "Religion of Humanity," &c., &c._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  NEW YORK
+  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+  182 FIFTH AVENUE
+  1876
+
+  COPYRIGHT,
+  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
+  1876.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                         PAGE
+
+  CONTENTS       iii
+
+  PREFACE      v
+
+  I.
+
+  BEGINNINGS IN GERMANY      1
+
+  II.
+
+  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN GERMANY--KANT, JACOBI, FICHTE, etc.      14
+
+  III.
+
+  THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE--SCHLEIERMACHER, GOETHE, RICHTER, etc.      47
+
+  IV.
+
+  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRANCE--COUSIN, CONSTANT, JOUFFROY, etc.      60
+
+  V.
+
+  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN ENGLAND--COLERIDGE, CARLYLE, WORDSWORTH      76
+
+  VI.
+
+  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN NEW ENGLAND      105
+
+  VII.
+
+  PRACTICAL TENDENCIES      142
+
+  VIII.
+
+  RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES      185
+
+  IX.
+
+  THE SEER--EMERSON      218
+
+  X.
+
+  THE MYSTIC--ALCOTT      249
+
+  XI.
+
+  THE CRITIC--MARGARET FULLER      284
+
+  XII.
+
+  THE PREACHER--THEODORE PARKER      302
+
+  XIII.
+
+  THE MAN OF LETTERS--GEORGE RIPLEY      322
+
+  XIV.
+
+  MINOR PROPHETS      335
+
+  XV.
+
+  LITERATURE      357
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+While we are gathering up for exhibition before other nations, the
+results of a century of American life, with a purpose to show the issues
+thus far of our experiment in free institutions, it is fitting that some
+report should be made of the influences that have shaped the national
+mind, and determined in any important degree or respect its intellectual
+and moral character. A well-considered account of these influences would
+be of very great value to the student of history, the statesman and
+philosopher, not merely as throwing light on our own social problem, but
+as illustrating the general law of human progress. This book is offered
+as a modest contribution to that knowledge.
+
+Transcendentalism, as it is called, the transcendental movement, was an
+important factor in American life. Though local in activity, limited in
+scope, brief in duration, engaging but a comparatively small number of
+individuals, and passing over the upper regions of the mind, it left a
+broad and deep trace on ideas and institutions. It affected thinkers,
+swayed politicians, guided moralists, inspired philanthropists, created
+reformers. The moral enthusiasm of the last generation, which broke out
+with such prodigious power in the holy war against slavery; which
+uttered such earnest protests against capital punishment, and the wrongs
+inflicted on women; which made such passionate pleading in behalf of the
+weak, the injured, the disfranchised of every race and condition; which
+exalted humanity above institutions, and proclaimed the inherent worth
+of man,--owed, in larger measure than is suspected, its glow and force
+to the Transcendentalists. This, as a fact of history, must be admitted,
+as well by those who judge the movement unfavorably, as by its friends.
+In the view of history, which is concerned with causes and effects in
+their large human relations, individual opinions on them are of small
+moment. It was once the fashion--and still in some quarters it is the
+fashion--to laugh at Transcendentalism as an incomprehensible folly, and
+to call Transcendentalists visionaries. To admit that they were, would
+not alter the fact that they exerted an influence on their generation.
+It is usual with critics of a cold, unsympathetic, cynical cast, to
+speak of Transcendentalism as a form of sentimentality, and of
+Transcendentalists as sentimentalists; to decry enthusiasm, and
+deprecate the mischievous effects of feeling on the discussion of social
+questions. But their disapproval, however just and wholesome, does not
+abolish the trace which moral enthusiasm, under whatever name these
+judges may please to put upon it, has left on the social life of the
+people. Whether the impression was for evil or for good, it is there,
+and equally significant for warning or for commendation.
+
+As a form of mental philosophy Transcendentalism may have had its day;
+at any rate, it is no longer in the ascendant, and at present is
+manifestly on the decline, being suppressed by the philosophy of
+experience, which, under different names, is taking possession of the
+speculative world. But neither has this consideration weight in deciding
+its value as an element in progress. An unsound system requires as
+accurate a description and as severe an analysis as a sound one; and no
+speculative prejudice should interfere with the most candid
+acknowledgment of its importance. Error is not disarmed or disenchanted
+by caricature or neglect.
+
+To those who may object that the writer has too freely indulged his own
+prejudices in favor of Transcendentalism and the Transcendentalists, and
+has transgressed his own rules by writing a eulogy instead of a history,
+he would reply, that in his belief every system is best understood when
+studied sympathetically, and is most fairly interpreted from the inside.
+We can know its purposes only from its friends, and we can do justice to
+its friends only when we accept their own account of their beliefs and
+aims. Renan somewhere says, that in order to judge a faith one must have
+confessed it and abandoned it. Such a rule supposes sincerity in the
+confession and honesty in the withdrawal; but with this qualification
+its reasonableness is easily admitted. If the result of such a verdict
+prove more favorable than the polemic would give, and more cordial than
+the critic approves, it may not be the less just for that.
+
+The writer was once a pure Transcendentalist, a warm sympathizer with
+transcendental aspirations, and an ardent admirer of transcendental
+teachers. His ardor may have cooled; his faith may have been modified;
+later studies and meditations may have commended to him other ideas and
+methods; but he still retains enough of his former faith to enable him
+to do it justice. His purpose has been to write a history; not a
+critical or philosophical history, but simply a history; to present his
+subject with the smallest possible admixture of discussion, either in
+defence or opposition. He has, therefore, avoided the metaphysics of his
+theme, by presenting cardinal ideas in the simplest statement he could
+command, and omitting the details that would only cumber a narrative.
+Sufficient references are given for the direction of students who may
+wish to become more intimately acquainted with the transcendental
+philosophy, but an exhaustive survey of the speculative field has not
+been attempted. This book has but one purpose--to define the fundamental
+ideas of the philosophy, to trace them to their historical and
+speculative sources, and to show whither they tended. If he has done
+this inadequately, it will be disclosed; he has done it honestly, and as
+well as he could. In a little while it will be difficult to do it at
+all; for the disciples, one by one, are falling asleep; the literary
+remains are becoming few and scarce; the materials are disappearing
+beneath the rapid accumulations of thought; the new order is thrusting
+the old into the background; and in the course of a few years, even they
+who can tell the story feelingly will have passed away. The author,
+whose task was gladly accepted, though not voluntarily chosen, ventures
+to hope, that if it has not been done as well as another might have done
+it, it has not been done so ill that others will wish he had left it
+untouched.
+
+O. B. F.
+
+NEW YORK, April 12, 1876.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCENDENTALISM.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+BEGINNINGS IN GERMANY.
+
+
+To make intelligible the Transcendental Philosophy of the last
+generation in New England it is not necessary to go far back into the
+history of thought. Ancient idealism, whether Eastern or Western, may be
+left undisturbed. Platonism and neo-Platonism may be excused from
+further tortures on the witness stand. The speculations of the mystics,
+Romanist or Protestant, need not be re-examined. The idealism of Gale,
+More, Pordage, of Cudworth and the later Berkeley, in England, do not
+immediately concern us. We need not even submit John Locke to fresh
+cross-examination, or describe the effect of his writings on the
+thinkers who came after him.
+
+The Transcendental Philosophy, so-called, had a distinct origin in
+Immanuel Kant, whose "Critique of Pure Reason" was published in 1781,
+and opened a new epoch in metaphysical thought. By this it is not meant
+that Kant started a new movement of the human mind, proposed original
+problems, or projected issues never contemplated before. The questions
+he discussed had been discussed from the earliest times, and with an
+acumen that had searched out the nicest points of definition. In the
+controversy between the Nominalists, who maintained that the terms used
+to describe abstract and universal ideas were mere names, designating no
+real objects and corresponding to no actually existing things, and the
+Realists, who contended that such terms were not figments of language,
+but described realities, solid though incorporeal, actual existences,
+not to be confounded with visible and transient things, but the
+essential types of such,--the scholastics of either school discussed
+after their manner, with astonishing fulness and subtlety, the matters
+which later metaphysicians introduced. The modern Germans revived in
+substance the doctrines held by the Realists. But the scholastic method,
+which was borrowed from the Greeks, lost its authority when the power of
+Aristotle's name declined, and the scholastic discussions, turning, as
+they signally did, on theological questions, ceased to be interesting
+when the spell of theology was broken.
+
+Between the schools of Sensationalism and Idealism, since John Locke,
+the same matters were in debate. The Scotch as well as the English
+metaphysicians dealt with them according to their genius and ability.
+The different writers, as they succeeded one another, took up the points
+that were presented in their day, exercised on them such ingenuity as
+they possessed, and in good faith made their several contributions to
+the general fund of thought, but neglected to sink their shafts deep
+enough below the surface to strike new springs of water.
+
+Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding was an event that made an epoch
+in philosophy, because its author, not satisfied to take up questions
+where his predecessors had left them, undertook an independent
+examination of the Human Mind, in order to ascertain what were the
+conditions of its knowledge. The ability with which this attempt was
+made, the entire sincerity of it, the patient watch of the mental
+operations, the sagacity that followed the trail of lurking thoughts,
+surprised them in their retreats, and extracted from them the secret of
+their combinations, fairly earned for him the title of "Father of Modern
+Psychology." The intellectual history of the race shows very few such
+examples of single-minded fidelity combined with rugged vigor and
+unaffected simplicity. With what honest directness he announced his
+purpose! His book grew out of a warm discussion among friends, the
+fruitlessness whereof convinced him that both sides had taken a wrong
+course; that before men set themselves upon inquiries into the deep
+matters of philosophy "it was necessary to examine our own abilities,
+and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal
+with." To do this was his purpose.
+
+"First," he said, "I shall inquire into the original of those ideas,
+notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes
+and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the
+understanding comes to be furnished with them.
+
+"Secondly, I shall endeavor to show what knowledge the understanding
+hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence and extent of it.
+
+"Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith
+or opinion; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition
+as true, of whose truth we have yet no certain knowledge; and we shall
+have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent."
+
+Locke did his work well: how well is attested by the excitement it
+caused in the intellectual world, the impulse it gave to speculation in
+England and on the continent of Europe, the controversies over the
+author's opinions, the struggle of opposing schools to secure for their
+doctrines his authority, the appreciation on one side, the depreciation
+on the other, the disposition of one period to exalt him as the greatest
+discoverer in the philosophic realm, and the disposition of another
+period to challenge his title to the name of philosopher. The "Essay" is
+a small book, written in a homely, business-like style, without
+affectation of depth or pretence of learning, but it is charged with
+original mental force. Exhaustive it was not; exhaustive it could not
+have been. The England of the seventeenth century was not favorable to
+original researches in that field. The "Essay" was planned in 1670,
+completed after considerable interruptions in 1687, and published in
+1690. To one acquainted with the phases through which England was
+passing at that period, these dates will tell of untoward influences
+that might account for graver deficiencies than characterize Locke's
+work. The scholastic philosophy, from which Locke broke contemptuously
+away at Oxford, seems to have left no mark on his mind; but the
+contemptuous revulsion, and the naked self-reliance in which the
+sagacious but not generously cultivated man found refuge, probably
+roughened his speculative sensibility, and made it impossible for him to
+handle with perfect nicety the more delicate facts of his science. It
+can hardly be claimed that Locke was endowed by nature with
+philosophical genius of the highest order. While at Oxford he abandoned
+philosophy, in disgust, for medicine, and distinguished himself there by
+judgment and penetration. Subsequently his attention was turned to
+politics, another pursuit even less congenial with introspective genius.
+These may not be the reasons for the "incompleteness" which so glowing a
+eulogist as Mr. George H. Lewes admits in the "Essay;" but at all
+events, whatever the reasons may have been, the incompleteness was felt;
+the debate over the author's meaning was an open proclamation of it; at
+the close of a century it was apparent to at least one mind that Locke's
+attempt must be repeated, and his work done over again more carefully.
+
+The man who came to this conclusion and was moved to act on it was
+IMMANUEL KANT, born at Koenigsberg, in Prussia, April 22d, 1724; died
+there February 12th, 1804. His was a life rigorously devoted to
+philosophy. He inherited from his parents a love of truth, a respect for
+moral worth, and an intellectual integrity which his precursor in
+England did not more than match. He was a master in the sciences, a
+proficient in languages, a man cultivated in literature, a severe
+student, of the German type, whose long, calm, peaceful years were spent
+in meditation, lecturing and writing. He was distinguished as a
+mathematician before he was heard of as a philosopher, having predicted
+the existence of the planet Uranus before Herschel discovered it. He was
+forty-five years old when these trained powers were brought to bear on
+the study of the human mind: he was sixty-seven when the meditation was
+ended. His book, the "Critique of Pure Reason," was the result of twelve
+years of such thinking as his genius and training made him capable of.
+In what spirit and with what hope he went about his task, appears in the
+Introduction and the Prefaces to the editions of 1781 and 1787. In these
+he frankly opens his mind in regard to the condition of philosophical
+speculation. That condition he describes as one of saddest indifference.
+The throne of Metaphysics was vacant, and its former occupant was a
+wanderer, cast off by the meanest of his subjects. Locke had started a
+flight of hypotheses, which had frittered his force away and made his
+effort barren of definite result. Theories had been suggested and
+abandoned; the straw had been thrashed till only dust remained; and
+unless a new method could be hit on, the days of mental philosophy might
+be considered as numbered. The physical sciences would take advantage of
+the time, enter the deserted house, secure possession, and set up their
+idols in the ancient shrine.
+
+These sciences, it was admitted, command and deserve unqualified
+respect. To discover the secret of their success Kant passed in review
+their different systems, examined them in respect to their principles
+and conditions of progress, with a purpose to know what, if any,
+essential difference there might be between them and the metaphysics
+which had from of old claimed to be, and had the name of being, a
+science. Logic, mathematics, physics, are sciences: by virtue of what
+inherent peculiarity do they claim superior right to that high
+appellation? Intellectual philosophy has always been given over to
+conflicting parties. Its history is a history of controversies, and of
+controversies that resulted in no triumph for either side, established
+no doctrine, and reclaimed no portion of truth. Material philosophy has
+made steady advances from the beginning; its disputes have ended in
+demonstrations, its contests have resulted in the establishment of
+legitimate authority: if its progress has been slow it has been
+continuous; it has never receded; and its variations from a straight
+course are insignificant when surveyed from a position that commands its
+whole career.
+
+Since Aristotle, logic has, without serious impediment or check, matured
+its rules and methods. Holding the same cardinal positions as in
+Aristotle's time, it has simply made them stronger, the rules being but
+interpretations of rational principles, the methods following precisely
+the indications of the human mind, which from the nature of the case
+remain always the same.
+
+The mathematics, again, have had their periods of uncertainty and
+conjecture. But since the discovery of the essential properties of the
+triangle, the career has been uninterrupted. The persistent study of
+constant properties, which were not natural data, but mental conceptions
+formed by the elimination of variable quantities, led to results which
+had not to be abandoned.
+
+It was the same with physics. The physics of the ancients were heaps of
+conjecture. The predecessors of Galileo abandoned conjecture, put
+themselves face to face with Nature, observed and classified phenomena,
+but possessed no method by which their labors could be made productive
+of cumulative results. But after Galileo had experimented with balls of
+a given weight on an inclined plane, and Torricelli had pushed upward a
+weight equal to a known column of water, and Stahl had reduced metals to
+lime and transformed lime back again into metal, by the addition and
+subtraction of certain parts, the naturalists carried a torch that
+illumined their path. They perceived that reason lays her own plans,
+takes the initiative with her own principles, and must compel nature to
+answer her questions, instead of obsequiously following its
+leading-string. It was discovered that scattered observations, made in
+obedience to no fixed plan, and associated with no necessary law, could
+not be brought into systematic form. The discovery of such a law is a
+necessity of reason. Reason presents herself before nature, holding in
+one hand the principles which alone have power to bring into order and
+harmony the phenomena of nature; in the other hand grasping the results
+of experiment conducted according to those principles. Reason demands
+knowledge of nature, not as a docile pupil who receives implicitly the
+master's word, but as a judge who constrains witnesses to reply to
+questions put to them by the court. To this attitude are due the happy
+achievements in physics; reason seeking--not fancying--in nature, by
+conformity with her own rules, what nature ought to teach, and what of
+herself she could not learn. Thus physics became established upon the
+solid basis of a science, after centuries of error and groping.
+
+Wherefore now, asks Kant, are metaphysics so far behind logic,
+mathematics, and physics? Wherefore these heaps of conjecture, these
+vain attempts at solution? Wherefore these futile lives of great men,
+these abortive flights of genius? The study of the mind is not an
+arbitrary pursuit, suggested by vanity and conducted by caprice, to be
+taken up idly and relinquished at a moment's notice. The human mind
+cannot acquiesce in a judgment that condemns it to barrenness and
+indifference in respect to such questions as God, the Soul, the World,
+the Life to Come; it is perpetually revising and reversing the decrees
+pronounced against itself. It must accept the conditions of its being.
+
+From a review of the progress of the sciences it appeared to Kant that
+their advance was owing to the elimination of the variable elements, and
+the steady contemplation of the elements that are invariable and
+constant, the most essential of which is the contribution made by the
+human mind. The laws that are the basis of logic, of the mathematics,
+and of the higher physics, and that give certitude to these sciences,
+are simply the laws of the human mind itself. Strictly speaking, then,
+it is in the constitution of the human mind, irrespective of outward
+objects and the application of principles to them, that we must seek the
+principle of certitude. Thus far in the history of philosophy the human
+mind had not been fairly considered. Thinkers had concerned themselves
+with the objects of knowledge, not with the mind that knows. They had
+collected facts; they had constructed systems; they had traced
+connections; they had drawn conclusions. Few had defined the relations
+of knowledge to the human mind. Yet to do that seemed the only way to
+arrive at certainty, and raise metaphysics to the established rank of
+physics, mathematics, and logic.
+
+Struck with this idea, Kant undertook to transfer contemplation from the
+objects that engaged the mind to the mind itself, and thus start
+philosophy on a new career. He meditated a fresh departure, and proposed
+to effect in metaphysics a revolution parallel with that which
+Copernicus effected in astronomy. As Copernicus, finding it impossible
+to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition of
+their turning round the globe as a centre, bethought him to posit the
+sun as a centre, round which the earth with other heavenly bodies
+turned--so Kant, perceiving the confusion that resulted from making man
+a satellite of the external world, resolved to try the effect of placing
+him in the position of central sway. Whether this pretension was
+justifiable or not, is not a subject of inquiry here. They may be right
+who sneer at it as a fallacy; they may be right who ridicule it as a
+conceit. We are historians, not critics. That Kant's position was as
+has been described, admits of no question. That he built great
+expectations on his method is certain. He anticipated from it the
+overthrow of hypotheses which, having no legitimate title to authority,
+erected themselves to the dignity of dogmas, and assumed supreme rank in
+the realm of speculation. That it would be the destruction of famous
+demonstrations, and would reduce renowned arguments to naught, might be
+foreseen; but in the place of pretended demonstrations, he was confident
+that solid ones would be established, and arguments that were merely
+specious would give room to arguments that were profound. Schools might
+be broken up, but the interests of the human race would be secured. At
+first it might appear as if cardinal beliefs of mankind must be menaced
+with extinction as the ancient supports one after another fell; but as
+soon as the new foundations were disclosed it was anticipated that faith
+would revive, and the great convictions would stand more securely than
+ever. Whatever of truth the older systems had contained would receive
+fresh and trustworthy authentication; the false would be expelled; and a
+method laid down by which new discoveries in the intellectual sphere
+might be confidently predicted.
+
+In this spirit the author of the transcendental philosophy began,
+continued, and finished his work.
+
+The word "transcendental" was not new in philosophy. The Schoolmen had
+used it to describe whatever could not be comprehended in or classified
+under the so-called categories of Aristotle, who was the recognized
+prince of the intellectual world. These categories were ten in number:
+Quantity, Quality, Relation, Action, Passion, The Where, The When,
+Position in Space, Possession, Substance. Four things were regarded by
+the Schoolmen as transcending these mental forms--namely, Being, Truth,
+Unity, Goodness. It is hardly necessary to say that the
+Transcendentalism of modern times owed very little to these
+distinctions, if it owed anything to them. Its origin was not from
+thence; its method was so dissimilar as to seem sharply opposed.
+
+The word "transcendental" has become domesticated in science.
+Transcendental anatomy inquires into the idea, the original conception
+or model on which the organic frame of animals is built, the unity of
+plan discernible throughout multitudinous genera and orders.
+Transcendental curves are curves that cannot be defined by algebraic
+equations. Transcendental equations express relations between
+transcendental qualities. Transcendental physiology treats of the laws
+of development and function, which apply, not to particular kinds or
+classes of organisms, but to all organisms. In the terminology of Kant
+the term "transcendent" was employed to designate qualities that lie
+outside of all "experience," that cannot be brought within the
+recognized formularies of thought, cannot be reached either by
+observation or reflection, or explained as the consequences of any
+discoverable antecedents. The term "transcendental" designated the
+fundamental conceptions, the universal and necessary judgments, which
+transcend the sphere of experience, and at the same time impose the
+conditions that make experience tributary to knowledge. The
+transcendental philosophy is the philosophy that is built on these
+necessary and universal principles, these primary laws of mind, which
+are the ground of absolute truth. The supremacy given to these and the
+authority given to the truths that result from them entitle the
+philosophy to its name. "I term all cognition transcendental which
+concerns itself not so much with objects, as with our mode of cognition
+of objects so far as this may be possible a priori. A system of such
+conceptions would be called Transcendental Philosophy."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+TRANSCENDENTALISM IN GERMANY.
+
+
+KANT.
+
+There is no call to discuss here the system of Kant, or even to describe
+it in detail. The means of studying the system are within easy reach of
+English readers.[1] Our concern is to know the method which Kant
+employed, and the use he made of it, the ground he took and the
+positions he held, so far as this can be indicated within reasonable
+compass, and without becoming involved in the complexity of the author's
+metaphysics. The Critique of Pure Reason is precisely what the title
+imports--a searching analysis of the human mind; an attempt to get at
+the ultimate grounds of thought, to discover the a priori principles.
+"Reason is the faculty which furnishes the principles of cognition a
+priori. Therefore pure reason is that which contains the principles of
+knowing something, absolutely a priori. An organon of pure reason would
+be a summary of these principles, according to which all pure cognition
+a priori can be obtained, and really accomplished. The extended
+application of such an organon would furnish a system of pure reason."
+
+[1] See Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, London, 1838; Morell's History
+of Modern Philosophy; Chalybaeus' Historical Development of Speculative
+Philosophy from Kant to Hegel; Lewes' Biographical History of
+Philosophy; Cousin's Lecons, OEuvres, Iere serie, vol. 5, give a clear
+account of Kant's philosophy.
+
+The problem of modern philosophy may be thus stated: _Have we or have we
+not ideas that are true of necessity, and absolutely? Are there ideas
+that can fairly be pronounced independent in their origin of experience,
+and out of the reach of experience by their nature?_ One party contended
+that all knowledge was derived from experience; that there was nothing
+in the intellect that had not previously been in the senses: the
+opposite party maintained that a portion, at least, of knowledge came
+from the mind itself; that the intellect contained powers of its own,
+and impressed its forms upon the phenomena of sense. The extreme
+doctrine of the two schools was represented, on the one side by the
+materialists, on the other by the mystics. Between these two extremes
+various degrees of compromise were offered.
+
+The doctrine of innate ideas, ascribed to Descartes,--though he
+abandoned it as untenable in its crude form,--affirmed that certain
+cardinal ideas, such as causality, infinity, substance, eternity, were
+native to the mind, born in it as part of its organic constitution,
+wholly independent therefore of experience. Locke claimed for the mind
+merely a power of reflection by which it was able to modify and alter
+the material given by the senses, thus exploding the doctrine of innate
+ideas.
+
+Leibnitz, anxious to escape the danger into which Descartes fell, of
+making the outward world purely phenomenal, an expression of unalterable
+thought, and also to escape the consequences of Locke's position that
+all knowledge originates in the senses, suggested that the understanding
+itself was independent of experience, that though it did not contain
+ideas like a vessel, it was entitled to be called a power of forming
+ideas, which have, as in mathematics, a character of necessary truths.
+These necessary laws of the understanding, which experience had no hand
+in creating, are, according to Leibnitz, the primordial conditions of
+human knowledge.
+
+Hume, taking Locke at his word, that all knowledge came from experience,
+that the mind was a passive recipient of impressions, with no
+independent intellectual substratum, reasoned that mind was a fiction;
+and taking Berkeley at his word that the outward world had no material
+existence, and no _apparent_ existence except to our perception, he
+reasoned that matter was a fiction. Mind and matter both being fictions,
+there could be no certain knowledge; truth was unattainable; ideas were
+illusions. The opposing schools of philosophers annihilated each other,
+and the result was scepticism.
+
+Hume started Kant on his long and severe course of investigation, the
+result of which was, that neither of the antagonist parties could
+sustain itself: that Descartes was wrong in asserting that such abstract
+ideas as causality, infinity, substance, time, space, are independent of
+experience, since without experience they would not exist, and
+experience takes from them form only; that Locke was wrong in asserting
+that all ideas originated in experience, and were resolvable into it,
+since the ideas of causality, substance, infinity and others certainly
+did not so originate, and were not thus resolvable. It is idle to
+dispute whether knowledge comes from one source or another--from without
+through sensation, or from within through intuition; the everlasting
+battle between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism, can
+never result in victory to either side. Mind and universe, intelligence
+and experience, suppose each other; neither alone is operative to
+produce knowledge. Knowledge is the product of their mutual
+co-operation. Mind does not originate ideas, neither does sensation
+impart them. Object and subject, sterile by themselves, become fruitful
+by conjunction. There are not two sources of knowledge, but one only,
+and that one is produced by the union of the two apparent opposites.
+Truth is the crystallization, so to speak, that results from the
+combined elements.
+
+Let us follow the initial steps of Kant's analysis. Mind and
+Universe--Subject and Object--Ego and Non-ego, stand opposite one
+another, front to front. Mind is conscious only of its own operations:
+the subject alone considers. The first fact noted is, that the subject
+is sensitive to impressions made by outward things, and is receptive of
+them. Dwelling on this fact, we discover that while the impressions are
+many in number and of great variety, they all, whatever their character,
+fall within certain inflexible and unalterable conditions--those of
+space and time--which must, therefore, be regarded as pre-established
+forms of sensibility. "Time is no empirical conception which can be
+deduced from experience. Time is a necessary representation which lies
+at the foundation of all intuitions. Time is given a priori. In it alone
+is any reality of phenomena possible. These disappear, but it cannot be
+annihilated." So of space. "Space is an intuition, met with in us a
+priori, antecedent to any perception of objects, a pure, not an
+empirical intuition." These two forms of sensibility, inherent and
+invariable, to which all experiences are subject, are primeval facts of
+consciousness. Kant's argument on the point whether or no space and time
+have an existence apart from the mind, is interesting, but need not
+detain us.
+
+The materials furnished by sensibility are taken up by the
+understanding, which classifies, interprets, judges, compares, reduces
+to unity, eliminates, converts, and thus fashions sensations into
+conceptions, transmutes impressions into thoughts. Here fresh processes
+of analysis are employed in classifying judgments, and determining their
+conditions. All judgments, it is found, must conform to one of four
+invariable conditions. I. Quantity, which may be subdivided into unity,
+plurality, and totality: the one, the many, the whole. II. Quality,
+which is divisible as reality, negation, and limitation: something,
+nothing, and the more or less. III. Relation, which also comprises three
+heads: substance and accident, cause and effect, reciprocity, or action
+and reaction. IV. Modality, which embraces the possible and the
+impossible, the existent and the non-existent, the necessary and the
+contingent. These categories, as they were called, after the terminology
+of Aristotle, were supposed to exhaust the forms of conception.
+
+Having thus arrived at conceptions, thoughts, judgments, another faculty
+comes in to classify the conceptions, link the thoughts together, reduce
+the judgments to general laws, draw inferences, fix conclusions, proceed
+from the particular to the general, recede from the general to the
+particular, mount from the conditioned to the unconditioned, till it
+arrives at ultimate principles. This faculty is reason,--the supreme
+faculty, above sensibility, above understanding. Reason gives the final
+generalization, the idea of a universe comprehending the infinitude of
+details presented by the senses, and the worlds of knowledge shaped by
+the understanding; the idea of a personality embracing the infinite
+complexities of feeling, and gathering under one dominion the realms of
+consciousness; the idea of a supreme unity combining in itself both the
+other ideas; the absolute perfection, the infinite and eternal One,
+which men describe by the word God.
+
+Here the thinker rested. His search could be carried no further. He had,
+as he believed, established the independent dominion of the mind, had
+mapped out its confines, had surveyed its surface; he had confronted the
+idealist with the reality of an external world; he had confronted the
+sceptic with laws of mind that were independent of experience; and,
+having done so much, he was satisfied, and refused to move an inch
+beyond the ground he occupied. To those who applied to him for a system
+of positive doctrines, or for ground on which a system of positive
+doctrines could be erected, he declined to give aid. The mind, he said,
+cannot go out of itself, cannot transgress its own limits. It has no
+faculty by which it can perceive things _as they are_; no vision to
+behold objects corresponding to its ideas; no power to bridge over the
+gulf between its own consciousness and a world of realities existing
+apart from it. Whether there be a spiritual universe answering to our
+conception, a Being justifying reason's idea of supreme unity, a soul
+that can exist in an eternal, supersensible world, are questions the
+philosopher declined to discuss. The contents of his own mind were
+revealed to him, no more. Kant laid the foundations, he built no
+structure. He would not put one stone upon another; he declared it to be
+beyond the power of man to put one stone upon another. The attempts
+which his earnest disciples--Fichte, for example--made to erect a temple
+on his foundation he repudiated. As the existence of an external world,
+though a necessary postulate, could not be demonstrated, but only
+logically affirmed; so the existence of a spiritual world of substantial
+entities corresponding to our conceptions, though a necessary inference,
+could only be logically affirmed, not demonstrated. Our idea of God is
+no proof that God exists. That there is a God may be an irresistible
+persuasion, but it can be nothing more; it cannot be knowledge. Of the
+facts of consciousness, the reality of the ideas in the mind, we may be
+certain; our belief in them is clear and solid; but from _belief_ in
+them there is no bridge to _them_.
+
+Kant asserted the veracity of consciousness, and demanded an absolute
+acknowledgment of that veracity. The fidelity of the mind to itself was
+a first principle with him. Having these ideas, of the soul, of God, of
+a moral law; being certain that they neither originated in experience,
+nor depended on experience for their validity; that they transcended
+experience altogether--man was committed to an unswerving and
+uncompromising loyalty to himself. His prime duty consisted in deference
+to the integrity of his own mind. The laws of his intellectual and moral
+nature were inviolable. Whether there was or was not a God; whether
+there was or was not a substantial world of experience where the idea of
+rectitude could be realized, the dictate of duty justified, the soul's
+affirmation of good ratified by actual felicity,--rectitude was none the
+less incumbent on the rational mind; the law of duty was none the less
+imperative; the vision of good none the less glorious and inspiring.
+Virtue had its principle in the constitution of the mind itself. Every
+virtue had there its seat. There was no sweetness of purity, no heroism
+of faith, that had not an abiding-place in this impregnable fortress.
+
+Thus, while on the speculative side Kant came out a sceptic in regard to
+the dogmatic beliefs of mankind, on the practical side he remained the
+fast friend of intellectual truth and moral sanctity. Practical ethics
+never had a more stanch supporter than Immanuel Kant. If a man cannot
+pass beyond the confines of his own mind, he has, at all events, within
+his own mind a temple, a citadel, a home.
+
+The "Critique of Pure Reason" made no impression on its first
+appearance. But no sooner was its significance apprehended, than a storm
+of controversy betrayed the fact that even the friends of the new
+teacher were less content than he was to be shut up in their own minds.
+The calm, passionless, imperturbable man smoked his pipe in the peace of
+meditation; eager thinkers, desirous of getting more out of the system
+than its author did, were impatient at his backwardness, and made the
+intellectual world ring with their calls to improve upon and complete
+his task.
+
+The publication of Kant's great work did not put an end to the wars of
+philosophy. On the contrary, they raged about it more furiously than
+ever. As the two schools found in Locke fresh occasion for renewing
+their strife under the cover of that great name, so here again the
+latent elements of discord were discovered and speedily brought to the
+surface. The sceptics seized on the sceptical bearings of the new
+analysis, and proceeded to build their castle from the materials it
+furnished; the idealists took advantage of the positions gained by the
+last champion, and pushed their lines forward in the direction of
+transcendental conquest. We are not called on to follow the sceptics,
+however legitimate their course, and we shall but indicate the progress
+made by the idealists, giving their cardinal principles, as we have done
+those of their master.
+
+
+JACOBI.
+
+The first important step in the direction of pure transcendentalism was
+taken by Frederick Henry Jacobi, who was born at Duesseldorf, January 25,
+1743. He was a man well educated in philosophy, with a keen interest in
+the study of it, though not a philosopher by profession, or a systematic
+writer on metaphysical subjects. His position was that of a civilian who
+devoted the larger part of his time to the duties of a public office
+under the government. His writings consist mainly of letters, treatises
+on special points of metaphysical inquiry, and articles in the
+philosophical journals. His official position gave repute to the
+productions of his pen, and the circumstance of his being, not an
+amateur precisely, but a devotee of philosophy for the love of it and
+not as a professional business, imparted to his speculation the
+freshness of personal feeling. His ardent temperament, averse to
+scepticism, and touched with a mystical enthusiasm, rebelled against the
+formal and deadly precision of the analytical method, and sought a way
+out from the intellectual bleakness of the Kantean metaphysics into the
+sunshine and air of a living spiritual world. The critics busied
+themselves with mining and sapping the foundations of consciousness as
+laid by the philosopher of Koenigsberg, who, they complained, had been
+too easy in conceding the necessity of an outward world. Jacobi accepted
+with gratitude the intellectual basis afforded, and proceeded to erect
+thereupon his observatory for studying the heavens. Though not the
+originator of the "Faith Philosophy," as it was called, he became the
+finisher and the best known expositor of it. "Since the time of
+Aristotle," he said, "it has been the effort of philosophical schools to
+rank direct and immediate knowledge below mediate and indirect; to
+subordinate the capacity for original perception to the capacity for
+reflection on abstract ideas; to make intuition secondary to
+understanding, the sense of essential things to definitions. Nothing is
+accepted that does not admit of being proved by formal and logical
+process, so that, at last, the result is looked for there, and there
+only. The validity of intuition is disallowed."
+
+Jacobi's polemics were directed therefore against the systems of
+Spinoza, Leibnitz, Wolf--in a word against all systems that led to
+scepticism and dogmatism; and his positive efforts were employed in
+constructing a system of Faith. His key-word was "Faith," by which he
+meant intuition, the power of gazing immediately on essential truth; an
+intellectual faculty which he finally called Reason, by which
+supersensual objects become visible, as material objects become visible
+to the physical eye; an inward sense, a spiritual eye, that "gives
+evidence of things not seen and substance to things hoped for;" a
+faculty of vision to which truths respecting God, Providence,
+Immortality, Freedom, the Moral Law, are palpably disclosed. Kant had
+pronounced it impossible to prove that the transcendental idea had a
+corresponding reality as objective being. Jacobi declared that no such
+proof was needed; that the reality was necessarily assumed. Kant had
+denied the existence of any faculty that could guarantee the existence
+of either a sensual or a supersensual world. Jacobi was above all else
+certain that such a faculty there was, that it was altogether
+trustworthy, and that it actually furnished material for religious hope
+and spiritual life: the only possible material, he went on to say; for
+without this capacity of intuition, philosophy could be in his judgment
+nothing but an insubstantial fabric, a castle in the air, a thing of
+definitions and terminologies, a shifting body of hot and cold vapor.
+
+This, it will be observed, seemed a legitimate consequence of Kant's
+method. Kant had admitted the subjective reality of sensible
+impressions, and had claimed a similar reality for our mental images of
+supersensible things. He allowed the validity _as conceptions_, the
+practical validity, of the ideas of God, Duty, Immortality. Jacobi
+contended that having gone so far, it was lawful if not compulsory to go
+farther; that the subjective reality implied an objective reality; that
+the practical inference was as valid as any logical inference could be;
+and that through the intuition of reason the mind was placed again in a
+living universe of divine realities.
+
+Chalybaeus says of Jacobi: "With deep penetration he traced the mystic
+fountain of desire after the highest and best, to the point where it
+discloses itself as an immediate feeling in consciousness; that this
+presentiment was nothing more than Kant said it was--a faint mark made
+by the compressing chain of logic, he would not allow; he described it
+rather as the special endowment and secret treasure of the human mind,
+which he that would not lose it must guard against the touch of
+evil-minded curiosity; for whoever ventures into this sanctuary with the
+torch of science, will fare as did the youth before the veiled image at
+Sais." And again: "This point, that a self-subsisting truth must
+correspond to the conscious idea, that the subject must have an object
+which is personal like itself, is the ore that Jacobi was intent on
+extracting from the layers of consciousness: he disclosed it only in
+part, but unsatisfactory as his exposition was to the stern inquisition
+of science, his purpose was so strong, his aim so single, we cannot
+wonder that, in spite of the outcry and the scorn against his 'Faith or
+Feeling Philosophy,' his thought survived, and even entered on a new
+career in later times. It must, however, be confessed that instead of
+following up his clue, speculative fashion, he laid down his undeveloped
+theorem as an essential truth, above speculation, declaring that
+speculation must end in absolute idealism, which was but another name
+for nihilism and fatalism. Jacobi made his own private consciousness a
+measure for the human mind." At the close of his chapter, Chalybaeus
+quotes Hegel's verdict, expressed in these words: "Jacobi resembles a
+solitary thinker, who, in his life's morning, finds an ancient riddle
+hewn in the primeval rock; he believes that the riddle contains a truth,
+but he tries in vain to discover it. The day long he carries it about
+with him; entices weighty suggestions from it; displays it in shapes of
+teaching and imagery that fascinate listeners, inspiring noblest wishes
+and anticipations: but the interpretation eludes him, and at evening he
+lays him down in the hope that a celestial dream or the next morning's
+waking will make articulate the word he longs for and has believed in."
+
+
+FICHTE.
+
+The transcendental philosophy received from Jacobi an impulse toward
+mysticism. From another master it received an impulse toward heroism.
+This master was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, born at Rammenau, in Upper
+Lusatia, on the 19th of May, 1762. A short memoir of him by William
+Smith, published in 1845, with a translation of the "Nature of the
+Scholar," and reprinted in Boston, excited a deep interest among people
+who had neither sympathy with his philosophy nor intelligence to
+comprehend it. He was a great mind, and a greater character--sensitive,
+proud, brave, determined, enthusiastic, imperious, aspiring; a mighty
+soul; "a cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear,
+like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have been the teacher of
+the Stoa, and to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves of
+Academe! So robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, massive, and
+immovable, has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of
+Luther. For the man rises before us amid contradiction and debate like a
+granite mountain amid clouds and winds. As a man approved by action and
+suffering, in his life and in his death, he ranks with a class of men
+who were common only in better ages than ours." Thus wrote Thomas
+Carlyle of him more than a generation ago.
+
+The direction given to philosophy by such a man could not but be decided
+and bold. His short treatises, all marked by intellectual power, some by
+glowing eloquence, carried his thoughts beyond the philosophical circle
+and spread his leading principles far beyond the usual speculative
+lines. "The Destination of Man," "The Vocation of the Scholar," "The
+Nature of the Scholar," "The Vocation of Man," "The Characteristics of
+the Present Age," "The Way towards the Blessed Life," were translated
+into English, published in the "Catholic Series" of John Chapman, and
+extensively read. The English reviewers helped to make the author and
+his ideas known to many readers.
+
+The contribution that Fichte made to the transcendental philosophy may
+be described without using many words. He became acquainted with Kant's
+system in Leipsic, where he was teaching, in 1790. The effect it had on
+him is described in letters to his friends. To one he wrote: "The last
+four or five months which I have passed in Leipsic have been the
+happiest of my life; and the most satisfactory part of it is, that I
+have to thank no man for the smallest ingredient in its pleasures. When
+I came to Leipsic my brain swarmed with great plans. All were wrecked;
+and of so many soap-bubbles there now remains not even the light froth
+that composed them. This disturbed a little my peace of mind, and half
+in despair I joined a party to which I should long ere this have
+belonged. Since I could not alter my outward condition, I resolved on
+internal change. I threw myself into philosophy, and, as you know, the
+Kantean. Here I found the remedy for my ills, and joy enough to boot.
+The influence of this philosophy, the moral part of it in particular
+(which, however, is unintelligible without previous study of the
+'Critique of Pure Reason'), on the whole spiritual life, and especially
+the revolution it has caused in my own mode of thought, is
+indescribable." To another he wrote in similar strain: "I have lived in
+a new world since reading the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' Principles I
+believed irrefragable are refuted; things I thought could never be
+proved--the idea of absolute freedom, of duty, for example--are
+demonstrated; and I am so much the happier. It is indescribable what
+respect for humanity, what power this system gives us. What a blessing
+to an age in which morality was torn up by the roots, and the word duty
+blotted out of the dictionary!" To Johanna Rahn he expresses himself in
+still heartier terms: "My scheming mind has found rest at last, and I
+thank Providence that shortly before all my hopes were frustrated I was
+placed in a position which enabled me to bear the disappointment with
+cheerfulness. A circumstance that seemed the result of mere chance
+induced me to devote myself entirely to the study of the Kantean
+philosophy--a philosophy that restrains the imagination, always too
+strong with me, gives reason sway, and raises the soul to an unspeakable
+height above all earthly concerns. I have accepted a nobler morality,
+and instead of busying myself with outward things, I concern myself
+more with my own being. It has given me a peace such as I never before
+experienced; amid uncertain worldly prospects I have passed my happiest
+days. It is difficult beyond all conception, and stands greatly in need
+of simplification.... The first elements are hard speculations, that
+have no direct bearing on human life, but their conclusions are most
+important for an age whose morality is corrupted at the fountain head;
+and to set these consequences before the world would, I believe, be
+doing it a good service. I am now thoroughly convinced that the human
+will is free, and that to be happy is not the purpose of our being, but
+to deserve happiness." So great was Fichte's admiration of Kant's
+system, that he became at once an expositor of its principles, in the
+hope that he might render it intelligible and attractive to minds of
+ordinary culture.
+
+Fichte considered himself a pure Kantean, perhaps the only absolutely
+consistent one there was; and that he did so is not surprising; for, in
+mending the master's positions, he seemed to be strengthening them
+against assault. He did not, like Jacobi, draw inferences which Kant had
+laboriously, and, as it seemed, effectually cut off; he merely
+entrenched himself within the lines the philosopher of Koenigsberg had
+drawn. Kant had, so his critics charged, taken for granted the reality
+of our perceptions of outward things. This was the weak point in his
+system, of which his adversaries took advantage. On this side he allowed
+empiricism to construct his wall, and left incautiously an opening which
+the keen-sighted foe perceived at once. Fichte bethought him to fortify
+that point, and thus make the philosophy unassailable; to take it, in
+fact, out of the category of a philosophical system, and give it the
+character of a science. To this end, with infinite pains and incredible
+labor, he tested the foundations to discover the fundamental and final
+facts which rested on the solid rock. The ultimate facts of
+consciousness were in question.
+
+Fichte accepted without hesitation the confinement within the limits of
+consciousness against which Jacobi rebelled, and proceeded to make the
+prison worthy of such an occupant. The facts of consciousness, he
+admitted, are all we have. The states and activities of the mind,
+perceptions, ideas, judgments, sentiments, or by whatever other name
+they may be called, constitute, by his admission, all our knowledge, and
+beyond them we cannot go. They are, however, solid and substantial. Of
+the outward world he knew nothing and had nothing to say; he was not
+concerned with that. The mind is the man; the history of the mind is the
+man's history; the processes of the mind report the whole of experience;
+the phenomena of the external universe are mere phenomena, reflections,
+so far as we know, of our thought; the mountains, woods, stars, are
+facts of consciousness, to which we attach these names. To infer that
+they exist because we have ideas of them, is illegitimate in philosophy.
+The ideas stand by themselves, and are sufficient of themselves.
+
+The mind is first, foremost, creative and supreme. It takes the
+initiative in all processes. He that assumes the existence of an
+external world does so on the authority of consciousness. If he says
+that consciousness compels us to assume the existence of such a world,
+that it is so constituted as to imply the realization of its conception,
+still we have simply the fact of consciousness; power to verify the
+relation between this inner fact and a corresponding physical
+representation, there is none. Analyze the facts of consciousness as
+much as we may, revise them, compare them, we are still within their
+circle and cannot pass beyond its limit. Is it urged that the existence
+of an external world is a _necessary_ postulate? The same reply avails,
+namely, that the idea of necessity is but one of our ideas, a conception
+of the mind, an inner notion or impression which legitimates itself
+alone. Does the objector further insist, in a tone of exasperation
+caused by what seems to him quibbling, that in this case consciousness
+plays us false, makes a promise to the ear which it breaks to the
+hope--lies, in short? The imperturbable philosopher sets aside the
+insinuation as an impertinence. The fact of consciousness, he maintains,
+stands and testifies for itself. It is not answerable for anything out
+of its sphere. In saying what it does it speaks the truth; the whole
+truth, so far as we can determine. Whether or no it is absolutely the
+whole truth, the truth as it lies in a mind otherwise constituted, is no
+concern of ours.
+
+The reasoning by which Fichte cut off the certainty of a material world
+outside of the mind, told with equal force against the objective
+existence of a spiritual world. The mental vision being bounded by the
+mental sphere, its objects being there and only there, with them we
+must be content. The soul has its domain, untrodden forests to explore,
+silent and trackless ways to follow, mystery to rest in, light to walk
+by, fountains and floods of living water, starry firmaments of thought,
+continents of reason, zones of law, and with this domain it must be
+satisfied. God is one of its ideas; immortality is another; that they
+are anything more than ideas, cannot be known.
+
+That the charge of atheism should be brought against so uncompromising a
+thinker, is a less grave imputation upon the discernment of his
+contemporaries than ordinarily it is. That he should have been obliged,
+in consequence of it, to leave Jena, and seek an asylum in Prussia, need
+not excite indignation, at least in those who remember his unwillingness
+or inability to modify his view, or explain the sense in which he called
+himself a believer. To "charge" a man with atheism, as if atheism were
+guilt, is a folly to be ashamed of; but to "class" a man among atheists
+who _in no sense_ accepts the doctrine of an intelligent, creative
+Cause, is just, while language has meaning. And this is Fichte's
+position. In his philosophy there was no place for assurance of a Being
+corresponding to the mental conception. The word "God" with him
+expressed the category of the Ideal. The world being but the incarnation
+of our sense of duty, the reflection of the mind, the creator of it is
+the mind. God, being a reflection of the soul in its own atmosphere, is
+one of the soul's creations, a shadow on the surface of a pool. The soul
+creates; deity is created. This is not even ideal atheism, like that of
+Etienne Vacherot; it may be much nobler and more inspiring than the
+recognized forms of theism; it is dogmatic or speculative atheism only:
+but that it is, and that it should confess itself. It was natural that
+Fichte, being perfect master of his thought, should disclaim and resent
+an imputation which in spirit he felt was undeserved. It was natural
+that people who were not masters of his thought, and would not have
+appreciated it if they had been, should judge him by the only
+definitions they had. Berkeley and Fichte stood at opposite extremes in
+their Idealism. Berkeley, starting from the theological conception of
+God, maintained that the outward world had a real existence in the
+supreme mind, being phenomenal only to the human. Fichte, starting from
+the human mind, contended that it was _altogether_ phenomenal, the
+supreme mind itself being phantasmal.
+
+How came it, some will naturally ask, that such a man escaped the deadly
+consequences of such resolute introspection? Where was there the
+indispensable basis for action and reaction? Life is conditioned by
+limitation; the shore gives character to the sea; the outward world
+gives character to the man, excites his energy, defines his aim, trains
+his perception, educates his will, offers a horizon to his hope. The
+outward world being removed, dissipated, resolved into impalpable
+thought, what substitute for it can be devised? Must not the man sink
+into a visionary, and waste his life in dream?
+
+That Fichte was practically no dreamer, has already been said. The man
+who closed a severe, stately, and glowing lecture on duty with the
+announcement--it was in 1813, when the French drums were rattling in
+the street, at times drowning the speaker's voice--that the course would
+be suspended till the close of the campaign, and would be resumed, if
+resumed at all, in a free country, and thereupon, with a German
+patriot's enthusiasm, rushed himself into the field--this man was no
+visionary, lost in dreams. The internal world was with him a living
+world; the mind was a living energy; ideas were things; principles were
+verities; the laws of thought were laws of being. So intense was his
+feeling of the substantial nature of these invisible entities, that the
+obverse side of them, the negation of them, had all the _vis inertia_,
+all the objective validity of external things. He spoke of "absolute
+limitations," "inexplicable limitations," against which the mind pressed
+as against palpable obstacles, and in pressing against which it acquired
+tension and vigor. Passing from the realm of speculation into that of
+practice, the obstacles assumed the attributes of powers, the
+impediments became foes, to be resisted as strenuously as ever soldier
+opposed soldier in battle. From the strength of this conviction he was
+enabled to say: "I am well convinced that this life is not a scene of
+enjoyment, but of labor and toil, and that every joy is granted but to
+strengthen us for further exertion; that the control of our fate is not
+required of us, but only our self-culture. I give myself no concern
+about external things; I endeavor to _be_, not to _seem_; I am no man's
+master, and no man's slave."
+
+Fichte was a sublime egoist. In his view, the mind was sovereign and
+absolute, capable of spontaneous, self-determined, originating action,
+having power to propose its own end and pursue its own freely-chosen
+course; a live intelligence, eagerly striving after self-development, to
+fulfil all the possibilities of its nature. Of one thing he was
+certain--the reality of the rational soul, and in that certainty lay the
+ground of his tremendous weight of assertion. His professional chair was
+a throne; his discourses were prophecies; his tone was the tone of an
+oracle. It made the blood burn to hear him; it makes the blood burn at
+this distance to read his printed words. To cite a few sentences from
+his writings in illustration of the man's way of dealing with the great
+problems of life, is almost a necessity. The following often-quoted but
+pregnant passage is from "The Destination of Man:" "I understand thee
+now, spirit sublime! I have found the organ by which to apprehend this
+reality, and probably all other. It is not knowledge, for knowledge can
+only demonstrate and establish itself; every kind of knowledge supposes
+some higher knowledge upon which it is founded; and of this ascent there
+is no end. It is faith, that voluntary repose in the ideas that
+naturally come to us, because through these only we can fulfil our
+destiny; which sets its seal on knowledge, and raises to conviction, to
+certainty, what, without it, might be sheer delusion. It is not
+knowledge, but a resolve to commit one's self to knowledge. No merely
+verbal distinction this, but a true and deep one, charged with momentous
+consequences to the whole character. All conviction is of faith, and
+proceeds from the heart, not from the understanding. Knowing this, I
+will enter into no controversy, for I foresee that in this way nothing
+can be gained. I will not endeavor, by reasoning, to press my conviction
+on others, nor will I be discouraged if such an attempt should fail. My
+mode of thinking I have adopted for myself, not for others, and to
+myself only need I justify it. Whoever has the same upright intention
+will also attain the same or a similar conviction, and without it that
+is impossible. Now that I know this, I know also from what point all
+culture of myself and others must proceed; from the will, and not from
+the understanding. Let but the first be steadily directed toward the
+good, the last will of itself apprehend the true. Should the last be
+exercised and developed, while the first remains neglected, nothing can
+result but a facility in vain and endless refinements of sophistry. In
+faith I possess the test of all truth and all conviction; truth
+originates in the conscience, and what contradicts its authority, or
+makes us unwilling or incapable of rendering obedience to it, is most
+certainly false, even should I be unable to discover the fallacies
+through which it is reached.... What unity, what completeness and
+dignity, our human nature receives from this view! Our thought is not
+based on itself, independently of our instincts and inclinations. Man
+does not consist of two beings running parallel to each other; he is
+absolutely one. Our entire system of thought is founded on intuition; as
+is the heart of the individual, so is his knowledge."
+
+"The everlasting world now rises before me more brightly, and the
+fundamental laws of its order are more clearly revealed to my mental
+vision. The will alone, lying hid from mortal eyes in the obscurest
+depths of the soul, is the first link in a chain of consequences that
+stretches through the invisible realm of spirit, as, in this terrestrial
+world, the action itself, a certain movement communicated to matter, is
+the first link in a material chain that encircles the whole system. The
+will is the effective cause, the living principle of the world of
+spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. The will is in itself a
+constituent part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I
+change and set in motion something in this transcendental world, and my
+energy gives birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and
+imperishable. Let this will find expression in a practical deed, and
+this deed belongs to the world of sense and produces effects according
+to the virtue it contains."
+
+This is the stoical aspect of the doctrine. The softer side of it
+appears throughout the book that is entitled "The Way towards the
+Blessed Life." We quote a few passages from the many the eloquence
+whereof does no more than justice to the depth of sentiment:
+
+"Full surely there is a blessedness beyond the grave for those who have
+already entered on it here, and in no other form than that wherein they
+know it here, at any moment. By mere burial man arrives not at bliss;
+and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will
+seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in
+aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here--the
+Infinite."
+
+"Religion consists herein, that man in his own person, with his own
+spiritual eye, immediately beholds and possesses God. This, however, is
+possible through pure independent thought alone; for only through this
+does man assume real personality, and this alone is the eye to which God
+becomes visible. Pure thought is itself the divine existence; and
+conversely, the divine existence, in its immediate essence, is nothing
+else than pure thought."
+
+"The truly religious man conceives of his world as action, which,
+because it is his world, he alone creates, in which alone he can live
+and find satisfaction. This action he does not will for the sake of
+results in the world of sense; he is in no respect anxious in regard to
+results, for he lives in action simply as action; he wills it because it
+is the will of God in him, and his own peculiar portion in being."
+
+"As to those in whom the will of God is not inwardly
+accomplished,--because there is no inward life in them, for they are
+altogether outward,--upon them the will of God is wrought as alone it
+can be; appearing at first sight bitter and ungracious, though in
+reality merciful and loving in the highest degree. To those who do not
+love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and
+torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation
+at last."
+
+Language like this from less earnest lips might be deceptive; but from
+the lips of a teacher like Fichte it tells of the solid grandeurs that
+faithful men possess in the ideal creations of their souls; the
+habitableness of air-castles.
+
+
+SCHELLING.
+
+The chief sources from which the transcendental philosophy came from
+Germany to America have been indicated. The traces of Jacobi and Fichte
+are broad and distinct on the mind of the New World. Of Schelling little
+need be said, for his works were not translated into English, and the
+French translation of the "Transcendental Idealism" was not announced
+till 1850, when the movement in New England was subsiding. His system
+was too abstract and technical in form to interest any but his
+countrymen. Coleridge was fascinated by it, and yielded to the
+fascination so far as to allow the thoughts of the German metaphysician
+to take possession of his mind; but for Coleridge, indeed, few
+English-speaking men would have known what the system was.
+Transcendentalism in New England was rather spiritual and practical than
+metaphysical. Jacobi and Fichte were both; it can scarcely be said that
+Schelling was either. His books were hard; his ideas underwent continual
+changes in detail; his speculative system was developed gradually in a
+long course of years. But for certain grandiose conceptions which had a
+charm for the imagination and fascinated the religious sentiment, his
+name need not be mentioned in this little incidental record at all.
+There was, however, in Schelling something that recalled the ideal side
+of Plato, more that suggested Plotinus, the neo-Platonists and
+Alexandrines, a mystical pantheistic quality that mingled well with the
+general elements of Idealism, and gave atmosphere, as it were, to the
+tender feeling of Jacobi and the heroic will of Fichte.
+
+Schelling was Fichte's disciple, filled his vacant chair in Jena in
+1798, and took his philosophical departure from certain of his
+positions. Fichte had shut the man up close in himself, had limited the
+conception of the world by the boundaries of consciousness, had reduced
+the inner universe to a full-orbed creation, made its facts substantial
+and its fancies solid, peopled it with living forces, and found room in
+it for the exercise of a complete moral and spiritual life. In his
+system the soul was creator. The outer universe had its being in human
+thought. Subject and object were one, and that one was the subject.
+
+Schelling restored the external world to its place as an objective
+reality, no fiction, no projection from the human mind. Subject and
+object, in his view, were one, but in the ABSOLUTE, the universal soul,
+the infinite and eternal mind. His original fire mist was the
+unorganized intelligence of which the universe was the expression.
+Finite minds are but phases of manifestation of the infinite mind,
+inlets into which it flows, some deeper, wider, longer than others.
+Spirit and matter are reverse aspects of being. Spirit is invisible
+nature, nature invisible spirit. Starting from nature, we may work our
+way into intelligence; starting from intelligence, we may work our way
+out to nature. Thought and existence having the same ground, ideal and
+real being one, the work of philosophy is twofold--from nature to arrive
+at spirit, from spirit to arrive at nature. They who wish to know how
+Schelling did it must consult the histories of philosophy; the most
+popular of them will satisfy all but the experts. It is easy to
+conjecture into what mysterious ways the clue might lead, and in what
+wilderness of thickets the reader might be lost; how in mind we are to
+see nature struggling upward into consciousness, and in nature mind
+seeking endless forms of finite expression. To unfold both processes, in
+uniform and balanced movement, avoiding pantheism on one side, and
+materialism on the other, was the endeavor we shall not attempt, even in
+the most cursory manner, to describe. God becomes conscious in man, the
+philosophic man, the man of reason, in whom the absolute being
+recognizes himself. The reason gazes immediately on the eternal
+realities, by virtue of what was called "intellectual intuition," which
+beholds both subject and object as united in a single thought. Reason
+was impersonal, no attribute of the finite intelligence, no fact of the
+individual consciousness, but a faculty, if that be the word for it,
+that transcended all finite experience, commanded a point superior to
+consciousness, was, in fact, the all-seeing eye confronting itself. What
+room here for intellectual rovers! What mystic groves for ecstatic souls
+to lose themselves in! What intricate mazes for those who are fond of
+hunting phantoms! Flashes of dim glory from this tremendous speculation
+are seen in the writings of Emerson, Parker, Alcott, and other seers,
+probably caught by reflection, or struck out, as they were by Schelling
+himself, by minds moving on the same level. In Germany the lines of
+speculation were carried out in labyrinthine detail, as, fortunately,
+they were not elsewhere.
+
+Of Hegel, the successor in thought of Schelling, there is no call here
+to speak at all. His speculation, though influential in America, as
+influential as that of either of his predecessors, was scarcely known
+thirty-five years ago, and if it had been, would have possessed little
+charm for idealists of the New England stamp. That system has borne
+fruits of a very different quality, being adopted largely by churchmen,
+whom it has justified and fortified in their ecclesiastical forms,
+doctrinal and sacramental, and by teachers of moderately progressive
+tendencies. The duty of unfolding his ideas has devolved upon students
+of German, as no other language has given them anything like adequate
+expression. Hegel, too, was more formidable than Schelling; the latter
+was brilliant, dashing, imaginative, glowing; his ideas shone in the
+air, and were caught with little toil by enthusiastic minds. To
+comprehend or even to apprehend Hegel requires more philosophical
+culture than was found in New England half a century ago, more than is
+by any means common to-day. Modern speculative philosophy is, as a rule,
+Hegelian. Its spirit is conservative, and it scarcely at all lends
+countenance to movements so revolutionary as those that shook New
+England.
+
+Long before the time we are dealing with--as early as 1824--the
+philosophy of Hegel had struck hands with church and state in Prussia;
+Hegel was at once prophet, priest, and prince. In the fulness of his
+powers, ripe in ability and in fame, he sat in the chair that Fichte had
+occupied, and gave laws to the intellectual world. He would "teach
+philosophy to talk German, as Luther had taught the Bible to do." A
+crowd of enthusiasts thronged about him. The scientific and literary
+celebrities of Berlin sat at his feet; state officials attended his
+lectures and professed themselves his disciples. The government provided
+liberally for his salary, and paid the travelling expenses of this great
+ambassador of the mind. The old story of disciple become master was told
+again. The philosopher was the friend of those that befriended him; the
+servant, some say, of those that lavished on him honors. Then the new
+philosophy that was to reconstruct the mental world learned to accept
+the actual world as it existed, and lent its powerful aid to the order
+of things it promised to reconstruct. Throwing out the aphorism, "The
+rational is the actual, the actual is the rational," Hegel declared that
+natural right, morality, and even religion are properly subordinated to
+authority. The despotic Prussian system welcomed the great philosopher
+as its defender. The Prussian Government was not tardy in showing
+appreciation of its advocate's eminent services.
+
+The church, taking the hint, put in its claim to patronage. It needed
+protection against the rationalism that was coming up; and such
+protection the majesty of Hegel vouchsafed to offer. Faith and
+philosophy formed a new alliance. Orthodox professors gave in their
+loyalty to the man who taught that "God was in process of becoming," and
+the man who taught that "God was in process of becoming" welcomed the
+orthodox professors to the circle of his disciples. He was more orthodox
+than the orthodox; he gave the theologians new explanations of their own
+dogmas, and supplied them with arguments against their own foes.
+Trinity, incarnation, atonement, redemption, were all interpreted and
+justified, to the complete satisfaction of the ecclesiastical powers.
+
+This being the influence of the master, and of philosophy as he
+explained it, the formation of a new school by the earnest, liberal men
+who drew very different conclusions from the master's first principles,
+was to be expected. But the "New Hegelians," as they were called, became
+disbelievers in religion and in spiritual things altogether, and either
+lapsed, like Strauss, into intellectual scepticism, or, like Feuerbach,
+became aggressive materialists. The ideal elements in Hegel's system
+were appropriated by Christianity, and were employed against liberty and
+progress. Spiritualists, whether in the old world or the new, had little
+interest in a philosophy that so readily favored two opposite
+tendencies, both of which they abhorred. To them the spiritual
+philosophy was represented by Hegel's predecessors. The disciples of
+sentiment accepted Jacobi; the loyalists of conscience followed Fichte;
+the severe metaphysicians, of whom there were a few, adhered to Kant;
+the soaring speculators and imaginative theosophists spread their
+"sheeny vans," and soared into the regions of the absolute with
+Schelling. The idealists of New England were largest debtors to Jacobi
+and Fichte.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+TRANSCENDENTALISM IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
+
+
+One of the earliest students of the German language in Boston was Dr. N.
+L. Frothingham, Unitarian minister of the First Church. Among the
+professional books that interested him was one by Herder, "Letters to a
+Young Theologian," chapters from which he translated for the "Christian
+Disciple," the precursor of the "Christian Examiner." Of Herder, George
+Bancroft wrote an account in the "North American Review," and George
+Ripley in the "Christian Examiner." The second number of "The Dial"
+contains a letter from Mr. Ripley to a theological student, in which
+this particular book of Herder is warmly commended, as being worth the
+trouble of learning German to read. The volume was remarkable for
+earnest enlightenment, its discernment of the spirit beneath the letter,
+its generous interpretations, and its suggestions of a better future for
+the philosophy of religion. Herder was one of the illuminated minds;
+though not professedly a disciple, he had felt the influence of Kant,
+and was cordially in sympathy with the men who were trying to break the
+spell of form and tradition. With Lessing more especially, Herder's
+"Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," of which a translation by Dr. James Marsh was
+published in 1833, found its way to New England, and helped to confirm
+the disposition to seek the springs of inspiration in the human mind,
+whence all poetry proceeded. The writer of the book, by applying to
+Hebrew poetry the rules of critical appreciation by which all poetic
+creations are judged, abolished so far the distinction between sacred
+and secular, and transferred to the credit of human genius the products
+commonly ascribed to divine. In the persons of the great bards of Israel
+all bards were glorified; the soul's creative power was recognized, and
+with it the heart of the transcendental faith.
+
+The influence of Schleiermacher was even more distinct than that of
+Herder. One book of his, in particular, made a deep impression,--the
+"Reden ueber Religion," published in 1799. The book is thus described by
+Mr. George Ripley, in a controversial letter to Mr. Andrews Norton, who
+had assailed Schleiermacher as an atheist. "The 'Discourses on Religion'
+were not intended to present a system of theology. They are highly
+rhetorical in manner, filled with bursts of impassioned eloquence,
+always intense, and sometimes extravagant; addressed to the feelings,
+not to speculation; and expressly disclaiming all pretensions to an
+exposition of doctrine. They were published at a time when hostility to
+religion, and especially to Christianity as a divine revelation, was
+deemed a proof of talent and refinement. The influence of the church was
+nearly exhausted; the highest efforts of thought were of a destructive
+character; a frivolous spirit pervaded society; religion was deprived of
+its supremacy; and a 'starveling theology' was exalted in place of the
+living word. Schleiermacher could not contemplate the wretched
+meagreness and degradation of his age without being moved as by 'a
+heavenly impulse.' His spirit was stirred within him as he saw men
+turning from the true God to base idols. He felt himself impelled to go
+forth with the power of a fresh and youthful enthusiasm, for the
+restoration of religion; to present it in its most sublime aspect, free
+from its perversions, disentangled from human speculation, as founded in
+the essential nature of man, and indispensable to the complete unfolding
+of his inward being. In order to recognize everything which is really
+religious among men, and to admit even the lowest degree of it into the
+idea of religion, he wishes to make this as broad and comprehensive in
+its character as possible." In illustration of this purpose Mr. Ripley
+quotes the author as follows: "I maintain that piety is the necessary
+and spontaneous product of the depths of every elevated nature; that it
+possesses a rightful claim to a peculiar province in the soul, over
+which it may exercise an unlimited sovereignty; that it is worthy, by
+its intrinsic power, to be a source of life to the most noble and
+exalted minds; and that from its essential character it deserves to be
+known and received by them. These are the points which I defend, and
+which I would fain establish."
+
+From this it will appear that Schleiermacher gave countenance to the
+spiritual aspect of transcendentalism, and co-operated with the general
+movement it represented. His position that religion was not a system of
+dogmas, but an inward experience; that it was not a speculation, but a
+feeling; that its primal verities rested not on miracle or tradition,
+not on the Bible letter or on ecclesiastical institution, but on the
+soul's own sense of things divine; that this sense belonged by nature to
+the human race, and gave to all forms of religion such genuineness as
+they had; that all affirmation was partial, and all definition
+deceptive; proved to be practically the same with that taken by Jacobi,
+and was so received by the disciples of the new philosophy.
+
+But Schleiermacher was an Evangelical Lutheran, a believer in
+supernatural religion, in Christ, in Christianity as a special
+dispensation, in the miracles of the New Testament. So far from being a
+"rationalist," he was the most formidable opponent that "rationalism"
+had; for his efforts were directed against the critical and theological
+method, and in support of the spiritual method of dealing with religious
+truths. In explaining religion as being in its primitive character a
+sense of divine things in the soul, and as having its seat, not in
+knowledge, nor yet in action, neither in theology nor in morality, but
+in feeling, in aspiration, longing, love, veneration, conscious
+dependence, filial trust, he deprived "rationalism" of its strength.
+Hence his attraction for liberal orthodox believers in America.
+Schleiermacher had as many disciples among the Congregationalists as
+among their antagonists of the opposite school. Professors Edwards and
+Park included thoughts of his in their "Selections from German
+Literature." The pulpit transcendentalists acknowledged their
+indebtedness to him, and the debt they acknowledged was sentimental
+rather than intellectual. They thanked him for the spirit of fervent
+piety, deep, cordial, human, unlimited in generosity, untrammelled by
+logical distinctions, rather than for new light on philosophical
+problems. His bursts of eloquent enthusiasm over men whom the church
+outlawed--Spinoza for example--made amends with them for the absence of
+doctrinal exactness. A warm sympathy with those who detached religion
+from dogma, and recognized the religious sentiment under its most
+diverse forms, was characteristic of the new spirit that burned in New
+England. Schleiermacher was one of the first and foremost to encourage
+such sympathy: he based it on the idea that man was by nature religious,
+endowed with spiritual faculties, and that was welcome tidings; and
+though he retained the essence of the evangelical system, he retained it
+in a form that could be dropped without injury to the principle by which
+it was justified. Thus Schleiermacher strengthened the very positions he
+assailed, and gave aid and comfort to the enemy he would overthrow. The
+transcendentalists, it is true, employed against the "rationalists" the
+weapons that he put into their hands. At the same time they left as
+unimportant the theological system which his weapons were manufactured
+to support.
+
+But it was through the literature of Germany that the transcendental
+philosophy chiefly communicated itself. Goethe, Richter and Novalis were
+more persuasive teachers than Kant, Jacobi or Fichte. To those who
+could not read German these authors were interpreted by Thomas Carlyle,
+who took up the cause of German philosophy and literature, and wrote
+about them with passionate power in the English reviews; not contenting
+himself with giving surface accounts of them, but plunging boldly into
+the depths, and carrying his readers with him through discussions that,
+but for his persuasive eloquence, would have had little charm to
+ordinary minds. Goethe and Richter were his heroes: their methods and
+opinions are of the greatest account with him; and he leaves nothing
+unexplained of the intellectual foundations on which they builded.
+Consequently in the remarkable papers that Carlyle wrote about them and
+their books, full report is given of the place held by the Kantean
+philosophy in their culture. The article on Novalis, in the "Foreign
+Review" of 1829, No. 7, presents with a master hand the peculiarities of
+the new metaphysics that were regenerating the German mind. Regenerating
+is not too strong a word for the influence that he ascribes to it. Thus
+in 1827 he wrote in the "Edinburgh Review:"
+
+"The critical philosophy has been regarded by persons of approved
+judgment, and nowise directly implicated in the furthering of it, as
+distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which
+it came to light. August Wilhelm Schlegel has stated in plain terms his
+belief that in respect of its probable influence on the moral culture of
+Europe, it stands on a line with the Reformation. We mention Schlegel as
+a man whose opinion has a known value among ourselves. But the worth of
+Kant's philosophy is not to be gathered from votes alone. The noble
+system of morality, the purer theology, the lofty views of man's nature
+derived from it; nay, perhaps the very discussion of such matters, to
+which it gave so strong an impetus, have told with remarkable and
+beneficial influence on the whole spiritual character of Germany. No
+writer of any importance in that country, be he acquainted or not with
+the critical philosophy, but breathes a spirit of devoutness and
+elevation more or less directly drawn from it. Such men as Goethe and
+Schiller cannot exist without effect in any literature or any century;
+but if one circumstance more than another has contributed to forward
+their endeavors and introduce that higher tone into the literature of
+Germany, it has been this philosophical system, to which, in wisely
+believing its results, or even in wisely denying them, all that was
+lofty and pure in the genius of poetry or the reason of man so readily
+allied itself."
+
+After quoting from "Meister's Apprenticeship" a noble passage on the
+spiritual function of art, Carlyle comments thus: "To adopt such
+sentiments into his sober practical persuasion; in any measure to feel
+and believe that such was still and must always be, the high vocation of
+the poet; on this ground of universal humanity, of ancient and now
+almost forgotten nobleness, to take his stand, even in these trivial,
+jeering, withered, unbelieving days, and through all their complex,
+dispiriting, mean, yet tumultuous influences, to make his light shine
+before men that it might beautify even our rag-gathering age with some
+beams of that mild divine splendor which had long left us, the very
+possibility of which was denied; heartily and in earnest to meditate all
+this was no common proceeding; to bring it into practice, especially in
+such a life as his has been, was among the highest and hardest
+enterprises which any man whatever could engage in."
+
+From Schiller's correspondence with Goethe, Carlyle quotes the following
+tribute to the Kantean philosophy: "From the opponents of the new
+philosophy I expect not that tolerance which is shown to every other
+system no better seen into than this; for Kant's philosophy itself, in
+its leading points, practises no tolerance, and bears much too rigorous
+a character to leave any room for accommodation. But in my eyes this
+does it honor, proving how little it can endure to have truth tampered
+with. Such a philosophy will not be shaken to pieces by a mere shake of
+the head. In the open, clear, accessible field of inquiry it builds up
+its system, seeks no shade, makes no reservation, but even as it treats
+its neighbors, so it requires to be treated, and may be forgiven for
+lightly esteeming everything but proofs. Nor am I terrified to think
+that the law of change, from which no human and no divine work finds
+grace, will operate on this philosophy as on every other, and one day
+its form will be destroyed, but its foundations will not have this fate
+to fear, for ever since mankind has existed, and any reason among
+mankind, these same first principles have been admitted, and on the
+whole, acted on."
+
+Of Richter he writes: "Richter's philosophy, a matter of no ordinary
+interest, both as it agrees with the common philosophy of Germany, and
+disagrees with it, must not be touched on for the present. One only
+observation we shall make: it is not mechanical or sceptical; it springs
+not from the forum or the laboratory, but from the depths of the human
+spirit, and yields as its fairest product a noble system of morality,
+and the firmest conviction of religion. An intense and continual faith
+in man's immortality and native grandeur accompanies him; from amid the
+vortices of life he looks up to a heavenly loadstar; the solution of
+what is visible and transient, he finds in what is invisible and
+eternal. He has doubted, he denies, yet he believes."
+
+Of Novalis, scarcely more than a name to Americans, the same oracle
+speaks thus: "The aim of Novalis' whole philosophy is to preach and
+establish the majesty of reason, in the strict philosophical sense; to
+conquer for it all provinces of human thought, and everywhere resolve
+its vassal understanding into fealty, the right and only useful relation
+for it. How deeply these and the like principles (those of the Kantean
+philosophy) had impressed themselves on Novalis, we see more and more
+the further we study his writings. Naturally a deep, religious,
+contemplative spirit, purified also by harsh affliction, and familiar in
+the 'Sanctuary of Sorrow,' he comes before us as the most ideal of all
+idealists. For him the material creation is but an appearance, a typical
+shadow in which the Deity manifests himself to man. Not only has the
+unseen world a reality, but the only reality; the rest being not
+metaphorically, but literally and in scientific strictness, 'a show;'
+in the words of the poet:
+
+    'Sound and smoke overclouding the splendor of heaven!'
+
+The invisible world is near us; or rather, it is here, in us and about
+us; were the fleshly coil removed from our soul, the glories of the
+unseen were even now around us, as the ancients fabled of the spheral
+music. Thus, not in word only, but in truth and sober belief he feels
+himself encompassed by the Godhead; feels in every thought that 'in Him
+he lives, moves, and has his being.'"
+
+These declarations from a man who was becoming prominent in the world of
+literature, and whose papers were widely and enthusiastically read, had
+great weight with people to whom the German was an unknown tongue. But
+it was not an unknown tongue to all, and they who had mastered it were
+active communicators of its treasures. Carlyle's efforts at interesting
+English readers through his remarkable translation of Wilhelm Meister,
+and the "Specimens of German Romance," which contained pieces by Tieck,
+Jean Paul, Hoffmann, and Musaeus, published in 1827, were seconded here
+by F. H. Hedge, C. T. Brooks, J. S. Dwight, and others, who made
+familiar to the American public the choicest poems of the most famous
+German bards. Richter became well known by his "Autobiography," "Quintus
+Fixlein," "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," "Hesperus," "Titan," "The
+Campaner Thal," the writings and versions of Madame de Stael. The third
+volume of the "Dial," July, 1841, opened with a remarkable paper on
+Goethe, by Margaret Fuller. The pages of the "Dial" abounded in
+references to Goethe's ideas and writings. No author occupied the
+cultivated New England mind as much as he did. None of these writers
+taught formally the doctrines of the transcendental philosophy, but they
+reflected one or another aspect of it. They assumed its cardinal
+principles in historical and literary criticism, in dramatic art, in
+poetry and romance. They conveyed its spirit of aspiration after ideal
+standards of perfection. They caught from it their judgments on society
+and religion. They communicated its aroma, and so imparted the
+quickening breath of its soul to people who would have started back in
+alarm from its doctrines.
+
+The influence of the transcendental philosophy on German literature was
+fully conceded by Menzel, who, however, found little trace of it in
+Goethe. Of the author of the philosophy he wrote: "Kant was very far
+from assenting to French infidelity and its immoral consequences. He
+directed man to himself, to the moral law in his own bosom; and the
+fresh breath of life of the old Grecian dignity of man penetrates the
+whole of his luminous philosophy." Of Goethe he wrote: "If he ever
+acknowledged allegiance to a good spirit, to great ideas, to virtue, he
+did it only because they had become the order of the day, for, on the
+other hand, he has, again, served every weakness, vanity and folly, if
+they were but looked on with favor at the time; in short, like a good
+player, he has gone through all the parts." Menzel's book was
+translated by a man who had no sympathy with Transcendentalism--Prof. C.
+C. Felton; was admired by people of his own school, and was sharply
+criticised, especially in the portions relating to Goethe, by the
+transcendentalists, who accepted Carlyle's view. He and they put the
+most generous interpretations on the masterpieces of the poet, passed by
+as incidental, did not see, or in their own mind transfigured, the
+objectionable features that Menzel seized on. Too little was ascribed to
+the foreign French element that reached the literature of Germany
+through Prussia--to Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot--whose ideas fell in
+with the unworthier sceptical tendencies of the Kantean system, and
+polluted the waters of that clear, cold stream; too much was ascribed to
+the noble idealism that was credited with power to glorify all it
+touched, and redeem even low things from degradation. If therefore they
+apologized for what the sensational moralists blamed, they did it in
+good faith, not as excusing the indecency, but as surmounting it. What
+they admired was the art, and the aspiration it expressed. The devotees
+of the French spirit, in its frivolity and meretricious beauty, they
+turned away from with disdain. There was enough of the nobler kind to
+engage them. When they went to France they went for what France had in
+common with Germany--an idealism of the wholesome, ethical and spiritual
+type, which, whether German, French or English, bore always the same
+characteristics of beauty and nobleness. Much that was unspiritual, all
+that was merely speculative, they passed by. With an appetite for the
+generous and inspiring only, they sought the really earnest teachers, of
+whom in France there were a few. The influence of those few was great in
+proportion to their fewness probably, quite as much as to their merit as
+philosophers.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRANCE.
+
+
+From the time of Malebranche, who died in 1715, to Maine de Biran,
+Royer-Collard, Ampere and Cousin, a period of about a century,
+philosophy in France had not borne an honorable name. The French mind
+was active; philosophy was a profession; the philosophical world was
+larger than in Germany, where it was limited to the Universities. But
+France took no lead in speculation, it waited to receive impulse from
+other lands; and even then, instead of taking up the impulse and
+carrying it on with original and sympathetic force, it was content to
+exhibit and reproduce it. The office of expositor, made easy by the
+perspicacity of its intellect and the flexibility of its language, was
+accepted and discharged with a cleverness that was recognized by all
+Europe. Its histories of philosophy, translations, expositions,
+reproductions, were admirable for neatness and clearness. The most
+obscure systems became intelligible in that limpid and lucid speech,
+which reported with faultless dexterity the agile movements of the
+Gallic mind, and made popular the most abstruse doctrines of
+metaphysics. German philosophy in its original dress was outlandish,
+even to practised students in German. The readers of French were many in
+England and the United States, and the readers of French, without
+severe labor on their part, were put in possession of the essential
+ideas of the deep thinkers of the race. The best accounts of human
+speculation are in French. Barthelemy Saint Hilaire interprets
+Aristotle, and throws important light on Indian Philosophy; Bouillet
+translates Plotinus; Emil Saisset translates Spinoza; Tissot and Jules
+Barni perform the same service for Kant; Jules Simon and Etienne
+Vacherot undertake to make intelligible the School of Alexandria; Paul
+Janet explains the dialectics of Plato; Adolphe Franck deals with the
+Jewish Kabbala; Charles de Remusat with Anselm, Abelard and Bacon; MM.
+Haureau and Rousselot with the philosophy of the middle age; M. Chauvet
+with the theories of the human understanding in antiquity. Cousin
+published unedited works of Proclus, analyzed the commentaries of
+Olympiodorus on the Platonic dialogues, made a complete translation of
+Plato, admirable for clearness and strength, and proposed to present,
+not of course with his own hand, but by the hands of friendly
+fellow-workers, and under his own direction, examples of whatever was
+best in every philosophical system. The philosophical work of France is
+ably summed up in the report on "Philosophy in France in the nineteenth
+century," presented by Felix Ravaisson, member of the Institute, and
+published in 1868, under the auspices of the Ministry of Public
+Instruction.
+
+The ideas of Locke were brought from London to Paris by Voltaire, who
+became acquainted with them during a residence in England, and found
+them effective in his warfare against the ecclesiastical institutions of
+his country. Through his brilliant interpretations and keen
+applications, they gained currency, became fashionable among the wits,
+were domesticated with people of culture and elegance, and worked their
+way into the religion and politics of the time. It is needless to say
+that in his hands full justice was done to their external and material
+aspects.
+
+The system found a more exact and methodical expounder in Condillac,
+who reduced it to greater simplicity by eliminating from it what in the
+original marred its unity, namely reflection, the bent of the mind back
+on itself, whereby it took cognizance of impressions made by the outer
+world. Taking what remained of the system, the notion that all knowledge
+came primarily through the senses, and drawing the conclusion that the
+mind itself was a product of sensation, Condillac fashioned a doctrine
+which had the merit, such as it was, of utter intelligibleness to the
+least instructed mind; a system of materialism naked and unadorned. If
+he himself forbore to push his principle to its extreme results,
+declining to assert that we were absolutely nothing else than products
+of sensation, and surmising that beneath the layers of intelligence and
+reason there might lurk a principle that sensation could not account
+for, something stable in the midst of the ceaseless instability,
+something absolute below everything relative, which might be called
+action or will, the popular interpretation of his philosophy took no
+account of such subtleties. In vain did his disciple Destutt de Tracy
+declare that "the principle of movement is the will, and that the will
+is the person, the man himself." The fascination of simplicity proved
+more than a match for nicety of distinction, and both were ranked among
+materialists.
+
+Cabanis was at no pains to conceal the most repulsive features of the
+system. In his work, "The Relations of the Physical and the Moral in
+Man," he maintained bluntly the theory that there was no spiritual being
+apart from the body; that mind had no substance, no separate existence
+of its own, but was in all its parts and qualities a product of the
+nervous system; that sensibility of every kind, sentimental,
+intelligent, moral, spiritual, including the whole domain of conscious
+and unconscious vitality, was a nervous manifestation; that man was
+capable of sensation because he had nerves; that he was what he was
+because of the wondrous character of the mechanism of sensation; that,
+in a word, the perfection of organization was the perfection of
+humanity. It was Cabanis who said "the brain secretes thought as the
+liver secretes bile." Cabanis modified his philosophy before his death,
+but without effect to break the force of his cardinal positions. The
+results of such teaching appeared in a morality of selfishness, tending
+to self-indulgence--a morality destitute of nobleness and sweetness,
+summing up its lessons in the maxims that good is good to eat; that the
+pleasurable thing is right, the painful thing wrong; that success is the
+measure of rectitude; that the aim of life is the attainment of
+happiness, and that happiness means physical enjoyment; that virtue and
+vice are names for prudence and for folly,--Virtue being conformity with
+the ways of the world, Vice being non-conformity with the ways of the
+world; no ideal standard being recognized for the one, no law of
+rectitude being confessed for the other. Conscience was regarded as an
+artificial habit created by custom or acquiesced in from tradition; the
+"categorical imperative" was pronounced the dogmatism of the fanatic.
+
+From such principles atheism naturally proceeded. Atheism not of opinion
+merely, but of sentiment and feeling; for at that time "the potencies"
+of matter impressed no such awe upon the mind as they have done since;
+the "mystery of matter" was unfelt; physiology was an unexplored region;
+the materialist simply denied spirit, putting a blank where believers in
+religion had been used to find a soul; and had no alternative but to run
+sensationalism into sensualism, and to give the senses the flavor of the
+ground. With us the sensational philosophy has become refined into a
+philosophy of experience, and the materialist finds himself in a region
+where to distinguish between matter and spirit is difficult, to say the
+least. But a hundred years ago matter was clod, and the passion it
+engendered smelt of the charnel-house. The morbid insanities of the
+revolution, the orgies in which blood and wine ran together, the savage
+glee, the delirium that ensued when the uncertainty of life acting on
+the impulse to enjoy life while it lasted, made men ferocious in
+clutching at immediate pleasure, attest the consequences that ensued
+from such frank adoption of the sensational philosophy as was practised
+among the French. Locke was a man of piety, which even his warmest
+apologists will hardly claim for Voltaire. The English mind, grave and
+thoughtful, trained by religious institutions in religious beliefs, was
+less inclined than the French to drive speculative theories to extreme
+conclusions. The philosophy of sensationalism culminated, not in the
+French Revolution, as has been vulgarly asserted, but in the unbelief
+and sensual extravagance that marked one phase of it.
+
+In this there was nothing original; there was no originality in the
+reaction that followed, and gave to modern philosophy in France its
+spiritual character. Laromiguiere, educated in the school of Condillac,
+improved on the suggestion that Condillac had given, and deepened into a
+chasm the scratch he had made to indicate a distinction between the
+results of sensation and the faculties of the mind. In his analysis of
+the mental constitution he came upon two facts that denoted an original
+activity in advance of sensation--namely, _attention_ and _desire_: the
+former the root of the intellectual, the latter of the moral powers;
+both at last resolvable into one principle--attention. This discovery
+met with wide and cordial welcome, the popularity of Laromiguiere's
+lectures, delivered in 1811, 1812, 1813, revealing the fact that
+thoughtful people were prepared for a new metaphysical departure.
+
+Maine de Biran, who more than the rest deserves the name of an original
+investigator, a severe, solitary, independent thinker, pupil of no
+school and founder of none, brought into strong relief the activity of
+the intellect. Thought, he maintained, proceeds from will, which is at
+the base of the personality, is, in fact, the essence of personality.
+The primary fact is volition. Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am."
+Maine de Biran said, "I will, therefore I am." "In every one of my
+determinations," he declared, "I recognize myself as being a cause
+anterior to its effect and capable of surviving it. I behold myself as
+outside of the movement I produce, and independent of time; for this
+reason, strictly speaking, I do not _become_, I really and absolutely
+_am_." "To be, to act, to will, are the same thing under different
+names." Will as the seat of activity; will as the core of personality;
+will as the soul of causation: here is the corner-stone for a new
+structure to replace the old one of the "Cyclopaedists." Important
+deductions followed from such a first principle; the dignity of the
+moral being, freedom of the moral will, the nobility of existence, the
+persistency of the individual as a ground for continuous effort and
+far-reaching hope, the spirituality of man and his destiny. To recover
+the will from the mass of sensations that had buried it out of sight,
+was the achievement of this philosopher. It was an achievement by which
+philosophy was disengaged from physics, and sent forth on a more
+cheerful way.
+
+The next steps were taken by disciples of the Scotch
+school--Royer-Collard, Victor Cousin and Theodore Jouffroy. The last
+translated Reid and Stewart from English into French; the two former
+lectured on them. The three, being masters of clear and persuasive
+speech, made their ideas popular in France. Cousin's lectures on the
+Scotch school, including Reid, were delivered in 1819. The lectures on
+Kant were given in 1820. Both courses were full and adequate. Cousin
+committed himself to neither, but freely criticised both, laying stress
+on the sceptical aspect of the transcendental system as expounded by
+Kant.
+
+Cousin's own system was the once famous, now discarded eclecticism,
+under cover of which another phase of idealism was presented which found
+favor in America. The cardinal principle of eclecticism was that truth
+was contained in no system or group of systems, but in all together;
+that each had its portion and made its contribution; and that the true
+philosophy would be reached by a process of intellectual distillation by
+which the essential truth in each would be extracted. A method like this
+would have nothing to recommend it but its generosity, if there were no
+criterion by which truths could be tested, no philosophical principle,
+in short, to govern the selection of materials. Eclecticism must have a
+philosophy before proceeding to make one, must have arrived at its
+conclusion before entering on its process. And this it did. It will be
+seen by the following extracts from his writings what the fundamental
+ideas of M. Cousin were, and in what respect they aided the process of
+rationalism.
+
+The quotations are from his exposition of eclecticism:
+
+     "Facts are the point of departure, if not the limit of philosophy.
+     Now facts, whatever they may be, exist for us only as they come to
+     our consciousness. It is there alone that observation seizes them
+     and describes them, before committing them to induction, which
+     forces them to reveal the consequences which they contain in their
+     bosom. The field of philosophical observation is consciousness;
+     there is no other; but in this nothing is to be neglected;
+     everything is important, for everything is connected; and if one
+     part be wanting, complete unity is unattainable. To return within
+     our consciousness, and scrupulously to study all the phenomena,
+     their differences and their relations--this is the primary study of
+     philosophy. Its scientific name is psychology. Psychology is then
+     the condition and, as it were, the vestibule of philosophy. The
+     psychological method consists in completely retiring within the
+     world of consciousness, in order to become familiar in that sphere
+     where all is reality, but where the reality is so various and so
+     delicate; and the psychological talent consists in placing
+     ourselves at will within this interior world, in presenting the
+     spectacle there displayed to ourselves, and in reproducing freely
+     and distinctly all the facts which are accidentally and confusedly
+     brought to our notice by the circumstances of life."...
+
+     "The first duty of the psychological method is to retire within the
+     field of consciousness, where there is nothing but phenomena, that
+     are all capable of being perceived and judged by observation. Now
+     as no substantial existence falls under the eye of consciousness,
+     it follows that the first effect of a rigid application of method
+     is to postpone the subject of ontology. It postpones it, I say, but
+     does not destroy it. It is a fact, indeed, attested by observation,
+     that in this same consciousness, in which there is nothing but
+     phenomena, there are found notions, whose regular development
+     passes the limits of consciousness and attains the knowledge of
+     actual existences. Would you stop the development of these notions?
+     You would then arbitrarily limit the compass of a fact, you would
+     attack this fact itself, and thus shake the authority of all other
+     facts. We must either call in question the authority of
+     consciousness in itself, or admit this authority without reserve
+     for all the facts attested by consciousness. The reason is no less
+     certain and real than the will or the sensibility; its certainty
+     once admitted we must follow it wherever it rigorously conducts,
+     though it be even into the depths of ontology. For example, it is a
+     rational fact attested by consciousness, that in the view of
+     intelligence, every phenomenon which is presented supposes a cause.
+     It is a fact, moreover, that this principle of causality is marked
+     with the characteristics of universality and necessity. If it be
+     universal and necessary, to limit it would be to destroy it. Now in
+     the phenomenon of sensation, the principle of causality intervenes
+     universally and necessarily, and refers this phenomenon to a cause;
+     and our consciousness testifying that this cause is not the
+     personal cause which the will represents, it follows that the
+     principle of causality in its irresistible application conducts to
+     an impersonal cause, that is to say, to an external cause, which
+     subsequently, and always irresistibly, the principle of causality
+     enriches with the characteristics and laws, of which the aggregate
+     is the Universe. Here then is an existence; but an existence
+     revealed by a principle which is itself attested by consciousness.
+     Here is a primary step in ontology, but by the path of psychology,
+     that is to say, of observation. We are led by similar processes to
+     the Cause of all causes, to the substantial Cause, to God; and not
+     only to a God of Power, but to a God of Justice, a God of Holiness;
+     so that this experimental method, which, applied to a single order
+     of phenomena, incomplete and exclusive, destroyed ontology and the
+     higher elements of consciousness, applied with fidelity, firmness
+     and completeness, to all the phenomena, builds up that which it had
+     overthrown, and by itself furnishes ontology with a sure and
+     legitimate instrument. Thus, having commenced with modesty, we can
+     end with results whose certainty is equalled by their
+     importance."...
+
+     "What physical inquirer, since Euler, seeks anything in nature but
+     forces and laws? Who now speaks of atoms? And even molecules, the
+     old atoms revived--who defends them as anything but an hypothesis?
+     If the fact be incontestable, if modern physics be now employed
+     only with forces and laws, I draw the rigorous conclusion from it,
+     that the science of Physics, whether it know it or not, is no
+     longer material, and that it became spiritual when it rejected
+     every other method than observation and induction, which can never
+     lead to aught but forces and laws. Now what is there material in
+     forces and laws? The physical sciences, then, themselves have
+     entered into the broad path of an enlightened spiritualism; and
+     they have only to march with a firm step, and to gain a more and
+     more profound knowledge of forces and laws, in order to arrive at
+     more important generalizations. Let us go still further. As it is a
+     law already recognized of the same reason which governs humanity
+     and nature, to refer every finite cause and every multiple
+     law--that is to say, every phenomenal cause and every phenomenal
+     law--to something absolute, which leaves nothing to be sought
+     beyond it in relation to existence, that is to say, to a substance;
+     so this law refers the external world composed of forces and laws
+     to a substance, which must needs be a cause in order to be the
+     subject of the causes of this world, which must needs be an
+     intelligence in order to be the subject of its laws; a substance,
+     in fine, which must needs be the identity of activity and
+     intelligence. We have thus arrived accordingly, for the second
+     time, by observation and induction in the external sphere, at
+     precisely the same point to which observation and induction have
+     successively conducted us in the sphere of personality and in that
+     of reason; consciousness in its triplicity is therefore one; the
+     physical and moral world is one, science is one, that is to say, in
+     other words, God is One."...
+
+     "Having gained these heights, philosophy becomes more luminous as
+     well as more grand; universal harmony enters into human thought,
+     enlarges it, and gives it peace. The divorce of ontology and
+     psychology, of speculation and observation, of science and
+     common-sense, is brought to an end by a method which arrives at
+     speculation by observation, at ontology by psychology, in order
+     then to confirm observation by speculation, psychology by ontology,
+     and which starting from the immediate facts of consciousness, of
+     which the common-sense of the human race is composed, derives from
+     them the science which contains nothing more than common-sense, but
+     which elevates that to its purest and most rigid form, and enables
+     it to comprehend itself. But I here approach a fundamental point.
+
+     "If every fact of consciousness contains all the human faculties,
+     sensibility, free activity, and reason, the me, the not-me, and
+     their absolute identity; and if every fact of consciousness be
+     equal to itself, it follows that every man who has the
+     consciousness of himself possesses and cannot but possess all the
+     ideas that are necessarily contained in consciousness. Thus every
+     man, if he knows himself, knows all the rest, nature and God at the
+     same time with himself. Every man believes in his own existence,
+     every man therefore believes in the existence of the world and of
+     God; every man thinks, every man therefore thinks God, if we may so
+     express it; every human proposition, reflecting the consciousness,
+     reflects the idea of unity and of being that is essential to
+     consciousness; every human proposition therefore contains God;
+     every man who speaks, speaks of God, and every word is an act of
+     faith and a hymn. Atheism is a barren formula, a negation without
+     reality, an abstraction of the mind which cannot assert itself
+     without self-destruction; for every assertion, even though
+     negative, is a judgment which contains the idea of being, and,
+     consequently, God in His fulness. Atheism is the illusion of a few
+     sophists, who place their liberty in opposition to their reason,
+     and are unable even to give an account to themselves of what they
+     think; but the human race, which is never false to its
+     consciousness and never places itself in contradiction to its laws,
+     possesses the knowledge of God, believes in him, and never ceases
+     to proclaim Him. In fact, the human race believes in reason and
+     cannot but believe in it, in that reason which is manifested in
+     consciousness, in a momentary relation with the me--the pure though
+     faint reflection of that primitive light which flows from the bosom
+     of the eternal substance, which is at once substance, cause,
+     intelligence. Without the manifestation of reason in our
+     consciousness, there could be no knowledge--neither psychological,
+     nor, still less, ontological. Reason is, in some sort, the bridge
+     between psychology and ontology, between consciousness and being;
+     it rests at the same time on both; it descends from God and
+     approaches man; it makes its appearance in the consciousness, as a
+     guest who brings intelligence of an unknown world of which it at
+     once presents the idea and awakens the want. If reason were
+     personal, it would have no value, no authority, beyond the limits
+     of the individual subject. If it remained in the condition of
+     primitive substance, without manifestation, it would be the same
+     for the me which would not know itself, as if it were not. It is
+     necessary therefore that the intelligent substance should manifest
+     itself; and this manifestation is the appearance of reason in the
+     consciousness. Reason then is literally a revelation, a necessary
+     and universal revelation, which is wanting to no man and which
+     enlightens every man on his coming into the world: _illuminat omnem
+     hominem venientem in hunc mundum_. Reason is the necessary mediator
+     between God and man, the [Greek: logos] of Pythagoras and Plato,
+     the Word made flesh which serves as the interpreter of God and the
+     teacher of man, divine and human at the same time. It is not,
+     indeed, the absolute God in his majestic individuality, but his
+     manifestation in spirit and in truth; it is not the Being of
+     beings, but it is the revealed God of the human race. As God is
+     never wanting to the human race and never abandons it, so the
+     human race believes in God with an irresistible and unalterable
+     faith, and this unity of faith is its own highest unity....
+
+     "If these convictions of faith be combined in every act of
+     consciousness, and if consciousness be one in the whole human race,
+     whence arises the prodigious diversity which seems to exist between
+     man and man, and in what does this diversity consist? In truth,
+     when we perceive at first view so many apparent differences between
+     one individual and another, one country and another, one epoch of
+     humanity and another, we feel a profound emotion of melancholy, and
+     are tempted to regard an intellectual development so capricious,
+     and even the whole of humanity, as a phenomenon without
+     consistency, without grandeur, and without interest. But it is
+     demonstrated by a more attentive observation of facts, that no man
+     is a stranger to either of the three great ideas which constitute
+     consciousness, namely, personality or the liberty of man,
+     impersonality or the necessity of nature, and the providence of
+     God. Every man comprehends these three ideas immediately, because
+     he found them at first and constantly finds them again within
+     himself. The exceptions to this fact, by their small number, by the
+     absurdities which they involve, by the difficulties which they
+     create, serve only to exhibit, in a still clearer light, the
+     universality of faith in the human race, the treasure of good sense
+     deposited in truth, and the peace and happiness that there are for
+     a human soul in not discarding the convictions of its kind. Leave
+     out the exceptions which appear from time to time in certain
+     critical periods of history, and you will perceive that the masses
+     which alone have true existence, always and everywhere live in the
+     same faith, of which the forms only vary."
+
+These somewhat too copious extracts have been purposely taken from the
+first volume of the "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," edited
+by George Ripley in 1838, rather than from the collected writings of
+Cousin, because they show what a leading New England transcendentalist
+thought most important in the teaching of the French school. His own
+estimate of the philosophy and his expectations from it may be learned
+from the closing passages of the introduction to that volume:
+
+     "The objects at which Mr. Coleridge aims, it seems to me, are in a
+     great measure accomplished by the philosophy of Cousin. This
+     philosophy demolishes, by one of the most beautiful specimens of
+     scientific analysis that is anywhere to be met with, the system of
+     sensation, against which Mr. Coleridge utters such eloquent and
+     pathetic denunciations. It establishes on a rock the truth of the
+     everlasting sentiments of the human heart. It exhibits to the
+     speculative inquirer, in the rigorous forms of science, the reality
+     of our instinctive faith in God, in virtue, in the human soul, in
+     the beauty of holiness, and in the immortality of man.
+
+     "Such a philosophy, I cannot but believe, will ultimately find a
+     cherished abode in the youthful affections of this nation, in whose
+     history, from the beginning, the love of freedom, the love of
+     philosophical inquiry, and the love of religion have been combined
+     in a thrice holy bond. We need a philosophy like this to purify and
+     enlighten our politics, to consecrate our industry, to cheer and
+     elevate society. We need it for our own use in the hours of mental
+     misgiving and gloom; when the mystery of the universe presses
+     heavily upon our souls; when the fountains of the great deep are
+     broken up, and the
+
+                  "Intellectual power
+     Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way,"
+
+     over the troubled waters of the stormy sea. We need it for the use
+     of our practical men, who, surrounded on every side with the
+     objects of sense, engrossed with the competitions of business, the
+     rivalries of public life, or the cares of professional duty, and
+     accustomed to look at the immediate and obvious utility of
+     everything which appeals to their notice, often acquire a distaste
+     for all moral and religious inquiries, and as an almost inevitable
+     consequence, lose their interest, and often their belief, in the
+     moral and religious faculties of their nature. We need it for the
+     use of our young men, who are engaged in the active pursuits of
+     life, or devoted to the cultivation of literature. How many on the
+     very threshold of manly responsibility, by the influence of a few
+     unhappy mistakes, which an acquaintance with their higher nature,
+     as unfolded by a sound religious philosophy, would have prevented,
+     have consigned themselves to disgrace, remorse, and all the evils
+     of a violated conscience! How many have become the dupes of the
+     sophists' eloquence, or the victims of the fanatics' terrors, for
+     whom the spirit of a true philosophy--a philosophy 'baptized in the
+     pure fountain of eternal love,' would have preserved the charm and
+     beauty of life."
+
+Cousin's "History of Philosophy," translated by H. G. Linberg, was
+published in 1832. The "Elements of Psychology," by C. S. Henry,
+appeared in 1834. Thus Cousin was early introduced and recommended, and
+his expositions of the German schools were received. The volume from
+which passages have been cited had an important influence on New England
+thought.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TRANSCENDENTALISM IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+The prophet of the new philosophy in England was Samuel Taylor
+Coleridge; in the early part of the present century, perhaps the most
+conspicuous figure in our literary world; the object of more admiration,
+the centre of more sympathy, the source of more intellectual life than
+any individual of his time; the criticism, the censure, the manifold
+animadversion he was made the mark for, better attest his power than the
+ovations he received from his worshippers. The believers in his genius
+lacked words to express their sense of his greatness. He was the
+"eternal youth," the "divine child." The brilliant men of his period
+acknowledged his surpassing brilliancy; the deep men confessed his
+depth; the spiritual men went to him for inspiration. His mind, affluent
+and profuse, contained within no barriers of conventional form, poured
+an abounding flood of thoughts over the whole literary domain. He was
+essayist, journalist, politician, poet, dramatist, metaphysician,
+philosopher, theologian, divine, critic, expositor, dreamer,
+soliloquizer; in all eloquent, in all intense. The effect he produced on
+the minds of his contemporaries will scarcely be believed now. At
+present he is little more than a name: his books are pronounced
+unreadable; his opinions are not quoted as authority; his force is
+spent. But in 1851, Thomas Carlyle, then past the years of his
+enthusiasm, and verging on the scornful epoch of his intellectual
+career, spoke of him, in the "Life of Sterling," as "A sublime man, who,
+alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood;
+escaping from the black materialisms and revolutionary deluges, with
+God, freedom, immortality still his; a king of men. The practical
+intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned
+him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the rising spirits of the young
+generation he had this dusky, sublime character, and sat there as a kind
+of _Magus_, girt in mystery and enigma, his Dodona oak grove (Mr.
+Gillman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain
+whether oracles or jargon." "To the man himself, Nature had given in
+high measure the seeds of a noble endowment, and to unfold it was
+forbidden him. A subtle, lynx-eyed intellect, tremulous, pious
+sensibility to all good and all beautiful; truly a ray of empyrean
+light,--but imbedded in such weak laxity of character, in such
+indolences and esuriences, as made strange work with it. Once more, the
+tragic story of a high endowment with an insufficient will."
+
+The abatement is painfully just; but while Coleridge lived, this very
+indolence and moral imbecility added to the interest he excited, and
+gave a mystic splendor as of a divine inspiration to his mental
+performances. The distinction between unhealthiness and inspiration has
+never been clearly marked, and the voluble utterances of the feebly
+outlined and loosely jointed soul easily passed for oracles. Thus his
+moral deficiencies aided his influence. His wonderful powers of
+conversation or rather of effusion in the midst of admiring friends
+helped the illusion and the fascination. He really seemed inspired while
+he talked; and as his talk ranged through every domain, the listeners
+carried away and communicated the impression of a superhuman wisdom.
+
+The impression that Coleridge made on minds of a very different order
+from Carlyle's, is given in the following lines by Aubrey de Vere:
+
+    "No loftier, purer soul than his hath ever
+     With awe revolved the planetary page
+           From infancy to age,
+     Of knowledge, sedulous and proud to give her
+     The whole of his great heart, for her own sake;
+     For what she is: not what she does, or what can make.
+
+     And mighty voices from afar came to him;
+     Converse of trumpets held by cloudy forms
+           And speech of choral storms.
+     Spirits of night and noontide bent to woo him;
+     He stood the while lonely and desolate
+     As Adam when he ruled a world, yet found no mate.
+
+     His loftiest thoughts were but as palms uplifted;
+     Aspiring, yet in supplicating guise--
+           His sweetest songs were sighs.
+     Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted,
+     Under Elysian shades from poppied bank,
+     With amaranths massed in dark luxuriance dank.
+
+     Coleridge, farewell! That great and grave transition
+     Which may not king or priest or conqueror spare.
+           And yet a babe can bear,
+     Has come to thee. Through life a goodly vision
+     Was thine; and time it was thy rest to take.
+     Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break;
+     When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake."
+
+In May, 1796,--he was then twenty-four years old,--Coleridge wrote to a
+friend, "I am studying German, and in about six weeks shall be able to
+read that language with tolerable fluency. Now I have some thoughts of
+making a proposal to Robinson, the great London bookseller, of
+translating all the works of Schiller, which would make a portly quarto,
+on condition that he should pay my journey and my wife's to and from
+Jena, a cheap German University where Schiller resides, and allow me two
+guineas each quarto sheet, which would maintain me. If I could realize
+this scheme, I should there study chemistry and anatomy, and bring over
+with me all the works of Semler and Michaelis, the German theologians,
+and of Kant, the great German metaphysician." In September, 1798, in
+company with Wordsworth and his sister, and at the expense of his
+munificent friends Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, he went to Germany and
+spent fourteen months in hard study. There he attended the lectures of
+Eichhorn and Blumenbach, made the acquaintance of Tieck, dipped quite
+deeply into philosophy and general literature, and took by contagion the
+speculative ideas that filled his imagination with visions of
+intellectual discovery. Schelling's "Transcendental Idealism," with
+which Coleridge was afterwards most in sympathy, was not published till
+1800. The "Philosophy of Nature" was published in 1797, the year before
+Coleridge's visit. In 1817, he tells the readers of the "Biographia
+Literaria" that he had been able to procure only two of Schelling's
+books--the first volume of his "Philosophical Writings," and the "System
+of Transcendental Idealism;" these and "a small pamphlet against Fichte,
+the spirit of which was, to my feelings, painfully incongruous with the
+principles, and which displayed the love of wisdom rather than the
+wisdom of love."
+
+The philosophical ideas of Schelling commended themselves at once to
+Coleridge, who was a born idealist, of audacious genius, speculative,
+imaginative, original, capable of any such abstract achievement as the
+German undertook.
+
+     "In Schelling's _Natur Philosophie_ and the _System des
+     Transcendentalen Idealismus_, I first found a genial coincidence
+     with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful
+     assistance in what I had yet to do. All the main and fundamental
+     ideas were born and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a
+     single page of the German philosopher; and I might indeed affirm
+     with truth, before the more important works of Schelling had been
+     written, or at least made public. Nor is this at all to be wondered
+     at. We had studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same
+     preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both
+     equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of
+     Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent
+     acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labors
+     of Behmen and other mystics which I had formed at a much earlier
+     period. God forbid that I should be suspected of a wish to enter
+     into a rivalry with Schelling for the honors so unequivocally his
+     right, not only as a great original genius, but as the _founder_ of
+     the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful _improver_ of
+     the Dynamic system, which, begun by Bruno, was reintroduced (in a
+     more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and
+     visionary accompaniments) by Kant, in whom it was the native and
+     necessary growth of his own system. Kant's followers, however, on
+     whom (for the greater part) their master's _cloak_ had fallen,
+     without, or with a very scanty portion of his _spirit_, had adopted
+     his dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species of mechanics.
+     With exception of one or two fundamental ideas which cannot be
+     withheld from Fichte, to Schelling we owe the completion and the
+     most important victories of this revolution in philosophy. To me it
+     will be happiness and honor enough, should I succeed in rendering
+     the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the
+     application of it to the most awful of subjects for the most
+     important of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's
+     own spirit and the product of original thinking, will be discovered
+     by those who are its sole legitimate judges, by better tests than
+     the mere reference to dates."
+
+The question of Coleridge's alleged plagiarism from Schelling does not
+concern us here. Whether the philosophy he taught was the product of his
+own thinking, or whether he was merely the medium for communicating the
+system of Schelling to his countrymen, is of no moment to us. For us it
+is sufficient to know that the English-speaking people on both shores of
+the Atlantic received them chiefly through the Englishman. Those who are
+interested in the other matter will find Coleridge's reputation
+vindicated in a long and elaborate introduction to the "Biographia
+Literaria," edition of 1847, by the poet's son.
+
+Coleridge was a pure Transcendentalist, of the Schelling school. The
+transcendental phrases came over and over in book and conversation,
+"reason" and "understanding," "intuition," "necessary truths,"
+"consciousness," and the rest that were used to describe the
+supersensual world and the faculties by which it was made visible. He
+shall speak for himself. The following passage from the "Biographia
+Literaria," Chapter XII., will be sufficiently intelligible to those who
+have read the previous chapters, or enough of them to comprehend their
+cardinal ideas:
+
+     "The criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and
+     therefore of course indemonstratable and incapable of further
+     analysis, the general notions of matter, spirit, soul, body,
+     action, passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness,
+     perception, memory and all these, and is satisfied if only he can
+     analyze all other notions into some one or more of these supposed
+     elements, with plausible subordination and apt arrangement; to such
+     a mind I would as courteously as possible convey the hint, that for
+     him this chapter was not written.... For philosophy, in its highest
+     sense, as the science of ultimate truths, and therefore _scientia
+     scientiarum_, this mere analysis of terms is preparative only,
+     though as a preparative discipline indispensable.
+
+     "Still less dare a favorable perusal be anticipated from the
+     proselytes of that compendious philosophy which, talking of mind,
+     but thinking of brick and mortar, or other images equally
+     abstracted from body, contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming
+     matter, and in a few hours can qualify its dullest disciples to
+     explain the _omne scibile_ by reducing all things to impressions,
+     ideas, and sensations.
+
+     "But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage
+     to avow it in an age and country in which disquisitions on all
+     subjects not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific
+     symbols, must be addressed to the public. I say, then, that it is
+     neither possible nor necessary for all men, nor for many, to be
+     philosophers. There is a philosophic consciousness which lies
+     beneath or (as it were) behind the spontaneous consciousness
+     natural to all reflecting beings. As the elder Romans distinguished
+     their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and Trans-Alpine, so may
+     we divide all the objects of human knowledge into those on this
+     side and those on the other side of the spontaneous consciousness.
+     The latter is exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, which is
+     therefore properly entitled _transcendental_, in order to
+     discriminate it at once, both from mere reflection and
+     _re_-presentation on the one hand, and on the other from those
+     flights of lawless speculation which, abandoned by _all_ distinct
+     consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of our
+     intellectual faculties, are justly condemned as _transcendent_.
+
+     "The first range of hills that encircles the scanty vale of human
+     life is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its
+     ridges the sun is born and departs. From them the stars rise, and
+     touching them they vanish. By the many, even this range, the
+     natural limit and bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known.
+     Its higher ascents are too often hidden in mists and clouds from
+     uncultivated swamps which few have courage or curiosity to
+     penetrate. To the multitude below these vapors appear, now as the
+     dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none may intrude with
+     impunity; and now all aglow, with colors not their own, they are
+     gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power. But in all
+     ages there have been a few who, measuring and sounding the rivers
+     of the vale at the feet of their farthest inaccessible falls, have
+     learned that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few
+     who, even in the level streams, have detected elements which
+     neither the vale itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or
+     could supply. How and whence to these thoughts, these strong
+     probabilities, the ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may
+     finally supervene, can be learned only by the fact. I might oppose
+     to the question the words with which Plotinus supposes Nature to
+     answer a similar difficulty: 'Should any one interrogate her how
+     she works, if graciously she vouchsafe to listen and speak, she
+     will reply, it behooves thee not to disquiet me with
+     interrogatories, but to understand in silence, even as I am silent,
+     and work without words.'
+
+     "They and they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the
+     sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret
+     and understand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are
+     forming within the skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in
+     their own spirits the same instinct which impels the chrysalis of
+     the horned fly to leave room in its _involucrum_ for _antennae_ yet
+     to come. They know and feel that the potential works in them, even
+     as the actual works in them! In short, all the organs of sense are
+     framed for a corresponding world of sense; and we have it. All the
+     organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent world of spirit;
+     though the latter organs are not developed in all alike. But they
+     exist in all, and their first appearance discloses itself in the
+     moral being. How else could it be that even worldlings, not wholly
+     debased, will contemplate the man of simple and disinterested
+     goodness with contradictory feelings of pity and respect. 'Poor
+     man, he is not made for this world.' Oh, herein they utter a
+     prophecy of universal fulfilment, for man must either rise or sink.
+
+     "It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied
+     with no imperfect light, as long as the impossibility of attaining
+     a fuller knowledge has not been demonstrated. That the common
+     consciousness itself will furnish proofs by its own direction that
+     it is connected with master currents below the surface, I shall
+     merely assume as a postulate _pro tempore_.... On the IMMEDIATE
+     which dwells in every man, and on the original intuition or
+     absolute affirmation of it (which is likewise in every man, but
+     does not in every man rise into consciousness), all the _certainty_
+     of our knowledge depends; and this becomes intelligible to no man
+     by the ministry of mere words from without. The medium by which
+     spirits understand each other is not the surrounding air, but the
+     _freedom_ which they possess in common, as the common ethereal
+     element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations of which
+     propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. Where the
+     spirit of a man is not _filled_ with the consciousness of freedom
+     (were it only from its restlessness, as of one struggling in
+     bondage) all spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with
+     others, but even with himself. No wonder, then, that he remains
+     incomprehensible to himself as well as to others. No wonder that in
+     the fearful desert of his consciousness he wearies himself out with
+     empty words to which no friendly echo answers, either from his own
+     heart or the heart of a fellow-being; or bewilders himself in the
+     pursuit of _notional_ phantoms, the mere refractions from unseen
+     and distant truths through the distorting medium of his own
+     unenlivened and stagnant understanding! To remain unintelligible to
+     such a mind, exclaims Schelling on a like occasion, is honor and a
+     good name before God and man.
+
+     "Philosophy is employed on objects of the _inner sense_, and
+     cannot, like geometry, appropriate to every construction a
+     corresponding _outward_ intuition.... Now the inner sense has its
+     direction determined for the greater part only by an act of
+     freedom. One man's consciousness extends only to the pleasant or
+     unpleasant sensations caused in him by external impressions;
+     another enlarges his inner sense to a consciousness of forms and
+     quantity; a third, in addition to the image, is conscious of the
+     conception or notion of the thing; a fourth attains to a notion of
+     his notions--he reflects on his own reflections; and thus we may
+     say without impropriety, that the one possesses more or less inner
+     sense than the other....
+
+     "The postulate of philosophy, and at the same time the test of
+     philosophical capacity, is no other than the heaven-descended KNOW
+     THYSELF. And this at once practically and speculatively. For as
+     philosophy is neither a science of the reason or understanding
+     only, nor merely a science of morals, but the science of BEING
+     altogether, its primary ground can be neither merely speculative
+     nor merely practical, but both in one. All knowledge rests upon the
+     coincidence of an object with a subject. For we can _know_ only
+     that which is true; and the truth is universally placed in the
+     coincidence of the thought with the thing, of the representation
+     with the object represented."
+
+Coleridge then puts and argues the two alternatives. 1. Either the
+Objective is taken as primary, and then we have to account for the
+supervention of the Subjective which coalesces with it, which natural
+philosophy supposes. 2. Or the Subjective is taken as primary, and then
+we have to account for the supervention of the objective, which
+spiritual philosophy supposes. The Transcendentalist accepts the latter
+alternative.
+
+     "The second position, which not only claims but necessitates the
+     admission of its immediate certainty, equally for the scientific
+     reason of the philosopher as for the common-sense of mankind at
+     large, namely, I AM, cannot properly be entitled a prejudice. It is
+     groundless indeed; but then in the very idea it precludes all
+     ground, and, separated from the immediate consciousness, loses its
+     whole sense and import. It is groundless; but only because it is
+     itself the ground of all other certainty. Now the apparent
+     contradiction, that the first position--namely, that the existence
+     of things without us, which from its nature cannot be immediately
+     certain--should be received as blindly and as independently of all
+     grounds as the existence of our own being, the transcendental
+     philosopher can solve only by the supposition that the former is
+     unconsciously involved in the latter; that it is not only coherent,
+     but identical, and one and the same thing with our own immediate
+     self-consciousness. To demonstrate this identity is the office and
+     object of his philosophy.
+
+     "If it be said that this is idealism, let it be remembered that it
+     is only so far idealism, as it is at the same time and on that very
+     account the truest and most binding realism."
+
+To follow the exposition further is unnecessary for the present purpose,
+which is to state the fundamental principles of the philosophy, not to
+give the processes of reasoning by which they are illustrated. Had
+Coleridge been merely a philosopher, his influence on his generation, by
+this means, would have been insignificant; for his expositions were
+fragmentary; his thoughts were too swift and tumultuous in their flow to
+be systematically arranged; his style, forcible and luminous in
+passages, is interrupted by too frequent episodes, excursions and
+explanatory parentheses, to be enjoyed by the inexpert. Besides being a
+philosopher, he was a theologian. His deepest interest was in the
+problems of theology. His mind was perpetually turning over the
+questions of trinity, incarnation, Holy Ghost, sin, redemption,
+salvation. He meditated endless books on these themes, and, in special,
+one "On the Logos," which was to remove all difficulties and reconcile
+all contradictions. "On the whole, those dead churches, this dead
+English church especially, must be brought to life again. Why not? It
+was not dead; the soul of it, in this parched-up body, was tragically
+asleep only. Atheistic philosophy was, true, on its side; and Hume and
+Voltaire could, on their own ground, speak irrefragably for themselves
+against any church: but lift the church and them into a higher sphere of
+argument, _they_ died into inanition, the church revivified itself into
+pristine florid vigor, became once more a living ship of the desert, and
+invincibly bore you over stock and stone."
+
+The philosophy was accepted as a basis for the theology, and apparently
+only so far as it supplied the basis. Mrs. Coleridge declares, in a note
+to Chapter IX. of the "Biographia Literaria," that her husband, soon
+after the composition of that work, became dissatisfied with the system
+of Schelling, considered as a fundamental and comprehensive scheme
+intended to exhibit the relations of God to the world and man. He
+objected to it, she insists, as essentially pantheistic, radically
+inconsistent with a belief in God as himself moral and intelligent, as
+beyond and above the world, as the supreme mind to which the human mind
+owes homage and fealty--inconsistent with any just view and deep sense
+of the moral and spiritual being of man. He was mainly concerned
+with the construction of a "philosophical system, in which
+Christianity,--based on the triune being of God, and embracing a primal
+fall and universal redemption, (to use Carlyle's words) Christianity,
+ideal, spiritual, eternal, but likewise and necessarily historical,
+realized and manifested in time,--should be shown forth as accordant, or
+rather as one with ideas of reason, and the demands of the spiritual and
+of the speculative mind, of the heart, conscience, reason, which should
+all be satisfied and reconciled in one bond of peace."
+
+This explains the interest which young and enthusiastic minds in the
+English Church took in Coleridge, the verses just quoted from Aubrey de
+Vere, one of the new school of believers, the admiring discipleship of
+Frederick Denison Maurice, the hearty allegiance of the leaders of the
+spiritual reformation in England. Coleridge was the real founder of the
+Broad Church, which attempted to justify creed and sacrament, by
+substituting the ideas of the spiritual philosophy for the formal
+authority of traditions which the reason of the age was discarding.
+
+The men who sympathized with the same movement in America felt the same
+gratitude to their leader. Already in 1829 "The Aids to Reflection" were
+republished by Dr. James Marsh. Caleb Sprague Henry, professor of
+philosophy and history in the University of New York in 1839, and before
+that a resident of Cambridge, an enthusiastic thinker and eloquent
+talker, loved to dilate on the genius of the English philosopher, and
+was better than a book in conveying information about him, better than
+many books in awakening interest in his thought. The name of Coleridge
+was spoken with profound reverence, his books were studied
+industriously, and the terminology of transcendentalism was as familiar
+as commonplace in the circles of divines and men of letters. At present
+Hegel is the prophet of these believers, Schelling is obsolete, and
+Coleridge, the English Schelling, has had his day. The change is marked
+by an all but entire absence of the passionate enthusiasm, the
+imaginative glow and fervor, that characterized the transcendental
+phase of the movement. Coleridge was a vital thinker; his mind was a
+flame; his thoughts burned within him, and issued from him in language
+that trembled and throbbed with the force of the ideas committed to it.
+He was a divine, a preacher of most wonderful eloquence. At the age of
+three or four and forty Serjeant Talfourd heard him talk.
+
+     "At first his tones were conversational: he seemed to dally with
+     the shallows of the subject and with fantastic images which
+     bordered it; but gradually the thought grew deeper, and the voice
+     deepened with the thought; the stream gathering strength seemed to
+     bear along with it all things which opposed its progress, and
+     blended them with its current; and stretching away among regions
+     tinted with ethereal colors, was lost at airy distance in the
+     horizon of fancy." At five-and-twenty William Hazlitt heard him
+     preach.
+
+     "It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight,
+     to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person
+     preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such
+     another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of
+     the year 1798. _Il y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les
+     circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse je vivre des siecles entiers,
+     le doux temps de ma jeunesse ne peut renaitre pour moi, ni
+     s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire._ When I got there the organ was
+     playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done Mr. Coleridge
+     rose and gave out his text. 'He departed again into a mountain
+     himself alone.' As he gave out this text his voice 'rose like a
+     stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and when he came to the last
+     two words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed
+     to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the
+     bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated
+     in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came
+     into my mind, of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins
+     girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey. The preacher
+     then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the
+     wind. The sermon was upon peace and war, upon church and state, not
+     their alliance, but their separation; on the spirit of the world
+     and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to
+     one another. He talked of those who had inscribed the cross of
+     Christ on banners dripping with human gore. He made a poetical and
+     pastoral excursion, and to show the effects of war, drew a striking
+     contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team afield,
+     or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock as though he
+     should never be old; and the same poor country lad, crimped,
+     kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an ale-house, turned
+     into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
+     powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
+     finery of the profession of blood.
+
+    'Such were the notes our once loved poet sung;'
+
+     and for myself I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
+     the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together,
+     Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction
+     of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
+     satisfied."
+
+The influence of Coleridge was greatly assisted by contemporary
+magazines, which helped by their furious efforts to crush him, and won
+sympathy for him by their attempts to laugh and hoot him down. Jeffrey
+handled the "Biographia Literaria" in the Edinburgh Review, August,
+1817; "as favorable to the book _as could be expected_," the editor
+quietly says. The numberless varieties of judgment were represented in
+the Dublin University Magazine, British and Foreign Quarterly, Fraser,
+Blackwood, Christian Quarterly, Spectator, Monthly Review, Eclectic,
+Westminster, most of which contained several articles on different
+aspects of the subject. In America, Geo. B. Cheever wrote in the North
+American Review, F. H. Hedge in the Christian Examiner, D. N. Lord in
+Lord's Theological Journal, H. T. Tuckerman in the Southern Literary
+Messenger, Noah Porter in the Bibliotheca Sacra. The New York Review,
+the American Quarterly, American Whig Review, all made contributions to
+the Coleridgian literature,[2] and exhibited the extensive reaches of
+his power. The readers of Lamb, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Southey and the
+brilliant essayists that made so fascinating the English literature of
+the first third of our century must perforce be introduced to Coleridge.
+The "Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel," which lay on every table,
+excited interest in the man from whom such astonishing pieces proceeded;
+so that many who understood little or nothing of his philosophical
+ideas, appropriated something of the spirit and tone of them. He had
+disciples who never heard him speak even in print, and followers who
+never saw his form even as sketched by critics. His thoughts were in the
+air; the mental atmosphere of theological schools was modified by them.
+They insensibly transplanted establishments and creeds from old to new
+regions.
+
+[2] See for references. Poole's Index to Periodical Literature.
+
+In 1851, Thomas Carlyle burlesqued Coleridge, took off his solemn
+oracular manner, made fun of his "plaintive snuffle and sing-song," his
+"om-m-ject and sum-m-ject," his "talk not flowing anywhither like a
+river, but spreading everywhither in inextricable currents and
+regurgitations like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in definite goal
+or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility; what you were to believe
+or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear
+from it, so that, most times, you felt logically lost; swamped near to
+drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables spreading out boundless as
+if to submerge the world." But in his earlier days the "windy harangues"
+and "dizzying metaphysics" had their charm for him too; the philosophy
+of the Highgate sage was in essence and fruit his own. He explained at
+some length and with considerable frequency, as well as much eloquence,
+the distinction between "understanding," the faculty that observed,
+generalized, inferred, argued, concluded, and "reason," the faculty that
+saw the ideal forms of truth face to face, and beheld the inmost reality
+of things. He dilated with a disciple's enthusiasm on the principles of
+the transcendental philosophy, painted in gorgeous colors the promises
+it held forth, prophesied earnestly respecting the better time for
+literature, art, social ethics and religious faith it would bring in,
+preached tempestuously against shams in church and state, from the mount
+of vision that it disclosed. We have already seen how he could speak of
+Kant, Fichte, Novalis, of Goethe and Jean Paul. Thirty-five years ago
+Carlyle was the high priest of the new philosophy. Emerson edited his
+miscellanies, and the dregs of his ink-bottle were welcomed as the
+precious sediment of the fountain of inspiration. In 1827 he defended
+the "Kritik of Pure Reason" against stupid objectors from the
+sensational side, as, in the opinion of the most competent judges,
+"distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in
+which it came to light," and affirmed as by authority, that the seeker
+for pure truth must begin with intuition and proceed outward by the
+light of the revelation thence derived. In 1831 he carried this
+principle to the extreme of maintaining that a complete surrender to the
+informing genius, a surrender so entire as to amount to the abandonment
+of definite purpose and will, was evidence of perfect wisdom; for such
+is the interpretation we give to the paradoxical doctrine of
+"unconsciousness" which implied that in order to save the soul it must
+be forgotten; that consciousness was a disease; that in much wisdom was
+much grief.
+
+Had Carlyle been more of a philosopher and less of a preacher, more a
+thinker and less a character, more a patient toiler after truth, and
+less a man of letters, his first intellectual impulse might have lasted.
+As it was, the reaction came precisely in middle life, and the apostle
+of transcendental ideas became the champion of Force. His
+Transcendentalism seems to have been a thing of sentiment rather than of
+conviction. A man of tremendous strength of feeling, his youth, as is
+the case with men of feeling, was romantic, enthusiastic, hopeful,
+exuberant; his manhood, as is also the case with men of feeling, was
+wilful and overbearing, with sadness deepening into moroseness and
+unhopefulness verging towards despair.
+
+The era of despair had not set in at the period when the mind of New
+England was fermenting with the ideas of the new philosophy. Then all
+was brave, humane, aspiring. The denunciations of materialism in
+philosophy, formalism in religion and utilitarianism in personal and
+social ethics, rang through the land; the superb vindications of soul
+against sense, spirit against letter, faith against rite, heroism and
+nobleness against the petty expediencies of the market, kindled all
+earnest hearts. The emphatic declarations that "wonder and reverence are
+the conditions of insight and the source of strength; that faith is
+prior to knowledge and deeper too; that empirical science can but play
+on the surface of unfathomable mysteries; that in the order of reality
+the ideal and invisible are the world's true adamant, and the laws of
+material appearance only its alluvial growths; that in the inmost
+thought of men there is a thirst to which the springs of nature are a
+mere mirage, and which presses on to the waters of eternity," fell like
+refreshing gales from the hills on the children of men imprisoned in
+custom and suffocated by tradition. The infinitely varied illustrations
+of the worth of beauty, the grandeur of truth, the excellence of simple,
+devout sincerity in nature, literature, character; the burning
+insistance on the need of fresh inspiration from the region of serene
+ideas, seemed to proceed from a soul newly awakened, if not especially
+endowed with the seer's vision. It was better than philosophy; it was
+philosophy made vital with sentiment and purpose.
+
+Carlyle early learned the German language, as Coleridge did, and drank
+deep from the fountains of its best literature. To him it opened a new
+world of thought, which the ordinary Englishman had no conception of.
+Coleridge found himself at home there by virtue of his natural genius,
+and also by the introduction given him by Wm. Law, John Pordage, Richard
+Saumarez, and Jacob Behmen, so that the suddenly discovered continent
+broke on him with less surprise; but Carlyle was as one taken wholly
+unawares, fascinated, charmed, intoxicated with the sights and sounds
+about him. Being unprepared by previous reflection and overpowered by
+the gorgeousness of color, the wealth was too much for him; it palled at
+last on his appetite, and he experienced a reaction similar to that of
+the sensualist whose delirium first persuades him that he has found his
+soul, and then makes him fear that he has lost it.
+
+With the reactionary stage of Carlyle's career when, as a frank critic
+observes, "he flung away with a shriek the problems his youth
+entertained, as the fruit by which paradise was lost; repented of all
+knowledge of good and evil; clapped a bandage round the open eyes of
+morals, religion, art, and saw no salvation but in spiritual suicide by
+plunging into the currents of instinctive nature that sweep us we know
+not whither"--we are not concerned. His interest for us ceases with his
+moral enthusiasm.
+
+A more serene and beneficent influence proceeded from the poet
+Wordsworth, whose fame rose along with that of Coleridge, struggled
+against the same opposition, and obtained even a steadier lustre. There
+was a kindred between them which Wordsworth did not acknowledge, but
+which Coleridge more than suspected and tried to divulge. One chapter in
+the first volume of the "Biographia Literaria" and four chapters in the
+second volume are devoted to the consideration of Wordsworth's poetry,
+and effort is made, not quite successfully, to bring Wordsworth's
+psychological faith into sympathy with his own.
+
+Wordsworth's genius has furnished critics with materials for speculation
+that must be sought in their proper places. We have no fresh analysis to
+offer. That the secret of his power over the ingenuous and believing
+minds of his age is to be found in the sentiment with which he invested
+homely scenes and characters is a superficial conjecture. What led him
+to invest homely scenes and characters with sentiment, and what made
+this circumstance interesting to precisely that class of minds? What,
+but the same latent idealism that came to deliberate and formal
+expression in Coleridge, and suggested in the one what was proclaimed by
+the other? For Wordsworth was a metaphysician, though he did not clearly
+suspect it; at least, if he did, he was careful not to betray himself by
+the usual signs. The philosophers recognized him and paid to him their
+acknowledgments.
+
+In the "Dial," Wordsworth is mentioned with honor; not discussed as
+Goethe was, but pleasantly talked about as a well-known friend. The
+third volume of that magazine, April, 1843, contains an article on
+"Europe and European Books" in which occurs the following tribute to
+Wordsworth:
+
+     "The capital merit of Wordsworth is that he has done more for the
+     sanity of this generation than any other writer. Early in life, at
+     a crisis, it is said, in his private affairs, he made his election
+     between assuming and defending some legal rights with the chances
+     of wealth and a position in the world--and the inward promptings of
+     his heavenly genius; he took his part; he accepted the call to be a
+     poet, and sat down, far from cities, with coarse clothing and plain
+     fare to obey the heavenly vision. The choice he had made in his
+     will manifested itself in every line to be real. We have poets who
+     write the poetry of society, of the patricians and conventional
+     Europe, as Scott and Moore; and others, who, like Byron or Bulwer,
+     write the poetry of vice and disease. But Wordsworth threw himself
+     into his place, made no reserves or stipulations; man and writer
+     were not to be divided. He sat at the foot of Helvellyn and on the
+     margin of Windermere, and took their lustrous mornings and their
+     sublime midnights, for his theme, and not Marlowe nor Massinger,
+     nor Horace, nor Milton nor Dante. He once for all forsook the
+     styles and standards and modes of thinking of London and Paris and
+     the books read there, and the aims pursued, and wrote Helvellyn and
+     Windermere and the dim spirits which these haunts harbored. There
+     was not the least attempt to reconcile these with the spirit of
+     fashion and selfishness, nor to show, with great deference to the
+     superior judgment of dukes and earls, that although London was the
+     home for men of great parts, yet Westmoreland had these
+     consolations for such as fate had condemned to the country life;
+     but with a complete satisfaction he pitied and rebuked their false
+     lives, and celebrated his own with the religion of a true priest.
+     Hence the antagonism which was immediately felt between his poetry
+     and the spirit of the age, that here not only criticism but
+     conscience and will were parties; the spirit of literature, and the
+     modes of living, and the conventional theories of the conduct of
+     life were called in question on wholly new grounds, not from
+     Platonism, nor from Christianity, but from the lessons which the
+     country muse taught a stout pedestrian climbing a mountain, and
+     following a river from its parent rill down to the sea. The
+     Cannings and Jeffreys of the capital, the Court Journals and
+     Literary Gazettes were not well pleased, and voted the poet a bore.
+     But that which rose in him so high as to the lips, rose in many
+     others as high as to the heart. What he said, they were prepared to
+     hear and to confirm. The influence was in the air, and was wafted
+     up and down into lone and populous places, resisting the popular
+     taste, modifying opinions which it did not change, and soon came to
+     be felt in poetry, in criticism, in plans of life, and at last in
+     legislation. In this country it very early found a stronghold, and
+     its effect may be traced on all the poetry both of England and
+     America."
+
+This is truly and well said, though quite inadequate. The slighting
+allusion to Platonism might have been omitted, for possibly Wordsworth
+had caught something of the philosophy that was in the air. Mr. Emerson,
+in "Thoughts on Modern Literature," in the second number of the "Dial,"
+Oct. 1840, touched a deeper chord.
+
+     "The fame of Wordsworth" he says, "is a leading fact in modern
+     literature, when it is considered how hostile his genius at first
+     seemed to the reigning taste, and with what feeble poetic talents
+     his great and steadily growing dominion has been established. More
+     than any poet his success has been not his own, but that of the
+     idea which he shared with his coevals, and which he has rarely
+     succeeded in adequately expressing. The Excursion awakened in every
+     lover of nature the right feeling. We saw the stars shine, we felt
+     the awe of mountains, we heard the rustle of the wind in the grass,
+     and knew again the ineffable secret of solitude. It was a great
+     joy. It was nearer to nature than any thing we had before. But the
+     interest of the poem ended almost with the narrative of the
+     influences of nature on the mind of the Boy, in the first book.
+     Obviously for that passage the poem was written, and with the
+     exception of this and a few strains of like character in the
+     sequel, the whole poem was dull. Here was no poem, but here was
+     poetry, and a sure index where the subtle muse was about to pitch
+     her tent and find the argument of her song. It was the human soul
+     in these last ages striving for a just publication of itself. Add
+     to this, however, the great praise of Wordsworth, that more than
+     any other contemporary bard he is pervaded with a reverence of
+     somewhat higher than (conscious) thought. There is in him that
+     property common to all great poets--a wisdom of humanity, which is
+     superior to any talents which they exert. It is the wisest part of
+     Shakespeare and Milton, for they are poets by the free course which
+     they allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes
+     beholdeth again and blesseth the things which it hath made. The
+     soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of its works."
+
+In the general Preface to his poems, where Wordsworth discusses the
+principles of the poetic art, he wrote: "The imagination is conscious of
+an indestructible dominion; the soul may fall away, from its not being
+able to sustain its grandeur, but if once felt and acknowledged, by no
+act of any other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired or
+diminished. Fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the temporal part
+of our nature; Imagination to incite and support the eternal." And in
+the appendix: "Faith was given to man that his affections, detached from
+the treasures of time, might be inclined to settle on those of eternity:
+the elevation of his nature, which this habit produces on earth, being
+to him a presumptive evidence of a future state of existence, and
+giving him a title to partake of its holiness. The religious man values
+what he sees, chiefly as an 'imperfect shadowing forth' of what he is
+incapable of seeing." Was this an echo from the German Jacobi, whose
+doctrine of Faith had been some time abroad in the intellectual world?
+
+The ode "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
+Childhood," was a clear reminiscence of Platonism. This famous poem was
+the favorite above all other effusions of Wordsworth with the
+Transcendentalists, who held it to be the highest expression of his
+genius, and most characteristic of its bent. Emerson in his last
+discourse on Immortality, calls it "the best modern essay on the
+subject." Many passages in the "Excursion" attest the transcendental
+character of the author's faith. Coleridge quotes the following lines:
+
+              "For I have learned
+    To look on nature, not as in the hour
+    Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
+    The still sad music of humanity,
+    Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
+    To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
+    A presence that disturbs me with the joy
+    Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
+    Of something far more deeply interfused,
+    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
+    And the round ocean and the living air,
+    And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
+    A motion and a spirit that impels
+    All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+    And rolls through all things."
+
+The passage quoted next suggests the very language of Fichte in his
+Bestimmung des Menschen, "In der Liebe nur ist das Leben, ohne Sie ist
+Tod und Vernichtung."
+
+    This is the genuine course, the aim, the end,
+    Of prescient Reason; all conclusions else
+    Are abject, vain, presumptuous and perverse,
+    The faith partaking of those holy times.
+
+    Life, I repeat, is energy of Love,
+    Divine or human; exercised in pain,
+    In strife and tribulation; and ordained,
+    If so approved and sanctified, to pass
+    Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy.
+
+Another extract recalls the "pantheism" of Schelling.
+
+      Thou--who didst wrap the cloud
+    Of infancy around us, that Thyself
+    Therein with our simplicity awhile
+    Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed,
+    Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,
+    Or from its death-like void, with punctual care,
+    And touch as gentle as the morning light,
+    Restorest us, daily, to the powers of sense
+    And reason's steadfast rule,--Thou, thou alone
+    Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits,
+    Which Thou includest, as the Sea her Waves.
+    For adoration Thou endurest; endure
+    For consciousness the motions of Thy will;
+    For apprehension those transcendent truths
+    Of the pure Intellect, that stand as laws;
+    Submission constituting strength and power,
+    Even to Thy Being's infinite majesty!
+
+Having before me a copy of Wordsworth's poems, once the possession of an
+earnest Transcendentalist, I find these, and many lines of similar
+import, underlined; showing how dear the English poet was to the
+American reader.
+
+There were others who held and enunciated the new faith that came from
+Germany, the transfigured protestantism of the land of Luther. But these
+three names will suffice to indicate the wealth of England's
+contribution to the spiritual life of the New World--Coleridge, Carlyle,
+Wordsworth--the philosopher, the preacher, the poet; the man of thought,
+the man of letters, the man of imagination. These embrace all the
+methods by which the fresh enthusiasm for the soul communicated its
+power. These three were everywhere read, and everywhere talked of. They
+occupied prominent places in the public eye. They sank into the shadow
+only when the faith that glorified them began to decline.
+
+It is remarkable that Emerson in the paper just quoted, written in 1840,
+passes from Wordsworth to Landor; while the author of the other paper,
+written in 1843, passes, and almost with an expression of relief, from
+Wordsworth to Tennyson, the new poet whose breaking glory threatened the
+morning star with eclipse. By this time Transcendentalism was on the
+wane. The "Dial" marked for one year longer the hours of the great day,
+and then was removed from its place, and the scientific method of
+measuring progress was introduced. Wordsworth from year to year had a
+diminishing proportion of admirers: from year to year the admirers of
+Tennyson increased. As early as 1843 the passion for music, color, and
+external polish was manifest. Tennyson's elegance and subtlety, his rich
+fancy, his mastery of language, his metrical skill, his taste for the
+sumptuous and gorgeous, were winning their way to popularity. The critic
+in the "Dial" has misgivings: "In these boudoirs of damask and alabaster
+one is further off from stern nature and human life than in "Lalla
+Rookh" and "The Loves of the Angels." Amid swinging censers and perfumed
+lamps, amidst velvet and glory, we long for rain and frost. Otto of
+roses is good, but wild air is better." But the sweets have been tasted,
+and have spoiled the relish for the old homeliness. For the man who
+loved him the charm of Wordsworth was idyllic; for the few who bent the
+head to him it was mystical and prophetic. The idyllic sentiment palled
+on the taste. It was a reaction from artificial forms of sensibility,
+and having enjoyed its day, submitted to the law of change that called
+it into being. The moral earnestness, the mystic idealism became
+unpopular along with the school of philosophy from which it sprung, and
+gave place to the realism of the Victorian bards, who expressed the
+sensuous spirit of a more external age. Transcendentalism lurks in
+corners of England now. The high places of thought are occupied by men
+who approach the great problems from the side of nature, and through
+matter feel after mind; by means of the senses attempt the heights of
+spirit.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+TRANSCENDENTALISM IN NEW ENGLAND.
+
+
+The title of this Chapter is in a sense misleading. For with some truth
+it may be said that there never was such a thing as Transcendentalism
+out of New England. In Germany and France there was a transcendental
+philosophy, held by cultivated men, taught in schools, and professed by
+many thoughtful and earnest people; but it never affected society in its
+organized institutions or practical interests. In old England, this
+philosophy influenced poetry and art, but left the daily existence of
+men and women untouched. But in New England, the ideas entertained by
+the foreign thinkers took root in the native soil and blossomed out in
+every form of social life. The philosophy assumed full proportions,
+produced fruit according to its kind, created a new social order for
+itself, or rather showed what sort of social order it would create under
+favoring conditions. Its new heavens and new earth were made visible, if
+but for a moment, and in a wintry season. Hence, when we speak of
+Transcendentalism, we mean New England Transcendentalism.
+
+New England furnished the only plot of ground on the planet, where the
+transcendental philosophy had a chance to show what it was and what it
+proposed. The forms of life there were, in a measure, plastic. There
+were no immovable prejudices, no fixed and unalterable traditions. Laws
+and usages were fluent, malleable at all events. The sentiment of
+individual freedom was active; the truth was practically acknowledged,
+that it takes all sorts of people to make a world, and the many minds of
+the many men were respected. No orders of men, no aristocracies of
+intellect, no privileged classes of thought were established. The old
+world supplied such literature as there was, in science, law,
+philosophy, ethics, theology; but an astonishing intellectual activity
+seized upon it, dealt with it in genuine democratic fashion, classified
+it, accepted it, dismissed it, paying no undue regard to its foreign
+reputation. Experiments in thought and life, of even audacious
+description, were made, not in defiance of precedent--for precedent was
+hardly respected enough to be defied--but in innocent unconsciousness of
+precedent. A feeling was abroad that all things must be new in the new
+world. There was call for immediate application of ideas to life. In the
+old world, thoughts remained cloistered a generation before any
+questioned their bearing on public or private affairs. In the new world,
+the thinker was called on to justify himself on the spot by building an
+engine, and setting something in motion. The test of a truth was its
+availability. The popular faith in the capacities of men to make states,
+laws, religions for themselves, supplied a ground work for the new
+philosophy. The philosophy of sensation, making great account, as it
+did, of circumstances, arrangements, customs, usages, rules of education
+and discipline, was alien and disagreeable to people who, having just
+emancipated themselves from political dependence on the mother country,
+were full of confidence in their ability to set up society for
+themselves. The philosophy that laid its foundations in human nature,
+and placed stress on the organic capacities and endowments of the mind,
+was as congenial as the opposite system was foreign. Every native New
+Englander was at heart, whether he suspected it or not, radically and
+instinctively a disciple of Fichte or Schelling, of Cousin or Jouffroy.
+
+The religion of New England was Protestant and of the most intellectual
+type. Romanism had no hold on the thinking people of Boston. None beside
+the Irish laboring and menial classes were Catholics, and their religion
+was regarded as the lowest form of ceremonial superstition. The
+Congregational system favored individuality of thought and action. The
+orthodox theology, in spite of its arbitrary character and its fixed
+type of supernaturalism, exercised its professors severely in
+speculative questions, and furnished occasions for discernment and
+criticism which made reason all but supreme over faith. This theology
+too had its purely spiritual side--nay, it was essentially spiritual.
+Its root ran back into Platonism, and its flower was a mysticism which,
+on the intellectual side, bordered closely on Transcendentalism. The
+charge that the Trinitarian system, in its distinguishing features, was
+of Platonic, and not of Jewish origin, was a confession that it was born
+of the noblest idealism of the race. So in truth it was, and so
+well-instructed Trinitarians will confess that it was. The Platonic
+philosophy being transcendental in its essence and tendency,
+communicated this character to Christian speculation. The skeletons of
+ancient polemics were buried deep beneath the soil of orthodoxy, and
+were not supposed to be a part of the structure of modern beliefs, but
+there nevertheless they were. The living faith of New England, in its
+spiritual aspects, betrayed its ancestry. The speculation had become
+Christian, the powers claimed by pagan philosophers for the mind were
+ascribed to the influences of the Holy Spirit and the truths revealed in
+consciousness were truths of the Gospel; but the fact of immediate
+communication between the soul of the believer and its Christ was so
+earnestly insisted on, the sympathy was represented as being of so
+kindred and organic a nature, that in reading the works of the masters
+of New England theology, it requires an effort to forget that the
+speculative basis of their faith was not the natural basis of the
+philosopher, but the supernatural one of the believer. The spiritual
+writings of Jonathan Edwards, the "Treatise on the Religious Affections"
+especially, breathe the sweetest spirit of idealism. Indeed, whenever
+orthodoxy spread its wings and rose into the region of faith, it lost
+itself in the sphere where the human soul and the divine were in full
+concurrence. Transcendentalism simply claimed for all men what
+Protestant Christianity claimed for its own elect.
+
+That adherents of the sensuous philosophy professed the orthodox
+doctrines, is a circumstance that throws the above statement into bolder
+relief. For these people gave to the system the hard, external,
+dogmatical character which in New England provoked the Unitarian
+reaction. The beliefs in scripture inspiration, incarnation, atonement,
+election, predestination, depravity, fall, regeneration, redemption,
+deprived of their interior meaning, became ragged heaps of dogmatism,
+unbeautiful, incredible, hateful. Assault came against them from the
+quarter of common intelligence and the rational understanding. The
+sensuous philosophy associated with the school of Locke,--which Edwards
+and the like of him scorned,--fell upon the fallen system and plucked it
+unmercifully. Never was easier work than that of the early Unitarian
+critics. The body of orthodoxy having lost its soul, was a very
+unsightly carcass,--so evidently, to every sense, a carcass, that they
+who had respected it as a celestial creation, and could not be persuaded
+that this was all they respected, allowed the scavengers to take it
+away, only protesting that the thing disposed of was not the revealed
+gospel, or anything but a poor effigy of it.
+
+The Unitarians as a class belonged to the school of Locke, which
+discarded the doctrine of innate ideas, and its kindred beliefs.
+Unitarianism from the beginning showed affinity with this school, and
+avowed it more distinctly than idealists avowed Trinitarianism. Paul of
+Samosata, Arius, Pelagius, Socinus, the Swiss, Polish, English advocates
+of the same general theology and christology were, after their several
+kinds, disciples of the same philosophical system. Unitarianism, it was
+remarked, has rarely, if ever, been taught or held by any man of
+eminence in the church who was a Platonist. The Unitarians of New
+England, good scholars, careful reasoners, clear and exact thinkers,
+accomplished men of letters, humane in sentiment, sincere in moral
+intention, belonged, of course with individual exceptions, to the class
+which looked without for knowledge, rather than within for inspiration.
+The Unitarian in religion was a whig in politics, a conservative in
+literature, art and social ethics. The Unitarian divine was more
+familiar with Tillotson than with Cudworth, and more in love with
+William Paley than with Joseph Butler. He was strong in the "Old
+English" classics, and though a confessed devotee to no school in
+philosophy, was addicted to the prevailing fashion of intelligent,
+cultivated good sense. The Unitarian was disquieted by mysticism,
+enthusiasm and rapture. Henry More was unintelligible to him, and Robert
+Fludd disgusting. He had no sympathy with Helvetius, D'Holbach, Diderot
+or Voltaire, those fierce disturbers of intellectual peace; he had as
+little with William Law and Coleridge, dreamers and visionaries, who
+substituted vapor for solid earth. The Unitarian leaders were
+distinguished by practical wisdom, sober judgment, and balanced
+thoughtfulness, that weighed opinions in the scale of evidence and
+argument. Even Dr. Channing clung to the philosophical traditions that
+were his inheritance from England. The splendid things he said about the
+dignity of human nature, the divinity of the soul, the moral kinship
+with Christ, the inspiration of the moral sentiment, the power of moral
+intuition, habitual and characteristic as they were, scarcely justify
+the ascription to him of sympathy with philosophical idealism. His
+tenacious adherence to the record of miracle as attesting the mission of
+the Christ, and his constant exaltation of the Christ above humanity,
+suggest that the first principles of the transcendental philosophy had
+not been distinctly accepted, even if they were distinctly apprehended.
+The following extract from a letter written in 1819, expresses Dr.
+Channing's feeling toward Christ, a feeling never essentially altered:
+"Jesus Christ existed before he came into the world, and in a state of
+great honor and felicity. He was known, esteemed, beloved, revered in
+the family of heaven. He was entrusted with the execution of the most
+sublime purposes of his Father." About the same time he wrote: "Jesus
+ever lives, and is ever active for mankind. He is Mediator, Intercessor,
+Lord, and Saviour; He has a permanent and constant connection with
+mankind. He is through all time, now as well as formerly, the active and
+efficient friend of the human race." The writer of such words was
+certainly not a Transcendentalist in philosophy. His biographer, himself
+a brilliant Transcendentalist, admits as much. "His soul" he says, "was
+illuminated with the idea of the absolute immutable glory of the Moral
+Good; and reverence for conscience is the key to his whole doctrine of
+human destiny and duty. Many difficult metaphysical points he passed
+wholly by, as being out of the sphere alike of intuition and of
+experience. He believed, to be sure, in the possibility of man's gaining
+some insight of Universal Order, and respected the lofty aspiration
+which prompts men to seek a perfect knowledge of the Divine laws; but he
+considered pretensions to absolute science as quite premature; saw more
+boastfulness than wisdom in ancient and modern schemes of philosophy,
+and was not a little amused at the complacent confidence with which
+quite evidently fallible theorists assumed to stand at the centre, and
+to scan and depict the panorama of existence." In a letter of 1840,
+referring to the doctrines of Mr. Parker and that school of thinkers, he
+writes: "I see and feel the harm done by this crude speculation, whilst
+I also see much nobleness to bind me to its advocates. In its opinions
+generally I see nothing to give me hope. I am somewhat disappointed that
+this new movement is to do so little for the spiritual regeneration of
+society." A year later, he tells James Martineau that the spiritualists
+(meaning the Transcendentalists) "in identifying themselves a good deal
+with Cousin's crude system, have lost the life of an original movement.
+They are anxious to defend the soul's immediate connection with God, and
+are in danger of substituting private inspiration for Christianity."
+What he knew of Kant, Schelling and Fichte, through Mad. de Stael and
+Coleridge, he welcomed as falling in with his own conceptions of the
+grandeur of the human mind and will; but his acquaintance with them was
+never complete, and if it had been, he would perhaps have been repelled
+by the intellectual, as strongly as he was attracted by the moral
+teaching.
+
+In this matter the sentiment of Channing went beyond his philosophy. The
+following extracts taken at random from a volume of discourses edited
+in 1873 by his nephew, under the title "The Perfect Life," show that
+Channing was a Transcendentalist in feeling, whatever he may have been
+in thought.
+
+     "The religious principle, is, without doubt, the noblest working of
+     human nature. This principle God implanted for Himself. Through
+     this the human mind corresponds to the Supreme Divinity."
+
+     "The idea of God is involved in the primitive and most universal
+     idea of Reason; and is one of its central principles."
+
+     "We have, each of us, the spiritual eye to see, the mind to know,
+     the heart to love, the will to obey God."
+
+     "A spiritual light, brighter than that of noon, pervades our daily
+     life. The cause of our not seeing is in ourselves."
+
+     "The great lesson is, that there is in human nature an element
+     truly Divine, and worthy of all reverence; that the Infinite which
+     is mirrored in the outward universe, is yet more brightly imaged in
+     the inward spiritual world."
+
+     "They who assert the greatness of human nature, see as much of
+     guilt as the man of worldly wisdom. But amidst the passions and
+     selfishness of men they see another element--a Divine element--a
+     spiritual principle."
+
+     "This moral principle--the supreme law in man--is the Law of the
+     Universe, the very Law to which the highest beings are subject, and
+     in obeying which they find their elevation and their joy."
+
+     "The Soul itself,--in its powers and affections, in its
+     unquenchable thirst and aspiration for unattained good, gives signs
+     of a Nature made for an interminable progress, such as cannot be
+     now conceived."
+
+The debt which Transcendentalism owed to Unitarianism was not
+speculative; neither was it immediate or direct. The Unitarians, clergy
+as well as laity, so far as the latter comprehended their position,
+acknowledged themselves to be friends of free thought in religion. This
+was their distinction. They disavowed sympathy with dogmatism, partly
+because such dogmatism as there was existed in the minds of their
+theological foes, and was felt in such persecution as society permitted;
+and partly because they honestly respected the human mind, and valued
+thought for its own sake. They had no creed, and no system of philosophy
+on which a creed could be, by common consent, built. Rather were they
+open inquirers, who asked questions and waited for rational answers,
+having no definite apprehension of the issue to which their
+investigations tended, but with room enough within the accepted theology
+to satisfy them; and work enough on the prevailing doctrines to keep
+them employed. Under these circumstances, they honestly but incautiously
+professed a principle broader than they were able to stand by, and
+avowed the absolute freedom of the human mind as their characteristic
+faith; instead of a creed, the right to judge all creeds; instead of a
+system, authority to try every system by rules of evidence. The
+intellectual among them were at liberty to entertain views which an
+orthodox mind instinctively shrank from; to read books which an orthodox
+believer would not have touched with the ends of his fingers. The
+literature on their tables represented a wide mental activity. Their
+libraries contained authors never found before on ministerial shelves.
+Skepticism throve by what it fed on; and, before they had become fully
+aware of the possible results of their diligent study, their powers had
+acquired a confidence that encouraged ventures beyond the walls of Zion.
+This profession of free inquiry, and the practice of it within the
+extensive area of Protestant theology, opened the door to the new
+speculation which carried unlooked-for heresies in its bosom; and before
+the gates could be closed the insidious enemy had penetrated to the
+citadel.
+
+There was idealism in New England prior to the introduction of
+Transcendentalism. Idealism is of no clime or age. It has its proportion
+of disciples in every period and in the apparently most uncongenial
+countries; a full proportion might have been looked for in New England.
+But when Emerson appeared, the name of Idealism was legion. He alone was
+competent to form a school, and as soon as he rose, the scholars trooped
+about him. By sheer force of genius Emerson anticipated the results of
+the transcendental philosophy, defined its axioms and ran out their
+inferences to the end. Without help from abroad, or with such help only
+as none but he could use, he might have domesticated in Massachusetts an
+idealism as heroic as Fichte's, as beautiful as Schelling's; but it
+would have lacked the dialectical basis of the great German systems.
+
+Transcendentalism, properly so called, was imported in foreign packages.
+Few read German, but most read French. As early as 1804, Degerando
+lectured on Kant's philosophy, in Paris; and as early as 1813 Mad. de
+Stael gave an account of it. The number of copies of the original works
+of either Kant, Fichte, Jacobi or Schelling, that found their way to
+the United States, was inconsiderable. Half a dozen eager students
+obtained isolated books of Herder, Schleiermacher, De Wette and other
+theological and biblical writers, read them, translated chapters from
+them, or sent notices of them to the Christian Examiner. The works of
+Coleridge made familiar the leading ideas of Schelling. The foreign
+reviews reported the results and processes of French and German
+speculation. In 1827, Thomas Carlyle wrote, in the Edinburgh Review, his
+great articles on Richter and the State of German Literature; in 1828
+appeared his essay on Goethe. Mr. Emerson presented these and other
+papers as "Carlyle's Miscellanies" to the American public. In 1838
+George Ripley began the publication of the "Specimens of Foreign
+Standard Literature," a series which extended to fourteen volumes; the
+first and second comprising philosophical miscellanies by Cousin,
+Jouffroy and Constant, translated with introductions by Mr. Ripley
+himself; the third devoted to Goethe and Schiller, with elaborate and
+discriminating prefaces by John S. Dwight; the fourth giving Eckermann's
+Conversations with Goethe, done into English by Margaret Fuller; the
+three next containing Menzel's German Literature, by Prof. C. C. Felton;
+the eighth and ninth introducing Wm. H. Channing's version of Jouffroy's
+Introduction to Ethics; the tenth and eleventh, DeWette's Theodor, by
+James Freeman Clarke; the twelfth and thirteenth, DeWette's Ethics, by
+Samuel Osgood; and the last offering samples of German Lyrics, by
+Charles T. Brooks. These volumes, which were remarkably attractive,
+both in form and contents, brought many readers into a close
+acquaintance with the teaching and the spirit of writers of the new
+school.
+
+The Philosophical Miscellanies of Cousin were much noticed by the press,
+George Bancroft in especial sparing no pains to commend them and the
+views they presented. The spiritual philosophy had no more fervent or
+eloquent champion than he. No reader of his "History of the United
+States," has forgotten the noble tribute paid to it under the name of
+Quakerism, or the striking parallel between the two systems represented
+in the history by John Locke and Wm. Penn, both of whom framed
+constitutions for the new world. For keenness of apprehension and
+fullness of statement the passages deserve to be quoted here. They occur
+in the XVI. chapter of the History.
+
+     "The elements of humanity are always the same, the inner light
+     dawns upon every nation, and is the same in every age; and the
+     French revolution was a result of the same principles as those of
+     George Fox, gaining dominion over the mind of Europe. They are
+     expressed in the burning and often profound eloquence of Rousseau;
+     they reappear in the masculine philosophy of Kant. The professor of
+     Koenigsberg, like Fox and Barclay and Penn, derived philosophy from
+     the voice in the soul; like them, he made the oracle within the
+     categorical rule of practical morality, the motive to disinterested
+     virtue; like them, he esteemed the Inner Light, which discerns
+     universal and necessary truths, an element of humanity; and
+     therefore his philosophy claims for humanity the right of ever
+     renewed progress and reform. If the Quakers disguised their
+     doctrine under the form of theology, Kant concealed it for a
+     season under the jargon of a nervous but unusual diction. But
+     Schiller has reproduced the great idea in beautiful verse;
+     Chateaubriand avowed himself its advocate; Coleridge has repeated
+     the doctrine in misty language; it beams through the poetry of
+     Lamartine and Wordsworth; while in the country of beautiful prose,
+     the eloquent Cousin, listening to the same eternal voice which
+     connects humanity with universal reason, has gained a wide fame for
+     "the divine principle," and in explaining the harmony between that
+     light and the light of Christianity, has often unconsciously
+     borrowed the language, and employed the arguments of Barclay and
+     Penn."
+
+A few pages later is the brilliant passage describing the essential
+difference between this philosophy and that of Locke:
+
+     "Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom, both
+     cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of
+     liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the
+     soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world;
+     Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke
+     compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbes had
+     compared it to a slate on which time and chance might scrawl their
+     experience. To Penn the soul was an organ which of itself
+     instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical
+     instruments which are so curiously and perfectly formed, that when
+     once set in motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies
+     designed by the artist that made them. To Locke, conscience is
+     nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions; to Penn, it
+     is the image of God and his oracle in the soul.... In studying the
+     understanding Locke begins with the sources of knowledge; Penn with
+     an inventory of our intellectual treasures.... The system of Locke
+     lends itself to contending factions of the most opposite interests
+     and purposes; the doctrine of Fox and Penn, being but the common
+     creed of humanity, forbids division and insures the highest moral
+     unity. To Locke, happiness is pleasure, and things are good and
+     evil only in reference to pleasure and pain; and to "inquire after
+     the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish
+     be in apples, plums or nuts." Penn esteemed happiness to lie in the
+     subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct of Deity in the
+     breast; good and evil to be eternally and always as unlike as truth
+     and falsehood; and the inquiry after the highest good to involve
+     the purpose of existence. Locke says plainly that, but for rewards
+     and punishments beyond the grave, 'it is certainly right to eat and
+     drink, and enjoy what we delight in.' Penn, like Plato and Fenelon,
+     maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots, that God is to be
+     loved for His own sake, and virtue to be practised for its
+     intrinsic loveliness. Locke derives the idea of infinity from the
+     senses, describes it as purely negative, and attributes it to
+     nothing but space, duration and number; Penn derived the idea from
+     the soul, and ascribed it to truth and virtue and God. Locke
+     declares immortality a matter with which reason has nothing to do;
+     and that revealed truth must be sustained by outward signs and
+     visible acts of power; Penn saw truth by its own light and summoned
+     the soul to bear witness to its own glory."
+
+The justice of the comparison, in the first part of the above extract,
+of Quakerism with Transcendentalism, may be disputed. Some may be of
+opinion that inasmuch as Quakerism traces the source of the Inner Light
+to the supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit, while
+Transcendentalism regards it as a natural endowment of the human mind,
+the two are fundamentally opposed while superficially in agreement.
+However this may be, the practical issues of the two coincide, and the
+truth of the contrast presented between the philosophies, designated by
+the name of Locke on the one side, and of Penn on the other, will not be
+disputed. Mr. Bancroft's statement, though dazzling, is exact. It was
+made in 1837. The third edition from which the above citation was made,
+was published in 1838, the year of Mr. Emerson's address to the Divinity
+students at Cambridge.
+
+Mr. Emerson had shown his hand plainly several years before. In 1832 he
+raised the whole issue in the "epoch making" sermon, in which he
+advanced the view of the communion service that led to his resignation
+of the Christian ministry. His elder brother, William, returning from
+his studies in Germany, was turned from the profession of the church
+which he had purposed entering, to the law, by similar scruples. In
+1834, James Walker printed in the "Christian Examiner" an address, which
+was the same year published as a tract, by the American Unitarian
+Association, entitled "The Philosophy of Man's Spiritual Nature in
+regard to the foundations of Faith," wherein he took frankly the
+transcendental ground, contending:
+
+     "That the existence of those spiritual faculties and capacities
+     which are assumed as the foundation of religion in the soul of man,
+     is attested, and put beyond controversy by the revelations of
+     consciousness; that religion in the soul, consisting as it does, of
+     a manifestation and development of these spiritual faculties and
+     capacities, is as much a reality in itself, and enters as
+     essentially into our idea of a perfect man, as the corresponding
+     manifestation and development of the reasoning faculties, a sense
+     of justice, or the affections of sympathy and benevolence; and
+     that from the acknowledged existence and reality of spiritual
+     impressions or perceptions, we may and do assume the existence and
+     reality of the spiritual world; just as from the acknowledged
+     existence and reality of sensible impressions or perceptions, we
+     may and do assume the existence and realities of the sensible
+     world."
+
+In this discourse, for originally it was a discourse, the worst species
+of infidelity is charged to the "Sensational" philosophy, and at the
+close, the speaker in impressive language, said:
+
+     "Let us hope that a better philosophy than the degrading sensualism
+     out of which most forms of infidelity have grown, will prevail, and
+     that the minds of the rising generation will be thoroughly imbued
+     with it. Let it be a philosophy which recognizes the higher nature
+     of man, and aims, in a chastened and reverential spirit, to unfold
+     the mysteries of his higher life. Let it be a philosophy which
+     comprehends the soul, a soul susceptible of religion, of the
+     sublime principle of faith, of a faith which 'entereth into that
+     within the veil.' Let it be a philosophy which continually reminds
+     us of our intimate relations to the spiritual world; which opens to
+     us new sources of consolation in trouble, and new sources of life
+     in death--nay, which teaches us that what we call _death_ is but
+     the dying of all that is mortal, that nothing but life may remain."
+
+In 1840, the same powerful advocate of the transcendental doctrine, in a
+discourse before the alumni of the Cambridge Divinity School, declared
+that the return to a higher order of ideas, to a living faith in God, in
+Christ, and in the church, had been promoted by such men as
+Schleiermacher and De Wette; gave his opinion that the religious
+community had reason to look with distrust and dread on a philosophy
+which limited the ideas of the human mind to the information imparted by
+the senses, and denied the existence of spiritual elements in the nature
+of man; and again welcomed the philosophy taught in England by Butler,
+Reid and Coleridge; in Germany, by Kant, Jacobi and Schleiermacher; in
+France, by Cousin, Jouffroy and Degerando. Such words from James Walker,
+always a favorite teacher with young men, a mind of judicial authority
+in the liberal community, and at that time Professor of Moral Philosophy
+at Harvard College, made a deep impression. When he said: "Men may put
+down Transcendentalism if they can, but they must first deign to
+comprehend its principles," the most conservative began to surmise that
+there must be something in Transcendentalism.
+
+But before this the movement was well under way. In 1836, Emerson's
+"Nature" broke through the shell of accepted opinions on a very
+essential subject: true, but five hundred copies were sold in twelve
+years; critics and philosophers could make nothing of it; but those who
+read it recognized signs of a new era, even if they could not describe
+them; and many who did not read it felt in the atmosphere the change it
+introduced. The idealism of the little book was uncompromising.
+
+     "In the presence of ideas we feel that the outward circumstance is
+     a dream and a shade. Whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods, we
+     think of nature as an appendix to the soul. We ascend into their
+     region, and know that these are the thoughts of the Supreme
+     Being."... "Idealism is an hypothesis to account for nature by
+     other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. It
+     acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our
+     own being, and the evidence of the world's being. The world is a
+     divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and
+     certainties of day."
+
+The same year, George Ripley reviewed in the "Christian Examiner,"
+Martineau's "Rationale of Religious Enquiry." The article was furiously
+assailed in the Boston Daily Advertiser. Mr. Ripley replied in the paper
+of the next day, vindicating the ideas of the review and of the book as
+being strictly in consonance with the principles of liberal
+Christianity.
+
+In 1838 came the wonderful "address" before the Cambridge Divinity
+School, which stirred the soul of aspiring young men, and, wakened the
+wrath of sedate old ones. It was idealism in its full blaze, and it made
+the germs of Transcendentalism struggle in the sods.
+
+The next year Andrews Norton attacked the new philosophy in a discourse
+before the same audience, on "The Latest Form of Infidelity." The
+doctrine of that discourse was "Sensationalism" in its boldest aspect.
+
+     "Christ was commissioned by God to speak to us in His name, and to
+     make known to us, on His authority, those truths which it most
+     concerns us to know; and there can be no greater miracle than this.
+     No proof of His divine commission could be afforded but through
+     miraculous displays of God's power. Nothing is left that can be
+     called Christianity, if its miraculous character be denied. Its
+     essence is gone; its evidence is annihilated."... "To the demand
+     for certainty let it come from whom it may, I answer that I know of
+     no absolute certainty beyond the limit of momentary consciousness;
+     a certainty that vanishes the instant it exists, and is lost in the
+     region of metaphysical doubt."... "There can be no intuition, no
+     direct perception of the truth of Christianity, no metaphysical
+     certainty."... "Of the facts on which religion is founded, we can
+     pretend to no assurance except that derived from the testimony of
+     God from the Christian revelation."
+
+A pamphlet defending the discourse contained passages like the
+following: "The doctrine that the mind possesses a faculty of
+intuitively discovering the truths of religion, is not only utterly
+untenable, but the proposition is of such a character that it cannot
+well bear the test of being distinctly stated. The question respecting
+the existence of such a faculty is not difficult to be decided. We are
+not conscious of possessing any such faculty; and there can be no other
+proof of its existence. Its defenders shrink from presenting it in broad
+daylight. They are disposed to keep it out of view behind a cloud of
+words."... "Consciousness or intuition can inform us of nothing but what
+exists in our own minds, including the relations of our own ideas. It is
+therefore not an intelligible error, but a mere absurdity to maintain
+that we are conscious, or have an intuitive knowledge of the being of
+God, of our own immortality, of the revelation of God through Christ, or
+of any other fact of religion."... "The religion of which they (the
+Transcendentalists) speak, therefore, exists merely, if it exist at all,
+in undefined and unintelligible feelings, having reference, perhaps, to
+certain imaginations, the result of impressions communicated in
+childhood or produced by the visible signs of religious belief existing
+around us, or awakened by the beautiful and magnificent spectacles which
+nature presents."
+
+Mr. Norton spoke with biting severity of the masters of German
+philosophy, criticism, and literature, and exhausted his sarcasm on the
+address of Mr. Emerson delivered the previous year. To Mr. Norton, Mr.
+Ripley made prompt and earnest, though temperate, reply in three long
+and powerful letters, devoted mainly to a refutation of his adversary's
+accusations against Spinoza, Schleiermacher, De Wette, and the
+philosophic theologians of Germany. Not till the end does he take issue
+with the fundamental positions of Mr. Norton's philosophy; then he
+brands as "revolting" the doctrine that "there can be no intuition, no
+direct perception of the truth of Christianity;" that "the feeling or
+direct perception of religious truth" is an "imaginary faculty;" and
+affirms his conviction that "the principle that the soul has no faculty
+to perceive spiritual truth, is contradicted by the universal
+consciousness of man."
+
+     "Does the body see," he asks, "and is the spirit blind? No, man has
+     the faculty for feeling and perceiving religious truth. So far from
+     being imaginary, it is the highest reality of which the pure soul
+     is conscious. Can I be more certain that I am capable of looking
+     out and admiring the forms of external beauty, 'the frail and weary
+     weed in which God dresses the soul that he has called into time,'
+     than that I can also look within, and commune with the fairer forms
+     of truth and holiness which plead for my love, as visitants from
+     Heaven?"
+
+The controversy was taken up by other pens. In 1840, Theodore Parker,
+speaking as a plain man under the name of Levi Blodgett, "moved and
+handled the Previous Question" after a fashion that betrayed the
+practised thinker and scribe. Mr. Parker occupied substantially the same
+ground that was taken by James Walker in 1834.
+
+     "The germs of religion, both the germs of religious principle and
+     religious sentiment, must be born in man, or innate, as our
+     preacher says. I reckon that man is by nature a religious being,
+     _i. e._ that he was made to be religious, as much as an ox was made
+     to eat grass. The existence of God is a fact given in our nature:
+     it is not something discovered by a process of reasoning, by a long
+     series of deductions from facts; nor yet is it the last
+     generalization from phenomena observed in the universe of mind or
+     matter. But it is a truth fundamental in our nature; given outright
+     by God; a truth which comes to light as soon as self-consciousness
+     begins. Still further, I take a sense of dependence on God to be a
+     natural and essential sentiment of the soul, as much as feeling,
+     seeing and hearing are natural sensations of the body. Here, then,
+     are the religious instincts which lead man to God and religion,
+     just as naturally as the intellectual instincts lead him to truth,
+     and animal instincts to his food. As there is light for the eye,
+     sound for the ear, food for the palate, friends for the affections,
+     beauty for the imagination, truth for the reason, duty for
+     conscience--so there is God for the religious sentiment or sense of
+     dependence on Him. Now all these presuppose one another, as a want
+     essential to the structure of man's mind or body presupposes
+     something to satisfy it. And as the sensation of hunger presupposes
+     food to satisfy it, so the sense of dependence on God presupposes
+     his existence and character."
+
+From these premises Mr. Parker proceeds to discuss the questions about
+miracles, inspiration, revelation, the character and functions of
+Jesus, the Christ, and kindred matters belonging to the general
+controversy. The year following, he preached the sermon on the
+"Transient and Permanent in Christianity," which brought out the issues
+between the "Sensationalists" and the "Transcendentalists," and was the
+occasion of detaching the latter from the original body.
+
+The first series of Emerson's "Essays" containing "Self Reliance,"
+"Compensation," "Spiritual Laws," "The Over Soul," "Circles,"
+"Intellect," was published during that year, and was followed almost
+immediately by "The Transcendentalist," a lecture read in Masonic
+Temple, Boston. In this lecture occurs the following allusion to Kant:
+
+     "The Idealism of the present day acquired the name of
+     Transcendental from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant of
+     Koenigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, which
+     insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not
+     previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there
+     was a very important class of ideas or imperative forms, which did
+     not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired;
+     that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated
+     them _Transcendental_ forms. The extraordinary profoundness and
+     precision of that man's thinking have given vogue to his
+     nomenclature in Europe and America, to that extent that whatever
+     belongs to the class of intuitive thought is popularly called, at
+     the present day, Transcendental."... "The Transcendentalist adopts
+     the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in
+     miracles, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx
+     of light and power; he believes in inspiration and ecstasy. He
+     wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to
+     demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the
+     state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual, that
+     is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal."
+
+From what has been said it may be inferred that Transcendentalism in New
+England was a movement within the limits of "liberal" Christianity or
+Unitarianism as it was called, and had none but a religious aspect. Such
+an inference would be narrow. In 1838, Orestes Augustus Brownson started
+"The Boston Quarterly Review," instituted for the discussion of
+questions in politics, art, literature, science, philosophy and
+religion. The editor who was the principal, and almost the sole writer,
+frankly declares that "he had no creed, no distinct doctrines to support
+whatever;" that he "aimed to startle, and made it a point to be as
+paradoxical and extravagant as he could, without doing violence to his
+own reason or conscience." This avowal was made in 1857, after Mr.
+Brownson had become a Roman Catholic. The pages of the Review prove the
+writer to have been a pronounced Transcendentalist. A foreign journal
+called him "the Coryphoeus of the sect," a designation which, at the
+time, was meekly accepted.
+
+Mr. Brownson was a remarkable man, remarkable for intellectual force,
+and equally for intellectual wilfulness. His mind was restless,
+audacious, swift; his self assertion was immense; his thoughts came in
+floods; his literary style was admirable for freshness, terseness and
+vigor. Of rational stability of principle he had nothing, but was
+completely at the mercy of every novelty in speculation. That others
+thought as he did, was enough to make him think otherwise; that he
+thought as he had six months before was a signal that it was time for
+him to strike his tent and move on. An experimenter in systems, a taster
+of speculations, he passed rapidly from one phase to another, so that
+his friends ascribed his steadfastness to Romanism, to the fatigue of
+intellectual travelling. Mr. Brownson was born in Stockbridge, Vt.,
+Sept. 16, 1803. His education was scanty; his nurture was neglected; his
+discipline, if such it can be called, was to the last degree unwise. The
+child had visions, fancied he had received communications from the
+Christ, and held spiritual intercourse with the Virgin Mary, Angels and
+Saints. Of a sensitive nature on the moral and spiritual side,
+interested from boyhood in religious speculations, he had, before he
+reached man's estate, asked and answered, in his own passionate way, all
+the deepest questions of destiny. At the age of 21, he passed from
+Supernaturalism to Rationalism; at 22 became a Universalist minister; at
+28 adopted what he called "The Religion of Humanity;" the year
+following, joined the Unitarian ministry. At this time he studied French
+and German, and became fervidly addicted to philosophy. Benjamin
+Constant's theory of religion fascinated him by its brilliant
+generalizations, and its novel readings of Mythology, and was
+immediately adopted because it interested him and fell in with his mood
+of mind. In 1833, he accepted Cousin's philosophy as he had accepted
+Constant's, "attending to those things that I could appropriate to my
+purposes." In 1836 he organized the "Society for Christian Union and
+Progress" in Boston, and continued to be its minister till 1843. All
+this time he was dallying with Socialism, principally in the form of St.
+Simonianism; thought of himself as possibly the precursor of the
+Messiah; threw out strange heresies on the subject of property and the
+modern industrial system; and was suspected, he declared afterwards
+unjustly suspected, of holding loose opinions on love and marriage. "New
+Views of Christianity, Society and the Church," appeared in 1836, a
+little book, written in answer to objections brought against
+Christianity as being a system of extravagant spiritualism. This idea
+Mr. Brownson combated, by pointing out the true character of the
+religion of Jesus as contrasted with the schemes that had borne his
+name, exposing the corruptions it had undergone, during the succeeding
+ages, from Protestantism as well as from Romanism, and indicating the
+method and the signs of a return to the primeval faith which reconciled
+God and man, spirit and matter, soul and body, heaven and earth, in the
+establishment of just relations between man and man, the institution of
+a simply human state of society.
+
+"Charles Elwood, or The Infidel Converted," was published in 1840. Two
+or three passages from this theological discussion, thinly masked in the
+guise of a novel, will suffice to class the author with
+Transcendentalists of the advanced school.
+
+     "They who deny to man all inherent capacity to know God, all
+     immediate perception of spiritual truth, place man out of the
+     condition of ever knowing anything of God."... "There must be a God
+     within to recognize and vouch for the God who speaks to us from
+     without."... "I hold that the ideas or conceptions which man
+     attempts to embody or realize in his forms of religious faith and
+     worship, are intuitions of reason." "I understand by inspiration
+     the spontaneous revelations of the reason; and I call these
+     revelations divine, because I hold the reason to be divine. Its
+     voice is the voice of God, and what it reveals without any aid from
+     human agency, is really and truly a divine revelation."... "This
+     reason is in all men. Hence the universal beliefs of mankind, the
+     universality of the belief in God and religion. Hence, too, the
+     power of all men to judge of supernatural revelations."... "All are
+     able to detect the supernatural, because all have the supernatural
+     in themselves."
+
+The "Boston Quarterly," was maintained five years,--from 1838 to 1842
+inclusive,--and consequently covered this period. It would therefore be
+safe to assume, what the volumes themselves attest, that whatever
+subject was dealt with,--and all conceivable subjects were dealt
+with,--were handled by the transcendental method. In the "Christian
+World," a short-lived weekly, published by a brother of Dr. W. E.
+Channing, Mr. Brownson began the publication of a series of articles on
+the "Mission of Jesus." Seven were admitted; the eighth was declined as
+being "Romanist" in its outlook. In 1844, the writer avowed himself a
+Roman Catholic, and was confirmed in Boston, October 20th. The
+"Convert," which contains the spiritual biography of this extraordinary
+man, and from which the above facts in his mental history are partly
+taken, was published in 1857. The Romanist was at that time essentially
+a Transcendentalist. "Truth," he writes, "is the mind's object, and it
+seeks and accepts it intuitively, as the new-born child seeks the
+mother's breast from which it draws its nourishment. The office of proof
+or even demonstration is negative rather than affirmative." Mr. Brownson
+was the most eminent convert to Romanism of this period, when
+conversions were frequent in Boston; and his influence was considerable
+in turning uneasy minds to the old faith. He was a powerful writer and
+lecturer, an occasional visitor at Brook Farm, but his mental
+baselessness perhaps repelled nearly as many as his ingenuity beguiled.
+
+The literary achievements of Transcendentalism are best exhibited in the
+"Dial," a quarterly "Magazine for Literature, Philosophy and Religion,"
+begun July, 1840, and ending April, 1844. The editors were Margaret
+Fuller and R. W. Emerson; the contributors were the bright men and women
+who gave voice in literary form to the various utterances of the
+transcendental genius. Mr. Emerson's bravest lectures and noblest poems
+were first printed there. Margaret Fuller, besides numerous pieces of
+miscellaneous criticism, contributed the article on Goethe, alone enough
+to establish her fame as a discerner of spirits, and the paper on "The
+Great Lawsuit; Man versus Men--Woman versus Women," which was afterwards
+expanded into the book "Woman in the XIXth century." Bronson Alcott
+sent in chapters the "Orphic Sayings," which were an amazement to the
+uninitiated and an amusement to the profane. Charles Emerson, younger
+brother of the essayist, whose premature death was bewailed by the
+admirers of intellect and the lovers of pure character, proved by his
+"Notes from the Journal of a Scholar," that genius was not confined to a
+single member of his family. George Ripley, James Freeman Clarke,
+Theodore Parker, Wm. H. Channing, Henry Thoreau, Eliot Cabot, John S.
+Dwight the musical critic, C. P. Cranch the artist-poet, Wm. E.
+Channing, were liberal of contributions, all in characteristic ways; and
+unnamed men and women did their part to fill the numbers of this most
+remarkable magazine. The freshest thoughts on all subjects were brought
+to the editors' table; social tendencies were noticed; books were
+received; the newest picture, the last concert, was passed upon;
+judicious estimates were made of reforms and reformers abroad as well as
+at home; the philosophical discussions were able and discriminating; the
+theological papers were learned, broad and fresh. The four volumes are
+exceedingly rich in poetry, and poetry such as seldom finds a place in
+popular magazines. The first year's issue contained sixty-six pieces;
+the second, thirty-five; the third, fifty; the fourth, thirty-three;
+among these were Emerson's earliest inspirations. The "Problem,"
+"Wood-notes," "The Sphinx," "Saadi," "Ode to Beauty," "To Rhea," first
+appeared in the "Dial." Harps that had long been silent, unable to make
+themselves heard amid the din of the later generation, made their music
+here. For Transcendentalism was essentially poetical and put its
+thoughts naturally into song. The poems in the "Dial," even leaving out
+the famous ones that have been printed since with their authors' names,
+would make an interesting and attractive volume. How surprised would
+some of those writers be if they should now in their prosaic days read
+what then they wrote under the spell of that fine frenzy!
+
+The following mystic poem, which might have come from an ancient
+Egyptian, dropped from one who has since become distinguished for
+something very different from mysticism. Has he seen it these many
+years? Can he believe that he was ever in the mood to write it? It is
+called
+
+VIA SACRA.
+
+    Slowly along the crowded street I go,
+    Marking with reverent look each passer's face,
+    Seeking and not in vain, in each to trace
+    That primal soul whereof he is the show.
+    For here still move, by many eyes unseen,
+    The blessed gods that erst Olympus kept.
+    Through every guise these lofty forms serene
+    Declare the all-holding life hath never slept,
+    But known each thrill that in man's heart hath been,
+    And every tear that his sad eyes have wept.
+    Alas for us! the heavenly visitants,--
+    We greet them still as most unwelcome guests
+    Answering their smile with hateful looks askance,
+    Their sacred speech with foolish, bitter jests;
+    But oh! what is it to imperial Jove
+    That this poor world refuses all his love?
+
+A remarkable feature of the "Dial" were the chapters of "Ethnical
+Scriptures," seven in all, containing texts from the Veeshnu Sarma, the
+laws of Menu, Confucius, the Desatir, the Chinese "Four Books," Hermes
+Trismegistus, the Chaldaean Oracles. Thirty-five years ago, these
+Scriptures, now so accessible, and in portions so familiar, were known
+to the few, and were esteemed by none but scholars, whose enthusiasm for
+ancient literature got the better of their religious faith. To read such
+things then, showed an enlightened and courageous mind; to print them in
+a magazine under the sacred title of "Scriptures" argued a most
+extraordinary breadth of view. In offering these chapters to its
+readers, without apology and on their intrinsic merits,
+Transcendentalism exhibited its power to overpass the limits of all
+special religions, and do perfect justice to all expressions of the
+religious sentiment.
+
+The creed of Transcendentalism has been sufficiently indicated. It had a
+creed, and a definite one. In his lecture on "The Transcendentalist,"
+read in 1841, Mr. Emerson seems disposed to consider Transcendentalism
+merely as a phase of idealism.
+
+     "Shall we say then that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or
+     excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his
+     integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the
+     satisfaction of his wit. Nature is Transcendental, exists
+     primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances; yet takes no
+     thought for the morrow. Man owns the dignity of the life which
+     throbs around him in chemistry, and tree, and animal, and in the
+     involuntary functions of his own body; yet he is balked when he
+     tries to fling himself into this enchanted circle, where all is
+     done without degradation. Yet genius and virtue predict in man the
+     same absence of private ends, and of condescension to
+     circumstances, united with every trait and talent of beauty and
+     power."... "This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, made
+     stoic philosophers; falling on despotic times made patriot Catos
+     and Brutuses; falling on superstitious times, made prophets and
+     apostles; on popish times, made protestants and ascetic monks;
+     preachers of Faith against preachers of Works; on prelatical times,
+     made Puritans and Quakers; and falling on Unitarian and commercial
+     times, makes the peculiar shades of Idealism which we know."
+
+It is audacious to criticize Mr. Emerson on a point like this; but
+candor compels the remark that the above description does less than
+justice to the definiteness of the transcendental movement. It was
+something more than a reaction against formalism and tradition, though
+it took that form. It was more than a reaction against Puritan
+Orthodoxy, though in part it was that. It was in a very small degree due
+to study of the ancient pantheists, of Plato and the Alexandrians, of
+Plutarch, Seneca and Epictetus, though one or two of the leaders had
+drunk deeply from these sources. Transcendentalism was a distinct
+philosophical system. Practically it was an assertion of the inalienable
+worth of man; theoretically it was an assertion of the immanence of
+divinity in instinct, the transference of supernatural attributes to the
+natural constitution of mankind.
+
+Such a faith would necessarily be protean in its aspects. Philosopher,
+Critic, Moralist, Poet, would give it voice according to cast of
+genius. It would present in turn all the phases of idealism, and to the
+outside spectator seem a mass of wild opinions; but running through all
+was the belief in the Living God in the Soul, faith in immediate
+inspiration, in boundless possibility, and in unimaginable good.
+
+The editors and reviewers of its day could make nothing of it. The most
+entertaining part of the present writer's task has been the reading of
+articles on Transcendentalism in the contemporaneous magazines. The
+reviewers were unable to resist the temptation to make themselves
+ridiculous. The quarterlies and monthlies are before me, looking as if
+they resented the exposure of their dusty and musty condition, and would
+conceal if they could the baldness of their wit. It would be cruel to
+exhume those antique judgments, so honest, yet so imbecile and so
+mistaken. The doubts and misgivings, the bitternesses and the horrors,
+the sinkings of heart and the revolvings of soul may be estimated by any
+who will consult the numbers of the Christian Examiner, the Biblical
+Repository, the Princeton Review, the New Englander, the Whig Review,
+Knickerbocker, (Knickerbocker is especially facetious), but we advise
+none to do it who would retain their respect for honorable names. The
+writers, let us hope, did the best they knew, and it would be unkind to
+expose the theological prejudice, the polemical acrimony, the narrowness
+and flippancy they would have been ashamed of had they been aware of it.
+
+A good example of the courteous kind of injustice may be found in the
+Christian Examiner for January, 1837, in a review of "Nature" from the
+pen of a Cambridge Professor, who writes in a kindly spirit and with an
+honest intention to be fair to a movement with which he had no
+intellectual sympathy:
+
+     "The aim of the Transcendentalists is high. They profess to look
+     not only beyond facts, but, without the aid of facts, to
+     principles. What is this but Plato's doctrine of innate, eternal
+     and immutable ideas on the consideration of which all science is
+     founded? Truly, the human mind advances but too often in a circle.
+     The New School has abandoned Bacon, only to go back and wander in
+     the groves of the Academy, and to bewilder themselves with the
+     dreams which first arose in the fervid imagination of the Greeks.
+     Without questioning the desirableness of this end, of considering
+     general truths without any previous examination of particulars, we
+     may well doubt the power of modern philosophers to attain it.
+     Again, they are busy in the enquiry (to adopt their own
+     phraseology) after the Real and Absolute, as distinguished from the
+     Apparent. Not to repeat the same doubt as to their success, we may
+     at least request them to beware lest they strip the truth of its
+     relation to Humanity, and thus deprive it of its usefulness."
+
+We quote this passage not merely to show how inevitably the best
+intentioned critics of Transcendentalism fell into sarcasm, nor to
+illustrate the species of error into which the "Sensational" philosophy
+betrayed even candid minds; but to call attention to another point,
+namely, the general misconception of the practical aims and purposes of
+the new school. It was a common prejudice that Transcendentalists were
+visionaries and enthusiasts, who in pursuit of principles neglected
+duties, and while seeking for The Real and The Absolute forgot the
+actual and the relative. Macaulay puts the case strongly in his article
+on Lord Bacon:
+
+     "To sum up the whole; we should say that the aim of the Platonic
+     philosophy was to exalt man into a God. The aim of the Baconian
+     philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he
+     continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to
+     raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy
+     was to supply our wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter
+     was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil,
+     he aimed at the stars; and though there was no want of strength and
+     skill, the shot was thrown away. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark
+     which was placed on the earth, and within bow shot, and hit it in
+     the white. The philosophy of Plato began in words and ended in
+     words--noble words indeed; words such as were to be expected from
+     the finest of human intellects exercising boundless control over
+     the finest of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in
+     observations and ended in arts. The smallest actual good is better
+     than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The truth
+     is, that in those very matters for the sake of which they neglected
+     all the vulgar interests of mankind, the ancient philosophers did
+     nothing or worse than nothing--they promised what was
+     impracticable; they despised what was practicable; they filled the
+     world with long words and long beards; and they left it as wicked
+     and as ignorant as they found it."
+
+Substitute Idealism for Platonism, and Transcendentalists for ancient
+philosophers, and this expresses the judgment of "sensible men" of the
+last generation, on Transcendentalism. It was not perceived that the
+two schools of philosophy aimed at producing the same results, but by
+different methods; that the "Sensationalist" worked up from beneath by
+material processes, while the "Idealist" worked downward from above by
+intellectual ones; that the former tried to push men up by mechanical
+appliances, and the latter endeavored to draw them up by spiritual
+attraction; that while the disciples of Bacon operated on man as if he
+was a complex animal, a creature of nature and of circumstances, who was
+borne along with the material progress of the planet, but had no
+independent power of flight, the disciples of Kant and Fichte assumed
+that man was a creative, recreative force, a being who had only to be
+conscious of the capacities within him to shape circumstances according
+to the pattern shown him on the Mount. The charge of shooting at stars
+is puerile. The only use they would make of stars was to "hitch wagons"
+to them. The Transcendentalists of New England were the most strenuous
+workers of their day, and at the problems which the day flung down
+before them. The most strenuous, and the most successful workers too.
+They achieved more practical benefit for society, in proportion to their
+numbers and the duration of their existence, than any body of Baconians
+of whom we ever heard. Men and women are healthier in their bodies,
+happier in their domestic and social relations, more contented in their
+estate, more ambitious to enlarge their opportunities, more eager to
+acquire knowledge, more kind and humane in their sympathies, more
+reasonable in their expectations, than they would have been if Margaret
+Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker and George Ripley and
+Bronson Alcott, and the rest of their fellow believers and fellow
+workers had not lived. It is the fashion of our generation to hold that
+progress is, and must of necessity be, exceedingly gradual; and that no
+safe advance is ever made except at snail's pace. But ever and anon the
+mind of man refutes the notion by starting under the influence of a
+thought, and leaping over long reaches of space at a bound.
+Transcendentalism gave one of these demonstrations, sufficient to refute
+the vulgar prejudice. Its brief history may have illustrated the truth
+of Wordsworth's lines,
+
+    "That 'tis a thing impossible to frame
+     Conceptions equal to the Soul's desires;
+     And the most difficult of tasks to keep
+     Heights which the Soul is competent to gain."
+
+The heights were gained nevertheless, and kept long enough for a view of
+the land of promise; and ever since, though the ascent is a dim
+recollection, and the great forms have come to look like images in
+dreams, and the mighty voices are but ghostly echoes, men and women have
+been happy in laboring for the heaven their fathers believed they saw.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+PRACTICAL TENDENCIES.
+
+
+Mr. Emerson--we find ourselves continually appealing to him as the
+finest interpreter of the transcendental movement--made a confession
+which its enemies were quick to seize on and turn to their purpose.
+
+     "It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer,
+     that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves
+     from the common labors and competitions of the market and the
+     caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical
+     way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to
+     justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof; they feel the
+     disproportion between themselves and the work offered them, and
+     they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the
+     degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can
+     propose to them. They are striking work and crying out for somewhat
+     worthy to do. They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and
+     conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general
+     society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the
+     house; to live in the country rather than in the town; and to find
+     their tasks and amusements in solitude. They are not good citizens;
+     not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of
+     the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the
+     public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises
+     of education, of missions, foreign or domestic, in the abolition of
+     the slave trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even
+     like to vote. The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism
+     does not mean sloth; they had as lief hear that their friend is
+     dead as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed,
+     and can do nothing for humanity."
+
+This extreme statement must not be taken as either complete or
+comprehensive. They who read it in the lecture on "The Transcendentalist"
+must be careful to notice Mr. Emerson's qualifications, that
+"this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of the
+separators;" that "this part is chosen both from temperament and
+from principle; with some unwillingness too, and as a choice of
+the less of two evils;" "that they are joyous, susceptible,
+affectionate;" that "they wish a just and even fellowship or none;" that
+"what they do is done because they are overpowered by the humanities
+that speak on all sides;" that "what you call your fundamental
+institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses,
+and, when nearly seen, paltry matters." But even this apology does not
+quite exonerate his friends.
+
+Transcendentalism certainly did produce its share of idle, dreamy,
+useless people--as "Sensationalism" produced its share of coarse,
+greedy, low-lived and bestial ones. But its legitimate fruit was
+earnestness, aspiration and enthusiastic energy.
+
+We must begin with the philosophy of Man. The Transcendentalist claims
+for all men as a natural endowment what "Evangelical" Christianity
+ascribes to the few as a special gift of the Spirit. This faith comes
+to expression continually. The numbers of the "Dial" are alight with
+it.
+
+     "Man is a rudiment and embryon of God: Eternity shall develop in
+     him the Divine Image."
+
+     "The Soul works from centre to periphery, veiling her labors from
+     the ken of the senses."
+
+     "The sensible world is spirit in magnitude outspread before the
+     senses for their analysis, but whose synthesis is the soul herself,
+     whose prothesis is God."
+
+     "The time may come, in the endless career of the soul, when the
+     facts of incarnation, birth, death, descent into matter, and
+     ascension from it, shall comprise no part of her history; when she
+     herself shall survey this human life with emotions akin to those of
+     the naturalist on examining the relics of extinct races of beings."
+
+     "Of the perception now fast becoming a conscious fact,--that there
+     is one mind, and that also the powers and privileges which lie in
+     any, lie in all; that I, as a man, may claim and appropriate
+     whatever of true or fair or good or strong has anywhere been
+     exhibited; that Moses and Confucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz are not
+     so much individuals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and
+     my intelligence proves them my own,--literature is far the best
+     expression."
+
+Thus Mr. Alcott and Mr. Emerson. Thomas T. Stone,--a modest, retiring,
+deep and interior man, a child of the spiritual philosophy, which he
+faithfully lived in and up to, and preached with singular fulness and
+richness of power--makes his statement thus, in an article entitled "Man
+in the Ages," contributed to the third number of the "Dial":
+
+     "Man is man, despite of all the lies which would convince him he is
+     not, despite of all the thoughts which would strive to unman him.
+     There is a spirit in man, an inspiration from the Almighty. What
+     is, is. The eternal is eternal; the temporary must pass it by,
+     leaving it to stand evermore. There is now, there has been always,
+     power among men to subdue the ages, to dethrone them, to make them
+     mere outgoings and servitors of man. It is needed only that we
+     assert our prerogative,--that man do with hearty faith affirm: 'I
+     am; in me being is. Ages, ye come and go; appear and disappear;
+     products, not life; vapors from the surface of the soul, not living
+     fountain. Ye are of me, for me, not I of you or for you. Not with
+     you my affinity, but with the Eternal. I am; I live; spirit I have
+     not; spirit am I.'"
+
+Samuel D. Robbins, another earnest prophet of the spiritual man, utters
+the creed again in the way peculiar to himself.
+
+     "There is an infinity in the human soul which few have yet
+     believed, and after which few have aspired. There is a lofty power
+     of moral principle in the depths of our nature which is nearly
+     allied to Omnipotence; compared with which the whole force of
+     outward nature is more feeble than an infant's grasp. There is a
+     spiritual insight to which the pure soul reaches, more clear and
+     prophetic, more wide and vast than all telescopic vision can
+     typify. There is a faith in God, and a clear perception of His will
+     and designs, and providence, and glory, which gives to its
+     possessor a confidence and patience and sweet composure, under
+     every varied and troubling aspect of events, such as no man can
+     realize who has not felt its influences in his own heart. There is
+     a communion with God, in which the soul feels the presence of the
+     unseen One, in the profound depths of its being, with a vivid
+     distinctness and a holy reverence such as no word can describe.
+     There is a state of union with God, I do not say often reached, yet
+     it has been attained in this world, in which all the past and
+     present and future seem reconciled, and eternity is won and
+     enjoyed: and God and man, earth and heaven, with all their
+     mysteries are apprehended in truth as they lie in the mind of the
+     Infinite."
+
+The poet chimes in with the prophet. We marked for quotation several
+passages from the "Dial," but a few detached stanzas must suffice. C. P.
+Cranch opens his lines to the ocean thus:
+
+    Tell me, brothers, what are we?
+    Spirits bathing in the sea of Deity.
+    Half afloat, and half on land,
+    Wishing much to leave the strand,
+    Standing, gazing with devotion,
+    Yet afraid to trust the ocean,
+        Such are we.
+
+And thus he closes lines to the Aurora Borealis:
+
+    But a better type thou art
+    Of the strivings of the heart,
+    Reaching upwards from the earth
+    To the _Soul_ that gave it birth.
+    When the noiseless beck of night
+    Summons out the inner light
+    That hath hid its purer ray
+    Through the lapses of the day,--
+    Then like thee, thou Northern Morn,
+    Instincts which we deemed unborn
+    Gushing from their hidden source
+    Mount upon their heavenward course,
+    And the spirit seeks to be
+    Filled with God's eternity.
+
+That a philosophy like this will impel to aspiration need not be said;
+aspiration is the soul of it. The Transcendentalist was constantly on
+the wing.
+
+     "On all hands men's existence is converted into a preparation for
+     existence. We do not properly live, in these days; but everywhere
+     with patent inventions and complex arrangements are getting ready
+     to live. The end is lost in the means, life is smothered in
+     appliances. We cannot get to ourselves, there are so many external
+     comforts to wade through. Consciousness stops half way. Reflection
+     is dissipated in the circumstances of our environment. Goodness is
+     exhausted in aids to goodness, and all the vigor and health of the
+     soul is expended in quack contrivances to build it up."... What the
+     age requires is not books, but example, high, heroic example; not
+     words but deeds; not societies but men--men who shall have their
+     root in themselves, and attract and convert the world by the beauty
+     of their fruits. All truth must be living, before it can be
+     adequately known or taught. Men are anterior to systems. Great
+     doctrines are not the origin, but the product of great lives. The
+     Cynic practice must precede the Stoic philosophy, and out of
+     Diogenes's tub came forth in the end the wisdom of Epictetus, the
+     eloquence of Seneca, and the piety of Antonine."...
+
+     "The religious man lives for one great object; to perfect himself,
+     to unite himself by purity with God, to fit himself for heaven by
+     cherishing within him a heavenly disposition. He has discovered
+     that he has a soul; that his soul is himself; that he changes not
+     with the changing things of life, but receives its discipline from
+     them; that man does not live by bread alone, but that the most real
+     of all things, inasmuch as they are the most enduring, are the
+     things which are not seen; that faith and love and virtue are the
+     sources of his life, and that one realises nothing, except he lay
+     fast hold on them. He extracts a moral lesson, a lesson of
+     endurance or of perseverance for himself, or a new evidence of God
+     and of his own immortal destiny, from every day's hard task."
+
+That last strain came from the man who for many years has been known as
+the foremost musical critic of New England, if not of America, John S.
+Dwight. Another writes:
+
+     "The soul lies buried in a ruined city, struggling to be free and
+     calling for aid. The worldly trafficker in life's caravan hears its
+     cries, and says, it is a prisoned maniac. But one true man stops
+     and with painful toil lifts aside the crumbling fragments; till at
+     last he finds beneath the choking mass a mangled form of exceeding
+     beauty. Dazzling is the light to eyes long blind; weak are the
+     limbs long prisoned; faint is the breath long pent. But oh! that
+     mantling flush, that liquid eye, that elastic spring of renovated
+     strength. The deliverer is folded to the breast of an angel."
+
+The duty of self-culture is made primary and is eloquently preached. The
+piece from which this extract is taken, entitled "The Art of Life" is
+anonymous, but supposed to be from Emerson's pen:
+
+     "The work of life, so far as the individual is concerned, and that
+     to which the scholar is particularly called, is _Self-Culture_,
+     the perfect unfolding of our individual nature. To this end above
+     all others, the art of which I speak directs our attention and
+     points our endeavor. There is no man, it is presumed, to whom this
+     object is wholly indifferent, who would not willingly possess this
+     too, along with other prizes, provided the attainment of it were
+     compatible with personal ease and worldly good. But the business of
+     self-culture admits of no compromise. Either it must be made a
+     distinct aim or wholly abandoned."
+
+But it is time wasted to speak on this point. It has been objected to
+Transcendentalism that it made self-culture too important, carrying it
+to the point of selfishness, sacrificing in its behalf, sympathy,
+brotherly love, sentiments of patriotism, personal fidelity and honor,
+and rejoicing in the production of a "mountainous Me" fed at the expense
+of life's sweetest humanities; and Goethe is straightway cited as the
+Transcendental apostle of the gospel of heartless indifference. But
+allowing the charge against Goethe to rest unrefuted, it must be made
+against him as a man, not as a Transcendentalist; and even were it true
+of him as a Transcendentalist, it was not true of Kant or Fichte, of
+Schleiermacher or Herder; of Jean Paul or Novalis; of Coleridge, Carlyle
+or Wordsworth; and who ever intimated that it was true of Emerson, who
+has been one of the most industrious teachers of his generation, and one
+of the most earnest worshippers of the genius of his native land;--of
+Margaret Fuller, whose life was a quickening flood of intellectual
+influence;--of Bronson Alcott, who, every winter for years, has carried
+his seed corn to the far West, seeking only a receptive furrow for his
+treasured being;--of Theodore Parker, who sacrificed precious days of
+study, his soul's passion for knowledge, his honorable ambition to
+achieve a scholar's fame, in order that his country, in her time of
+trial, might not want what he was able to give;--of Wm. Henry Channing,
+to whom the thought of humanity is an inspiration, and "sacrifice an all
+sufficing joy;"--of George Ripley, who offered himself, all that he had
+and was, that the experiment of an honest friendly society might be
+fairly tried? By "self-culture" these and the rest of their brotherhood
+meant the culture of that nobler self which includes heart, and
+conscience, sympathy and spirituality, not as incidental ingredients,
+but as essential qualities. Self-hood they never identified with
+selfishness; nor did they ever confound or associate its attainment with
+the acquisition of place, power, wealth, or eminent repute; the person
+was more to them than the individual; they sought no reward except for
+service; and the consciousness of serving faithfully was their best
+reward.
+
+To Transcendentalism belongs the credit of inaugurating the theory and
+practice of dietetics which is preached so assiduously now by
+enlightened physiologists. The people who regarded man as a soul, first
+taught the wisdom that is now inculcated by people who regard man as a
+body. The doctrine that human beings live on air and light; that food
+should be simple and nutritious; that coarse meats should be discarded
+and fiery liquors abolished; that wines should be substituted for
+"spirits," light wines for heavy, and pure water for wines;--has in all
+ages been taught by mystics and idealists. The ancient master of it was
+Pythagoras. Their idea was, that as the body was, for the time being,
+the dwelling-place of the soul, its lodging and home, its prison or its
+palace, its organ, its instrument, its box of tools, the medium of its
+activity, it must be kept in perfect condition for these high offices.
+They honored the flesh in the nobility of their care of it. No sour
+ascetics they, but generous feeders on essences and elixirs; no
+mortifiers of matter, but purifiers and refiners of it; regarding it as
+too exquisitely mingled and tempered a substance to be tortured and
+imbruted. The materialist prescribes temperance, continence, sobriety,
+in order that life may be long, and comfortable, and free from disease.
+The idealist prescribes them, in order that life may be intellectual,
+serene, pacific, beneficent.
+
+The chief mystic of the transcendental band has been the chief prophet
+of this innocent word. "The New Ideas," wrote Mr. Alcott, "bear direct
+on all the economies of life. They will revise old methods, and
+institute new cultures. I look with special hope to their effect on the
+regimen of the land. Our present modes of agriculture exhaust the soil,
+and must, while life is made thus sensual and secular; the narrow
+covetousness which prevails in trade, in labor, in exchanges, ends in
+depraving the land; it breeds disease, decline, in the flesh,--debauches
+and consumes the heart." "The Soul's Banquet is an art divine. To mould
+this statue of flesh from chaste materials, kneading it into comeliness
+and strength, this is Promethean; and this we practise, well or ill, in
+all our thoughts, acts, desires. I would abstain from the fruits of
+oppression and blood, and am seeking means of entire independence. This,
+were I not holden by penury unjustly, would be possible. One miracle we
+have wrought nevertheless, and shall soon work all of them;--our wine is
+water,--flesh, bread;--drugs, fruits;--and we defy, meekly, the satyrs
+all, and Esculapius."
+
+"It was the doctrine of the Samian Sage, that whatsoever food obstructs
+divination, is prejudicial to purity and chastity of mind and body, to
+temperance, health, sweetness of disposition, suavity of manners, grace
+of form and dignity of carriage, should be shunned. Especially should
+those who would apprehend the deepest wisdom, and preserve through life
+the relish for elegant studies and pursuits, abstain from flesh,
+cherishing the justice which animals claim at men's hands, nor
+slaughtering them for food or profit." "A purer civilization than ours
+can yet claim to be, is to inspire the genius of mankind with the skill
+to deal dutifully with soils and souls, exalt agriculture and manculture
+into a religion of art; the freer interchange of commodities which the
+current world-wide intercourse promotes, spreads a more various,
+wholesome, classic table, whereby the race shall be refined of traits
+reminding too plainly of barbarism and the beast." Said Timotheus of
+Plato, "they who dine with the philosopher have nothing to complain of
+the next morning." That the doctrine has its warm, glowing side,
+appears in a characteristic poem in the little volume called "Tablets."
+
+The anchorite's plea was not always as good as his practice. Arguing the
+point once with a sagacious man of the world, he urged as a reason for
+abstinence from animal food that one thereby distanced the animal. For
+the eating of beef encouraged the bovine quality, and the pork diet
+repeats the trick of Circe, and changes men into swine. But, rejoined
+the friend, if abstinence from animal food leaves the animal out, does
+not partaking of vegetable food put the vegetable in? I presume the
+potato diet will change man into a potato. And what if the potatoes be
+small! The philosopher's reply is not recorded. But in his case the
+beast did disappear, and the leek has never become prominent. In his
+case health, strength, agility, sprightliness, cheerfulness, have been
+wholly compatible with disuse of animal food. Few men have preserved the
+best uses of body and mind so long unimpaired. Few have lost so few
+days; have misused so few; are able to give a good account of so many.
+The vegetarian of seventy-six shames many a cannibal of forty.
+
+The Transcendentalist was by nature a reformer. He could not be
+satisfied with men as they were. His doctrine of the capacities of men,
+even in its most moderate statement, kindled to enthusiasm his hope of
+change. However his disgust may have kept him aloof for a time, his
+sympathy soon brought him back, and his faith sent him to the front of
+the battle. In beginning his lecture on "Man The Reformer," Mr. Emerson
+does not dissemble his hope that each person whom he addresses has
+"felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidities and
+limitations, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer,
+a benefactor, not content to slip through the world like a footman or a
+spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can,
+but a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight path to
+everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself,
+but make it easier for all who follow him, to go in honor and with
+benefit." "The power," he declares, "which is at once spring and
+regulator in all efforts of reform, is the conviction that there is an
+infinite worthiness in man, which will appear at the call of worth, and
+that all particular reforms are the removing of some impediment. Is it
+not the highest duty that man should be honored in us?" "In the history
+of the world" the same great teacher remarks, "the doctrine of Reform
+had never such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans, Herrnhuetters,
+Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, in their
+accusations of society, all respected something,--church or state,
+literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the dinner
+table, coined money. But now all these and all things else hear the
+trumpet and must rush to judgment,--Christianity, the laws, commerce,
+schools, the farm, the laboratory: and not a kingdom, town, statute,
+rite, calling, man, or woman but is threatened by the new spirit." "Let
+me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to it that the world is the
+better for me, and to find my reward in the act. Love would put a new
+face on this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too
+long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of
+statesmen, the impotence of armies, and navies, and lines of defence,
+would be superseded by this unarmed child."
+
+The method of reform followed from the principle. It was the method of
+individual awakening and regeneration, and was to be conducted "through
+the simplest ministries of family, neighborhood, fraternity, quite wide
+of associations and institutions." "The true reformer," it was
+proclaimed, "initiates his labor in the precincts of private life, and
+makes it, not a set of measures, not an utterance, not a pledge merely,
+but a life; and not an impulse of a day, but commensurate with human
+existence: a tendency towards perfection of being." The
+Transcendentalist might easily become an enthusiast from excess of
+faith; but a fanatic, with a tinge of melancholy in his disposition, a
+drop of malignity in his blood, he could not be. He was less a reformer
+of human circumstance than a regenerator of the human spirit, and he was
+never a destroyer except as destruction accompanied the process of
+regeneration.
+
+This fine positive purpose appeared in all he undertook. With movements
+that did not start from this primary assumption of individual dignity,
+and come back to that as their goal, he had nothing to do. Was he an
+anti-slavery man--and he was certain to be one at heart--the
+Transcendentalists were glowing friends of that reform,--he was so
+because his philosophy compelled him to see in the slave the same
+humanity that appeared in the master; in the African the same
+possibilities that were confessed in the Frank, the Anglo-Saxon, and the
+Celt. Did he take up the cause of education, it was as a believer in the
+latent capacity of every child, boy or girl; as an earnest wisher that
+such capacity might be stimulated by the best methods, and directed to
+the best ends. What he effected, or tried to effect in this way will be
+understood by the reader of the record of Mr. Alcott's school; that bold
+and original attempt at educating, leading or drawing out young minds,
+which showed such remarkable promise, and would have achieved such
+remarkable results had more faithful trial of its method been possible.
+Was he a reformer of society, it was as a vitalizer, not as a machinist.
+
+In no respect does the Transcendentalist's idea of social reform stand
+out more conspicuously than in this. With an incessant and passionate
+aspiration after a pure social state,--deeply convinced of the mistakes,
+profoundly sensible of the miseries of the actual condition, he would
+not be committed to experiments that did not assume his first
+principle--the supreme dignity of the individual man. The systems of
+French socialism he distrusted from the first; for they proceeded on the
+ground that man is not a self determined being, but a creature of
+circumstance. Mr. Albert Brisbane's attempt to domesticate Fourierism
+among us was cordially considered, but not cordially welcomed. He seemed
+to have no spiritual depth of foundation; his proposition to imprison
+man in a Phalanx, was rejected; his omission of moral freedom in the
+scheme was resented; no sincerity, no keenness of criticism, no exposure
+of existing evils or indignation of protest against them, disarmed the
+jealousy of endeavors to reconstruct society, as if human beings were
+piles of brick or lumps of mortar.
+
+In 1841 a community was planned in Massachusetts, by Liberal Christians
+of the Universalist sect. Though never put in operation it did not
+escape the criticism of the "Dial." The good points were recognized and
+commended; the moral features were praised as showing a deep insight
+into the Christian idea, and the articles of confederation were
+pronounced admirable in judgment and form, with a single exception,
+which however was fatal. Admittance of members was conditioned on
+pledges of non-resistance, abolition, temperance, abstinence from
+voting, and such like. Though these conditions were easy enough in
+themselves, and were expressed in the most conciliatory spirit, they
+were justly regarded as giving to the community the character of a
+church or party, much less than world embracing. "A true community," it
+was declared, "can be founded on nothing short of faith in the universal
+man, as he comes out of the hands of the Creator, with no law over his
+liberty but the eternal ideas that lie at the foundation of his being."
+"The final cause of human society is the unfolding of the individual
+man, into every form of perfection, without let or hindrance, according
+to the inward nature of each."
+
+When the Brook Farm experiment was under way at West Roxbury, its
+initiators were warned against three dangers: the first, _Organization_,
+which begins by being an instrument and ends by being a master; the
+second, _Endowment_, which promises to be a swift helper, and is, ere
+long, a stifling encumbrance; the third, the spirit of _Coterie_, which
+would in no long time, shrink their rock of ages to a platform, diminish
+their brotherhood to a clique, and reduce their aims to experiences.
+
+Brook Farm, whereof it is not probable that a history will ever be
+written, for the reason that there were in it slender materials for
+history,--though there were abundant materials for thought,--was
+projected on the purest transcendental basis. It was neither European
+nor English, neither French nor German in its origin. No doubt, among
+the supporters and friends of it were some who had made themselves
+acquainted with the writings of St. Simon and Chevalier, of Proudhon and
+Fourier; but it does not appear that any of these authors shaped or
+prescribed the plan, or influenced the spirit of the enterprise. The
+Constitution which is printed herewith explains sufficiently the
+project, and expresses the spirit in which it was undertaken. The
+jealous regard for the rights of the individual is not the least
+characteristic feature of this remarkable document. The By-Laws, which
+want of space excludes from these pages, simply confirm the provisions
+that were made to guard the person against unnecessary infringement of
+independence.
+
+
+     CONSTITUTION.
+
+     In order more effectually to promote the great purposes of human
+     culture; to establish the external relations of life on a basis of
+     wisdom and purity; to apply the principles of justice and love to
+     our social organization in accordance with the laws of Divine
+     Providence; to substitute a system of brotherly cooperation for one
+     of selfish competition; to secure to our children and those who may
+     be entrusted to our care, the benefits of the highest physical,
+     intellectual and moral education, which in the progress of
+     knowledge the resources at our command will permit; to institute an
+     attractive, efficient, and productive system of industry; to
+     prevent the exercise of worldly anxiety, by the competent supply of
+     our necessary wants; to diminish the desire of excessive
+     accumulation, by making the acquisition of individual property
+     subservient to upright and disinterested uses; to guarantee to each
+     other forever the means of physical support, and of spiritual
+     progress; and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity,
+     truthfulness, refinement, and moral dignity, to our mode of
+     life;--we the undersigned do unite in a voluntary Association, and
+     adopt and ordain the following articles of agreement, to wit:
+
+
+     ARTICLE I.
+
+     NAME AND MEMBERSHIP.
+
+     SEC. 1. The name of this Association shall be "THE BROOK-FARM
+     ASSOCIATION FOR INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION." All persons who shall hold
+     one or more shares in its stock, or whose labor and skill shall be
+     considered an equivalent for capital, may be admitted by the vote
+     of two-thirds of the Association, as members thereof.
+
+     SEC. 2. No member of the Association shall ever be subjected to any
+     religious test; nor shall any authority be assumed over individual
+     freedom of opinion by the Association, nor by one member over
+     another; nor shall any one be held accountable to the Association,
+     except for such overt acts, or omissions of duty, as violate the
+     principles of justice, purity, and love, on which it is founded;
+     and in such cases the relation of any member may be suspended or
+     discontinued, at the pleasure of the Association.
+
+
+     ARTICLE II.
+
+     CAPITAL STOCK.
+
+     SEC. 1. The members of this Association shall own and manage such
+     real and personal estate in joint stock proprietorship, divided
+     into shares of one hundred dollars each, as may from time to time
+     be agreed on.
+
+     SEC. 2. No shareholder shall be liable to any assessment whatever
+     on the shares held by him; nor shall he be held responsible
+     individually in his private property on account of the Association;
+     nor shall the Trustees, or any officer or agent of the Association,
+     have any authority to do any thing which shall impose personal
+     responsibility on any shareholder, by making any contracts or
+     incurring any debts for which the shareholders shall be
+     individually or personally responsible.
+
+     SEC. 3. The Association guarantees to each shareholder the interest
+     of five per cent. annually on the amount of stock held by him in
+     the Association, and this interest may be paid in certificates of
+     stock and credited on the books of the Association; provided that
+     each shareholder may draw on the funds of the Association for the
+     amount of interest due at the third annual settlement from the time
+     of investment.
+
+     SEC. 4. The shareholders on their part, for themselves, their heirs
+     and assigns, do renounce all claim on any profits accruing to the
+     Association for the use of their capital invested in the stock of
+     the Association, except five per cent. interest on the amount of
+     stock held by them, payable in the manner described in the
+     preceding section.
+
+
+     ARTICLE III.
+
+     GUARANTIES.
+
+     SEC. 1. The Association shall provide such employment for all its
+     members as shall be adapted to their capacities, habits, and
+     tastes; and each member shall select and perform such operations of
+     labor, whether corporal or mental, as shall be deemed best suited
+     to his own endowments and the benefit of the Association.
+
+     SEC. 2. The Association guarantees to all its members, their
+     children and family dependents, house-rent, fuel, food, and
+     clothing, and the other necessaries of life, without charge, not
+     exceeding a certain fixed amount to be decided annually by the
+     Association; no charge shall ever be made for support during
+     inability to labor from sickness or old age, or for medical or
+     nursing attendance, except in case of shareholders, who shall be
+     charged therefor, and also for the food and clothing of children,
+     to an amount not exceeding the interest due to them on settlement;
+     but no charge shall be made to any members for education or the use
+     of library and public rooms.
+
+     SEC. 3. Members may withdraw from labor, under the direction of the
+     Association, and in that case, they shall not be entitled to the
+     benefit of the above guaranties.
+
+     SEC. 4. Children over ten years of age shall be provided with
+     employment in suitable branches of industry; they shall be credited
+     for such portions of each annual dividend, as shall be decided by
+     the Association, and on the completion of their education in the
+     Association at the age of twenty, shall be entitled to a
+     certificate of stock to the amount of credits in their favor, and
+     may be admitted as members of the Association.
+
+
+     ARTICLE IV.
+
+     DISTRIBUTION OF PROFITS.
+
+     SEC. 1. The net profits of the Association, after the payment of
+     all expenses, shall be divided into a number of shares
+     corresponding to the number of days' labor; and every member shall
+     be entitled to one share of every day's labor performed by him.
+
+     SEC. 2. A full settlement shall be made with every member once a
+     year, and certificates of stock given for all balances due; but in
+     case of need, to be decided by himself, every member may be
+     permitted to draw on the funds in the Treasury to an amount not
+     exceeding the credits in his favor for labor performed.
+
+
+     ARTICLE V.
+
+     GOVERNMENT.
+
+     SEC. 1. The government of the Association shall be vested in a
+     board of Directors, divided into four departments, as follows; 1st,
+     General Direction; 2d, Direction of Education; 3d, Direction of
+     Industry; 4th, Direction of Finance; consisting of three persons
+     each, provided that the same person may be elected member of each
+     Direction.
+
+     SEC. 2. The General Direction and Direction of Education shall be
+     chosen annually, by the vote of a majority of the members of the
+     Association. The Direction of Finance shall be chosen annually, by
+     the vote of a majority of the share-holders and members of the
+     Association. The direction of Industry shall consist of the chiefs
+     of the three primary series.
+
+     SEC. 3. The chairman of the General Direction shall be the
+     President of the Association, and together with the Direction of
+     Finance, shall constitute a board of Trustees, by whom the property
+     of the Association shall be held and managed.
+
+     SEC. 4. The General Direction shall oversee and manage the affairs
+     of the Association, so that every department shall be carried on in
+     an orderly and efficient manner.
+
+     SEC. 5. The departments of Education and Finance shall be under the
+     control each of its own Direction, which shall select, and in
+     concurrence with the General Direction, shall appoint such
+     teachers, officers, and agents, as shall be necessary to the
+     complete and systematic organization of the department. No
+     Directors or other officers shall be deemed to possess any rank
+     superior to the other members of the Association, nor shall they
+     receive any extra remuneration for their official services.
+
+     SEC. 6. The department of industry shall be arranged in groups and
+     series, as far as practicable, and shall consist of three primary
+     series; to wit, Agricultural, Mechanical, and Domestic Industry.
+     The chief of each series shall be elected every two months by the
+     members thereof, subject to the approval of the general Direction.
+     The chief of each group shall be chosen weekly by its members.
+
+
+     ARTICLE VI.
+
+     MISCELLANEOUS.
+
+     SEC. 1. The Association may from time to time adopt such by-laws,
+     not inconsistent with the spirit and purpose of these articles, as
+     shall be found expedient or necessary.
+
+     SEC. 2. In order to secure to the Association the benefits of the
+     highest discoveries in social science, and to preserve its fidelity
+     to the principles of progress and reform, on which it is founded,
+     any amendment may be proposed to this Constitution at a meeting
+     called for the purpose; and if approved by two-thirds of the
+     members at a subsequent meeting, at least one month after the date
+     of the first, shall be adopted.
+
+From this it appears that the association was simply an attempt to
+return to first principles, to plant the seeds of a new social order,
+founded on respect for the dignity, and sympathy with the aspirations of
+man. It was open to all sects; it admitted, welcomed, nay, demanded all
+kinds and degrees of intellectual culture. The most profound regard for
+individual opinion, feeling and inclination, was professed and
+exhibited. Confidence that surrender to the spontaneous principle, with
+no more restriction than might be necessary to secure its development,
+was wisest, lay at the bottom of the scheme.
+
+It was felt at this time, 1842, that, in order to live a religious and
+moral life in sincerity, it was necessary to leave the world of
+institutions, and to reconstruct the social order from new beginnings. A
+farm was bought in close vicinity to Boston; agriculture was made the
+basis of the life, as bringing man into direct and simple relations with
+nature, and restoring labor to honest conditions. To a certain extent,
+it will be seen, the principle of community in property was recognized,
+community of interest and cooperation requiring it; but to satisfy the
+claims and insure the rights of the individual, members were not
+required to impoverish themselves, or to resign the fruit of their
+earnings.
+
+Provisions were either raised on the farm or purchased at wholesale.
+Meals were eaten in "commons." It was the rule that all should
+labor--choosing their occupations, and the number of hours, and
+receiving wages according to the hours. No labor was hired that could be
+supplied within the community; and all labor was rewarded alike, on the
+principle that physical labor is more irksome than mental, more
+absorbing and exacting, less improving and delightful. Moreover, to
+recognize practically the nobility of labor in and of itself, none were
+appointed to special kinds of work. All took their turn at the several
+branches of employment. None were drudges or menials. The intellectual
+gave a portion of their time to tasks such as servants and handmaidens
+usually discharge. The unintellectual were allowed a portion of their
+time for mental cultivation. The benefits of social intercourse were
+thrown open to all. The aim was to secure as many hours as practicable
+from the necessary toil of providing for the wants of the body, that
+there might be more leisure to provide for the deeper wants of the soul.
+The acquisition of wealth was no object. No more thought was given to
+this than the exigencies of existence demanded. To live, expand, enjoy
+as rational beings, was the never-forgotten aim.
+
+The community trafficked by way of exchange and barter with the outside
+world; sold its surplus produce; sold its culture to as many as came or
+sent children to be taught. It was hoped that from the accumulated
+results of all this labor, the appliances for intellectual and spiritual
+health might be obtained; that books might be bought, works of art,
+scientific collections and apparatus, means of decoration and
+refinement, all of which should be open on the same terms to every
+member of the association. The principle of cooperation was substituted
+for the principle of competition; self development for selfishness. The
+faith was avowed in every arrangement that the soul of humanity was in
+each man and woman.
+
+The reputation for genius, accomplishment and wit, which the founders of
+the Brook Farm enterprise enjoyed in society, attracted towards it the
+attention of the public, and awakened expectation of something much more
+than ordinary in the way of literary advantages. The settlement became a
+resort for cultivated men and women who had experience as teachers and
+wished to employ their talent to the best effect; and for others who
+were tired of the conventionalities, and sighed for honest relations
+with their fellow-beings. Some took advantage of the easy hospitality of
+the association, and came there to live mainly at its expense--their
+unskilled and incidental labor being no compensation for their
+entertainment. The most successful department was the school. Pupils
+came thither in considerable numbers and from considerable distances.
+Distinguished visitors gave charm and reputation to the place.
+
+The members were never numerous; the number varied considerably from
+year to year. Seventy was a fair average; of these, fewer than half were
+young persons sent thither to be educated. Several adults came for
+intellectual assistance. Of married people there were, in 1844, but four
+pairs. A great deal was taught and learned at Brook Farm. Classics,
+mathematics, general literature, aesthetics, occupied the busy hours. The
+most productive work was done in these ideal fields, and the best
+result of it was a harvest in the ideal world, a new sense of life's
+elasticity and joy, the delight of freedom, the innocent satisfaction of
+spontaneous relations.
+
+The details above given convey no adequate idea of the Brook Farm
+fraternity. In one sense it was much less than they imply; in another
+sense it was much more. It was less, because its plan was not materially
+successful; the intention was defeated by circumstances; the hope turned
+out to be a dream. Yet, from another aspect, the experiment fully
+justified itself. Its moral tone was high; its moral influence sweet and
+sunny. Had Brook Farm been a community in the accepted sense, had it
+insisted on absolute community of goods, the resignation of opinions, of
+personal aims interests or sympathies; had the principle of
+renunciation, sacrifice of the individual to the common weal, been
+accepted and maintained, its existence might have been continued and its
+pecuniary basis made sure. But asceticism was no feature of the original
+scheme. On the contrary, the projectors of it were believers in the
+capacities of the soul, in the safety, wisdom and imperative necessity
+of developing those capacities, and in the benign effect of liberty. Had
+the spirit of rivalry and antagonism been called in, the sectarian or
+party spirit, however generously interpreted, the result would probably
+have been different. But the law of sympathy being accepted as the law
+of life, exclusion was out of the question; inquisition into beliefs was
+inadmissible; motives even could not be closely scanned; so while some
+were enthusiastic friends of the principle of association, and some
+were ardent devotees to liberty, others thought chiefly of their private
+education and development; and others still were attracted by a desire
+of improving their social condition, or attaining comfort on easy terms.
+The idea, however noble, true, and lovely, was unable to grapple with
+elements so discordant. Yet the fact that these discordant elements did
+not, even in the brief period of the fraternity's existence, utterly
+rend and abolish the idea; that to the last, no principle was
+compromised, no rule broken, no aspiration bedraggled, is a confession
+of the purity and vitality of the creative thought. That a mere
+aggregation of persons, without written compact, formal understanding,
+or unity of purpose, men, women and children, should have lived
+together, four or five years, without scandal or reproach from
+dissension or evil whisper, should have separated without rancor or
+bitterness, and should have left none but the pleasantest savor behind
+them--is a tribute to the Transcendental Faith.
+
+In 1844, the Directors of the Association, George Ripley, Minot Pratt,
+and Charles Anderson Dana, published a statement, declaring: that every
+step had strengthened the faith with which they set out; that their
+belief in a divine order of human society had in their minds become an
+absolute certainty; that, in their judgment, considering the state of
+humanity and of social science, the world was much nearer the attainment
+of such a condition than was generally supposed. They here said
+emphatically that Fourier's doctrine of universal unity commanded their
+unqualified assent, and that their whole observation had satisfied them
+of the practical arrangements which he deduced therefrom, of the
+correspondence of the law of groups and series with the law of human
+nature. At this time the farm contained two hundred and eight acres, and
+could be enlarged to any extent necessary. The Association held property
+worth nearly or quite thirty thousand dollars, of which about twenty-two
+thousand was invested, either in the stock of the company or in
+permanent loans to it at six per cent., which could remain as long as the
+Association might wish. The organization was pronounced to be in a
+satisfactory working condition; the Department of Education, on which
+much thought had been bestowed, was flourishing. With a view to an
+ultimate expansion into a perfect Phalanx, it was proposed to organize
+the three primary departments of labor, namely, Agriculture, Domestic
+Industry, and the Mechanical Arts. Public meetings had awakened an
+interest in the community. Appeals for money had been generously
+answered. The numbers had been increased by the accession of many
+skilful and enthusiastic laborers in various departments. About ten
+thousand dollars had been added by subscription to the capital. A
+work-shop sixty feet by twenty-eight had been erected; a Phalanstery, or
+unitary dwelling on a large scale, was in process of erection, to meet
+the early needs of the preparatory period, until success should
+authorize the building of a Phalanstery "with the magnificence and
+permanence proper to such a structure." The prospect was, or looked,
+encouraging. The experiment had been tested by the hard discipline of
+more than two years; the severest difficulties had apparently been
+conquered; the arrangements had attained systematic form, as far as the
+limited numbers permitted; the idea was respectfully entertained;
+socialism was spreading; it embraced persons of every station in life;
+and in its extent, and influence on questions of importance, it seemed,
+to enthusiastic believers, to be fast assuming in the United States a
+national character. This was in October 1844. At this time the Brook
+Farm Associationists connected themselves with the New York Socialists
+who accepted the teachings of Fourier; and the efforts described were
+put forth in aid of the new and more systematic plans that had been
+adopted. But this coalition, which promised so much, proved disastrous
+in its result. The Association was unable to sustain industrial
+competition with established trades. The expenses were more than the
+receipts. In the spring of 1847 the Phalanstery was burned down; the
+summer was occupied in closing up the affairs; and in the autumn the
+Association was broken up. The members betook themselves to the world
+again, and engaged in the ordinary pursuits of life. The farm was bought
+by the town of West Roxbury, and afterwards passed into private hands.
+During the civil war the government used it for military purposes. The
+main building has since been occupied as a hospital. The leaders of the
+Association removed to New York, and for about a year, till February
+1849, continued their labors of propagandism by means of the
+"Harbinger," till that expired: then their dream faded away.
+
+The full history of that movement can be written only by one who
+belonged to it, and shared its secret: and it would doubtless have been
+written before this, had the materials for a history been more solid.
+Aspirations have no history. It is pleasant to hear the survivors of the
+pastoral experiment talk over their experiences, merrily recall the
+passages in work or play, revive the impressions of country rambles,
+conversations, discussions, social festivities, recount the comical
+mishaps, summon the shadows of friends dead, but unforgotten, and
+describe the hours spent in study or recreation, unspoiled by
+carefulness. But it is in private alone that these confidences are
+imparted. To the public very little has been, or will be, or can be
+told.
+
+Mr. Hawthorne was one of the first to take up the scheme. He was there a
+little while at the beginning in 1841, and his note-books contain
+passages that are of interest. But Hawthorne's temperament was not
+congenial with such an atmosphere, nor was his faith clear or steadfast
+enough to rest contented on its idea. His, however, were observing eyes;
+and his notes, being soliloquies, confessions made to himself, convey
+his honest impressions:
+
+     BROOK FARM, April 13th, 1841. "I have not taken yet my first lesson
+     in agriculture, except that I went to see our cows foddered,
+     yesterday afternoon. We have eight of our own; and the number is
+     now increased by a Transcendental heifer belonging to Miss Margaret
+     Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick over the
+     milk pail.... I intend to convert myself into a milk-maid this
+     evening, but I pray Heaven that Mr. Ripley may be moved to assign
+     me the kindliest cow in the herd, otherwise I shall perform my
+     duties with fear and trembling. I like my brethren in affliction
+     very well, and could you see us sitting round our table at meal
+     times, before the great kitchen fire, you would call it a cheerful
+     sight."
+
+     "April 14. I did not milk the cows last night, because Mr. R. was
+     afraid to trust them to my hands, or me to their horns, I know not
+     which. But this morning I have done wonders. Before breakfast I
+     went out to the barn and began to chop hay for the cattle, and with
+     such "righteous vehemence," as Mr. R. says, did I labor, that in
+     the space of ten minutes I broke the machine. Then I brought wood
+     and replenished the fires; and finally went down to breakfast, and
+     ate up a huge mound of buckwheat cakes. After breakfast Mr. R. put
+     a four-pronged instrument into my hands, which he gave me to
+     understand was called a pitchfork; and he and Mr. Farley being
+     armed with similar weapons, we all three commenced a gallant attack
+     on a heap of manure. This office being concluded, and I having
+     purified myself, I sit down to finish this letter. Miss Fuller's
+     cow hooks other cows, and has made herself ruler of the herd, and
+     behaves in a very tyrannical manner."
+
+     "April 16th. I have milked a cow!!! The herd has rebelled against
+     the usurpation of Miss Fuller's heifer; and whenever they are
+     turned out of the barn, she is compelled to take refuge under our
+     protection. So much did she impede my labors by keeping close to
+     me, that I found it necessary to give her two or three gentle pats
+     with a shovel. She is not an amiable cow; but she has a very
+     intelligent face, and seems to be of a reflective cast of
+     character.
+
+     I have not yet been twenty yards from our house and barn; but I
+     begin to perceive that this is a beautiful place. The scenery is of
+     a mild and placid character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I
+     think its beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more
+     the longer we live here. There is a brook so near the house that we
+     shall be able to hear its ripple in the summer evenings,--but for
+     agricultural purposes it has been made to flow in a straight and
+     rectangular fashion which does it infinite damage as a picturesque
+     object. Mr. R. has bought four black pigs."
+
+     "April 22nd. What an abominable hand do I scribble; but I have been
+     chopping wood and turning a grind-stone all the forenoon; and such
+     occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and
+     sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to
+     be done in the world; but thank God I am able to do my share of it,
+     and my ability increases daily. What a great, broad-shouldered,
+     elephantine personage I shall become by and by!
+
+     I read no newspapers, and hardly remember who is President, and
+     feel as if I had no more concern with what other people trouble
+     themselves about, than if I dwelt in another planet."
+
+     "May 1st. All the morning I have been at work, under the clear blue
+     sky, on a hill side. Sometimes it almost seemed as if I were at
+     work in the sky itself, though the material in which I wrought was
+     the ore from our gold-mine. There is nothing so disagreeable or
+     unseemly in this sort of toil as you could think. It defiles the
+     hands indeed, but not the soul.
+
+     The farm is growing very beautiful now,--not that we yet see
+     anything of the peas and potatoes which we have planted, but the
+     grass blushes green on the slopes and hollows.
+
+     I do not believe that I should be so patient here if I were not
+     engaged in a righteous and heaven-blessed way of life. We had some
+     tableaux last evening. They went off very well."
+
+     "May 11th. This morning I arose at milking time, in good trim for
+     work; and we have been employed partly in an Augean labor of
+     clearing out a wood-shed, and partly in carting loads of oak. This
+     afternoon I hope to have something to do in the field, for these
+     jobs about the house are not at all suited to my taste."
+
+     "June 1st. I think this present life of mine gives me an antipathy
+     to pen and ink, even more than my Custom-house experience did. In
+     the midst of toil, or after a hard day's work, my soul obstinately
+     refuses to be poured out on paper. It is my opinion that a man's
+     soul may be buried and perish under a dung heap, just as well as
+     under a pile of money."
+
+     "August 15th. Even my Custom-house experience was not such a
+     thraldom and weariness as this. O, labor is the curse of the world,
+     and nobody can meddle with it, without becoming proportionably
+     brutified! Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five
+     golden months in providing food for cows and horses? It is not so."
+
+     "Salem, Sept. 3d. Really I should judge it to be twenty years since
+     I left Brook Farm; and I take this to be one proof that my life
+     there was an unnatural and unsuitable, and therefore an unreal one.
+     It already looks like a dream behind me. The real Me was never an
+     associate of the community; there had been a spectral Appearance
+     there, sounding the horn at daybreak, and milking the cows, and
+     hoeing the potatoes, and raking hay, toiling in the sun, and doing
+     me the honor to assume my name. But this spectre was not myself."
+
+Mr. Hawthorne was elected to high offices, to those of Trustee of the
+Brook Farm estate, and Chairman of the Committee of Finance; but he told
+Mr. Ripley that he could not spend another winter there. If we could
+inspect all the note-books of the community, supposing all to be as
+frank as Hawthorne, our picture of Brook Farm life would be fascinating.
+But his was, perhaps, the only note-book kept in the busy brotherhood,
+and his rather sombre view must be accepted as the impression of one
+peculiar mind. In the "Blithedale Romance," Hawthorne disclaimed any
+purpose to describe persons or events at Brook Farm, and expressed a
+hope that some one might yet do justice to a movement so full of earnest
+aspiration. But he, himself, declined the task. "The old and
+affectionately remembered home at Brook Farm--certainly the most
+romantic episode of his own life--essentially a day dream, and yet a
+fact--thus offering an available foothold between fiction and reality,"
+merely supplied the scenery for the romance. More than twenty years have
+passed since Hawthorne's appeal to his associates, but it has not been
+answered.
+
+The characteristic nature of transcendental reform was exhibited in the
+temper of its agitation for the enfranchisement of women, and the
+enlargement of her sphere of duty and privilege. More definitely than
+any other, this reform can trace its beginnings and the source of its
+inspiration to the disciples of the transcendental philosophy. The
+transcendentalists gave it their countenance to some extent, to a man
+and a woman, conceding the truth of its idea even when criticising the
+details of its application. With almost if not quite equal unanimity,
+the other school regarded it with disfavor. The cause of woman, as
+entertained by the reformers, was not likely to commend itself to people
+who consulted custom, law, or institution; who accepted the authority of
+tradition, took history to be revelation, deferred to the decree of
+circumstance, or, under any other open or disguised form, bowed to the
+doctrine that might makes right. The philosophical conservatives and the
+social conservatives struck hands on this; for both, the one party in
+deference to established usage, the other party in deference to the
+opinion that mind followed organization, defended things as they were,
+and hoped for a better state of things, if they hoped for it at all, as
+a result of changes in the social environment. The disciples of the same
+philosophy now hold the same view of this particular reform. From them
+comes the charge of unsexing women and demoralizing the sex. In the
+belief of the transcendentalist, souls were of no sex. Men and women
+were alike human beings, with human capacities, longings, and destinies;
+and the condition of society that doomed them to hopelessness in regard
+to the complete and perfect justification of their being, was,
+in his judgment--not in his feeling, or sentiment, but in his
+judgment--unsound.
+
+The ablest and most judicial statement on the question was made by
+Margaret Fuller in the "Dial" of July 1843. The paper entitled the
+"Great Law Suit" was afterwards expanded into the little volume called
+"Woman in the XIXth Century," which contains all that is best worth
+saying on the subject, has been the storehouse of argument and
+illustration from that time to this, and should be read by all who would
+understand the cardinal points in the case. The careful student of that
+book will be amazed at the misapprehensions in respect to its doctrine
+that are current even in intelligent circles. Certainly Miss Fuller does
+claim everything that may fairly be comprehended under woman's
+education; everything that follows, or may be honestly and rationally
+held as following in the course of her intellectual development. But
+she claims it by rigorous fidelity to a philosophical idea; not
+passionately or hastily. Not as a demand of sentiment, not as a right
+under liberty, not as a conclusion from American institutions, but as
+the spiritual prerogative of the spiritual being. Her argument moves on
+this high table-land of thought; and moves with a steadiness, a
+serenity, an ease that little resemble the heated debates on later
+platforms. Miss Fuller was thoroughly feminine in her intuitions. It was
+impossible for her to treat any subject, to say nothing of a subject so
+complex and delicate as this, with any but the finest tempered tools.
+Her sympathies were with women; she attracted women by the power of her
+intelligence and fellow feeling. Women of feeling and aspiration--pure
+feeling and beautiful aspiration,--came to her. The secrets of the best
+hearts were revealed to her, as they could not have been, had she failed
+to reach or attract them on their own level. Her idea of womanly
+character as displayed in sentiment and action was as gracious as it was
+lofty.
+
+     "We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have
+     every path laid open to women as freely as to man. Were this done,
+     and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we believe
+     that the Divine would ascend into nature to a height unknown in the
+     history of past ages; and nature, thus instructed, would regulate
+     the spheres, not only so as to avoid collision, but to bring forth
+     ravishing harmony."
+
+Yet then, and only then, will human beings, in her judgment, be ripe for
+this, when inward and outward freedom for woman as much as for man,
+shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession.
+
+     "What woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature
+     to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely, and
+     unimpeded to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our
+     common home. If fewer talents were given her, yet, if allowed the
+     full and free employment of these, so that she may render back to
+     the giver his own with usury, she will not complain, nay, I dare to
+     say, she will bless and rejoice in her earthly birth-place her
+     earthly lot."
+
+     "Man is not willingly ungenerous. He wants faith and love because
+     he is not yet himself an elevated being. He cries with sneering
+     skepticism: Give us a sign! But if the sign appears, his eyes
+     glisten, and he offers not merely approval but homage."
+
+The Transcendental idea makes her just to all, to the Hebrews who
+"greeted with solemn rapture all great and holy women as heroines,
+prophetesses, nay judges in Israel, and if they made Eve listen to the
+serpent, gave Mary to the Holy Ghost;" to the Greeks whose feminine
+deities were types of dignity and loveliness; to the Romans, whose
+glorious women are "of threadbare celebrity;" to Asiatics, Russians,
+English. It gave her generous interpretations for laws, institutions,
+customs, bidding her look on the bright side of history.
+
+     "Whatever may have been the domestic manners of the ancient
+     nations, the idea of woman was nobly manifested in their
+     mythologies and poems, where she appeared as Sita in the Ramayana,
+     a form of tender purity; in the Egyptian Isis, of divine wisdom
+     never yet surpassed. In Egypt too, the sphinx, walking the earth
+     with lion tread, looked out upon its marvels in the calm,
+     inscrutable beauty of a virgin face, and the Greek could only add
+     wings to the great emblem." "In Sparta the women were as much
+     Spartans as the men. Was not the calm equality they enjoyed well
+     worth the honors of chivalry? They intelligently shared the ideal
+     life of their nation." "Is it in vain that the truth has been
+     recognized that woman is not only a part of man, bone of his bone,
+     and flesh of his flesh, born that man might not be lonely, but in
+     themselves possessors of and possessed by immortal souls? This
+     truth undoubtedly received a greater outward stability from the
+     belief of the church that the earthly parent of the Saviour of
+     souls was a woman."
+
+     "Woman cannot complain that she has not had her share of power.
+     This in all ranks of society, except the lowest, has been hers to
+     the extent that vanity could crave, far beyond what wisdom would
+     accept. It is not the transient breath of poetic incense that women
+     want; each can receive that from a lover. It is not life-long sway;
+     it needs to become a coquette, a shrew, or a good cook, to be sure
+     of that. It is not money, nor notoriety, nor the badges of
+     authority that men have appropriated to themselves. It is for that
+     which includes all these and precludes them; which would not be
+     forbidden power, lest there be temptation to steal and misuse it;
+     which would not have the mind perverted by flattery from a
+     worthiness of esteem. It is for that which is the birthright of
+     every being capable to receive it,--the freedom, the religious, the
+     intelligent freedom of the universe, to use its means, to learn its
+     secret as far as nature has enabled them, with God alone for their
+     guide and their judge."
+
+     "The only reason why women ever assume what is more appropriate to
+     men, is because men prevent them from finding out what is fit for
+     themselves. Were they free, were they wise fully to develop the
+     strength and beauty of woman, they would never wish to be men or
+     manlike. The well instructed moon flies not from her orbit to seize
+     on the glories of her partner."
+
+     "Give the soul free course, let the organization be freely
+     developed, and the being will be fit for any and every relation to
+     which it may be called."
+
+     "Civilized Europe is still in a transition state about marriage,
+     not only in practice but in thought. A great majority of societies
+     and individuals are still doubtful whether earthly marriage is to
+     be a union of souls, or merely a contract of convenience and
+     utility. Were woman established in the rights of an immortal being,
+     this could not be." But "those who would reform the world, must
+     show that they do not speak in the heat of wild impulse; their
+     lives must be unstained by passionate error; they must be severe
+     lawgivers to themselves. As to their transgressions of opinions, it
+     may be observed, that the resolve of Eloise to be only the mistress
+     of Abelard, was that of one who saw the contract of marriage a seal
+     of degradation. Wherever abuses of this sort are seen, the timid
+     will suffer, the bold will protest; but society has the right to
+     outlaw them, till she has revised her law, and she must be taught
+     to do so, by one who speaks with authority, not in anger or haste."
+
+     "Whether much or little has been or will be done; whether women
+     will add to the talent of narration, the power of systematizing;
+     whether they will carve marble as well as iron, is not important.
+     But that it should be acknowledged that they have intellect which
+     needs developing, that they should not be considered complete, if
+     beings of affection and habit alone, is important. Earth knows no
+     fairer, holier relation than that of mother. But a being of
+     infinite scope must not be treated with an exclusive view to any
+     one relation."
+
+     "In America women are much better situated than men. Good books are
+     allowed, with more time to read them. They have time to think, and
+     no traditions chain them. Their employments are more favorable to
+     the inward life than those of men. Men are courteous to them;
+     praise them often; check them seldom. In this country, is
+     venerated, wherever seen, the character which Goethe spoke of as an
+     Ideal: 'The excellent woman is she, who, if her husband dies, can
+     be a father to the children.'"
+
+Nothing can be more reasonable than this; and this is the tone of
+transcendental feeling and thought on the subject. The only criticism
+that can fairly be made on the Transcendentalist's idea of woman, is
+that it has more regard for essential capacities and possibilities, than
+for incidental circumstances, more respect for the ideal than for the
+actual woman. However grave a sin this may be against common sense, it
+is none against purity, nobleness, or the laws of private or public
+virtue. The dream, if it be no more than a dream, is beautiful and
+inspiring.
+
+The Transcendentalist believed in man's ability to apprehend absolute
+ideas of Truth, Justice, Rectitude, Goodness; he spoke of The Right, The
+True, The Beautiful, as eternal realities which he perceived. The
+"Sensational" philosophy was shut up in the relative and conditioned;
+knew nothing higher than expediency; held prudence, caution, practical
+wisdom in highest rank among the virtues; consulted the revelations of
+history; recognized no law above established usage; went for guidance to
+the book, the record, the statute; it could not speak therefore with
+power, but could only consider, surmise, cast probabilities, devise
+plans and work carefully towards their execution. The Sensationalist
+distrusted the seer, rejected the prophet, and disliked the reformer.
+His aim was law; his work within easy distance; his object, some
+plainly visible and appreciable satisfaction. His faith in men and women
+was small; his trust in circumstances and conditions was unbounded; but
+as this faith had no wings, it could neither raise its possessor from
+the ground, nor speed him faster than a walking pace. He was easily
+satisfied with the world as it was; or if dissatisfied, had little hope
+of its being made better by anything he could do. His helplessness and
+hopelessness will make him in opinion an optimist, who finds it easier
+to assume that the order of the world is perfect and will so appear by
+and by, than that it is made imperfect for him to mend. Optimism is
+perhaps oftener the creed of the indolent than of the earnest.
+
+The Transcendentalist was satisfied with nothing so long as it did not
+correspond to the ideal in the enlightened soul; and in the soul
+recognized the power to make all things new. Nothing will content him
+short of the absolute right, the eternally true, the unconditioned
+excellence. He prays for the kingdom of Heaven, lives in expectation of
+it; would not be surprised at its coming any day. For though the
+distance is immense between the world as it is and his vision of the
+world as it should be--a distance that the Evolutionist despairs of
+seeing traversed in thousands of years, if he believes it will be
+traversed at all,--still, as the power of regeneration is supposed to be
+in the soul itself, which is possessed of infinite capacities and is
+open continually to inspirations from the world of soul, the
+transformation may begin when least expected, and may be completed
+before preparation for it can be made. Hence his boundless enthusiasm
+and hope; hence the order of his feeling, the glow of his language.
+Hence his disposition to exaggerate the force of tendencies that point
+in his direction; to take the brightest view of events, and put the
+happiest construction on the signs of the times. In the anti-slavery
+period the Transcendentalist glorified the negro beyond all warrant of
+fact, seeing in him an imprisoned soul struggling to be free. The same
+soul he sees in woman oppressed by limitations; the same in the
+drunkard, the gambler, the libertine. His eye is ever fixed on the
+future.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+RELIGION.
+
+
+It was by no accident that the transcendental philosophy addressed
+itself at once to the questions of religion. It did so at the beginning,
+in Germany, and later, in England, and did so from the nature of the
+case. Its very name implied that it maintained the existence of ideas in
+the mind which transcended sensible experience. Such ideas fall within
+the domain of religion; ideas of the infinite, the eternal, the
+absolute; and the significance and import of these ideas exercised the
+minds of transcendental thinkers, according to their genius. Kant felt
+it necessary to reopen the problem of God and immortality; Fichte
+followed, Schelling and Hegel moved on the same plane.
+
+Transcendentalism was, in fact, a reaction against the moral and
+political skepticism which resulted directly from the prevailing
+philosophy of sensation. Since Bacon's day, religious beliefs had been
+taking hold on the enlightened mind of England and Europe. The drift of
+speculation was strongly against, not the Christian system alone, but
+natural religion, and the ideal foundation of morality. The writings of
+Collins, Dodwell, Mandeville, expressed more skepticism than they
+created, and betrayed a deeply-seated and widely-spread misgiving in
+regard to the fundamental truths of theology. Hume's argument against
+the credibility of miracles was never answered, and the anxiety to
+answer it was a confession of alarm from the heart of the church. The
+famous XVIth chapter of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
+was assailed furiously, but in vain, each assault exposing the weakness
+of the assailants; and it was only by adopting his history, and editing
+it with judicious notes, that the church silenced the enemy it could not
+crush. The deists of the seventeenth century in no wise balanced their
+denials by their affirmations, but left Christianity fearfully shattered
+by their blows. The champions of the church fought skepticism with
+skepticism, conceding in substance the points they superficially
+attacked. Towards the close of the seventeenth century Cudworth
+confronted atheism with idealism, retreating upon Plato when the foe had
+carried the other works; early in the century following, Butler, in the
+celebrated "Analogy," fought infidelity with weapons that infidelity
+might have turned, and since has turned with deadly effect, against
+himself. The ablest representative of Unitarianism was Joseph Priestley,
+a materialist of the school of Hartley. The cardinal beliefs of religion
+were debated in a way that was quite unsatisfactory in the light of
+reason, showing the extent to which faith had been undermined. Indeed,
+had it not been for the power of institutions, customs, respectability,
+and tradition, the popular beliefs would have all but disappeared, so
+deep into the heart of the people unbelief had penetrated. The church
+stood fast, because it was allied with power and fashion, not because it
+was supported by reason or faith. The whole tone of feeling on sacred
+and ethical topics was low; divine ideas were defended by considerations
+of expediency; God was a probability; the immortality of the soul a
+possibility, a supplement to skepticism, an appendix to a philosophy
+which, finding no God here, presumed there must be one hereafter. There
+is no more soulless reading than the works of the Christian apologists
+of the seventeenth century. The infidels had more ideas, and apparently
+more sincerity, but in neither was there any spiritual impulse or
+fervor.
+
+In Germany the philosophy of Bacon and Locke did not strike deep root.
+The day of Germany was to come later. Her thoughts were pent up in her
+own breast. She was isolated, and almost speechless. Her genius awoke
+with the new philosophy. Under the influence of idealism it bloomed in
+the richest of modern literatures. Her very skepticism, the much
+talked-of rationalism, had an ideal origin. Strauss was a disciple of
+Hegel. Bauer, and the "historical school" of Tuebingen worked out their
+problem of New Testament criticism from the Hegelian idea, the
+constructive force whereof was so powerful, that the negations lost
+their negative character, and showed primarily as affirmations of
+reason. By being adopted into the line of intellectual development of
+mankind, Christianity, though dethroned and disenchanted, was dignified
+as a supreme moment in the autobiography of God.
+
+Frederick the Great, in the middle of the eighteenth century, attracted
+literary celebrities to his court, and gave an impulse, so far, to the
+German mind; but the French genius found more encouragement there than
+the German, and in his time French genius was speeding fast in the way
+of skepticism. Condillac, Cabanis, d'Holbach, Helvetius, were of that
+generation. The "Encyclopaedists," the most brilliant men and women of
+the generation, were planning their work of demolition. Voltaire was the
+great name in contemporary literature. The books of Volney were popular
+towards the end of the century. Skepticism and materialism had the
+floor. It was fashionable to ridicule the belief in personal
+immortality, and in enlightened circles to deny the existence of God.
+The doctrines of Christianity were abandoned to priests and women;
+philosophers deemed them too absurd to be argued against. Had the
+assault been less witty and more scientific, less acrimonious and more
+reasonable, less scornful and more consistent, its apparent success
+might have been permanent. As it was, a change of mood occurred; a
+conservative spirit succeeded the destructive; order prevailed over
+anarchy; and the Catholic church, which had only been temporarily thrust
+aside--not fatally wounded, not by any means disposed of--regained its
+suspended power.
+
+But rational or intellectual Christianity--in other words the system of
+Protestantism, in whatever form held--received a severe blow in France
+from these audacious hands. Religion took refuge in institutions and
+ceremonial forms; and there remained little else except a kernel of
+sentiment in a thin shell of tradition. What beliefs were entertained
+were accepted on authority; reason sought other fields of exercise,
+scientific, philosophical, literary; and a chill of indifference crept
+over the once religious world. From France, opinions adverse to
+Christianity were brought to America by travelled or curious people;
+they pervaded the creative minds of our earliest epoch, and penetrated
+far into the popular intelligence. The habit of thinking independently
+of authority and tradition became confirmed, and as a matter of course
+led to doubts and denials; for thinking was done in a temper of
+defiance, which constrained the thought to obey the wish. Such
+philosophical ideas as there were, came from France and England. Paley's
+was the last word in morals; the "Bridgewater Treatises" were the
+received oracles in religion; the rules of practical judgment had
+usurped the dominion of faith.
+
+What pass things had come to in New England, in the centre of its
+culture, has been described in a previous chapter. It was time for a
+reaction to set in; and it came in the form of Transcendentalism. The
+"sensational" philosophy, it was contended, could not supply a basis for
+faith. Its first principle was "_Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in
+sensu_." "There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the
+senses." From this principle nothing but skepticism could proceed. How,
+for instance, asks the Transcendentalist, can the sensational philosophy
+of Locke and his disciples give us anything approaching to a certainty
+of the existence of God? The senses furnish no evidence of it. God is
+not an object of sensation. He is not seen, felt, heard, tasted or
+smelt. The objects of sense are material, local, incidental; God is
+immaterial, universal, eternal. The objects of sense are finite; but a
+finite God is no God; for God is infinite. Is it said that by men of
+old, bible men, God was seen, heard, clasped in human arms? The reply
+is, that whatever Being was so apparent and tangible, could not have
+been God. To the assertion that the Being announced himself as God,--the
+infinite, the eternal God,--the challenge straightway is given: To whom
+did he say it? How can it be proved that he said it? Is the record of
+his saying it authentic? Might not the Being have made a false
+statement? Can we be certain there was no mental hallucination? Suppose
+these and other doubts of a similar character dispelled, still, hearing
+is not knowing. All we have is a tradition of God, a legend, a rumor, a
+dim reminiscence, that passes like a shadow across men's minds. The
+appeal to miracle is set aside by historical skepticism. The wonder
+lacks evidence; and to prove the wonder a miracle, is beyond
+achievement. A possibility, or at most, a probability of God's existence
+is all that sensationalism, with every advantage given it, can supply.
+
+And if this philosophy fails to give an assurance of God's existence,
+the failure to throw light on his attributes is more signal. The senses
+report things as they exist in relations, not as they exist in
+themselves. Neither absolute power, absolute wisdom nor absolute
+goodness is hinted at by the senses. The visible system of things
+abounds in contradictions that we cannot reconcile, puzzles we cannot
+explain, mysteries we cannot penetrate, imperfections we cannot account
+for, wrongs we cannot palliate, evils we cannot cover up or justify.
+That a vein of wisdom, an element of goodness, an infusion of
+loving-kindness is in the world is evident; but to show that, is to go
+very little way towards establishing the attributes of a Perfect Being.
+A God of limited power, wisdom or goodness, is no God, and no other does
+Sensationalism offer. Transcendentalism points to the fact that under
+the auspices of this philosophy atheism has spread; and along with
+atheism the intellectual demoralization that accompanies the
+disappearance of a cardinal idea.
+
+From this grave peril the Transcendentalist found an escape in flight to
+the spiritual nature of man, in virtue of which he had an intuitive
+knowledge of God as a being, infinite and absolute in power, wisdom and
+goodness; a direct perception like that which the senses have of
+material objects; a perception that gains in distinctness, clearness and
+positiveness as the faculties through which it is obtained increase in
+power and delicacy. To the human mind, by its original constitution,
+belongs the firm assurance of God's existence, as a half latent fact of
+consciousness, and with it a dim sense of his moral attributes. To minds
+capacious and sensitive the truth was disclosed in lofty ranges that
+lifted the horizon line, in every direction, above the cloud land of
+doubt; to minds cultivated, earnest, devout, aspiring, the revelation
+came in bursts of glory. The experiences of inspired men and women were
+repeated. The prophet, the seer, the saint, was no longer a favored
+person whose sayings and doings were recorded in the Bible, but a living
+person, making manifest the wealth of soul in all human beings.
+Communication with the ideal world was again opened through conscience;
+and communion with God, close and tender as is anywhere described by
+devotees and mystics, was promised to the religious affections.
+
+The Transcendentalist spoke of God with authority. His God was not
+possible, but real; not probable, but certain. In his high confidence he
+had small respect for the labored reasonings of "Natural Religion;" the
+argument from design, so carefully elaborated by Paley, Brougham and the
+writers of the "Bridgewater Treatises," was interesting and useful as
+far as it went, but was remanded to an inferior place. The demonstration
+from miracle was dismissed with feelings bordering on contempt, as
+illogical and childish.
+
+Taking his faith with him into the world of nature and of human life,
+the Transcendentalist, sure of the divine wisdom and love, found
+everywhere joy for mourning and beauty for ashes. Passing through the
+valley of Baca, he saw springs bubbling up from the sand, and making
+pools for thirsty souls. Wherever he came, garments of heaviness were
+dropped and robes of praise put on. Evil was but the prophecy of good,
+wrong the servant of right, pain the precursor of peace, sorrow the
+minister to joy. He would acknowledge no exception to the rule of an
+absolute justice and an inexorable love. It was certain that all was
+well, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. He was, as we have
+said, an optimist--not of the indifferent sort that make the maxim
+"Whatever is, is right" an excuse for idleness--but of the heroic kind
+who, by refreshing their minds with thoughts of the absolute goodness,
+keep alive their faith, hope, endeavor, and quicken themselves to
+efforts at understanding, interpreting and bringing to the surface the
+divine attributes. For himself he had no misgivings, and no alarm at the
+misgivings of others; believing them due, either to some
+misunderstanding that might be corrected, or to some moral defect that
+could be cured. Even Atheism, of the crudest, coarsest, most stubborn
+description, had no terrors for him. It was in his judgment a matter of
+definition mainly. Utter atheism was all but inconceivable to him; the
+essential faith in divine things under some form of mental perception
+being too deeply planted in human nature to be eradicated or buried.
+
+Taking his belief with him into the world of history, the
+Transcendentalist discovered the faith in God beneath all errors,
+delusions, idolatries and superstition. He read it into unintelligible
+scriptures; he drew it forth from obsolete symbols; he dragged it to the
+light from the darkness of hateful shrines and the bloody mire of pagan
+altars. Mr. Parker meditated a work on the religious history of mankind,
+in which the development of the theistic idea was to be traced from its
+shadowy beginnings to its full maturity; and this he meant should be the
+crowning work of his life. Sure of his first principle, he had no
+hesitation in going into caves and among the ruins of temples. Had that
+work been completed, the Transcendentalist's faith in God would have
+received its most eloquent statement.
+
+The other cardinal doctrine of religion--the immortality of the
+soul,--Transcendentalism was proud of having rescued from death in the
+same way. The philosophy of sensation could give no assurance of
+personal immortality. Here, too, its fundamental axiom, "_Nihil in
+intellectu quod non prius in sensu_," was discouraging to belief. For
+immortality is not demonstrable to the senses. Experience affords no
+basis for conviction, and knowledge cannot on any pretext be claimed.
+The sensational school was divided into two parties. The first party
+confessed that the immortality of the soul was a thing not only
+unprovable, but a thing easily disproved, a thing improbable, and, to a
+clear mind, impossible to believe. The soul being a product of
+organization, at all events fatally implicated in organization,
+conditioned by it in all respects, must perish with organization, as the
+flower perishes with the stem. Of a spirit distinct from body there is,
+according to this school, no evidence, either before death or after.
+Man's prospect, therefore, is bounded by this life. Dreamers may have
+visions of another; mourners may sigh for another; ardent natures may
+hope for another; but to believe in another is, to the rational mind,
+according to this philosophy, impossible. The sentence "dust thou art,
+and to dust thou shalt return," may seem a hard one; but as it cannot be
+reversed or modified, it must be accepted with submission; and in
+default of another life, the honest man will make the most of the life
+he has; not necessarily saying with the sensualist: "Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die;" but with the hero reminding himself that
+he must "Work while it is day, for the night cometh in which no man can
+work." The modern disciples of this doctrine of annihilation speak in a
+tone of lofty courage of their destiny, and disguise under shining and
+many-colored garments of anticipation, the fact of their personal
+cessation. The thinkers find refuge in the intellectual problems of the
+present; the workers pile up monuments that shall endure when they are
+gone; poets like George Eliot, make grand music on the harp-strings of
+the common humanity; but the fact remains that the philosophy of
+experience abandons, or did before the advent of spiritualism--the
+expectation of an existence after death.
+
+The other branch of the Sensational school fell back on authority, and
+received on the tradition of history what could not be verified by
+science. Immortality was accepted as a doctrine of instituted religion,
+taken on the credit of revelation, and sealed by the resurrection of
+Jesus. As an article of faith it was accepted without comment. If we
+have not seen the glorified dead, others have, and their witness is
+recorded in the Scriptures. Beyond that believers did not care to go;
+beyond that advised no one else to go. To question the genuineness of
+the Scriptures, to cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus, to intimate
+that the tradition of the church is a thin stream that murmurs
+pleasantly in the shade of the sacred groves, but would dry up if the
+sun-light were let in, was resented as an offence against reverence and
+morality. By such as these the belief that slipped away from the reason
+was detained by the will.
+
+But beliefs thus appropriated are insecurely held. The inactivity of the
+mind cannot be guaranteed; a slight disturbance of its tamely
+acquiescent condition may set its whole scheme of opinions afloat. A
+sentence on a printed page, a word let fall in conversation, a
+discovered fact, an awakened suspicion, a suggestion of doubt by a
+friend, may stir the thought whose movement will bring the whole
+structure down. There being no certainty, only arbitrary content; no
+personal conviction, only formal acquiescence; there was nothing to
+prevent the belief from disappearing altogether, and leaving the mind
+vacant.
+
+Even when retained, beliefs thus held have no vitality. They are not
+living faiths in any intelligent sense. Useful they may be for pulpit
+declamation and closet discussion; serviceable on funeral occasions and
+in chambers of sorrow; available for purposes of moral impression; but
+inspiring they are not; actively sustaining and consoling they are not.
+Their effect on the conduct of life is almost imperceptible. They are
+appendages to the mind, not parts of it; proprieties, not properties.
+They are to be reckoned as part of a man's stock in trade, not as part
+of his being.
+
+Transcendentalism, by taking the belief in immortality out of these
+incidental and doubtful associations, and making it a constituent
+element in the constitution of the mind itself, thought to rescue it
+from its precarious position, and place it beyond the reach of danger.
+No belief was, on the whole, so characteristic of Transcendentalism as
+this; none was so steadfastly assumed, so constantly borne in view.
+Immortality was here a postulate, a first principle. Theodore Parker
+called it a fact of consciousness--the intensity of his conviction
+rendering him careless of precision in speech. The writings of Emerson
+are redolent of the faith. Even when he argues in his way against the
+accepted creed, and casts doubt on every form in which the doctrine is
+entertained, the loftiness of his language about the soul carries the
+presage of immortality with it. The "Dial" has no argument about
+immortality; no paper in the whole series is devoted to the subject; the
+faith was too deep and essential to be talked about--it was assumed. The
+Transcendentalist was an enthusiast on this article. He spoke, not as
+one who surmises, conjectures, is on the whole inclined to think; but as
+one who knows beyond cavil or question. We never met a man whose
+assurance of immortality was as strong as Theodore Parker's. The
+objections of materialists did not in the least disturb him. In the
+company of the most absolute of them he avowed his conviction. What
+others clung to as supports--the church tradition, the story of the
+raising of Lazarus, the account of the resurrection of Jesus--were to
+him stumbling blocks in the way of spiritual faith, for they drew
+attention away from the witness of the soul.
+
+The preaching of Transcendentalists caused, in all parts of the
+country, a revival of interest and of faith in personal immortality;
+spiritualized the idea of it; enlarged the scope of the belief, and
+ennobled its character; established an organic connection between the
+present life and the future, making them both one in substance;
+disabused people of the coarse notion that the next life was an incident
+of their experience, and compelled them to think of it as a normal
+extension of their being; substituted aspiration after spiritual
+deliverance and perfection, for hope of happiness and fear of misery;
+recalled attention to the nature and capacity of the soul itself; in a
+word, announced the natural immortality of the soul by virtue of its
+essential quality. The fanciful reasoning of Plato's "_Phaedon_" was
+supplemented by new readings in psychology, and strengthened by powerful
+moral supports; the highest desires, the purest feelings, the deepest
+sympathies, were enlisted in its cause; death was made incidental to
+life; lower life was made subordinate to higher; and men who were
+beginning to doubt whether the demand for personal immortality was
+entirely honorable in one who utterly trusted in God, thoroughly
+appreciated the actual world, and fairly respected his own dignity, were
+reassured by a faith which promised felicity on terms that compromised
+neither reason nor virtue. The very persons who had let go the hope of
+immortality because they could not accept it at the cost of sacrificing
+their confidence in God's instant justice, were glad to recover it as a
+promise of fulfilment to their dearest desire for spiritual expansion.
+
+The Sensational philosophy had done a worse harm to the belief in
+immortality, than by rendering the prospect of it uncertain; it had
+rendered the character of it pusillanimous and plebeian; it had demanded
+it on the ground that God must explain himself, must correct his
+blunders and apologize for his partiality in distributing sugar plums;
+it had argued for it from personal, social, sectarian, and other
+sympathies and antipathies; it had expected it on the strength of a
+rumor that a specially holy man, a saint of Judea, had appeared after
+death to his peculiar friends; it had pleaded for it, as children beg
+for dessert after bread and meat. The transcendental philosophy
+dismissed these unworthy claims, made no demand, put up no petition, but
+simply made articulate the prophecy of the spiritual nature in man, and
+trusted the eternal goodness for its fulfilment. Other arguments might
+come to the support of this anticipation; history might bring its
+contribution of recorded facts; suffering and sorrow might add their
+pathetic voices, bewailing the oppressive power of circumstance, and
+crying for peace out of affliction; the biographies of Jesus might
+furnish illustration of the victory of the greatest souls over death;
+but considerations of this kind received their importance from the light
+they threw on the immortal attributes of spirit. Apart from these their
+significance was gone.
+
+The pure Transcendentalists saw everywhere evidence of the greatness of
+the soul. Christianity they regarded as its chief manifestation.
+Imperfect Transcendentalists there were, who used the fundamental
+postulates of the transcendental philosophy to confirm their faith in
+supernatural realities. Their Transcendentalism amounted merely to
+this, that man had a natural capacity for _receiving_ supernatural
+truths, when presented by revelation. The _possession_ of such truths,
+even in germ; the power to unfold them naturally, by process of mental
+or spiritual growth; the faculty to seize, define, shape, legitimate and
+enthrone them, they denied. The soul, according to them, was recipient,
+not originating or creative. They continued to be Christians of the
+"Evangelical" stamp; champions of special intervention of light and
+grace; hearty believers in the divinity of the Christ and the saving
+influence of the Holy Ghost; holding to the peculiar inspiration of the
+Bible, and the personal need of regeneration. The wisest teachers of
+orthodoxy belonged to this school.
+
+The pure Transcendentalist went much further. According to him, the
+seeds of truth, if not the outline forms of truth, were contained in the
+soul itself, all ready to expand in bloom and beauty, as it felt the
+light and heat of the upper world. Sir Kenelm Digby relates that in
+Padua he visited the laboratory of a famous physician, and was there
+shown a small pile of fine ashes under a glass. On the application of a
+gentle heat, it arose, assumed the shape of its original flower, all its
+parts being perfectly distinct in form and well defined in character.
+During the application of the heat, the spectral plant preserved its
+delicate outline; but on withdrawal of the heat, it became dust again.
+So, according to the Transcendentalist, the spiritual being of
+man--which apparently is a heap of lifeless ashes on the surface of
+material existence--when graciously shone upon by knowledge and love,
+puts on divine attributes, glows with beauty, palpitates with joy, gives
+out flashes of power, distils odors of sanctity, and exhibits the marks
+of a celestial grace. The soul, when thus awakened, utters oracles of
+wisdom, sings, prophesies, thunders decalogues, pronounces beatitudes,
+discourses grandly of God and divine things, performs wonders of healing
+on sick bodies and wandering minds, rises to heights of heroism and
+saintliness.
+
+From this point of vision, it was easy to survey the history of mankind,
+and, in the various religions of the world, see the efforts of the soul
+to express itself in scriptures, emblems, doctrines, altar forms,
+architecture, painting, moods and demonstrations of piety. The
+Transcendentalist rendered full justice to all these, studied them,
+admired them, confessed their inspiration. Of these faiths Christianity
+was cheerfully acknowledged to be the queen. The supremacy of Jesus was
+granted with enthusiasm. His teachings were accepted as the purest
+expressions of religious truth; His miracles were regarded as the
+natural achievements of a soul of such originality and force. In his
+address to the senior class in Divinity College, 1838, Mr. Emerson spoke
+of Christ's miracles as being "one with the blowing clover and the
+falling rain," and urged the young candidates for the ministry to let
+his life and dialogues "lie as they befel, active and warm, part of
+human life, and of the landscape, and of the cheerful day." When, in
+1840, Theodore Parker wrote his "Levi Blodgett" letter, he believed in
+miracles, the miracles of the New Testament and many others besides,
+more than the Christians about him were willing to accept.
+
+     "It may be said these religious teachers (Zoroaster, Buddha, Fo)
+     pretended to work miracles. I would not deny that they _did_ work
+     miracles. If a man is obedient to the law of his mind, conscience
+     and heart, since his intellect, character and affections are in
+     harmony with the laws of God, I take it he can do works that are
+     impossible to others, who have not been so faithful, and
+     consequently are not "one with God" as he is; and this is all that
+     is meant by a miracle." "The possession of this miraculous power,
+     when it can be proved, as I look at the thing, is only a _sign_,
+     which may be uncertain, of the superior genius of a religious
+     teacher, or a _sign_ that he will utter the truth, and never a
+     _proof_ thereof."
+
+The Transcendentalist was a cordial believer in marvels, as being so
+hearty a believer in the potency of the spiritual laws. Parker's
+opposition to the miracles of the New Testament was provoked by the
+exclusive claim that was put forward by their defenders, and by the
+position they were thrust into as pillars of doctrine. His wish to make
+it appear that truth could stand without them, impelled him to strain at
+their overthrow. Later, his studies in New Testament criticism confirmed
+his suspicion that the testimony in their favor was altogether
+inadequate to sustain their credibility. The theory of Bauer and his
+disciples of the Tuebingen school seemed to him unanswerable, and he
+abandoned, as a scholar, much that as a Transcendentalist he might have
+been disposed to retain. W. H. Furness, author of several biographical
+studies on the life and character of Jesus--a Transcendentalist
+of the most impassioned school, but no adept in historical
+criticism--maintained to the last the credibility of the Christian
+miracles, and purely on the ground of their perfect naturalness as
+performed by a person so spiritually exalted as Jesus was. The more
+ardent his admiration of that character, the more unshrinking his belief
+in these manifestations of its superiority. Dr. Furness is prepared to
+think that if no miracles had been recorded, nevertheless miracles must
+have been wrought, and would, but for some blindness or skepticism, have
+been mentioned.
+
+The charge that Transcendentalism denied the reality of supernatural
+powers and influences shows how imperfectly it was apprehended. It
+seemed to deny them because it transferred them to another sphere. It
+regarded man himself as a supernatural being; not the last product of
+nature, but the lord of nature; not the _creature_ of organization, but
+its creator. In its extreme form, Transcendentalism was a deification of
+nature, in the highest aspects of Beauty. It raised human qualities to
+the supreme power; it ascribed to extraordinary virtue in its exalted
+states the efficient grace that is commonly attributed to the Holy
+Spirit. The pure Transcendentalist spoke of the experiences and powers
+of the illuminated soul with as much extravagance of rapture as one of
+the newly redeemed ever expressed. The profane made sport of his
+fanaticisms and fervors in the same way that they made sport of the wild
+over-gush of a revival meeting. The demonstrations of feeling were in
+fact, precisely similar; only in the one case the excitement was traced
+to the Christ in the skies, in the other to the Christ who was the soul
+of the man; in the one case a superhuman being was imagined as operating
+on the soul; in the other case the soul was supposed to be giving
+expression to itself.
+
+The Transcendentalist was not careful enough in making this distinction,
+and was, therefore, to blame for a portion of the misapprehension that
+ensued. He often found in sacred literature, thoughts which he himself
+put there. Parker, discoursing of inspiration, cites Paul and John as
+holding the same doctrine with himself; though it is plain to the single
+mind that their doctrine was in no respect the same, but so different as
+to be in contradiction. Paul and John, it is hardly too much to say, set
+up their doctrine in precise opposition to the doctrine of the
+Transcendentalists. Paul declared that the natural man could _not_
+discern divine things; that they were foolishness to him; that they must
+be spiritually discerned; that the Christian was able to discern them
+spiritually _because he had_ the "mind of Christ." The eighth chapter of
+the Epistle to the Romans contains sentences that, taken singly, apart
+from their connection, comfort the cockles of the transcendental heart;
+but the writer is glorifying Christ the inspirer; not the soul he
+inspired. He opens the chapter with the affirmation that "there is no
+condemnation to them which are in CHRIST JESUS, who walk not after the
+flesh, but after the spirit," and follows it with the saying that "if
+any man have not the _Spirit of Christ_, he is none of his." This is
+the spirit that "quickens mortal bodies," that makes believers to be
+"Sons of God," giving them the spirit of adoption whereby they cry
+"Abba, Father," bearing witness with their spirit that they are "the
+children of God." This is the spirit that "helpeth our infirmities," and
+"maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered."
+Transcendentalism deliberately broke with Christianity. Paul said "other
+foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
+Transcendentalism responded: "Jesus Christ built on my foundation, the
+soul;" and, for thus answering, was classed with those who used as
+building materials "wood, hay, stubble," which the fire would consume.
+In the view of Transcendentalism, Christianity was an illustrious form
+of natural religion--Jesus was a noble type of human nature; revelation
+was disclosure of the soul's mystery; inspiration was the filling of the
+soul's lungs; salvation was spiritual vitality.
+
+Transcendentalism carried its appeal to metaphysics. At present physics
+have the floor. Our recent studies have been in the natural history of
+the soul. Its spiritual history is discredited. But the human mind ebbs
+and flows. The Bains and Spencers and Taines may presently give place to
+other prophets; psychology may come to the front again, and with it will
+reappear the sages and seers. In that event, the religion of
+Transcendentalism will revive, and will have a long and fair day.
+
+For it can hardly be supposed that the present movement in the line of
+observation is the final one; that henceforth we are to continue
+straight on till, by the path of physiology, we arrive at absolute
+truth; that idealism is dead and gone for ever, and materialism of a
+refined type holds the future in its hand. The triumphs of the
+scientific method in the natural world are wonderful. The law of
+evolution has its lap full of promise. But one who has studied at all
+the history of human thought; who has seen philosophies crowned and
+discrowned, sceptred and outcast; who has followed the changing fortunes
+of opposing schools, and witnessed the alternate victories and defeats
+that threatened, each in its turn, to decide the fate of philosophy,
+will be slow to believe that the final conflict has been fought, or is
+to be, for hundreds of years to come. The principles of the
+"Sensational" philosophy have, within the last half century, been
+revived and restated with great power by Mill, Bain, Spencer, Taine, and
+other leaders of speculative opinion both in England and Europe. Recent
+discoveries and generalizations in physical science have lent
+countenance to them. The investigations in physiology and biology, the
+researches in the regions of natural history, the revelations of
+chemistry, have all combined to confirm their truth. Psychology, in the
+hands of its latest masters, has worked successfully in their interest.
+The thinness, shallowness and dry technicality of the original school
+have given place to a rich and varied exposition of the facts of organic
+life in its origin, development and results. The original form of the
+Sensational philosophy as it prevailed in Europe is described by Mill as
+"the shallowest set of doctrines which perhaps, were ever passed off
+upon a cultivated age as a complete psychological system; a system which
+affected to resolve all the phenomena of the human mind into sensation,
+by a process which essentially consisted in merely _calling_ all states
+of mind, however heterogeneous, by that name; a philosophy now
+acknowledged to consist solely of a set of verbal generalizations,
+explaining nothing, distinguishing nothing, leading to nothing." The
+"Sensational" philosophy is now presented as the philosophy of
+"experience." Its occupation is to resolve into results of experience
+and processes of organic life the _a priori_ conceptions that have been
+accepted as simple and primitive data of consciousness, by the Ideal
+philosophy. Mill was one of the first to undertake this from the
+psychological side, analyzing the processes of reason, and making
+account of the contents of the mind. Lewes, Spencer, Tyndall have
+approached the same problem from the side of organization. In the first
+edition of the Logic, Mill clearly indicated the ground he took in the
+controversy between the two schools; in the last edition, he defined his
+position more clearly, against Whewell, and in agreement with Bain.
+
+In the article on Coleridge, published in the _London and Westminister
+Review_, March, 1840, and republished in the second volume of
+"Dissertations and Discussions," Mill declares explicitly, that in his
+judgment, the truth on the much-debated question between the two
+philosophies lies with the school of Locke and Bentham:
+
+     "The nature of laws and things in themselves, or the hidden causes
+     of the phenomena which are the objects of experience, appear to us
+     radically inaccessible to the human faculties. We see no ground for
+     believing that any thing can be the object of our knowledge except
+     our experience, and what can be inferred from our experience by the
+     analogies of experience itself; nor that there is any idea, feeling
+     or power in the human mind, which, in order to account for it,
+     requires that its origin should be referred to any other source. We
+     are, therefore, at issue with Coleridge on the central idea of his
+     philosophy; and we find no need of, and no use for, the peculiar
+     technical terminology which he and his masters, the Germans, have
+     introduced into philosophy, for the double purpose of giving
+     logical precision to doctrines which we do not admit, and of
+     marking a relation between those abstract doctrines and many
+     concrete experimental truths, which this language, in our judgment,
+     serves not to elucidate, but to disguise and obscure."
+
+In the examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, he still more
+emphatically expressed his dissent from Schelling, Cousin, and every
+school of idealism, rejecting the doctrine of intuitive knowledge;
+taking the eternal ground from beneath the ideas of the Infinite and
+Absolute; sharply questioning the well-conceded interpretations of
+consciousness; resolving the "first principles" into mental habits; and
+even going so far as to doubt whether twice two necessarily made
+four.[3]
+
+[3] Vol. 1, page 89, 90.
+
+The system of Spencer and other expositors of the doctrine of evolution
+is, in its general features and its ultimate tendency, too familiar to
+be stated. Its hostility to the intuitive philosophy must be obvious
+even to unpractised minds. The atomic theory of the constitution of
+matter, which, in one or another form, is accepted by the majority of
+scientific men, gives ominous prediction of disaster to every scheme
+that is built on the necessary truths of pure reason.
+
+But the philosophers of the experimental school are by no means in
+accord among themselves, on a matter so cardinal as the relation of mind
+to organization. In the latest edition of the Logic, Mill repeats the
+language used in the first:[4]
+
+     "That every mental state has a nervous state for its immediate
+     antecedent, though extremely probable, cannot hitherto be said to
+     be proved, in the conclusive manner in which this can be proved of
+     sensations; and even were it certain, yet every one must admit that
+     we are wholly ignorant of the characteristics of these nervous
+     states; we know not, and have no means of knowing, in what respect
+     one of them differs from another.... The successions, therefore,
+     which obtain among mental phenomena, do not admit of being deduced
+     from the physiological laws of our nervous organization." "It must
+     by no means be forgotten that the laws of mind may be derivative
+     laws resulting from laws of animal life, and that their truth,
+     therefore, may ultimately depend on physical conditions; and the
+     influence of physiological states or physiological changes in
+     altering or counter-acting the mental successions, is one of the
+     most important departments of psychological study. But on the other
+     hand, to reject the resource of psychological analysis, and
+     construct the theory of mind solely on such data as physiology
+     affords at present, seems to me as great an error in principle,
+     and an even more serious one in practice. Imperfect as is the
+     science of mind, I do not scruple to affirm that it is in a
+     considerably more advanced state than the portion of physiology
+     which corresponds with it; and to discard the former for the latter
+     appears to me to be an infringement of the true canons of inductive
+     philosophy."
+
+[4] Logic, p. 591. Amer. Edition.
+
+In a previous chapter[5] Mill had said:
+
+     "I am far from pretending that it may not be capable of proof, or
+     that it is not an important addition to our knowledge, if proved,
+     that certain motions in the particles of bodies are the
+     _conditions_ of the production of heat or light; that certain
+     assignable physical modifications of the nerves may be the
+     conditions, not only of our sensations and emotions, but even of
+     our thoughts; that certain mechanical and chemical conditions may,
+     in the order of nature, be sufficient to determine to action the
+     physiological laws of life. All I insist upon, in common with every
+     thinker who entertains any clear idea of the logic of science, is,
+     that it shall not be supposed that by proving these things, one
+     step would be made toward a real explanation of heat, light, or
+     sensation; or that the generic peculiarity of those phenomena can
+     be in the least degree evaded by any such discoveries, however well
+     established. Let it be shown, for instance, that the most complex
+     series of physical causes and effects succeed one another in the
+     eye and in the brain, to produce a sense of color; rays falling on
+     the eye, refracted, converging, crossing one another, making an
+     inverted image on the retina; and after this a motion--let it be a
+     vibration, or a rush of nervous fluid, or whatever else you are
+     pleased to suppose, along the optic nerve--a propagation of this
+     motion to the brain itself, and as many more different motions as
+     you choose; still, at the end of these motions there is something
+     which is not motion, there is a feeling or sensation of color. The
+     mode in which any one of the motions produces the next, may
+     possibly be susceptible of explanation by some general law of
+     motion; but the mode in which the last motion produces the
+     sensation of color cannot be explained by any motion; it is the law
+     of color, which is, and must always remain a peculiar thing. Where
+     our consciousness recognizes between two phenomena an inherent
+     distinction; where we are sensible of a difference, which is not
+     merely of degree; and feel that no adding one of the phenomena to
+     itself will produce the other; any theory which attempts to bring
+     either under the laws of the other must be false."
+
+[5] Logic, p. 548. Amer. Edition.
+
+To precisely the same effect, DuBois Reymond, in an address to the
+Congress of German Naturalists given in Leipsic:
+
+     "It is absolutely and forever inconceivable that a number of
+     carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen atoms, should be otherwise
+     than indifferent to their own position and motion, past, present,
+     or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should
+     result from their joint action."
+
+The position of John Tyndall is well understood. It was avowed in 1860
+in the _Saturday Review_; again in his address to the Mathematical and
+Physical Section of the British Association in 1868, wherein he declared
+that
+
+     "The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding
+     facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a thought and
+     a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we
+     do not possess the organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment of the
+     organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from
+     the one phenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we do
+     not know why."
+
+In 1875, reviewing Martineau in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for
+December, Tyndall calls attention to these declarations, and quotes
+other language of his own to the same purpose:
+
+     "You cannot satisfy the understanding in its demand for logical
+     continuity between molecular processes and the phenomena of
+     consciousness. This is a rock on which materialism must inevitably
+     split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human
+     mind."
+
+Mr. John Fiske, a disciple of Herbert Spencer, and an exceedingly able
+expositor of the philosophy of which Spencer is the acknowledged chief,
+makes assertions equally positive:[6]
+
+     "However strict the parallelism may be within the limits of our
+     experience, between the phenomena of the mind, and the segment of
+     the circle of motions, the task of transcending or abolishing the
+     radical antithesis between the phenomena of mind and the phenomena
+     of matter, must always remain an impracticable task; for, in order
+     to transcend or abolish this radical antithesis, we must be
+     prepared to show how a given quantity of molecular motion in nerve
+     tissue can be transformed into a definable amount of ideation or
+     feeling. But this, it is quite safe to say, can never be done."
+
+[6] Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II., p. 442.
+
+There are of course, distinguished names on the other side. The work on
+"Intelligence," by Mr. Taine, which Mr. Mill warmly commends as the "the
+first serious effort (in France) to supply the want of a better than the
+official psychology," cannot be wisely overlooked by any one interested
+in this problem. Taine objects to Tyndall's statement of the problem,
+declares that by approaching it from another point, it is soluble, and
+frankly undertakes to solve it.[7]
+
+[7] On Intelligence, Book III., chap. I.
+
+     "When we consider closely any one of our conceptions--that of a
+     plant, an animal, a mineral--we find that the primitive threads of
+     which it is woven, are sensations, and sensations only. We have
+     proof of this already if we recollect that our ideas are only
+     reviving sensations, that our ideas are nothing more than images
+     which have become signs, and that thus this elementary tissue
+     subsists in a more or less disguised form at all stages of our
+     thought." "It is true that we cannot conceive the two events
+     otherwise than as irreducible to one another; but that may depend
+     on the way we conceive them, and not on their actual qualities;
+     their incompatibility is perhaps rather apparent than real; it
+     arises on our side and not on theirs."
+
+Mr. George H. Lewes[8] follows closely Taine's line of argument, but
+developes it with more system. He too quotes Tyndall, alludes to DuBois
+Reymond and makes reference to Mill. Lewes holds it to be a severe
+deduction from proven facts "that the neural process and the feeling are
+one and the same process viewed under different aspects. Viewed from the
+physical or objective side, it is a neural process; viewed from the
+psychological or subjective side, it is a sentient process."
+
+[8] Problems of Life and Mind II. pp. 410, 415.
+
+     "It is not wonderful that conceptions so dissimilar as those of
+     Motion and Feeling should seem irreducible to a common term, while
+     the one is regarded as the symbol of a process in the object, and
+     the other as the symbol of a process in the subject. But
+     psychological analysis leads to the conclusion that the objective
+     process and the subjective process are simply the twofold aspects
+     of one and the same fact; in the one aspect it is the Felt, in the
+     other it is the Feeling."
+
+For the remarkable reasonings by which these assertions are justified,
+the readers must consult the works quoted. Their novelty renders any but
+an extended account of them unfair; and an extended account would be out
+of place in a general study like this.
+
+Should the analyses of Taine and Lewes prove successful at last, and be
+accepted by the authorities in speculative philosophy, idealism, as a
+philosophy, must disappear. The days of metaphysics in the old sense,
+will be numbered; the German schools from Kant to Hegel will become
+obsolete; Jacobi's doctrine of faith, Fichte's doctrine of the absolute
+Ego, Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition, will be forgotten;
+Cousin's influence will be gone; the fundamental ideas of Transcendental
+teachers, French, English, American, will be discredited; and the
+beliefs founded on them will fade away. There will, however, be no cause
+to apprehend the personal, social, moral or spiritual demoralization
+which the "Sensualist" doctrines of the last century were accused of
+encouraging. The attitude of the human mind towards the great problems
+of destiny has so far altered, the problems themselves have so far
+changed their face, that no shock will be felt in the passage from the
+philosophy of intuition to that of experience. Questions respecting the
+origin, order and regulation of the world, the laws of character, the
+constitution of society, the conditions of welfare, the prospects and
+relations of the individual, are put in new forms, discussed by new
+arguments, and answered by new assurances. The words atheism and
+materialism have passed through so many definitions, the conceptions
+they stand for have become so completely transformed by the mutations of
+thought, that the ancient antipathies are not longer excusable; the
+ancient fears are weak. The sanctities that once were set apart in ideal
+shrines will be perfectly at home among the demonstrated facts of common
+life.
+
+If, on the other hand, the school to which Spencer, Fiske and Tyndall
+belong is right, the science of mind will recover its old dignity,
+though under new conditions. Nobody has spoken more plainly against the
+intuitive philosophy, than Mill. No one probably is further from it than
+Tyndall, though he responds in sentiment to the eloquent affirmations of
+Martineau, and quotes Emerson enthusiastically, as "a profoundly
+religious man who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries
+of science, past, present or prospective; one by whom scientific
+conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer
+hues of an ideal world." Under the influences of the new psychology,
+dogmatic idealism will probably be deprived of its sceptre and sway. The
+claim to intuitive knowledge of definite truths of any order whatsoever
+will be abandoned, as untenable on scientific or philosophical grounds;
+but imagination, which, as Emerson says, "respects the cause,"--"the
+vision of an inspired soul reading arguments and affirmations in all
+nature of that which it is driven to say;" emotion, which contains all
+the possibilities of feeling and hope; the moral sentiment, which
+affirms principles with imperative authority; these remain, and claim
+their right to create ideal worlds of which the natural world is image
+and symbol. The Transcendentalism which concedes to all mankind
+spiritual faculties by virtue whereof divine entities are seen in
+definite shape--the personal God--the city of the heavenly
+Jerusalem--will be superseded by the poetic idealism that is the cheer
+and inspiration of poetic minds, animating them with fine visions, and
+gladdening them with unfading, though vague, anticipations.
+
+The Transcendental doctrine has been exposed to most deadly assault on
+the ethical side. The theory of moral intuition, which held that "every
+man is, according to the cautious statement of James Walker, born with a
+moral faculty, or the elements of a moral faculty, which, on being
+developed, creates in him the idea of a right and a wrong in human
+conduct; which summons him before the tribunal of his own soul for
+judgment on the rectitude of his purposes; which grows up into an
+habitual sense of personal responsibility, and thus prepares him, as his
+views are enlarged, to comprehend the moral government of God, and to
+feel his own responsibility to God as a moral governor,"--has fallen
+into general disrepute; and in its place a persuasion is abroad, that,
+in the language of Grote, "the universal and essential tendencies of the
+moral sense, admit of being most satisfactorily deduced from other
+elementary principles of our nature." It is now a widely accepted belief
+among conservative thinkers, that "conscience" is not a faculty, or an
+element, existing here in germ, there in maturity; but is the result of
+social experience. Moderate Transcendentalists conceded the necessity of
+_educating_ conscience, which still implied the existence of a
+conscience or moral sense to be educated. It is now contended that
+conscience itself is a product of education, a deposit left in the
+crucible of experiment, a habit formed by the usage of mankind. The
+justification of this view has gone so far, that it seems likely to
+become the recognized account of this matter; but in course of
+substantiating this doctrine, a new foundation for ethical feeling and
+judgment is laid, which is as immovable as the transcendental "facts of
+consciousness." The moral sentiments are represented as resting on the
+entire past of the race, on reefs of fact built up by the lives of
+millions of men, from the bottom of the deep of humanity. The finest
+moral sensibility caps the peak of the world's effort at
+self-adjustment, as the white, unsullied snow rests on the summit of
+the Jungfrau. The intuition is referred to in another genesis, but it is
+equally clear and equally certain. The difference of origin creates no
+difference of character. Moral distinctions are precisely the same for
+idealists and sensationalists. Here at least, the transcendentalist and
+his adversary can dwell in amity together.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE SEER.
+
+
+A discerning German writer, Herman Grimm, closes a volume of fifteen
+essays, with one on Ralph Waldo Emerson, written in 1861, approved in
+1874. The essay is interesting, apart from its literary merit, as giving
+the impression made by Mr. Emerson on a foreigner to whom his reputation
+was unknown, and a man of culture to whom books and opinions rarely
+brought surprise. He saw a volume of the "Essays" lying on the table of
+an American acquaintance, looked into it, and was surprised that, being
+tolerably well practised in reading English, he understood next to
+nothing of the contents. He asked about the author, and, learning that
+he was highly esteemed in his own country, he opened the book again,
+read further, and was so much struck by passages here and there, that he
+borrowed it, carried it home, took down Webster's dictionary, and began
+reading in earnest. The extraordinary construction of the sentences, the
+apparent absence of logical continuity, the unexpected turns of thought,
+the use of original words, embarrassed him at first; but soon he
+discovered the secret and felt the charms. The man had fresh thoughts,
+employed a living speech, was a genuine person. The book was bought,
+read and re-read, "and now every time I take it up, I seem to take it up
+for the first time."
+
+The power that the richest genius has in Shakspeare, Rafael, Goethe,
+Beethoven, to reconcile the soul to life, to give joy for heaviness, to
+dissipate fears, to transfigure care and toil, to convert lead into
+gold, and lift the veil that conceals the forms of hope, Grimm ascribes
+in the highest measure to Emerson.
+
+     "As I read, all seems old and familiar as if it was my own
+     well-worn thought; all seems new as if it never occurred to me
+     before. I found myself depending on the book and was provoked with
+     myself for it. How could I be so captured and enthralled; so
+     fascinated and bewitched? The writer was but a man like any other;
+     yet, on taking up the volume again, the spell was renewed--I felt
+     the pure air; the old weather-beaten motives recovered their tone."
+
+To him Emerson seemed to stand on the ground of simple fact, which he
+accepted in all sincerity.
+
+     "He regards the world in its immediate aspect, with fresh vision;
+     the thing done or occurring before him opens the way to serene
+     heights. The living have precedence of the dead. Even the living of
+     to-day of the Greeks of yesterday, nobly as the latter thought,
+     moulded, chiselled, sang. For me was the breath of life, for me the
+     rapture of spring, for me love and desire, for me the secret of
+     wisdom and power."... "Emerson fills me with courage and
+     confidence. He has read and observed, but he betrays no sign of
+     toil. He presents familiar facts, but he places them in new lights
+     and combinations. From every object the lines run straight out,
+     connecting it with the central point of life. What I had hardly
+     dared to think, it was so bold, he brings forth as quietly as if it
+     was the most familiar commonplace. He is a perfect swimmer on the
+     ocean of modern existence. He dreads no tempest, for he is sure
+     that calm will follow it; he does not hate, contradict, or dispute,
+     for he understands men and loves them. I look on with wonder to see
+     how the hurly-burly of modern life subsides, and the elements
+     gently betake themselves to their allotted places. Had I found but
+     a single passage in his writings that was an exception to this
+     rule, I should begin to suspect my judgment, and should say no
+     further word; but long acquaintance confirms my opinion. As I think
+     of this man, I have understood the devotion of pupils who would
+     share any fate with their master, because his genius banished doubt
+     and imparted life to all things."
+
+Grimm tells us that one day he found Emerson's Essays in the hands of a
+lady to whom he had recommended them without effect. She had made a
+thousand excuses; had declared herself quite satisfied with Goethe, who
+had all that Emerson could possibly have, and a great deal more; had
+expressed doubts whether, even if Emerson were all that his admirers
+represented, it was worth while to make a study of him. Besides, she had
+read in the book, and found only commonplace thoughts which had come to
+herself, and which she considered not of sufficient importance to
+express. So Emerson was neglected.
+
+     "On this occasion she made him the subject of conversation. She had
+     felt that he was something remarkable. She had come upon sentences,
+     many times, that opened the darkest recesses of thought. I listened
+     quietly, but made no response. Not long afterwards she poured out
+     to me her astonished admiration in such earnest and impassioned
+     strain, that she made me feel as if I was the novice and she the
+     apostle."
+
+This experience was repeated again and again, and Grimm had the
+satisfaction of seeing the indifferent kindle, the adverse turn, the
+objectors yield. The praise was not universal indeed; there were
+stubborn dissentients who did not confess the charm, and declared that
+the enthusiasm was infatuation. Such remained unconverted. It was
+discovered that Emerson came to his own only, though his own were a
+large and increasing company.
+
+The reasons of Grimm's admiration have been sufficiently indicated in
+the above extracts. They are good reasons, but they are not the best.
+They do not touch the deeper secret of power. That secret lies in the
+writer's pure and perfect idealism, in his absolute and perpetual faith
+in thoughts, his supreme confidence in the spiritual laws. He lives in
+the region of serene ideas; lives there all the day and all the year;
+not visiting the mount of vision occasionally, but setting up his
+tabernacle there, and passing the night among the stars that he may be
+up and dressed for the eternal sunrise. To such a spirit there is no
+night: "the darkness shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are
+both alike." There are no cloudy days. Tyndall's expression "in his case
+Poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver brother science by
+the hand, and cheers him with immortal laughter"--is singularly
+infelicitous in phrase, for it is as easy to associate night orgies with
+the dawn as the bacchanalian spirit with Emerson, who never riots and
+never laughs, but is radiant with a placid buoyancy that diffuses itself
+over his countenance and person. Mr. Emerson's characteristic trait is
+serenity. He is faithful to his own counsel, "Shun the negative side.
+Never wrong people with your contritions, nor with dismal views of
+politics or society. Never name sickness; even if you could trust
+yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a valetudinarian
+who will soon give you your fill of it." He seems to be perpetually
+saying "Good Morning."
+
+This is not wholly a result of philosophy; it is rather a gift of
+nature. He is the descendant of eight generations of Puritan
+clergymen,--the inheritor of their thoughtfulness and contemplation,
+their spirit of inward and outward communion. The dogmatism fell away;
+the peaceful fruits of discipline remained, and flowered beautifully in
+his richly favored spirit. An elder brother William, whom it was a
+privilege to know, though lacking the genius of Waldo, was a natural
+idealist and wise saint. Charles, another brother, who died young and
+greatly lamented had the saintliness and the genius both. The "Dial"
+contained contributions from this young man, entitled "Notes from the
+Journal of a Scholar" that strongly suggest the genius of his eminent
+brother; a few passages from them may be interesting as throwing light
+on the secret of Emerson's inspiration.
+
+     "This afternoon we read Shakspeare. The verse so sank into me, that
+     as I toiled my way home under the cloud of night, with the gusty
+     music of the storm around and overhead, I doubted that it was all
+     a remembered scene; that humanity was indeed one, a spirit
+     continually reproduced, accomplishing a vast orbit, whilst
+     individual men are but the points through which it passes.
+
+     We each of us furnish to the angel who stands in the sun, a single
+     observation. The reason why Homer is to me like dewy morning, is
+     because I too lived while Troy was, and sailed in the hollow ships
+     of the Grecians to sack the devoted town. The rosy-fingered dawn as
+     it crimsoned the tops of Ida, the broad sea shore covered with
+     tents, the Trojan hosts in their painted armor, and the rushing
+     chariots of Diomed and Idomeneus,--all these I too saw: my ghost
+     animated the frame of some nameless Argive; and Shakspeare, in King
+     John, does but recall to me myself in the dress of another age, the
+     sport of new accidents. I who am Charles, was sometime Romeo. In
+     Hamlet I pondered and doubted. We forget what we have been, drugged
+     by the sleepy bowl of the Present. But when a lively chord in the
+     soul is struck, when the windows for a moment are unbarred, the
+     long and varied past is recovered. We recognize it all; we are no
+     more brief, ignoble creatures; we seize our immortality and bind
+     together the related parts of our secular being."
+
+From the second record of thoughts a passage may be taken, so precisely
+like paragraphs in the essays that they might have proceeded from the
+same mind:
+
+     "Let us not vail our bonnets to circumstance. If we act so, because
+     we are so; if we sin from strong bias of temper and constitution,
+     at least we have in ourselves the measure and the curb of our
+     aberration. But if they who are around us sway us; if we think
+     ourselves incapable of resisting the cords by which fathers and
+     mothers and a host of unsuitable expectations and duties, falsely
+     so called, seek to bind us,--into what helpless discord shall we
+     not fall."
+
+     "I hate whatever is imitative in states of mind as well as in
+     action. The moment I say to myself, 'I ought to feel thus and so,'
+     life loses its sweetness, the soul her vigor and truth. I can only
+     recover my genuine self by stopping short, refraining from every
+     effort to shape my thought after a form, and giving it boundless
+     freedom and horizon. Then, after oscillation more or less
+     protracted, as the mind has been more or less forcibly pushed from
+     its place, I fall again into my orbit and recognize myself, and
+     find with gratitude that something there is in the spirit which
+     changes not, neither is weary, but ever returns into itself, and
+     partakes of the eternity of God."
+
+Idealism is native to this temperament, the proper expression of its
+feeling. Emerson was preordained an idealist; he is one of the eternal
+men, bearing about him the atmosphere of immortal youth. He is now
+seventy-three years old, having been born in Boston May 25th, 1803; but
+his last volume, "Letters and Social Aims," shows the freshness of his
+first essays. The opening chapter, "Poetry and Imagination," has the
+emphasis and soaring confidence of undimmed years; and the closing one,
+"Immortality," sustains an unwearied flight among the agitations of this
+most hotly-debated of beliefs. The address before the Phi Beta Kappa
+Society at Cambridge, in 1867, equals in moral grandeur and earnestness
+of appeal, in faithfulness to ideas and trust in principles, the
+addresses that made so famous the prime of his career. There is
+absolutely no abatement of heart or hope; if anything, the tone is
+richer and more assured than ever it was. During the season of his
+popularity as a lyceum lecturer, the necessity of making his discourse
+attractive and entertaining, brought into the foreground the play of his
+wit, and forced the graver qualities of his mind into partial
+concealment; but in later years, in the solitude of his study, the
+undertone of high purpose is heard again, in solemn reverberations,
+reminding us that the unseen realities are present still; that no
+opening into the eternal has ever been closed.
+
+     "Shall we study the mathematics of the sphere," he says to the
+     Cambridge scholars, "and not its causal essence also? Nature is a
+     fable, whose moral blazes through it. There is no use in
+     Copernicus, if the robust periodicity of the solar system does not
+     show its equal perfection in the mental sphere--the periodicity,
+     the compensating errors, the grand reactions. I shall never believe
+     that centrifugence and centripetence balance, unless mind heats and
+     meliorates, as well as the surface and soil of the globe."
+
+     "On this power, this all-dissolving unity, the emphasis of heaven
+     and earth is laid. Nature is brute, but as this soul quickens it;
+     nature always the effect, mind the flowing cause. Mind carries the
+     law; history is the slow and atomic unfolding."
+
+     "All vigor is contagious, and when we see creation, we also begin
+     to create. Depth of character, height of genius, can only find
+     nourishment in this soil. The miracles of genius always rest on
+     profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed. Enthusiasm is the
+     leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the
+     understanding. Hope never spreads her golden wings but on
+     unfathomable seas."
+
+     "We wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty
+     instead of chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its
+     proper checks; believing that a free press will prove safer than
+     the censorship; to ordain free trade, and believe that it will not
+     bankrupt us; universal suffrage, believing that it will not carry
+     us to mobs or back to kings again."
+
+     "Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable
+     convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and
+     love. Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of
+     silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and
+     delicate as the bonfires of the meadow flies. Yet the powers of
+     numbers cannot compute its enormous age--lasting as time and
+     space--embosomed in time and space. And time and space, what are
+     they? Our first problems, which we ponder all our lives through,
+     and leave where we found them; whose outrunning immensity, the old
+     Greeks believed, astonished the gods themselves; of whose dizzy
+     vastitudes, all the worlds of God are a mere dot on the margin;
+     impossible to deny, impossible to believe. Yet the moral element in
+     man counterpoises this dismaying immensity and bereaves it of
+     terror."
+
+Emerson has been called the prince of Transcendentalists. It is nearer
+the truth to call him the prince of idealists. A Transcendentalist, in
+the technical sense of the term, it cannot be clearly affirmed that he
+was. Certainly he cannot be reckoned a disciple of Kant, or Jacobi, or
+Fichte, or Schelling. He calls no man master; he receives no teaching on
+authority. It is not certain that he ever made a study of the
+Transcendental philosophy in the works of its chief exposition. In his
+lecture on "The Transcendentalist," delivered in 1842, he conveys the
+impression that it is idealism--active and protesting--an excited
+reaction against formalism, tradition, and conventionalism in every
+sphere. As such, he describes it with great vividness and beauty. But as
+such merely, it was not apprehended by metaphysicians like James Walker,
+theologians like Parker or preachers like William Henry Channing.
+
+Emerson does not claim for the soul a special faculty, like faith or
+intuition, by which truths of the spiritual order are perceived, as
+objects are perceived by the senses. He contends for no doctrines,
+whether of God or the hereafter, or the moral law, on the credit of such
+interior revelation. He neither dogmatizes nor defines. On the contrary,
+his chief anxiety seems to be to avoid committing himself to opinions;
+to keep all questions open; to close no avenue in any direction to the
+free ingress and egress of the mind. He gives no description of God that
+will class him as theist or pantheist; no definition of immortality that
+justifies his readers in imputing to him any form of the popular belief
+in regard to it. Does he believe in personal immortality? It is
+impertinent to ask. He will not be questioned; not because he doubts,
+but because his beliefs are so rich, various and many-sided, that he is
+unwilling, by laying emphasis on any one, to do an apparent injustice to
+others. He will be held to no definitions; he will be reduced to no
+final statements. The mind must have free range. Critics complain of the
+tantalizing fragmentariness of his writing; it is evidence of the
+shyness and modesty of his mind. He dwells in principles, and will not
+be cabined in beliefs. He needs the full expanse of the Eternal Reason.
+In the chapter on Worship--"Conduct of Life," p. 288, he writes thus:
+
+     "Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious; it is
+     so well, that it is sure it will be well; it asks no questions of
+     the Supreme Power; 'tis a higher thing to confide, that if it is
+     best we should live, we shall live--it is higher to have this
+     conviction than to have the lease of indefinite centuries, and
+     millenniums and aeons. Higher than the question of our duration, is
+     the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are
+     fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future, must be a
+     great soul now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend,
+     that is, on any man's experience but our own. It must be proved, if
+     at all, from our own activity and designs, which imply an
+     interminable future for their play."
+
+The discourse on Immortality, which closes the volume, "Letters and
+Social Aims," moves on with steady power, towards the conclusion of
+belief. Emerson really seems about to commit himself; he argues and
+affirms, with extraordinary positiveness. Of skepticism, on the subject,
+he says:
+
+     "I admit that you shall find a good deal of skepticism in the
+     streets and hotels, and places of coarse amusement. But that is
+     only to say that the practical faculties are faster developed than
+     the spiritual. Where there is depravity there is a slaughter-house
+     style of thinking. One argument of future life is the recoil of the
+     mind in such company--our pain at every skeptical statement."
+
+His enumeration of "the few simple elements of the natural faith," is as
+clear and cogent as was ever made. He urges the delight in permanence
+and stability, in immense spaces and reaches of time. "Every thing is
+prospective, and man is to live hereafter." He urges that:
+
+     "The implanting of a desire indicates that the gratification of
+     that desire is in the constitution of the creature that feels it;
+     the wish for food; the wish for motion; the wish for sleep, for
+     society, for knowledge, are not random whims, but grounded in the
+     structure of the creature, and meant to be satisfied by food; by
+     motion; by sleep; by society; by knowledge. If there is the desire
+     to live, and in larger sphere, with more knowledge and power, it is
+     because life and knowledge and power are good for us, and we are
+     the natural depositaries of these gifts."
+
+He ranks as a hint of endless being the novelty which perpetually
+attends life:
+
+     "The soul does not age with the body." "Every really able man, in
+     whatever direction he work--a man of large affairs--an inventor, a
+     statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter--if you talk sincerely with
+     him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what
+     it should be. What is this 'Better,' this flying ideal but the
+     perpetual promise of his Creator?"
+
+The prophecy of the intellect is enunciated in stirring tones:
+
+     "All our intellectual action, not promises but bestows a feeling of
+     absolute existence. We are taken out of time, and breathe a purer
+     air. I know not whence we draw the assurance of prolonged life: of
+     a life which shoots that gulf we call death, and takes hold of what
+     is real and abiding, by so many claims as from our intellectual
+     history." "As soon as thought is exercised, this belief is
+     inevitable; as soon as virtue glows, this belief confirms itself.
+     It is a kind of summary or completion of man."
+
+This reads very much like encouragement to the popular persuasion, yet
+it comes far short of it; indeed, does not, at any point touch it. The
+immortality is claimed for the moral and spiritual by whom thought is
+exercised, in whom virtue glows--for none beside--and for these, the
+individual conscious existence is not asserted. In the midst of the high
+argument occur sentences like these:
+
+     "I confess that everything connected with our personality fails.
+     Nature never spares the individual. We are always balked of a
+     complete success. No prosperity is promised to _that_. We have our
+     indemnity only in the success of that to which we belong. _That_ is
+     immortal, and we only through that." "Future state is an illusion
+     for the ever present state. It is not length of life, but depth of
+     life. It is not duration, but a taking of the soul out of time, as
+     all high action of the mind does; when we are living in the
+     sentiments we ask no questions about time. The spiritual world
+     takes place--that which is always the same."
+
+Goethe is quoted to the same purpose:
+
+     "It is to a thinking being quite impossible to think himself
+     non-existent, ceasing to think and live; so far does every one
+     carry in himself the proof of immortality, and quite spontaneously.
+     But so soon as the man will be objective and go out of himself, so
+     soon as he dogmatically will grasp a personal duration to bolster
+     up in cockney fashion that inward assurance, he is lost in
+     contradiction."
+
+It is thought worth while to dwell so long on this point, because it
+furnishes a perfect illustration of Emerson's intellectual attitude
+towards beliefs, its entire sincerity, disinterestedness and modesty.
+The serenity of his faith makes it impossible for him to be a
+controversialist. He never gave a sweeter or more convincing proof of
+this than in the sermon he preached on the Communion Supper, which
+terminated his connection with his Boston parish, and with it his
+relations to the Christian ministry, after a short service of less than
+four years. The rite in question was held sacred by his sect, as a
+personal memorial of Jesus perpetuated according to his own request. To
+neglect it was still regarded as a reproach; to dispute its authority
+was considered contumacious; to declare it obsolete and useless, an
+impediment to spiritual progress, a hindrance to Christian growth, was
+to excite violent animosities, and call down angry rebuke. Yet this is
+what Mr. Emerson deliberately did. That the question of retaining a
+minister who declined to bless and distribute the bread and wine, was
+debated at all, was proof of the extraordinary hold he had on his
+people. Through the crisis he remained unruffled, calm and gracious as
+in the sunniest days. On the evening when the church were considering
+his final proposition, with such result as he clearly foresaw, he sat
+with a brother clergyman talking pleasantly on literature and general
+topics, never letting fall a hint of the impending judgment, until, as
+he rose to leave, he said gently, "this is probably the last time we
+shall meet as brethren in the same calling," added a few words in
+explanation of the remark, and passed into the street.
+
+The sermon alluded to was a model of lucid, orderly and simple
+statement, so plain that the young men and women of the congregation
+could understand it; so deep and elevated that experienced believers
+were fed; learned enough, without a taint of pedantry; bold, without a
+suggestion of audacity; reasonable, without critical sharpness or
+affectation of mental superiority; rising into natural eloquence in
+passages that contained pure thought, but for the most part flowing in
+unartificial sentences that exactly expressed the speaker's meaning and
+no more. By Mr. Emerson's kind permission, the discourse is printed in
+the last chapter of this volume. The farewell letter to the parish is
+also printed here.
+
+
+     BOSTON, 22d December, 1832.
+
+     _To the Second Church and Society_:
+
+     CHRISTIAN FRIENDS:--Since the formal resignation of my official
+     relation to you in my communication to the proprietors in
+     September, I had waited anxiously for an opportunity of addressing
+     you once more from the pulpit, though it were only to say, let us
+     part in peace and in the love of God. The state of my health has
+     prevented, and continues to prevent me from so doing. I am now
+     advised to seek the benefit of a sea voyage. I cannot go away
+     without a brief parting word to friends who have shown me so much
+     kindness, and to whom I have felt myself so dearly bound.
+
+     Our connection has been very short; I had only begun my work. It is
+     now brought to a sudden close; and I look back, I own, with a
+     painful sense of weakness, to the little service I have been able
+     to render, after so much expectation on my part,--to the checkered
+     space of time, which domestic affliction and personal infirmities
+     have made yet shorter and more unprofitable.
+
+     As long as he remains in the same place, every man flatters
+     himself, however keen may be his sense of his failures and
+     unworthiness, that he shall yet accomplish much; that the future
+     shall make amends for the past; that his very errors shall prove
+     his instructors,--and what limit is there to hope? But a separation
+     from our place, the close of a particular career of duty, shuts the
+     book, bereaves us of this hope, and leaves us only to lament how
+     little has been done.
+
+     Yet, my friends, our faith in the great truths of the New Testament
+     makes the change of places and circumstances of less account to us,
+     by fixing our attention upon that which is unalterable. I find
+     great consolation in the thought that the resignation of my present
+     relations makes so little change to myself. I am no longer your
+     minister, but am not the less engaged, I hope, to the love and
+     service of the same eternal cause, the advancement, namely, of the
+     Kingdom of God in the hearts of men. The tie that binds each of us
+     to that cause is not created by our connexion, and cannot be hurt
+     by our separation. To me, as one disciple, is the ministry of
+     truth, as far as I can discern and declare it, committed; and I
+     desire to live nowhere and no longer than that grace of God is
+     imparted to me--the liberty to seek and the liberty to utter it.
+
+     And, more than this, I rejoice to believe that my ceasing to
+     exercise the pastoral office among you does not make any real
+     change in our spiritual relation to each other. Whatever is most
+     desirable and excellent therein, remains to us. For, truly
+     speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought, has given
+     me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under bonds to
+     adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached. And so I say
+     to all you who have been my counsellors and cooperators in our
+     Christian walk, that I am wont to see in your faces the seals and
+     certificates of our mutual obligations. If we have conspired from
+     week to week in the sympathy and expression of devout sentiments;
+     if we have received together the unspeakable gift of God's truth;
+     if we have studied together the sense of any divine word; or
+     striven together in any charity; or conferred together for the
+     relief or instruction of any brother; if together we have laid down
+     the dead in a pious hope; or held up the babe into the baptism of
+     Christianity; above all, if we have shared in any habitual
+     acknowledgment of that benignant God, whose omnipresence raises and
+     glorifies the meanest offices and the lowest ability, and opens
+     heaven in every heart that worships him,--then indeed are we
+     united, we are mutually debtors to each other of faith and hope,
+     engaged to persist and confirm each other's hearts in obedience to
+     the Gospel. We shall not feel that the nominal changes and little
+     separations of this world can release us from the strong cordage of
+     this spiritual bond. And I entreat you to consider how truly
+     blessed will have been our connexion, if in this manner, the memory
+     of it shall serve to bind each one of us more strictly to the
+     practice of our several duties.
+
+     It remains to thank you for the goodness you have uniformly
+     extended towards me, for your forgiveness of many defects, and your
+     patient and even partial acceptance of every endeavor to serve you;
+     for the liberal provision you have ever made for my maintenance;
+     and for a thousand acts of kindness which have comforted and
+     assisted me.
+
+     To the proprietors I owe a particular acknowledgment, for their
+     recent generous vote for the continuance of my salary, and hereby
+     ask their leave to relinquish this emolument at the end of the
+     present month.
+
+     And now, brethren and friends, having returned into your hands the
+     trust you have honored me with,--the charge of public and private
+     instruction in this religious society--I pray God, that, whatever
+     seed of truth and virtue we have sown and watered together, may
+     bear fruit unto eternal life. I commend you to the Divine
+     Providence. May He grant you, in your ancient sanctuary the service
+     of able and faithful teachers. May He multiply to your families and
+     to your persons, every genuine blessing; and whatever discipline
+     may be appointed to you in this world, may the blessed hope of the
+     resurrection, which He has planted in the constitution of the human
+     soul, and confirmed and manifested by Jesus Christ, be made good
+     to you beyond the grave. In this faith and hope I bid you farewell.
+
+     Your affectionate servant,
+
+     RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
+
+
+Mr. Emerson's place is among poetic, not among philosophic minds. He
+belongs to the order of imaginative men. The imagination is his organ.
+His reading, which is very extensive in range, has covered this
+department more completely than any. He is at home with the seers,
+Swedenborg, Plotinus, Plato, the books of the Hindus, the Greek
+mythology, Plutarch, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Henry More, Hafiz; the books
+called sacred by the religious world; "books of natural science,
+especially those written by the ancients,--geography, botany,
+agriculture, explorations of the sea, of meteors, of astronomy;" he
+recommends "the deep books." Montaigne has been a favorite author on
+account of his sincerity. He thinks Hindu books the best gymnastics for
+the mind.
+
+His estimate of the function of the poetic faculty is given in his
+latest volume.
+
+     "Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the
+     thing; to pass the brute body, and search the life and reason which
+     causes it to exist; to see that the object is always flowing away,
+     whilst the spirit or necessity which causes it subsists." "The poet
+     contemplates the central identity; sees it undulate and roll this
+     way and that, with divine flowings, through remotest things; and
+     following it, can detect essential resemblances in natures never
+     before compared." "Poetry is faith. To the poet the world is virgin
+     soil; all is practicable; the men are ready for virtue; it is
+     always time to do right. He is the true recommencer, or Adam in the
+     garden again." "He is the healthy, the wise, the fundamental, the
+     manly man, seer of the secret; against all the appearance, he sees
+     and reports the truth, namely, that the soul generates matter. And
+     poetry is the only verity, the expression of a sound mind, speaking
+     after the ideal, not after the apparent." "Whilst common sense
+     looks at things or visible nature as real and final facts, poetry,
+     or the imagination which dictates it, is a second sight, looking
+     through these and using them as types or words for thoughts which
+     they signify."
+
+By the poet, Emerson is careful to say that he means the potential or
+ideal man, not found now in any one person.
+
+The upshot of it all is that soul is supreme. Not _the_ soul, as if that
+term designated a constituent part of each man's nature.
+
+     "All goes to show that the soul is not an organ, but animates and
+     exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of
+     memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and
+     feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the
+     will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the
+     background of our being, in which they lie--an immensity not
+     possessed, and that cannot be possessed. From within or from
+     behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware
+     that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a
+     temple, wherein all wisdom and all good abide."
+
+We stand now at the centre of Emerson's philosophy. His thoughts are few
+and pregnant; capable of infinite expansion, illustration and
+application. They crop out on almost every page of his characteristic
+writings; are iterated and reiterated in every form of speech; and put
+into gems of expression that may be worn on any part of the person. His
+prose and his poetry are aglow with them. They make his essays oracular,
+and his verse prophetic. By virtue of them his best books belong to the
+sacred literature of the race; by virtue of them, but for the lack of
+artistic finish of rhythm and rhyme, he would be the chief of American
+poets.
+
+The first article in Mr. Emerson's faith is the primacy of Mind. That
+Mind is supreme, eternal, absolute, one, manifold, subtle, living,
+immanent in all things, permanent, flowing, self-manifesting; that the
+universe is the result of mind, that nature is the symbol of mind; that
+finite minds live and act through concurrence with infinite mind. This
+idea recurs with such frequency that, but for Emerson's wealth of
+observation, reading, wit, mental variety and buoyancy, his talent for
+illustration, gift at describing details, it would weary the reader. As
+it is, we delight to follow the guide through the labyrinth of his
+expositions, and gaze on the wonderful phantasmagoria that he exhibits.
+
+His second article is the connection of the individual intellect with
+the primal mind, and its ability to draw thence wisdom, will, virtue,
+prudence, heroism, all active and passive qualities. This belief, as
+being the more practical, has even more exuberant expression than the
+other:
+
+     "The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it
+     is profane to seek to interpose helps. Whenever a mind is simple,
+     and receives a divine wisdom, all things pass away--means,
+     teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and
+     future into the present hour."
+
+     "Let man learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his
+     heart; this, namely: that the highest dwells with him; that the
+     sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is
+     there."
+
+     "Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul;
+     the simplest person who, in his integrity, worships God, becomes
+     God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal
+     self is new and unsearchable."
+
+     "We are wiser than we know. If we will not interfere with our
+     thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God,
+     we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. For
+     the Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us, and casts
+     His dread omniscience through us over things."
+
+     "The only mode of obtaining an answer to the questions of the
+     senses, is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of
+     being which floats us into the secret of nature, work and live,
+     work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and
+     forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer
+     are one."
+
+     "We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies aloft in our
+     life or unconscious power."
+
+     "We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
+     Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence;
+     the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally
+     related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist,
+     and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
+     self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and
+     the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the
+     object, are one."
+
+    "All the forms are fugitive,
+     But the substances survive;
+     Ever fresh the broad creation--
+     A divine improvisation,
+     From the heart of God proceeds,
+     A single will, a million deeds.
+     Once slept the world an egg of stone,
+     And pulse and sound, and light was none;
+     And God said 'Throb,' and there was motion,
+     And the vast mass became vast ocean.
+     Onward and on, the eternal Pan,
+     Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
+     Halteth never in one shape,
+     But forever doth escape,
+     Like wave or flame, into new forms
+     Of gem and air, of plants and worms.
+     I that to-day am a pine,
+     Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
+     He is free and libertine,
+     Pouring of his power, the wine
+     To every age--to every race;
+     Unto every race and age
+     He emptieth the beverage;
+     Unto each and unto all--
+     Maker and original.
+     The world is the ring of his spells,
+     And the play of his miracles.
+     As he giveth to all to drink,
+     Thus or thus they are, and think.
+     He giveth little, or giveth much,
+     To make them several, or such.
+     With one drop sheds form and feature;
+     With the second a special nature;
+     The third adds heat's indulgent spark;
+     The fourth gives light, which eats the dark;
+     In the fifth drop himself he flings,
+     And conscious Law is King of kings.
+     Pleaseth him, the Eternal Child
+     To play his sweet will--glad and wild.
+     As the bee through the garden ranges,
+     From world to world the godhead changes;
+     As the sheep go feeding in the waste,
+     From form to form he maketh haste.
+     This vault, which glows immense with light,
+     Is the inn, where he lodges for a night.
+     What recks such Traveller, if the bowers
+     Which bloom and fade, like meadow flowers--
+     A bunch of fragrant lilies be,
+     Or the stars of eternity?
+     Alike to him, the better, the worse--
+     The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
+     Thou meetest him by centuries,
+     And lo! he passes like the breeze;
+     Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
+     He hides in pure transparency;
+     Thou askest in fountains, and in fires,
+     He is the essence that inquires.
+     He is the axis of the star;
+     He is the sparkle of the spar;
+     He is the heart of every creature;
+     He is the meaning of each feature;
+     And his mind is the sky,
+     Than all it holds, more deep, more high."
+
+Mr. Emerson is never concerned to defend himself against the charge of
+pantheism, or the warning to beware lest he unsettle the foundations of
+morality, annihilate the freedom of the will, abolish the distinction
+between right and wrong, and reduce personality to a mask. He makes no
+apology; he never explains; he trusts to affirmation, pure and simple.
+By dint of affirming all the facts that appear, he makes his
+contribution to the problem of solving all, and by laying incessant
+emphasis on the cardinal virtues of humility, fidelity, sincerity,
+obedience, aspiration, simple acquiescence in the will of the supreme
+power, he not only guards himself against vulgar misconception, but
+sustains the mind at an elevation that makes the highest hill-tops of
+the accepted morality disappear in the dead level of the plain.
+
+The primary thoughts of his philosophy, if such it may be termed,
+Emerson takes with him wherever he goes. Does he study history, history
+is the autobiography of the Eternal Mind. The key is in the sentence
+that begins the Essay on History:
+
+     "There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an
+     inlet to the same, and to all of the same. He that is once admitted
+     to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What
+     Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may
+     feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who
+     hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or
+     can be done, for that is the only and sovereign agent." "This human
+     mind wrote history, and this must read it. The sphinx must solve
+     her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to
+     be explained from individual experience. There is a relation
+     between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. Of the
+     universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its
+     properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience
+     flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the
+     crises of his life refer to national crises." In the "Progress of
+     Culture" the same sentiment recurs.
+
+     "What is the use of telegraphy? What of newspapers? To know in each
+     social crisis how men feel in Kansas, in California, the wise man
+     waits for no mails, reads no telegrams. He asks his own heart. If
+     they are made as he is, if they breathe the same air, eat of the
+     same wheat, have wives and children, he knows that their joy or
+     resentment rises to the same point as his own. The inviolate soul
+     is in perpetual telegraphic communication with the Source of
+     events, has earlier information, a private despatch, which relieves
+     him of the terror which presses on the rest of the community."
+
+     "We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our
+     private experience, and verifying them here. All history becomes
+     subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only
+     biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,--must
+     go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not
+     live, it does not know."
+
+In the appreciation of scientific facts the same method avails. Tyndall
+commends Emerson as "a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is
+really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past,
+present, or prospective." The praise seems to imply some misconception
+of Emerson's position. Tyndall intimates that Emerson is undaunted where
+others fear. But this is not so. No man deserves commendation for not
+dreading precisely what he desires. Emerson, by his principle, is
+delivered from the alarm of the religious man who has a creed to defend,
+and from the defiance of the scientific man who has creeds to assail. To
+him Nature is but the symbol of spirit; this the scientific men, by
+their discoveries, are continually proving. The faster they disclose
+facts, and the more accurately, the more brilliantly do they illustrate
+the lessons of the perfect wisdom. For the scientific _method_ he
+professes no deep respect; for the scientific _assumptions_ none
+whatever. He begins at the opposite end. They start with matter, he
+starts with mind. They feel their way up, he feels his way down. They
+observe phenomena, he watches thoughts. They fancy themselves to be
+gradually pushing away as illusions the so-called entities of the soul;
+he dwells serenely with those entities, rejoicing to see men paying
+jubilant honor to what they mean to overturn. The facts they bring in,
+chemical, physiological, biological, Huxley's facts, Helmholtz's,
+Darwin's, Tyndall's, Spencer's, the ugly facts which the theologians
+dispute, he accepts with eager hands, and uses to demonstrate the force
+and harmony of the spiritual laws.
+
+     "Science," he says, "was false by being unpoetical. It assumed to
+     explain a reptile or mollusk, and isolated it,--which is hunting
+     for life in graveyards; reptile or mollusk, or man or angel, only
+     exists in system, in relation. The metaphysician, the poet, only
+     sees each animal form as an inevitable step in the path of the
+     creating mind." "The savans are chatty and vain; but hold them hard
+     to principle and definition, and they become mute and near-sighted.
+     What is motion? What is beauty? What is matter? What is life? What
+     is force? Push them hard and they will not be loquacious. They will
+     come to Plato, Proclus and Swedenborg. The invisible and
+     imponderable is the sole fact." "The atomic theory is only an
+     interior process _produced_, as geometers say, or the effect of a
+     foregone metaphysical theory. Swedenborg saw gravity to be only an
+     external of the irresistible attractions of affection and faith.
+     Mountains and oceans we think we understand. Yes, so long as they
+     are contented to be such, and are safe with the geologist; but when
+     they are melted in Promethean alembics and come out men; and then
+     melted again, come out woods, without any abatement, but with an
+     exaltation of power!"
+
+Emerson is faithful in applying his principle to social institutions and
+laws. His faith in ideal justice and love never blenches. In every
+emergency, political, civil, national, he has been true to his
+regenerating idea; true as a recreator from the inside, rather than as a
+reformer of the outside world. A profounder, more consistent, more
+uncompromising radical does not exist; a less heated, ruffled or anxious
+one cannot be thought of. He scarcely ever suggested measures, rarely
+joined in public assemblies, did not feel at home among politicians or
+agitators. But his thought never swerved from the line of perfect
+rectitude, his sympathies were always human. His heart was in the
+anti-slavery movement from the beginning. He was abroad in its stormy
+days, his steadfast bearing and cheerful countenance carrying hope
+whenever he appeared. His name stood with that of his wife in the list
+of signers to the call for the first National Woman's Rights Convention,
+in 1850. The Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Society of
+Arts and Sciences have honored themselves by electing him a member; the
+Alumni of Harvard University joyfully made him an overseer; he was
+proposed as rector of the University of Glasgow. Such confidence did the
+great idealist inspire, that he has been even called to the duty of
+Examiner at West Point Military Academy. His name is spoken in no
+company with other than respect, and his influence is felt in places
+where it is not acknowledged, and would be officially disavowed.
+
+Mr. A. B. Alcott, a townsman of Mr. Emerson, and a close acquaintance,
+in his "Concord Days" says pleasant things of his friend, just and
+discerning things, as well as pleasant.
+
+     "Consider," he says, "how largely our letters have been enriched by
+     his contributions. Consider, too, the change his views have wrought
+     in our methods of thinking; how he has won over the bigot, the
+     unbeliever, at least to tolerance and moderation, if not
+     acknowledgment, by his circumspection and candor of statement." "A
+     poet, speaking to individuals as few others can speak, and to
+     persons in their privileged moments, he is heard as none others
+     are. 'Tis every thing to have a true believer in the world, dealing
+     with men and matters as if they were divine in idea and real in
+     fact, meeting persons and events at a glance, directly, not at a
+     millionth remove, and so passing fair and fresh into life and
+     literature." "His compositions affect us, not as logic linked in
+     syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather, as preludes, in which one is
+     not tied to any design of air, but may vary his key or not at
+     pleasure, as if improvised without any particular scope of
+     argument; each period, paragraph, being a perfect note in itself,
+     however it may chance chime with its accompaniments in the piece,
+     as a waltz of wandering stars, a dance of Hesperus with Orion."
+
+After this, one is surprised to hear Mr. Alcott say, "I know of but one
+subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books--shall I say his
+conversation?--gives me; his pains to be impersonal or discreet, as if
+he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to
+self-respect, the courtesy due to intercourse and authorship." To others
+this exquisite reserve, this delicate withdrawal behind his thought, has
+seemed not only one of Emerson's peculiar charms, but one of his most
+subtle powers. Personal magnetism is very delightful for the moment. The
+exhibition of attractive personal traits is interesting in the lecture
+room; sometimes in the parlor. The public, large or small, enjoy
+confidences. But in an age of personalities, voluntary and involuntary,
+the man who keeps his individual affairs in the background, tells
+nothing of his private history, holds in his own breast his petty
+concerns and opinions, and lets thoughts flow through him, as light
+streams through plate glass, is more than attractive--is noble, is
+venerable. To his impersonality in his books and addresses, Emerson owes
+perhaps a large measure of his extraordinary influence. You may search
+his volumes in vain for a trace of egotism. In the lecture room, he
+seems to be so completely under the spell of his idea, so wholly
+abstracted from his audience, that he is as one who waits for the
+thoughts to come, and drops them out one by one, in a species of
+soliloquy or trance. He is a bodiless idea. When he speaks or writes,
+the power is that of pure mind. The incidental, accidental, occasional,
+does not intrude. No abatement on the score of personal antipathy needs
+to be made. The thought is allowed to present and commend itself. Hence,
+when so many thoughts are forgotten, buried beneath affectation and
+verbiage, his gain in brilliancy and value as time goes on; and in an
+age of ephemeral literature his books find new readers, his mind exerts
+wider sway. That his philosophy can be recommended as a sound rule to
+live by for ordinary practitioners may be questioned. It is better as
+inspiration than as prescription. For maxims it were wiser to go to
+Bentham, Mill or Bain. The plodders had best keep to the beaten road.
+But for them who need an atmosphere for wings, who require the impulse
+of great motives, the lift of upbearing aspirations--for the
+imaginative, the passionate, the susceptible, who can achieve nothing
+unless they attempt the impossible--Emerson is the master. A single
+thrill sent from his heart to ours is worth more to the heart that feels
+it, than all the schedules of motive the utilitarian can offer.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE MYSTIC.
+
+
+If among the representatives of spiritual philosophy the first place
+belongs to Mr. Emerson, the second must be assigned to Mr. Amos Bronson
+Alcott,--older than Mr. Emerson by four years (he was born in 1779), a
+contemporary in thought, a companion, for years a fellow townsman, and,
+if that were possible, more purely and exclusively a devotee of
+spiritual ideas. Mr. Alcott may justly be called a mystic--one of the
+very small class of persons who accept without qualification, and
+constantly teach the doctrine of the soul's primacy and pre-eminence. He
+is not a learned man, in the ordinary sense of the term; not a man of
+versatile mind or various tastes; not a man of general information in
+worldly or even literary affairs; not a man of extensive commerce with
+books. Though a reader, and a constant and faithful one, his reading has
+been limited to books of poetry--chiefly of the meditative and interior
+sort--and works of spiritual philosophy. Plato, Plotinus, Proclus,
+Jamblichus, Pythagoras, Boehme, Swedenborg, Fludd, Pordage, Henry More,
+Law, Crashaw, Selden, are the names oftener than any on his pages and
+lips. He early made acquaintance with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
+and never ceased to hold it exceedingly precious, at one period making
+it a rule to read the volume once a year. His books are his friends; his
+regard for them seems to be personal; he enjoys their society with the
+feeling that he gives as well as receives. He loves them in part because
+they love him; consequently, in all his quoting of them, his own mind
+comes in as introducer and voucher as it were. His indebtedness to them
+is expressed with the cordiality of an intimate, rather than with the
+gratitude of a disciple. His own mind is so wakeful and thoughtful, so
+quick and ready to take the initiative, that it is hard to say in what
+respect even his favorite and familiar authors have enriched him. What
+was not originally his own, is so entirely made his own by sympathetic
+absorption, that the contribution which others have made is not to be
+distinguished from his native stores. Few men seem less dependent on
+literature than he.
+
+Mr. Alcott is a thinker, interior, solitary, deeply conversant with the
+secrets of his own mind, like thinkers of his order, clear, earnest, but
+not otherwise than monotonous from the reiteration of his primitive
+ideas. We have called him a mystic. Bearing in mind the derivations of
+the word--[Greek: myein]--to brood, to meditate, to shut one's self up
+in the recesses of consciousness, to sink into the depths of one's own
+being for the purpose of exploring the world which that being contains;
+of discovering how deep and boundless it is, of meeting in its retreats
+the form of the Infinite Being who walks there in the evening, and makes
+his voice audible in the mysterious whispers that breathe over its
+plains,--it well describes him. He is a philosopher of that school;
+instead of seeking wisdom by intellectual processes, using induction and
+deduction, and creeping step by step towards his goal,--he appeals at
+once to the testimony of consciousness, claims immediate insight, and
+instead of hazarding a doctrine which he has argued, announces a truth
+which he has seen; he studies the mystery of being in its inward
+disclosures, contemplates ultimate laws and fundamental data in his own
+soul.
+
+While Mr. Emerson's idealism was nourished--so far as it was supplied
+with nourishment from foreign sources--by the genius of India, Mr.
+Alcott's was fed by the speculation of Greece. Kant was not his master,
+neither was Fichte nor Schelling, but Pythagoras rather; Pythagoras more
+than Plato, with whom, notwithstanding his great admiration, he is less
+intimately allied. He talks about Plato, he talks Pythagoras. Of the
+latter he says:
+
+     "Of the great educators of antiquity, I esteem Pythagoras the most
+     eminent and successful; everything of his doctrine and discipline
+     comes commended by its elegance and humanity, and justifies the
+     name he bore of the golden-souled Samian, and founder of Greek
+     culture. He seems to have stood in providential nearness to human
+     sensibility, as if his were a maternal relation as well, and he
+     owned the minds whom he nurtured and educated. The first of
+     philosophers, taking the name for its modesty of pretension, he
+     justified his claim to it in the attainments and services of his
+     followers; his school having given us Socrates, Plato, Pericles,
+     Plutarch, Plotinus, and others of almost equal fame, founders of
+     states and cultures.... He was reverenced by the multitude as one
+     under the influence of divine inspiration. He abstained from all
+     intoxicating drinks, and from animal food, confining himself to a
+     chaste nutriment; hence his sleep was short and undisturbed; his
+     soul vigilant and pure; his body in state of perfect and invariable
+     health. He was free from the superstitions of his time, and
+     pervaded with a deep sense of duty towards God, and veneration for
+     his divine attributes and immanency in things. He fixed his mind so
+     intently on the attainment of wisdom, that systems and mysteries
+     inaccessible to others were opened to him by his magic genius and
+     sincerity of purpose. The great principle with which he started,
+     that of being a seeker rather than a possessor of truth, seemed
+     ever to urge him forward with a diligence and activity
+     unprecedented in the history of the past, and perhaps unequalled
+     since. He visited every man who could claim any degree of fame for
+     wisdom or learning; whilst the rules of antiquity and the simplest
+     operations of nature seemed to yield to his researches; and we
+     moderns are using his eyes in many departments of activity into
+     which pure thought enters, being indebted to him for important
+     discoveries alike in science and metaphysics."
+
+It is evident that the New England sage made the Greek philosopher his
+model in other respects than the adoption of his philosophical method
+implied. The rules of personal conduct and behavior, of social
+intercourse, and civil association, were studiously practised on by the
+American disciple, who seemed never to forget the dignified and gracious
+figure whose fame charmed him.
+
+Mr. Alcott's philosophical ideas are not many, but they are profound and
+significant.
+
+     "The Dialectic, or Method of the Mind,"--he says in "Concord Days,"
+     under the head of Ideal Culture,--"constitutes the basis of all
+     culture. Without a thorough discipline in this, our schools and
+     universities give but a showy and superficial training. The
+     knowledge of mind is the beginning of all knowledge; without this,
+     a theology is baseless, the knowledge of God impossible. Modern
+     education has not dealt with these deeper questions of life and
+     being. It has the future in which to prove its power of conducting
+     a cultus answering to the discipline of the Greek thinkers,
+     Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle."
+
+     "As yet we deal with mind with far less certainty than with matter;
+     the realm of intellect having been less explored than the world of
+     the senses, and both are treated conjecturally rather than
+     absolutely. When we come to perceive that intuition is the primary
+     postulate of all intelligence, most questions now perplexing and
+     obscure will become transparent; the lower imperfect methods then
+     take rank where they belong, and are available. The soul leads the
+     senses; the reason the understanding; imagination the memory;
+     instinct and intuition include and prompt the Personality entire."
+
+     "The categories of imagination are the poet's tools; those of the
+     reason, the implements of the naturalist. The dialectic philosopher
+     is master of them both. The tools to those only who can handle them
+     skilfully. All others but gash themselves and their subject at
+     best. Ask not a man of understanding to solve a problem in
+     metaphysics. He has neither wit, weight, nor scales for the task.
+     But a man of reason or of imagination solves readily the problems
+     of understanding, the moment these are fairly stated. Ideas are
+     solvents of all mysteries, whether in matter or in mind."
+
+     "Having drank of immortality all night, the genius enters eagerly
+     upon the day's task, impatient of any impertinences jogging the
+     full glass.... Sleep and see; wake, and report the nocturnal
+     spectacle. Sleep, like travel, enriches, refreshes, by varying the
+     day's perspective, showing us the night side of the globe we
+     traverse day by day. We make transits too swift for our wakeful
+     senses to follow; pass from solar to lunar consciousness in a
+     twinkling; lapse from forehead and face to occupy our lower parts,
+     and recover, as far as permitted, the keys of genesis and of the
+     fore worlds. 'All truth,' says Porphyry, 'is latent;' but this the
+     soul sometimes beholds, when she is a little liberated by sleep
+     from the employments of the body, and sometimes she extends her
+     sight, but never perfectly reaches the objects of her vision."
+
+     "The good alone dream divinely. Our dreams are characteristic of
+     our waking thoughts and states; we are never out of character;
+     never quite another, even when fancy seeks to metamorphose us
+     entirely. The Person is One in all the manifold phases of the Many,
+     through which we transmigrate, and we find ourself perpetually,
+     because we cannot lose ourself personally in the mazes of the many.
+     'Tis the one soul in manifold shapes. Ever the old friend of the
+     mirror in other face, old and new, yet one in endless revolution
+     and metamorphosis, suggesting a common relationship of forms at
+     their base, with divergent types as these range wider and farther
+     from their central archetype, including all concrete forms in
+     nature, each returning into other, and departing therefrom in
+     endless revolution."
+
+     "What is the bad but lapse from good,--the good blindfolded?"
+
+     "One's foes are of his own household. If his house is haunted, it
+     is by himself only. Our choices are our Saviors or Satans."
+
+     "The celestial man is composed more largely of light and ether. The
+     demoniac man of fire and vapor. The animal man of embers and
+     dust."
+
+     "The sacraments, symbolically considered, are
+
+     Baptism, or purification by water;
+     Continence, or chastity in personal indulgences;
+     Fasting, or temperance in outward delights;
+     Prayer, or aspiring aims;
+     Labor, or prayer in act or pursuits.
+
+     These are the regimen of inspiration and thought."
+
+The following, from the chapter entitled "Genesis and Lapse," in
+"Concord Days," extends Mr. Alcott's principle to a deep problem in
+speculative truth. He quotes Coleridge thus:
+
+     "The great maxim in legislation, intellectual or physical, is
+     _subordinate_, not _exclude_. Nature, in her ascent, leaves nothing
+     behind; but at each step subordinates and glorifies,--mass,
+     crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection."
+
+Then he proceeds:
+
+     "Taken in reverse order of descent, spirit puts itself before; at
+     each step protrudes faculty in feature, function, organ, limb,
+     subordinating to glorify also,--person, volition, thought,
+     sensibility, sense, body,--animating thus and rounding creation to
+     soul and sense alike. The naturalist cannot urge too strongly the
+     claims of physical, nor the plea of the idealist be too vigorously
+     pressed for metaphysical studies. One body in one soul. Nature and
+     spirit are inseparable, and are best studied as a unit. Nature ends
+     where spirit begins. The idealist's point of view is the obverse of
+     the naturalist's, and each must accost his side with a first love
+     before use has worn off the bloom, and seduced their vision....
+
+     "Whether man be the successor or predecessor of his inferiors in
+     nature, is to be determined by exploring faithfully the realms of
+     matter and of spirit alike, and complementing the former in the
+     latter. Whether surveyed in order, descending or ascending, in
+     genesis or process, from the side of the idealist or of the
+     materialist, the keystone of the arch in either case is an ideal,
+     under-propped by nature or upheld by mind."
+
+     "Man, the sum total of animals, transcends all in being a Person, a
+     responsible creature. Man is man, in virtue of being a Person, a
+     self-determining will, held accountable to a spiritual Ideal. To
+     affirm that brute creatures are endowed with freedom and choice,
+     the sense of responsibility, were to exalt them into a spiritual
+     existence and personality; whereas, it is plain enough that they
+     are not above deliberation and choice, but below it, under the sway
+     of Fate, as men are when running counter to reason and conscience.
+     The will bridges the chasm between man and brute, and frees the
+     fated creature he were else. Solitary, not himself, the victim of
+     appetite, inmate of the den, is man, till freed from individualism,
+     and delivered into his free Personality."
+
+The next extract is from the Chapter on Ideals:
+
+     "Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high
+     endeavor; without which incentive, one is not sure of his equality
+     to the humblest undertakings even. And he attempts little worth
+     living for, if he expects completing his task in an ordinary
+     lifetime. This translation is for the continuance of his work here
+     begun; but for whose completion, time and opportunity were all too
+     narrow and brief. Himself is the success or failure. Step by step
+     one climbs the pinnacles of excellence; life itself is but the
+     stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here with humanity,
+     'tis the aiming at divinity in ever-ascending circles of aspiration
+     and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire, dies. Our pursuits are our
+     prayers, our ideals our gods."
+
+In the journals of Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott is represented as taking
+an active part in the thinking and talking of the period immediately
+preceding the establishment of the "Dial," and as expressing audacious
+opinions; among others, this--which suggests Hegel, though it might have
+reached Mr. Alcott from a different quarter--that the Almighty
+progressively unfolds himself towards His own perfection; and this, that
+the hideous things in nature are reflections of man's animalism; that
+the world being the product of all men, man is responsible for its evil
+condition; a doctrine similar to the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall,
+hinted at also in the Book of Genesis. It was the doctrine of Jacob
+Boehme, one of Mr. Alcott's seers, that as the inevitable consequence of
+sin, the operation of the Seven Qualities in Lucifer's dominion became
+perverted and corrupted. The fiery principle, instead of creating the
+heavenly glory, produced wrath and torment. The astringent quality, that
+should give stability and coherence, became hard and stubborn. The sweet
+was changed to bitter; the bitter to raging fury. This earth--once a
+province of the heavenly world--was broken up into a chaos of wrath and
+darkness, roaring with the din of conflicting elements. Eden became a
+waste; its innocence departed, its friendly creatures began to bite and
+tear one another, and man became an exile and a bondsman to the elements
+he once controlled.
+
+In 1837 Mr. Alcott--not Mr. Emerson--was the reputed leader of the
+Transcendentalists, none being more active than he in diffusing the
+ideas of the Spiritual Philosophy, and none being so uncompromising in
+his interpretations of them. He was generally present at the meetings of
+the informal Club which, under different names, held meetings at the
+private houses of members, from 1836 to 1850. Mr. Ripley had
+consultations with him in regard to the proposed community which was
+later established at Brook Farm. When Mr. Garrison founded the American
+Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Alcott joined that cause, and was faithful to
+it till the end. With the movement for the emancipation and elevation of
+women, he was a sympathizer. He was one of the reformers who met at
+Chardon Street Chapel, in 1840, to discuss plans of universal
+reform--Garrison, Edmund Quincy, Henry C. Wright, Theodore Parker,
+William H. Channing, Christopher Greene, Maria Chapman and Abby Kelly
+being of the number. In those days he was intimate with Emerson, Ripley,
+Hedge, Brownson, Clarke, Bartol, Stetson, and well known as a leader in
+speculative thought. His period of Pythagorean discipline had already
+begun. In 1835 he put away the use of animal food. Declining to join
+either the Brook Farm community, or that of Adin Ballou, at Milford, he
+undertook to do his part towards the solution of the "labor and culture
+problem," by supporting himself by manual labor in Concord, working
+during the summer in field and garden, and in winter chopping wood in
+the village woodlands, all the time keeping his mind intent on high
+thoughts. To conventional people he was an object of ridicule, not
+unmingled with contempt, as an improvident visionary. But Dr. Channing
+held him in admiration.
+
+     "Mr. Alcott," he wrote to a friend, "little suspects how my heart
+     goes out to him. One of my dearest ideas and hopes is the union of
+     _labor_ and _culture_. I wish to see labor honored and united with
+     the free development of the intellect and heart. Mr. Alcott, hiring
+     himself out for day labor, and at the same time living in a region
+     of high thought, is perhaps the most interesting object in our
+     commonwealth. I do not care much for Orpheus, in "The Dial," but
+     Orpheus at the plough is after my own heart. There he teaches a
+     grand lesson, more than most of us teach by the pen."
+
+The Orpheus in "The Dial" perplexed others beside Dr. Channing, and
+amused nearly all he perplexed--all whom he did not exasperate and
+enrage. The "Orphic Sayings"--Mr. Alcott's contribution to the
+magazine--attracted the attention of the critics, who made them an
+excuse for assailing with ridicule, the entire transcendental party.
+"Identity halts in diversity." "The poles of things are not integrated."
+"Love globes, wisdom orbs, all things." "Love is the Genius of Spirit."
+"Alway are the divine Gemini intertwined,"--the very school-boys
+repeated these dark sayings, with a tone that consigned the "Dial" and
+its oracles to the insane asylum. Yet the thought was intelligible, and
+even simple. In ordinary prose it would have sounded like common-place.
+It was the mystic phrase, and the perpetual reiteration of absolute
+principles that made the propositions seem obscure. The extracts from
+these "Sayings," given in a previous chapter, are remarkable for
+crystalline clearness of conception, as well as of expression. The
+writer's aim evidently was to deliver what he had to utter, in language
+of exact outline, and with the utmost economy of words. A singular
+sincerity characterized his mind and his life; he formed his beliefs on
+ideal laws, and based his conduct on them. In conduct and bearing, as in
+thought, he was a disciple of the philosopher of Samos. Fascinated by
+his vision of an ideal society, and determined to commence with a scheme
+of his own, he resolutely began by withdrawing from civil society as
+constituted, declined to pay the tax imposed by the authorities, and was
+lodged in Concord jail, where he would have stayed, had not his friend,
+Samuel Hoar, father of Judge Hoar, paid the tax for him, against his
+wish, and procured his immediate release. This was in 1843. The next
+spring found him inspecting lands suitable for a community. The next
+summer saw him, with some English friends, domesticated on the "Wyman
+Farm," at Harvard, a piece of ninety acres, bordering the Nashua river,
+with an old house on it. "Fruitlands"--for so the community was
+named--did not justify its name. A single summer and autumn dissipated
+the hopes planted there, and with them the faith that the world could be
+refashioned by artificial arrangements of circumstances.
+
+The surprising thing was, that such a man should ever have fallen into
+the notion that it could; he was an idealist; his faith was in the
+soul--not in organization of any sort; he was a regenerator, not a
+reformer. All the good work he had done was of the regenerative kind,
+through an awakening of the spiritual powers of individuals. His mission
+was to educate--to draw out souls, whether of children or adults. Faith
+in the soul was his inspiration and his guide. He early accepted the
+office of teacher, made it the calling of his life, and in the exercise
+of it, kept in mind this faith in the soul as the highest of
+qualifications. To understand his enthusiasm, it is only necessary to
+apprehend his idea. In the chapter on Childhood, in "Concord Days," that
+idea is thus conveyed:
+
+     "To conceive a child's acquirements as originating in nature,
+     dating from his birth into his body, seems an atheism that only a
+     shallow metaphysical theology could entertain in a time of such
+     marvellous natural knowledge as ours. 'I shall never persuade
+     myself,' says Synesius, 'to believe my soul to be of like age with
+     my body.' And yet we are wont to date our birth, as that of the
+     babes we christen, from the body's advent, so duteously inscribed
+     in our family registers, as if time and space could chronicle the
+     periods of the immortal mind, and mark its longevity by our
+     chronometers. Only a God could inspire a child with the intimations
+     seen in its first pulse-plays; the sprightly attainments of a
+     single day's doings afford the liveliest proofs of an omniscient
+     Deity, revealing His attributes in the motions of the little
+     one!... Were the skill for touching its tender sensibilities,
+     calling forth its budding gifts, equal to the charms the child has
+     for us, what noble characters would graduate from our families--the
+     community receiving its members accomplished in the personal
+     graces, the state its patriots, the church its saints, all
+     glorifying the race."
+
+The process of education was spiritual, therefore, to entice the
+indwelling deity forth by sympathy. The first experiment made with set
+purpose, with definite idea and calculated method, was tried in
+Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1825. So original was it in design and
+execution, and so remarkable in results, that the fame of it went
+abroad. Rev. Samuel J. May, minister in Brooklyn, Conn., a zealous
+friend of common-school education, being, along with the school
+committee, convinced that the schools throughout the State needed
+improvement, prepared a printed circular calling attention to the
+subject, and propounding questions so framed as to draw out full and
+precise information from every town. Among the letters received in
+answer to the circular was one from Dr. Wm. A. Alcott, a "philosopher
+and philanthropist," author of the "House I Live In," and other books on
+physical and moral training, calling particular attention to this
+remarkable school, kept on a very original plan, by his kinsman:
+
+     "His account," says Mr. May, "excited so much my curiosity to know
+     more of the American Pestalozzi, as he has since been called, that
+     I wrote immediately to Mr. A. B. Alcott, begging him to send me a
+     detailed statement of his principles and methods of teaching and of
+     training children. In due time came to me a full account of the
+     school of Cheshire, which revealed such a depth of insight into the
+     nature of man; such a true sympathy with children; such profound
+     appreciation of the work of education; and withal, so
+     philosophically arranged and exquisitely written, that I at once
+     felt assured the man must be a genius, and that I must know him
+     more intimately; so I wrote, inviting him urgently, to visit me. I
+     also sent the account of his school to Mr. William Russell, in
+     Boston, then editing the first Journal of Education ever published
+     in our country. Mr. Russell thought as highly of the article as I
+     did, and gave it to the public in his next October number."
+
+     "Mr. Alcott accepted my invitation; he came and passed a week with
+     me before the close of the summer. I have never, but in one other
+     instance, been so immediately taken possession of by any man I have
+     ever met in life. He seemed to me like a born sage and saint. He
+     was radical in all matters of reform; went to the root of all
+     things, especially the subjects of education, mental and moral
+     culture. If his biography shall ever be written by one who can
+     appreciate him, and especially if his voluminous writings shall be
+     properly published, it will be known how unique he was in wisdom
+     and purity."
+
+The chief peculiarity of the Cheshire School was the effort made there
+to rouse and elevate individual minds. Single desks were substituted for
+the long forms in common use; blackboards were introduced, and slates
+which put the pupils on their mettle; a library was instituted of
+carefully selected books, the reading whereof was diligently supervised
+and directed; hopes were appealed to instead of fears; gentleness took
+the place of severity; the affections and moral sentiments were
+addressed, to give full action to the heart and conscience, the physical
+being replaced by the spiritual scourge; light gymnastic exercises were
+introduced; evening entertainments gladdened the school room after
+working hours; even the youngest scholars were encouraged to clear their
+minds by keeping diaries. In these and other ways, especially by the
+enthusiasm and dignity of the master, knowledge was made attractive, and
+the teacher's office was made venerable.
+
+The plan, albeit nearly the same with that practised by Pestalozzi in
+Switzerland, was original with Mr. Alcott, the product of his peculiar
+philosophical ideas. Had those ideas been less deep and lofty, the
+method might have commended itself to all as it did to Mr. May; but, had
+they been less deep and lofty, it would not have been tried at all. A
+profound faith in the soul suggested it, and certainly a profound faith
+was required to sustain it. But faith in the soul was no more popular
+then than it is now, implying, as it did, radical convictions on all
+sorts of questions, and familiar assumption of the truth of the
+opinions. Such a teacher is not permitted to be conventional. Mr. Alcott
+showed himself the disciple of Pythagoras in that he was the worshipper
+of ideal truth and purity, the uncompromising servant of the spiritual
+laws. When this was fairly understood, as it was in two years, the
+experiment was terminated.
+
+The idea, which made the teacher suspected by the school committee
+boards, was recognized and applauded by the finest spirits in New
+England, New York and Pennsylvania. The reformers hailed the reformer;
+the spiritualists welcomed the spiritualist. In Hartford, Drs. Gallaudet
+and Barnard; in Boston, Dr. Channing and Mr. Garrison, the Mays,
+Quincys, Phillipses, and other families of character and courage; in
+Philadelphia, Dr. Furness, Matthew Cary, Robert Vaux, and the radical
+Friends took him up. Mr. Emerson saluted him with high expectation, in
+the words addressed by Burke to John Howard:
+
+     "Your plan is original, and as full of genius as of humanity; so do
+     not let it sleep or stop a day."
+
+The project of a school on the new plan was started in Boston; Margaret
+Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Miss Hoar, Mrs. Nath'l Hawthorne being among
+the most deeply interested. It was kept in the Masonic Temple during the
+year 1834. The account of this experiment has been so fully given by
+Miss Peabody, the original scribe, in a volume entitled "Record of a
+School," placed within easy reach by a Boston publisher, only two years
+ago, and largely read, that to describe it here would be impertinent. In
+her new preface, Miss Peabody, who of late years has become an
+enthusiastic advocate of Froebel's method, which approaches the mind
+from the outside, while Mr. Alcott approaches it from the inside,
+frankly declares that she has
+
+     "Come to doubt the details of his method of procedure, and to
+     believe that Froebel's method of cultivating children through
+     artistic production in the childish sphere of affection and fancy
+     is a healthier and more effective way than self inspection, for at
+     least those years of a child's life before the age of seven."
+
+While thus honestly declaring her abandonment of Mr. Alcott's plan, she
+affirms her belief
+
+     "That his school was a marked benefit to every child with whom he
+     came into communication...."
+
+     "What I witnessed in his school room threw for me a new light into
+     the profoundest mysteries that have been consecrated by the
+     Christian symbols; and the study of childhood made there I would
+     not exchange for anything else I have experienced in life."
+
+The Boston school was made more closely conformable to the spiritual
+idea than any previous ones. The intellectual tone of the society he
+frequented, the sympathy of his transcendental friends, the standing of
+his pupils, the expectation of exacting lookers on, encouraged the
+philosopher to give free rein to his theory. The principle of vicarious
+punishment--the innocent bearing pain for the guilty--the master for the
+pupil--was adopted as likely to enlist the sentiment of honor and noble
+shame in the cause of good behavior. A portion of the time was set apart
+for direct address by way of question and answer, to the higher
+faculties of the scholars. Mr. Alcott gave a series of "Conversations on
+the Gospels," with most interesting and surprising results. These too
+were reported, and are very suggestive and astonishing reading.
+
+But even in Boston, the teacher's faith in the soul found an
+unresponsive public. The "Conversations on the Gospels" were furiously
+attacked in the newspapers. The conservative spirit was aroused; the
+sectarian feeling was shocked; and the school, which began with thirty
+pupils, and rose to forty, fell away to ten; the receipts, which in the
+first year were $1,794, in the fourth (1837), were but $549, and at last
+only $343. In April, 1839, the furniture, library and apparatus of the
+school were sold to pay debts. The culture, refinement, liberality,
+philosophic aspiration of Boston, led by such men as James Freeman
+Clarke, Frederick H. Hedge, Chandler Robbins, George Russell, and by
+such women as Margaret Fuller, Miss Peabody, Miss Martineau, and the
+mothers of boys who have since done credit to their names, were not
+sufficient to protect the institution from failure, or the teacher from
+insult and obloquy. Prejudice, and prejudice alone, defeated the scheme.
+
+But the idea and the apostle survived. Miss Harriet Martineau, who knew
+Mr. Alcott well in 1837, spoke of him on her return home to James
+Pierrepont Greaves, an ardent English disciple of Pestalozzi. Mr.
+Greaves gave the name "Alcott House," to a school near London, which he
+had founded on the Pestalozzian method; he even meditated a visit to
+America, for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the New
+England sage, and would have done so but for illness, which terminated
+in death. A long letter from him to Mr. Alcott, was printed in the
+"Dial" of April, 1843, a portion whereof it is interesting to read,
+because it throws light on the cardinal ideas of this school of
+thinkers. Mr. Alcott's reply to the letter is not before us, but it was
+probably, in the main, sympathetic. The letter is dated London, 16th
+December, 1837:
+
+     DEAR SIR,--Believing the Spirit has so far established its nature
+     in you, as to make you willing to co-operate with itself in Love
+     operations, I am induced, without apology, to address you as a
+     friend and companion in the hidden path of Love's most powerful
+     revelations. "The Record of a School" having fallen into my hands,
+     through Miss Harriet Martineau, I have perused it with deep
+     interest; and the object of my present address to you (occasioned
+     by this work) is to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with one,
+     in our Sister Land, who is so divinely and universally developed.
+     Permit me, therefore, dear sir, in simple affection, to put a few
+     questions to you, which, if answered, will give me possession of
+     that information respecting you and your work, which I think will
+     be useful to present and to future generations of men. Also a
+     mutual service may be rendered to ourselves, by assisting to evolve
+     our own being more completely, thereby making us more efficient
+     instruments for Love's use, in carrying forward the work which it
+     has begun within us. The Unity himself must have his divine purpose
+     to accomplish in and by us, or he would not have prepared us as far
+     as he has. I am, therefore, willing to withhold nothing, but to
+     receive and transmit all he is pleased to make me _be_, and thus,
+     at length, to become an harmonious being. This he can readily work
+     in the accomplishment of his primitive purposes. Should you think
+     that a personal intercourse of a few weeks would facilitate the
+     universal work, I would willingly undertake the voyage to America
+     for that purpose. There is so decided and general a similarity in
+     the sentiments and natures addressed in the account of your
+     teaching, that a contact of spirits so alike developed would, no
+     doubt, prove productive of still further development. Your school
+     appears to work deeper than any we have in England, and its inner
+     essential character interests me. If an American bookseller will
+     send over any of your books to his correspondents here, I shall be
+     happy to receive and pay for them.
+
+     In the year 1817 some strong interior visitations came over me,
+     which withdrew me from the world in a considerable degree, and I
+     was enabled to yield myself up to Love's own manner of acting,
+     regardless of all consequences. Soon after this time, I met with an
+     account of the Spirit's work in and by the late venerable
+     Pestalozzi, which so interested me that I proceeded at once to
+     visit him in Switzerland, and remained with him in holy fellowship
+     four years. After that I was working with considerable success
+     amongst the various students in that country, when the prejudices
+     of the self-made wise and powerful men became jealous of my
+     influence, and I was advised to return to England, which I did; and
+     have been working in various ways of usefulness ever since, from
+     the deep centre to the circumference; and am now engaged in writing
+     my conscientious experiences as well as I can represent them in
+     words, and in teaching all such as come within my sphere of action.
+     Receptive beings, however, have as yet been but limited, and those
+     who permanently _retain_, have been still less; yet, at present,
+     there appears a greater degree of awakening to the central
+     love-sensibility than before. I see many more symptoms of the
+     harvest-time approaching in this country. There is, at present, no
+     obvious appearance of the Love-seed beginning to germinate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     The child has two orders of faculties which are to be educated,
+     essential and semi-essential; or in other words, roots and
+     branches.
+
+     Radical faculties belong to the interior world, and the branchial
+     to the exterior.
+
+     To _produce_ a central effect on the child, the radical faculties
+     must be first developed; to _represent_ this effect, the branchial
+     faculties must be developed.
+
+     The radical faculties belong entirely to Love; the branchial to
+     knowledge and industry.
+
+     It is imperative upon us to follow the determination of the radical
+     faculties, and to modify the branchial always in obedience to the
+     radical.
+
+     It is the child, or the Love-Spirit in the child, that we must
+     obey, and not suffer the Parents or any one else to divert us from
+     it.
+
+     Good is not to be determined by man's wishes, but Good must
+     originate and determine the wish.
+
+     The Preceptor must watch attentively for every new exhibition of
+     the child's radical faculties, and obey them as divine laws.
+
+     We must in every movement consider that it is the Infinite
+     perfecting the finite.
+
+     All that is unnecessary in the external must be kept from the
+     child.
+
+     The Preceptor's duty is, as far as possible, to remove every
+     hindrance out of the child's way.
+
+     The closer he keeps the child to the Spirit, the less it will want
+     of us, or anyone else.
+
+     The child has an inward, sacred, and unchangeable nature; which
+     nature is the Temple of Love. This nature only demands what it will
+     give, if properly attended to, viz.: Unfettered Liberty.
+
+     The Love Germs can alone germinate with Love. Light and Life are
+     but conditions of Love. Divine capacities are made by love alone.
+
+     Love education is primarily a passive one; and, secondarily, an
+     active one. To educate the radical faculties is altogether a new
+     idea with Teachers at present.
+
+     The parental end must be made much more prominent than it has been.
+
+     The conceptive powers want much more purification than the
+     perceptive; and it is only as we purify the conceptive that we
+     shall get the perceptive clear.
+
+     It is the essential conceptive powers that tinge all the
+     consequences of the exterior conceptive powers.
+
+     We have double conceptions, and double perceptions; we are
+     throughout double beings; and claim the universal morality, as well
+     as the personal.
+
+     We must now educate the universal moral faculties, as before we
+     have only educated the personal moral faculties.
+
+     It is in the universal moral faculties that the laws reside; until
+     these laws are developed, we remain lawless beings.
+
+     The personal moral faculties cannot stand without the aid of the
+     universal moral faculties, any more than the branches can grow
+     without the roots.
+
+     Education, to be decidedly religious, should reach man's universal
+     faculties, those faculties which contain the laws that connect man
+     with his maker.
+
+     These reflections seem to me to be worthy of consideration. Should
+     any of them strike you as worth while to make an observation upon,
+     I shall be happy to hear it. Suggestions are always valuable, as
+     they offer to the mind the liberty of free activity. The work we
+     are engaged in is too extensive and important, to lose any
+     opportunity of gaining information.
+
+     The earlier I receive your reply, the better.
+
+     I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
+
+     J. P. GREAVES.
+
+In 1842, Mr. Alcott visited England with the aim to confer with the
+philanthropists and educators there, to exchange views, collect
+information, and gather hints on the subject of literary and social
+methods. Mr. Greaves was dead; but the living friends of the "First
+Philosophy" received him with hearty respect and joy, introduced him to
+men of literary and philanthropic eminence, and made his arrival the
+occasion of meetings for conversation on the religious, social and
+ethical questions of the day. The meetings were held mostly at an
+institution managed on his own methods and called by his own name, the
+school of Mr. Wright at Alcott House, Ham, Surrey. Strange people were
+some of those he met, Communists, Alists (deriving their name from
+Alah--the Hebrew name for God), Syncretic Associationists,
+Pestalozzians, friends and advocates of self-supporting institutions,
+experimental Normal Schools, Hydropathic and Philosophical Associations,
+Health Unions, Philansteries, Utopias of every description, new social
+arrangements between the sexes, new devices for making marriage what it
+should be.
+
+The London _Morning Chronicle_, of July 5th, contained the following
+advertisement:
+
+     "Public Invitation.--An open meeting of the friends to human
+     progress will be held to-morrow, July 6th, at Mr. Wright's, Alcott
+     House School, Ham Common, near Richmond, Surrey, for the purpose of
+     considering and adopting means for the promotion of the great end,
+     when all who are interested in human destiny are earnestly urged to
+     attend. The chair taken at three o'clock, and again at seven, by A.
+     Bronson Alcott, Esq., now on a visit from America. Omnibuses travel
+     to and fro, and the Richmond steamboat reaches at a convenient
+     hour."
+
+The call brought together some sixteen or twenty persons, from various
+distances; one a hundred miles; another a hundred and fifty. "We did not
+find it easy to propose a question sufficiently comprehensive to unfold
+the whole of the fact with which our bosoms labored," writes a private
+correspondent of the "Dial."
+
+     "We aimed at nothing less than to speak of the instauration of
+     spirit, and its incarnation in a beautiful form. When a word failed
+     in extent of meaning, we loaded the word with new meaning. The word
+     did not confine our experience, but from our own being we gave
+     significance to the word. Into one body we infused many lives, and
+     it shone as the image of divine or angelic, or human thought. For a
+     word is a Proteus, that means to a man what the man is."
+
+The "Dial" of October, 1842, prints an abstract of the proceedings,
+which are interesting, as illustrations of the phases that the Spiritual
+Philosophy assumed, but would occupy more space here than their
+significance warrants. Three papers were presented, on Formation,
+Transition, Reformation. The views, it is needless to say, were of the
+extreme school. The essayist on the first theme advanced the doctrine
+that evil commenced in birth; that the unpardonable sin was an unholy
+birth; that birth "must be surrendered to the spirit." The second
+essayist maintained that property was held on the tenure of might and
+immemorial custom; that "pure love, which is ever communicative, never
+yet conceded to any being the right of appropriation." "We ignore human
+governments, creeds and institutions; we deny the right of any man to
+dictate laws for our regulation, or duties for our performance; and
+declare our allegiance only to Universal Love, the all-embracing
+Justice."
+
+The reader of the paper on Reformation pursued the same train of
+thought; he demanded amendment of monetary arrangements, the penal code,
+education, the church, the law of primogeniture, and divorce; challenged
+reliance on commercial prosperity and popular representation; denied the
+right of man to inflict pain on man; asserted that the question of
+generation preceded that of education; that the reign of love was
+supreme over that of opinion; insisted on "the restoration of all things
+to their primitive Owner, and hence the abrogation of property--either
+individual or collective;" and on "the divine sanction, instead of the
+civil and ecclesiastical authority, for marriage." It was his idea, that
+"aspirations are the pledge of their own fulfilment,"--that "beneath the
+actual which a man is, there is always covered a possible to tempt him
+forward"--that "beneath sense lie reason and understanding; beneath them
+both, humility; and beneath all, God"--that "to be God-like we must pass
+through the grades of progress." "Even now the God-life is enfolded in
+us; even now the streams of eternity course freely in our central heart;
+if impelled by the spirit to intermingle with the arrangements of
+polities of the world, in order to improve them, we shall discover the
+high point from which we begin, by the God-thought in our interference;
+our act must be divine; we seem to do, God does; God empowers
+legislators, and ennobles them for their fidelity; let them, however,
+be apostles, not apostles' representatives; men of God, not men of men;
+personal elevation is our credentials; personal reform is that which is
+practicable, and without it our efforts on behalf of others are dreams
+only."
+
+No remarks from Mr. Alcott are recorded. That the meetings satisfied and
+cheered him may be inferred from the circumstance that, immediately
+after his return from England, he undertook to inaugurate the ideal
+social state at Fruitlands--with what success we know.
+
+In 1859, Mr. Alcott had another and larger opportunity to exercise his
+wisdom as an educator of youth. He was chosen superintendent of the
+schools of Concord; a position that called out the finest qualities of
+his mind, and put to immediate use the results of his long experience,
+but relieved him from the business arrangements for which he had never
+displayed an aptitude. The three brief but remarkable reports that he
+made on the condition and needs of the schools, increase one's respect
+for the workings of the spiritual philosophy in this field of effort. If
+the suggestions offered in those reports were to any considerable extent
+adopted, if the noble and gracious spirit of them was felt, the schools
+of Concord should be model schools of their class.
+
+     "The school is the primary interest of the community. Every parent
+     naturally desires a better education for his children than he
+     received himself, and spends liberally of his substance for this
+     pleasure; wisely hoping to make up his deficiencies in that way,
+     and to complement himself in their better attainments; esteeming
+     these the richest estate he can leave, and the fairest ornaments of
+     his family name."
+
+     "Especially have I wished to introduce the young to the study of
+     their minds, the love of thinking; often giving examples of lessons
+     in analysis and classification of their faculties. I think I may
+     say that these exercises have given much pleasure, and have been
+     found profitable alike to the teacher and the children. In most
+     instances, I have closed my visits by reading some interesting
+     story or parable. These have never failed of gaining attention, and
+     in most cases, prompt responses. I consider these readings and
+     colloquies as among the most profitable and instructive of the
+     superintendent's labors."
+
+Pilgrim's Progress, Krummacher's Parables, AEsop's Fables, Faery Queen,
+the stories of Plutarch and Shakspeare, were his favorites.
+
+     "The graceful exercise of singing has been introduced into some of
+     the schools. It should prevail in all of them. It softens the
+     manners, cultivates the voice, and purifies the taste of the
+     children. It promotes harmony and good feelings. The old masters
+     thought much of it as a discipline. 'Let us sing' has the welcome
+     sound of 'Let us play,'--and is perhaps the child's prettiest
+     translation of 'Let us pray,'--admitting him soonest to the
+     intimacy he seeks."
+
+     "Conversations on words, paraphrases and translations of sentences,
+     are the natural methods of opening the study of language. A child
+     should never be suffered to lose sight of the prime fact that he is
+     studying the realities of nature and of the mind through the
+     picture books of language. Any teaching falling short of this is
+     hollow and a wrong done to the mind."
+
+     "For composition, let a boy keep his diary, write his letters, try
+     his hand at defining from a dictionary and paraphrasing, and he
+     will find ways of expressing himself simply as boys and men did
+     before grammars were invented."
+
+     "Teaching is a personal influence for the most part, and operating
+     as a spirit unsuspected at the moment. I have wished to divine the
+     secret source of success attained by any, and do justice to this;
+     it seemed most becoming to regard any blemishes as of secondary
+     account in the light of the acknowledged deserts. We require of
+     each what she has to give, no more. Does the teacher awaken
+     thought, strengthen the mind, kindle the affections, call the
+     conscience, the common sense into lively and controlling activity,
+     so promoting the love of study, the practice of the virtues; habits
+     that shall accompany the children outwards into life? The memory is
+     thus best cared for, the end of study answered; the debt of teacher
+     to parents, of parents to teacher discharged, and so the State's
+     bounty best bestowed."
+
+     "A little gymnasticon, a system of gestures for the body might be
+     organized skilfully and become part of the daily exercises in our
+     schools. Graceful steps, pretty musical airs, in accompaniment of
+     songs--suiting the sentiment to the motions, the emotions, ideas of
+     the child--would be conducive to health of body and mind alike. We
+     shall adopt dancing presently as a natural training for the manners
+     and morals of the young."
+
+     "Conversation is the mind's mouth-piece, its best spokesman; the
+     leader elect and prompter in teaching; practised daily, it should
+     be added to the list of school studies; an art in itself, let it be
+     used as such, and ranked as an accomplishment second to none that
+     nature or culture can give. Certainly the best we can do is to
+     teach ourselves and children how to talk. Let conversation displace
+     much that passes current under the name of recitation; mostly sound
+     and parrotry, a repeating by rote not by heart, unmeaning sounds
+     from the memory and no more. 'Take my mind a moment,' says the
+     teacher, 'and see how things look through that prism,' and the
+     pupil sees prospects never seen before or surmised by him in that
+     lively perspective. So taught the masters; Plato, Plutarch,
+     Pythagoras, Pestalozzi; so Christianity was first published from
+     lovely lips; so every one teaches deserving the name of teacher or
+     interpreter. Illustration always and apt; life calling forth life;
+     the giving of life and a partaking. Nothing should be interposed
+     between the mind and its subject matter--cold sense is impertinent;
+     learning is insufficient--only life alone; life like a torch
+     lighting the head at the heart."
+
+     "Next to thinking for themselves, the best service any teacher can
+     render his scholars is to show them how to use books. The wise
+     teacher is the key for opening the mind to the books he places
+     before it."
+
+     "Stories are the idyls of childhood. They cast about it the romance
+     it loves and lives in, rendering the commonest circumstances and
+     things inviting and beautiful. Parables, poems, histories,
+     anecdotes, are prime aids in teaching; the readiest means of
+     influence and inspiration; the liveliest substitutes for flagging
+     spirits, fatigued wits."
+
+     "A little atlas of the body mythologically shown from the artist's
+     points of view, the plates displaying the person to the eye, in a
+     set of draped figures, is a book much wanted for first lines in
+     drawing. A child's piety is seen in its regards for its body and
+     the concern it shows in its carriage and keeping. Of all forms the
+     human form is most marvellous; and the modest reverence for its
+     shadings intimates the proper mode of studying it rightly and
+     religiously as a pantheon of powers. The prime training best opens
+     here as an idealism, the soul fashioning her image in the form she
+     animates, and so scrutinizing piously without plucking the
+     forbidden fruits."
+
+     "There is a want of suitable aids to the studies of these
+     mysteries. The best books I know are poor enough. In the want of a
+     better, we name for the study of matter in its connection with the
+     mind, including the proper considerations regarding health and
+     temperance, Graham's 'Laws of Life,' a rather dull but earnest
+     book; and for smaller classes and beginners Dr. Alcott's 'House I
+     Live In.' Miss Catherine Beecher's book for studies in Physiology
+     and Calisthenics, is a practical treatise, and should be in all
+     schools. Sir John Sinclair's 'Code of Health' contains a
+     republication of the Wisdom of the Ancients, on these subjects, and
+     is a book for all persons and times."
+
+     "Perhaps we are correcting the old affection for flogging at some
+     risk of spoiling the boys of this generation. Girls have always
+     known how to cover with shame any insult of that sort, but the
+     power of persuasion comes slow as a promptitude to supersede its
+     necessity. Who deals with a child, deals with a piece of divinity
+     obeying laws as innate as those he transgresses; and which he must
+     treat tenderly, lest he put spiritual interests in jeopardy.
+     Punishment must be just, else it cannot be accepted as good, and
+     least of all by the wicked and weak."
+
+     "The accomplished teacher combines in himself the art of teaching
+     and of ruling; power over the intellect and the will, inspiration
+     and persuasiveness. And this implies a double consciousness in its
+     possessor that carries forward the teaching and ruling together;
+     noting what transpires in motive as in act; the gift that in seeing
+     controls. It is the sway of presence and of mien; a conversion of
+     the will to his wishes, without which other gifts are of little
+     avail."
+
+     "Be sure the liveliest dispensations, the holiest, are his (the
+     unruly boy's)--his as cordially as ours, and sought for as kindly.
+     We must meet him where he is. Best to follow his bent if bent
+     beautifully; else bending him gently, not fractiously, lest we snap
+     or stiffen a stubbornness too stiff already. Gentleness now; the
+     fair eye, the conquering glances straight and sure; the strong
+     hand, if you must, till he fall penitent at the feet of Persuasion;
+     the stroke of grace before the smiting of the birch; for only so is
+     the conquest complete, and the victory the Lord's. If she is good
+     enough she may strike strong and frequent, till thanks come for it;
+     but who is she, much less he, that dares do it more than once, nor
+     repents in sorrow and shame for the strokes given? Only 'the
+     shining ones' may do it for good."
+
+     "Our teachers open their schools with readings from the New
+     Testament, and this reading is in some of the schools, and would,
+     but for a diffident piety, be followed in all, by devotions and the
+     singing of some suitable morning hymn. The spoken prayers and
+     praises are not enjoined by our rules; and we think we show therein
+     that tender courtesy to the faiths of the heart that true piety
+     loves and cannot overstep. An earnest and sweet disposition is the
+     spring from which children love to taste, and best always if
+     insinuated softly in mild persuasions, and so leading to the
+     practice of the loves and graces that soften and save. A course of
+     readings from the Picture Testament might favor the best ends of
+     spiritual culture. A child should be approached with reverence, as
+     a recipient of the spirit from above. The best of books claims the
+     best of persons and the gracious moments to make its meanings
+     clear; else the reading and listening are but a sound, a pretence,
+     and of no account. I have wished these books were opened with the
+     awe belonging to the eminent Personalities portrayed therein,
+     thinking them best read when the glow of sentiment kindles the
+     meaning into life in the morning hour--the teacher opening her
+     school by opening their leaves."
+
+The following earnest words respecting the duties of the State in regard
+to the education of its children, may fitly close these fragmentary
+extracts, which give but the scantiest notions of the richness of
+suggestion in these reports:
+
+     "It is difficult to reach the sources of ignorance and consequent
+     crime in a community like ours, calling itself free, and boasting
+     of its right to do what it will. But freedom is a social not less
+     than an individual concern, and the end of the State is to protect
+     it. The first object of a free people is the preservation of their
+     liberties. It becomes, then, their first duty to assume the
+     training of all the children in the principles of right knowledge
+     and virtue, as the only safeguard of their liberties. We cannot
+     afford to wait at such hazards. The simplest humanities are also
+     the least costly, and the nearest home. We should begin there. The
+     State is stabbed at the hearth-side and here liberty and honor are
+     first sold. It is injured by family neglect, and should protect
+     itself in securing its children's virtue against their parents'
+     vices; for, by so doing, can it alone redeem its pledges to
+     humanity and its citizens' liberties. A virtuous education is the
+     greatest alms it can bestow on any of its children."
+
+Meetings for conversation with the parents of the scholars were a device
+of Mr. Alcott for bringing the subject of education home to those whose
+concern in it should be the deepest.
+
+His faith was from the first in conversation, rather than in lecturing
+or in preaching. Preaching assumed too much in the single mind, paid
+less than due respect to the minds of the hearers, and gave no
+opportunity for the instant exchange of thoughts. Lecturing was
+intellectual and even less sympathetic. By conversation the best was
+drawn out and the best imparted. All were put on an equality; all were
+encouraged, none oppressed.
+
+     "Truth," Mr. Alcott declares "is spherical, and seen differently
+     according to the culture, temperament and disposition of those who
+     survey it from their individual standpoint. Of two or more sides,
+     none can be absolutely right, and conversation fails if it find not
+     the central truth from which all radiate; debate is angular,
+     conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity. Who
+     speaks, deeply excludes all possibility of controversy. His
+     affirmation is self-sufficient; his assumption final, absolute.
+     Thus holding himself above the arena of dispute he gracefully
+     settles a question by speaking so home to the core of the matter as
+     to undermine the premise upon which an issue had been taken. For
+     whoso speaks to the personality dives beneath the grounds of
+     difference, and deals face to face with principles and ideas."
+
+     "Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements. It avoids
+     argument, by finding a common basis of agreement; and thus escapes
+     controversy by rendering it superfluous. Pertinent to the platform,
+     debate is out of place in the parlor. Persuasion is the better
+     weapon in this glittering game."
+
+     "Conversation presupposes a common sympathy in the subject, a great
+     equality in the speakers; absence of egotism, a tender criticism of
+     what is spoken. Good discourse wins from the bashful and discreet
+     what they have to speak, but would not, without this provocation.
+     The forbidding faces are Fates to overbear and blemish true
+     fellowship. We give what we are, not necessarily what we know;
+     nothing more, nothing less, and only to our kind; those playing
+     best their parts who have the nimblest wits, taking out the
+     egotism, the nonsense, putting wisdom, information in their place."
+
+Mr. Alcott therefore forsook the platform, seldom entered the pulpit,
+adopted the parlor, and made it what its name imports, the talking
+place. Collecting a company of ladies and gentlemen, larger or smaller,
+as nearly as possible of similar tastes and culture, he started a topic
+of general interest and broad scope--usually one of social concern with
+deep roots and wide branches,--and began his soliloquy in a calm and
+easy strain, throwing out suggestions as he went on, and enticing
+thoughts from the various minds present. If none responded or
+accompanied, the discourse proceeded evenly till the measure of an hour
+was filled. If the company was awake, and sympathetic, the soliloquy
+became conversation and an evening full of instruction and entertainment
+followed. When circumstances favored--the room, decorations, atmosphere,
+mingling of elements--the season was delightful. The unfailing serenity
+of the leader, his wealth of mental resource, his hospitality of
+thought, his wit, his extraordinary felicity of language, his delicacy
+of touch, ready appreciation of different views, and singular grace in
+turning opinions towards the light, made it clear to all present that to
+this especial calling he was chosen. For years Mr. Alcott's
+conversations have been a recognized institution in Eastern and Western
+cities. Every winter he takes the field, and goes through the Northern
+and North Western States, with his scheme of topics. The best minds
+collect about him, and centres of influence are established that act as
+permanent distributors of culture. The noble idealism never pales or
+falters. Neither politics, science, financial convulsion, or civil war,
+disturb the calm serenity of the soul that is sure that mind is its own
+place, and that infinite and absolute mind is supreme above all.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE CRITIC.
+
+
+Margaret Fuller--she was called Ossoli long after the time
+we are concerned with, in a foreign land and amid foreign
+associations--Margaret Fuller died July 16th, 1850. In 1852 her Memoirs
+were published in Boston, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman
+Clarke, and William Henry Channing: each giving an individual and
+personal account of her. These three gentlemen--all remarkable for
+intellectual capacity, sympathetic appreciation, and literary
+skill--undertook their task in the spirit of loving admiration, and
+executed it with extraordinary frankness, courage and delicacy. No more
+unique or satisfactory book of biography was ever made. They had known
+Margaret personally and well; were intimately acquainted with her mind,
+and deeply interested in her character. They had access to all the
+necessary materials. The whole life--inward and outward--was open to
+them, and they described it with no more reserve than good taste
+imposed. Those who are interested to know what sort of a person she was,
+are referred to that book, from which the biographical materials for
+this little sketch have, in the main, been taken. Her place here is due
+to her association with the leaders of the Transcendental movement, and
+to the peculiar part she played in it.
+
+Strictly speaking, she was not a Transcendentalist, though Mr. Channing
+declares her to have been "in spirit and thought pre-eminently a
+transcendentalist;" and Mr. Alcott wrote that she adopted "the spiritual
+philosophy, and had the subtlest perception of its bearings." She was
+enthusiastic rather than philosophical, and poetic more than systematic.
+Emerson's judgment is that--
+
+     "Left to herself, and in her correspondence, she was much the
+     victim of Lord Bacon's _idols of the cave_, or self-deceived by her
+     own phantasms.... Her letters are tainted with a mysticism which,
+     to me, appears so much an affair of constitution, that it claims no
+     more respect than the charity or patriotism of a man who has dined
+     well and feels better for it. In our noble Margaret, her personal
+     feeling colors all her judgment of persons, of books, of pictures,
+     and even of the laws of the world.... Whole sheets of warm, florid
+     writing are here, in which the eye is caught by 'sapphire,'
+     'heliotrope,' 'dragon,' 'aloes,' 'Magna Dea,' 'limboes,' 'stars,'
+     and 'purgatory'--but one can connect all this or any part of it
+     with no universal experience.
+
+     "In short, Margaret often loses herself in sentimentalism; that
+     dangerous vertigo nature, in her case, adopted, and was to make
+     respectable.... Her integrity was perfect, and she was led and
+     followed by love; and was really bent on truth, but too indulgent
+     to the meteors of her fancy."
+
+She said of herself:
+
+     "When I was in Cambridge I got Fichte and Jacobi; I was much
+     interrupted, but some time and earnest thought I devoted; Fichte I
+     could not understand at all, though the treatise which I read was
+     one intended to be popular, and which he says must compel to
+     conviction. Jacobi I could understand in details, but not in
+     system. It seemed to me that his mind must have been moulded by
+     some other mind, with which I ought to be acquainted, in order to
+     know him well--perhaps Spinoza's. Since I came home I have been
+     consulting Buhle's and Tennemann's histories of philosophy, and
+     dipping into Brown, Stewart, and that class of books."
+
+This was in 1832, before the transcendental movement began. At the same
+period, writing to a friend on the subject of religious faith--a subject
+intimately allied with philosophy--she said:
+
+     "I have not formed an opinion; I have determined not to form
+     settled opinions at present; loving or feeble natures need a
+     positive religion--a visible refuge, a protection--as much in the
+     passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave.
+     But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have
+     yet experienced; my affection is strong admiration, not the
+     necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy. When
+     disappointed, I do not ask or wish consolation; I wish to know and
+     feel my pain, to investigate its nature and its source; I will not
+     have my thoughts diverted or my feelings soothed; 'tis therefore
+     that my young life is so singularly barren of illusions. I know I
+     feel the time must come when this proud and impatient heart shall
+     be stilled, and turn from the ardors of search and action to lean
+     on something above. But shall I say it?--the thought of that calmer
+     era is to me a thought of deepest sadness; so remote from my
+     present being is that future existence, which still the mind may
+     conceive; I believe in eternal progression; I believe in a God, a
+     beauty and perfection, to which I am to strive all my life for
+     assimilation. From these two articles of belief I draw the rules by
+     which I strive to regulate my life; but though I reverence all
+     religions as necessary to the happiness of man, I am yet ignorant
+     of the religion of revelation. Tangible promises, well-defined
+     hopes, are things of which I do not _now_ feel the need. At
+     present, my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as
+     its rule; and in my opinion this is the natural and proper course
+     from youth to age."
+
+The tone of this extract is negatively transcendental; that is, it
+implies that the writer did not belong to the opposite school, in any
+sense; and that her mind was in condition to accept the cardinal truths
+of a philosophy, the special doctrines whereof she did not apprehend or
+feel interested in. Had she entertained a philosophical creed, it would
+have been the creed of Schelling, more likely than any other.
+
+Margaret Fuller was a critic, and a critic rather from natural gift than
+from trained perception. Her genius was her guide. Persons and things
+came to her for judgment, and judgment they received. Searching and
+frank, but hearty and loving, she judged from the inside. To her, so her
+biographers tell, with unanimous voice, "the secrets of all hearts were
+revealed." In private intercourse, in letters, in parlor conversations
+on books, pictures, statues, architecture, she was ever the judge. The
+most unlike minds and characters receive their dues with entire
+impartiality; Goethe, Lessing, Novalis, Jean Paul, were each in kind
+honored. The last is "infinitely variegated, and certainly most
+exquisitely colored, but fatigues attention; his philosophy and religion
+seem to be of the sighing sort." She is steeped to the lips in enjoyment
+by Southey, whom she was inclined to place next to Wordsworth.
+Coleridge, Heine, Carlyle, Herschel, attract her mind. She ponders
+before Michael Angelo's sibyls; displays a singular penetration in her
+analysis of them, and makes them all interpreters of the genius of
+woman. The soul of Greek art, as contrasted with Christian, is disclosed
+to her with a clear perception; the Greek mythology gave up to her its
+secret; emblems, symbols, dark parables, enigmas, mysteries, laid aside
+their vails. A friend said of her: "She proceeds in her search after the
+unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion but by
+comprehension; and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to
+hope and faith. I have thought, sometimes, that her acceptance of evil
+was _too_ great; that her theory of the good to be educed proved too
+much; but I understand her now better than I did." Atkinson, the
+"mesmeric atheist," struck her as "a fine instinctive nature, with a
+head for Leonardo to paint," who "seems bound by no tie, yet looks as if
+he had relatives in every place." Mazzini impressed her as one "in whom
+holiness has purified, but somewhat dwarfed the man." Carlyle "is
+arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there is no bitterness,
+no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian
+conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable energy that has given him
+power to crush the dragon." Dr. Wilkinson, the Swedenborgian, is "a
+sane, strong, well-exercised mind; but in the last degree unpoetical in
+its structure; very simple, natural, and good; excellent to see, though
+one cannot go far with him." Rachel, Fourier, Rousseau--she has a
+piercing glance for them all; a word of warm admiration, all the more
+weighty for being qualified by criticism.
+
+It was probably this keen penetration, this capacity to appreciate all
+kinds, this inclusiveness of sympathy, that prompted the selection of
+Margaret Fuller as chief editor of the "Dial," the organ of
+transcendental thought. Thus she regarded the enterprise:
+
+     "What others can do--whether all that has been said is the mere
+     restlessness of discontent, or there are thoughts really struggling
+     for utterance,--will be tested now. A perfectly free organ is to be
+     offered for the expression of individual thought and character.
+     There are no party measures to be carried, no particular standards
+     to be set up; a fair, calm tone, a recognition of universal
+     principles, will, I hope, pervade the essays in every form. I trust
+     there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism nor compromise, and
+     that this journal will aim, not at leading public opinion, but at
+     stimulating each man to judge for himself, and to think more deeply
+     and more nobly, by letting him see how some minds are kept alive by
+     a wise self-trust. We must not be sanguine at the amount of talent
+     which will be brought to bear on this publication. All concerned
+     are rather indifferent, and there is no great promise for the
+     present. We cannot show high culture, and I doubt about vigorous
+     thought. But we shall manifest free action as far as it goes, and a
+     high aim. It were much if a periodical could be kept open, not to
+     accomplish any outward object, but merely to afford an avenue for
+     what of liberal and calm thought might be originated among us, by
+     the wants of individual minds."
+
+     "Mr. Emerson best knows what he wants; but he has already said it
+     in various ways. Yet this experiment is well worth trying; hearts
+     beat so high, they must be full of something, and here is a way to
+     breathe it out quite freely. It is for dear New England that I want
+     this review. For myself, if I had wished to write a few pages now
+     and then, there were ways and means enough of disposing of them.
+     But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure
+     to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original
+     genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the
+     utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a
+     certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the
+     truth with a little better grace than I did at first. For this the
+     world will not care much, so I shall hazard a few critical remarks
+     only, or an unpretending chalk sketch now and then till I have
+     learned to do something. There will be beautiful poesies; about
+     prose we know not yet so well. We shall be the means of publishing
+     the little Charles Emerson left as a mark of his noble course, and,
+     though it lies in fragments, all who read will be gainers."
+
+That these modest anticipations were justified and more, need not be
+said. The "beautiful poesies" came, and so did the various, eloquent,
+well-considered prose. The people who expected the whole gospel of
+Transcendentalism may have been disappointed; for the editor gave the
+magazine more of a literary than philosophical or reformatory tone. That
+she looked for from others, and was more than willing to welcome. She
+had a discerning eye for the evils of the time, and a sincere respect
+for the men and women who were disposed to counteract them. Another
+extract from her correspondence at this time--1840--taken, like the
+former, from the second volume of the memoirs, leaves no doubt on this
+point. After speaking of "the tendency of circumstances," since the
+separation from England, "to make our people superficial, irreverent,
+and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally," she
+continues:
+
+     "New England is now old enough, some there have leisure enough to
+     look at all this, and the consequence is a violent reaction, in a
+     small minority, against a mode of culture that rears such fruits.
+     They see that political freedom does not necessarily produce
+     liberality of mind, nor freedom in church institutions, vital
+     religion; and, seeing that these changes cannot be wrought from
+     without inwards, they are trying to quicken the soul, that they may
+     work from within outwards. Disgusted with the vulgarity of a
+     commercial aristocracy, they become radicals; disgusted with the
+     materialistic working of "rational" religion they become mystics.
+     They quarrel with all that is because it is not spiritual enough.
+     They would, perhaps, be patient, if they thought this the mere
+     sensuality of childhood in our nation, which it might outgrow; but
+     they think that they see the evil widening, deepening, not only
+     debasing the life, but corrupting the thought of our people; and
+     they feel that if they know not well what should be done, yet that
+     the duty of every good man is to utter a protest against what is
+     done amiss. Is this protest undiscriminating? Are these opinions
+     crude? Do these proceedings threaten to sap the bulwarks on which
+     men at present depend? I confess it all, yet I see in these men
+     promise of a better wisdom than in their opponents. Their hope for
+     man is grounded on his destiny as an immortal soul, and not as a
+     mere comfort-loving inhabitant of earth, or as a subscriber to the
+     social contract. It was not meant that the soul should cultivate
+     the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul.
+     Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No
+     institution can be good which does not tend to improve the
+     individual. In these principles I have confidence so profound, that
+     I am not afraid to trust those who hold them, despite their partial
+     views, imperfectly developed characters, and frequent want of
+     practical sagacity. I believe, if they have opportunity to state
+     and discuss their opinions, they will gradually sift them,
+     ascertain their grounds and aims with clearness, and do the work
+     this country needs. I hope for them as for the 'leaven that is
+     hidden in the bushel of meal till all be leavened.' The leaven is
+     not good by itself, neither is the meal; let them combine, and we
+     shall yet have bread."
+
+     "Utopia it is impossible to build up; at least, my hopes for the
+     race on this one planet are more limited than those of most of my
+     friends; I accept the limitations of human nature, and believe a
+     wise acknowledgment of them one of the best conditions of progress;
+     yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifestation, prophesies to
+     man his eventual destiny; and were not man ever more sanguine than
+     facts at the moment justify, he would remain torpid, or be sunk in
+     sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is
+     called the 'Transcendental Party,' and that I feel their aim to be
+     the true one. They acknowledge in the nature of man an arbiter for
+     his deeds--a standard transcending sense and time--and are, in my
+     view, the true utilitarians. They are but at the beginning of their
+     course, and will, I hope, learn to make use of the past, as well as
+     to aspire for the future, and to be true in the present moment."
+
+Margaret Fuller's power lay in her faith in this spiritual capacity. The
+confidence began with herself, and was extended to all others, without
+exception. Mr. Channing says:
+
+     "Margaret cherished a trust in her powers, a confidence in her
+     destiny, and an ideal of her being, place and influence, so lofty
+     as to be extravagant. In the morning hour and mountain air of
+     aspiration, her shadow moved before her, of gigantic size, upon the
+     snow-white vapor."
+
+Mr. Clarke says:
+
+     "Margaret's life _had an aim_, and she was, therefore, essentially
+     a moral person, and not merely an overflowing genius, in whom
+     impulse gives birth to impulse, deed to deed. This aim was
+     distinctly apprehended and steadily pursued by her from first to
+     last. It was a high, noble one, wholly religious, almost Christian.
+     It gave dignity to her whole career, and made it heroic.
+
+     "This aim, from first to last, was SELF-CULTURE. If she was ever
+     ambitious of knowledge and talent, as a means of excelling others,
+     and gaining fame, position, admiration--this vanity had passed
+     before I knew her, and was replaced by the profound desire for a
+     full development of her whole nature, by means of a full experience
+     of life."
+
+Speaking of her demands on others, her three biographers agree that they
+were based on the expectation in them of spiritual excellence:
+
+     "One thing only she demanded of all her friends--that they should
+     have some 'extraordinary generous seeking;' that they should not be
+     satisfied with the common routine of life--that they should aspire
+     to something higher, better, holier, than they had now attained.
+     Where this element of aspiration existed, she demanded no
+     originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If these were
+     found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where they
+     were not.
+
+     "She never formed a friendship until she had seen and known this
+     germ of good, and afterwards judged conduct by this. To this germ
+     of good, to this highest law of each individual, she held them
+     true.
+
+     "Some of her friends were young, gay, and beautiful; some old,
+     sick, or studious; some were children of the world, others pale
+     scholars; some were witty, others slightly dull; but all, in order
+     to be Margaret's friends, must be capable of seeking
+     something--capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did
+     she glorify life to all! All that was tame and common vanishing
+     away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things
+     by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her
+     creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her
+     knowledge, and the copious rhetoric, which found words and images
+     always apt and always ready."
+
+     "Margaret saw in each of her friends the secret interior
+     capability, which might be hereafter developed into some special
+     beauty or power. By means of this penetrating, this prophetic
+     insight, she gave each to himself, acted on each to draw out his
+     best nature; gave him an ideal, out of which he could draw strength
+     and liberty, hour by hour. Thus her influence was ever ennobling,
+     and each felt that in her society he was truer, wiser, better, and
+     yet more free and happy than elsewhere. The 'dry light,' which Lord
+     Bacon loved, she never knew: her light was life, was love, was warm
+     with sympathy and a boundless energy of affection and hope. Though
+     her love flattered and charmed her friends, it did not spoil them,
+     for they knew her perfect truth; they knew that she loved them, not
+     for what she imagined, but for what she saw, though she saw it only
+     in the germ. But as the Greeks beheld a Persephone and Athene in
+     the passing stranger, and ennobled humanity into ideal beauty,
+     Margaret saw all her friends thus idealized; she was a balloon of
+     sufficient power to take us all up with her into the serene depth
+     of heaven, where she loved to float, far above the low details of
+     earthly life; earth lay beneath us as a lovely picture--its sounds
+     came up mellowed into music."
+
+     "Margaret was, to persons younger than herself, a Makaria and
+     Natalia. She was wisdom and intellectual beauty, filling life with
+     a charm and glory 'known to neither sea nor land.' To those of her
+     own age, she was sibyl and seer,--a prophetess, revealing the
+     future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims
+     only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself, she
+     was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and
+     Helen,--a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of
+     romantic fulness and classic limitation. They saw with surprise her
+     clear good sense, balancing her flow of sentiment and ardent
+     courage. They saw her comprehension of both sides of every
+     question, and gave her their confidence, as to one of equal age,
+     because of so ripe a judgment."
+
+     "An interview with her was a joyous event; worthy men and women who
+     had conversed with her, could not forget her, but worked bravely on
+     in the remembrance that this heroic approver had recognized their
+     aims. She spoke so earnestly, that the depth of the sentiment
+     prevailed, and not the accidental expression, which might chance to
+     be common. Thus I learned the other day, that in a copy of Mrs.
+     Jameson's 'Italian Painters,' against a passage describing Coreggio
+     as a true servant of God in his art, above sordid ambition, devoted
+     to truth, 'one of those superior beings of whom there are so few;'
+     Margaret wrote on the margin: 'And yet all might be such.' The book
+     lay long on the table of the owner, in Florence, and chanced to be
+     read there by an artist of much talent. 'These words' said he,
+     months afterwards, 'struck out a new strength in me. They revived
+     resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a
+     flint.'"
+
+     "'Yes, my life is strange;' she said, 'thine is strange. We are,
+     we shall be, in this life, mutilated beings, but there is in my
+     bosom a faith, that I shall see the reason; a glory, that I can
+     endure to be so imperfect; and a feeling, ever elastic, that fate
+     and time shall have the shame and the blame, if I am mutilated. I
+     will do all I can,--and if one cannot succeed, there is a beauty in
+     martyrdom.'"
+
+     "'Would not genius be common as light if men trusted their higher
+     selves?'"
+
+     "She won the confidence and affection of those who attracted her,
+     by unbounded sympathy and trust. She probably knew the cherished
+     secrets of more hearts than any one else, because she freely
+     imparted her own. With a full share both of intellectual and of
+     family pride, she preeminently recognized and responded to the
+     essential brotherhood of all human kind, and needed but to know
+     that a fellow being required her counsel or assistance, to render
+     her not merely willing, but eager to impart it. Loving ease,
+     luxury, and the world's good opinion, she stood ready to renounce
+     them all, at the call of pity or of duty. I think no one, not
+     radically averse to the whole system of domestic servitude, would
+     have treated servants, of whatever class, with such uniform and
+     thoughtful consideration--a regard which wholly merged their
+     factitious condition in their antecedent and permanent humanity. I
+     think few servants ever lived weeks with her, who were not
+     dignified and lastingly benefited by her influence and her
+     counsels. They might be at first repelled, by what seemed her too
+     stately manner and exacting disposition, but they soon learned to
+     esteem and love her.
+
+     "I have known few women, and scarcely another maiden, who had the
+     heart and the courage to speak with such frank compassion, in mixed
+     circles, of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The
+     contemplation of their treatment, especially by the guilty authors
+     of their ruin, moved her to a calm and mournful indignation, which
+     she did not attempt to suppress nor control. Others were willing to
+     pity and deplore; Margaret was more inclined to vindicate and to
+     redeem.
+
+     "'In the chamber of death,' she wrote, 'I prayed in very early
+     years: "Give me truth; cheat me by no illusion." O, the granting of
+     this prayer is sometimes terrible to me! I walk over burning
+     ploughshares, and they sear my feet; yet nothing but truth will do;
+     no love will serve that is not eternal, and as large as the
+     universe; no philanthropy, in executing whose behests I myself
+     become unhealthy; no creative genius which bursts asunder my life,
+     to leave it a poor black chrysalid behind; and yet this last is too
+     true of me.'"
+
+Margaret Fuller did justice to the character of Fourier, admired his
+enthusiasm, honored his devotion, acknowledged the terrible nature of
+the evils he gave the study of a life-time to correct, and paid an
+unstinting tribute to the disinterested motives that impelled him; but
+with his scheme for refashioning society she had no sympathy. William H.
+Channing was an intimate friend, whose sincerity had her deepest
+respect, whose enthusiasm won her cordial admiration; she listened to
+his brilliant expositions of socialism, but was not persuaded. Practical
+difficulties always appeared, and she never could believe that any
+rearrangement of circumstances would effect the regeneration of mankind.
+She was acquainted from the first with the experiment of Brook Farm;
+knew the founders of it; watched with genuine solicitude the
+inauguration of the scheme and its fortunes; talked over the principles
+and details of it with the leading spirits; visited the community;
+examined for herself the working of the plan; gave her talent to the
+entertainment and edification of the associates; discerned with clear
+eye the distinctions between this experiment and those of European
+origin; but still questioned the practical wisdom of the institution,
+and declined to join the fraternity, even on the most flattering terms,
+for the reason that, interested as she was in the experiment, it was, in
+her judgment, too purely an experiment to be personally and practically
+sanctioned by one who had no more faith in its fundamental principles
+than she.
+
+She was not to be thrown off from her essential position, the primacy
+and all sufficiency of the soul. No misery or guilt daunted her, no
+impatience at slowness tempted her to resort to artificial methods of
+cure. Her visit to Sing Sing, and her intercourse with the abandoned
+women there was exceedingly interesting in this view.
+
+     "'They listened with earnest attention, and many were moved to
+     tears. I never felt such sympathy with an audience as when, at the
+     words "Men and Brethren," that sea of faces, marked with the scars
+     of every ill, were up-turned, and the shell of brutality burst
+     apart at the touch of love. I knew that at least heavenly truth
+     would not be kept out by self complacence and dependence on good
+     appearances.... These women were among the so-called worst, and all
+     from the lowest haunts of vice. Yet nothing could have been more
+     decorous than their conduct, while it was also frank; and they
+     showed a sensibility and sense of propriety which would not have
+     disgraced any society.'"
+
+     "She did not hesitate to avow that, on meeting some of these
+     abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them
+     scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of
+     womanhood,--realizing and loathing their debasement; anxious to
+     escape it; and only repelled by the sad consciousness that for them
+     sympathy and society remained only so long as they should persist
+     in the ways of pollution."
+
+Margaret Fuller's loyalty to principles was proof against bad taste;
+which is saying a good deal, for many a reformer is of opinion that
+blunders are worse than crimes, and that vulgarity is more offensive
+than wickedness. She found the Fourierites in Europe terribly wearisome,
+and yet did not forget that they served the great future which neither
+they nor she would live to see. At home she could not endure the
+Abolitionists--"they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid
+and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they had a high motive,
+something eternal in their desire and life; and if it was not the only
+thing worth thinking of, it was really something worth living and dying
+for, to free a great nation from such a blot, such a plague." In Europe
+she was disgusted at hearing Americans urging the same arguments against
+the freedom of the Italians that they urged at home against the
+emancipation of the blacks; the same arguments in favor of the
+spoliation of Poland that they used at home in favor of the conquest of
+Mexico. With her, principles were independent of time and place. She
+always believed in liberty as a condition of enlightenment, and in
+enlightenment as a condition of progress. This practical faith in the
+intellectual and moral nature is the key to all her work. Every chamber
+that opened she entered and occupied, fearless of ghosts and goblins.
+The chambers that opened not she was content to leave unopened
+altogether.
+
+On the table where the writer pens this poor tribute to a most
+remarkable woman, are the bulky volumes of her unpublished letters and
+diaries, revealing some things too personal for the public eye, but
+nothing in the least incongruous with the best things recorded by her
+biographers and suggested here; and how much they tell that illustrates
+and confirms the moral nobleness and sweetness of her nature. They
+contain a psychometric examination from two letters, given after the
+manner familiar to those interested in such things, by one of the chief
+of these spiritual vaticinators. We shall not transcribe it, for it is
+long and indistinct. The indistinctness is the one interesting feature
+of the sketch. The sensitive reporter confessed herself put out by the
+singular commingling of moods and dispositions, and seemed to be
+describing several persons in one. But through them all the same general
+impression was clear; the impression of a fascinating, lovable, earnest
+and lofty spirit, which, whether sad or gay, intellectual or
+sentimental, bore itself like a queenly woman.
+
+When the news of her death reached Boston, one of Boston's eminent men
+in letters and public affairs quietly remarked: "it is just as well so."
+He was thinking of the agitation she might cause by her brilliant
+conversations and her lightning pen, if she brought back from her
+Italian heroisms the high spirit of liberty. The times were growing dark
+in America. The Slave Power was drawing its lines closer about the
+citadel of freedom. The brave voices were few and fewer; the
+conservatives were glad when one was hushed by death. The movement she
+had encouraged was waning. The high enthusiasm was smouldering in
+breasts that anticipated the battle which came ten years later. The
+period of poetic aspiration and joy was ended, and the priestess, had
+she survived, would have found a deserted shrine.
+
+No accessible portrait of Margaret Fuller exists, that worthily presents
+her. Thomas Hicks painted a likeness, of cabinet size, in Rome, which
+her friends approved. The daguerreotype was too painfully literal to be
+just; the sun having no sentiment or imagination in his eye. She was not
+beautiful in youth, nor was she one of those who gain beauty with years.
+Her physical attractions were of the kind that time impairs soon, and
+though she died at forty, her personal charm was gone. Intellect gave
+her what beauty she had, and they saw it who saw her intellect at play.
+Her image, therefore, is best preserved in the memory of her friends.
+They cannot put it on exhibition.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE PREACHER.
+
+
+Transcendentalism is usually spoken of as a philosophy. It is more
+justly regarded as a gospel. As a philosophy it is abstract and
+difficult--purely metaphysical in character, resting on no basis of
+observed and scientifically-proven fact, but on the so-called data of
+consciousness, which cannot be accurately defined, distinctly verified,
+or generally recommended. It must be, therefore, inexact and
+inconclusive; so far from uniform in its structure, that it may rather
+be considered several systems than one. As a gospel, it possesses all
+the qualities desirable for effect. It is worth remarking that its chief
+disciples have been clergymen. In Germany, Schleiermacher--if we may
+count him a Transcendentalist; he was the author of the doctrine, that
+the essence of religion consisted in the _sense of dependence_, which
+figured largely in the sermons of New England divines--was a clergyman;
+Fichte assumed the prophetic tone; the German professors associated
+religious teaching with the duties of their chairs. In England,
+Coleridge was a preacher by practice, and, part of his life, by
+profession; Carlyle was never anything else, his essays and even his
+histories being sermons in disguise, and disguise of the most
+transparent sort. In New England, Emerson began his career as a
+Unitarian minister; so did Walker; so did Ripley; so did W. H. Channing;
+so did J. S. Dwight; so did C. P. Cranch. Dr. Channing, a
+Transcendentalist without knowing it, was the greatest preacher of his
+generation. Brownson was a preacher of all orders in succession; Bartol
+preaches still; Clarke preaches still. Of the younger men, Johnson,
+Longfellow, Wasson, Higginson, are, or were, Unitarian clergymen. Alcott
+is a preacher without a pulpit. The order of mind that was attracted to
+the ministry was attracted to the Transcendental ideas.
+
+The explanation is easy; Transcendentalism possessed all the chief
+qualifications for a gospel. Its cardinal "facts" were few and
+manageable. Its data were secluded in the recesses of consciousness, out
+of the reach of scientific investigation, remote from the gaze of vulgar
+skepticism; esoteric, having about them the charm of a sacred privacy,
+on which common sense and the critical understanding might not intrude.
+Its oracles proceeded from a shrine, and were delivered by a priest or
+priestess, who came forth from an interior holy of holies to utter them,
+and thus were invested with the air of authority which belongs to
+exclusive and privileged truths, that revealed themselves to minds of a
+contemplative cast. It dealt entirely with "divine things," "eternal
+realities;" supersensible forms of thought; problems that lay out of the
+reach of observation, such as the essential cause, spiritual laws, the
+life after death, the essence of the good, the beautiful, the true; the
+ideal possibilities of the soul; its organ was intuition; its method was
+introspection: its brightness was inspiration. It possessed the
+character of indefiniteness and mystery, full of sentiment and
+suggestion, that fascinates the imagination, and lends itself so easily
+to acts of contemplation and worship. The German Mystics were in spirit
+Transcendentalists. The analogies are close between Boehme and
+Schelling; between Eckardt and Fichte; Frederick Schlegel had much in
+common with Boehme; Coleridge acknowledged his debt to him and to other
+Mystics; even Hegel ran in line with them on some of his high roads.
+Minds as opposite as Alcott and Parker met in communion here--Alcott
+going to the Mystics for inspiration; Parker resorting to them for rest.
+The Mystics were men of feeling; the Transcendentalists were men of
+thought: but thought and feeling sought the same object in the same
+region. Piety was a feature of Transcendentalism; it loved devout hymns,
+music, the glowing language of aspiration, the moods of awe and
+humility, emblems, symbols, expressions of inarticulate emotion,
+silence, contemplation, breathings after communion with the Infinite.
+The poetry of Transcendentalism is religious, with scarcely an
+exception; the most beautiful hymns in our sacred collections, the only
+deeply impressive hymns, are by transcendental writers.
+
+This was the aspect of Transcendentalism that fascinated Theodore
+Parker. His intellect was constructed on the English model. His acute
+observation; his passion for external facts; his faith in statistics;
+his hunger for information on all external topics of history and
+politics; his capacity for retaining details of miscellaneous knowledge;
+his logical method of reasoning; his ability to handle masses of raw
+mental material, to distribute and classify;--all indicate intellectual
+power of the English rather than of the German type. It was his custom
+to speak slightingly of the "Bridgewater Treatises" and works of a
+similar class, in which the processes of inductive argument are employed
+to establish truths of the "Pure Reason;" but he easily fell into the
+same habit, and pushed the inductive method as far as it would go. His
+discourses on Providence, the Economy of Pain and Misery, Atheism,
+Theism, in the volume entitled "Theism, Atheism, and The Popular
+Theology," are quite in the style of the "Bridgewater Treatises." Parker
+was, in many respects, the opposite of a Mystic; he was a realist of the
+most concrete description, entirely at home among sensible things, a
+good administrator, a safe investor of moneys, a wise counsellor in
+practical affairs. But along with this intellectual quality which he
+inherited from his father, was an interior, sentimental, devotional
+quality, derived from his mother. The two were never wholly blended;
+often they were wide apart, occupying different spheres, and engaged in
+different offices; sometimes they were in apparent opposition. Neither
+could subdue or overshadow the other; neither could keep the other long
+in abeyance. As a rule, the dominion was divided between them: the
+practical understanding assumed control of all matters pertaining to
+this world; the higher reason claimed supremacy in all matters of
+faith. But for the tendency to poetic idealism, which came to him from
+his mother, Parker might, from the constitution of his mind, have
+belonged to an opposite school. A passage in the letter from Santa Cruz,
+entitled "Theodore Parker's Experience as a Minister," is curious, as
+showing how the two tendencies of his mind overlapped; he is speaking of
+the two methods of developing the contents "of the instinctive
+intuitions of the divine, the just, and the immortal,"--the inductive
+and the deductive. After a few words respecting the inductive method of
+gathering facts from the history of mankind, he speaks thus of the
+deductive: "Next, from the primitive facts of consciousness given by the
+power of instinctive intuition, I endeavored to deduce the true notion
+of God, of justice, and futurity." Then, forgetting that the power of
+instinctive intuition must be self-authenticating--cannot, at any rate,
+be authenticated by miscellaneous facts in the religious history of
+mankind--he continues:
+
+     "To learn what I could about the spiritual faculties of man, I not
+     only studied the sacred books of various nations, the poets and
+     philosophers who professedly treat thereof, but also such as deal
+     with sleep-walking, dreams, visions, prophecies, second-sight,
+     oracles, ecstasies, witchcraft, magic-wonders, the appearance of
+     devils, ghosts, and the like. Besides, I studied other works which
+     lie out from the regular highway of theology; the spurious books
+     attributed to famous Jews and Christians; Pseudepigraphy of the Old
+     Testament, and the Apocrypha of the New; with the strange fantasies
+     of the Neoplatonists and Gnostics."
+
+Very important reading all this for one who studied to qualify himself
+to instruct his fellow men in the natural history of the world's
+religions; but not so valuable as illustrating the "instinctive
+intuitions of human nature." Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Boehme,
+Eckardt, never worked by that method, which may properly be called the
+method of Sensationalism applied to Transcendentalism. Parker, on the
+religious side, was a pure Transcendentalist without guile, accepting
+the transcendental ideas with no shadow of qualification; stating them
+with the concrete sharpness of scientific propositions, and applying
+them with the exactness of mathematical principles. He took them as he
+found them in the writings of the great German thinkers; shaped them as
+he, better than any body else, could shape thought in form of words,--as
+he shaped the formula of republican government--"government of the
+people, by the people, for the people"--from the looser statement of
+Daniel Webster,--and laid them down as corner-stones of a new
+theological structure. The materials were furnished by Schleiermacher,
+Spinoza, Jacobi, Schelling; the architectural skill was his own.
+Consciousness he did not undertake to analyze; the "facts of
+consciousness" he took on others' verification; their spiritual import
+he perceived, developed and applied. Transcendentalism put into his
+hands the implements he was in special need of.
+
+It is not easy to determine the precise period at which Parker fully
+accepted, with all its consequences, the transcendental philosophy. He
+was not a Transcendentalist--not distinctly and avowedly one--at the
+time of his ordination, in 1837; he clearly was in 1840, the date of
+the Levi Blodgett letter, which contains the most thorough-going
+statement of the transcendental idea to be found in any single tractate.
+The probability is, that he always was one in sentiment, and became more
+and more consciously one in thought, as he found it necessary to shift
+his position in order to save his faith. So long as the beliefs he
+cherished seemed to be satisfactorily supported on the old grounds, he
+was content; but as the old grounds, one after another, gave way, the
+beliefs were transferred to the keeping of new principles. Then the
+sentiments of his youth hardened into ideas; the delicate creatures that
+lived and gleamed beneath the waters of faith's tropical ocean, became
+reefs of white stone, that lifted their broad surface above the level of
+the sea, and offered immovable support to human habitations.
+
+Parker was, more than anything, a preacher;--preacher more than
+theologian, philosopher or scholar. Whatever else he was, contributed to
+his greatness in this. He had a profuse gift of language; expression was
+a necessity to him; his thoughts came swiftly, and clothed in attractive
+garments; he had wit, and he had humor; laughter and tears were equally
+at his command. His resources of illustration, drawn from history,
+literature, biography, nature, were simply inexhaustible; the fruits of
+enormous reading were at the immediate disposal of a memory that never
+lost a trifle of the stores committed to it. The religious emotions were
+as genuine with him as they were quick, and as deep as they were
+glowing: the human sympathies were wide as the widest, and tender as
+the tenderest. He had the power of persuasion and of rebuke, a withering
+sarcasm, a winning compassion. His indignation at wrong was not so
+qualified by sentimental regard for the wrong doer that invective was
+wasted on lifeless abstractions, nor was his judgment of evil doers so
+austere that wickedness escaped by being made incredible. It cannot be
+said of anybody that he has been able to discriminate nicely, in hours
+of moral feeling, between wrong doers and wrong deeds; that cannot be
+done in the present state of psychological science. We simply do not
+know what the limits of personal responsibility are; how much power is
+entrusted to the will; how much allowance is to be made for temperament
+and circumstance; at what point the individual is detached from the mass
+of mankind, and constituted an accountable person. Parker was guilty, as
+others are, of personal injustice in holding individuals answerable for
+sins of their generation, and for vices transmitted with their blood;
+conscience and charity were occasionally at issue with him; but if
+righteousness was betrayed into intemperance of zeal, peace made haste
+to offer its kiss of sorrow, and unaffected tears damped down the flames
+of wrath when they threatened to consume the innocent. This two-fold
+power of blasting and of blessing, was vastly effective both on large
+audiences and on small. The personal integrity which no one ever
+doubted, the courage which was evident to even hasty observers, the
+mental independence which justified the boldness of its position by an
+indefatigable purpose to discover truth, were prime qualifications for
+the office he filled. The very disadvantages,--an unheroic presence, an
+uninspired countenance, an unmelodious and unpliable voice, the
+necessity of interposing glasses between his clear blue eyes and his
+audience, and thus veiling the heavens that lay behind them,--helped him
+by putting out of mind all thought of meretricious attempts at
+influence, and compelling recognition of the intellectual and moral
+force which could so easily dispense with what most orators consider
+invaluable aids.
+
+All that Parker had went into his preaching; the wealth of his library,
+the treasures of his heart, the sweetness of his closet meditations, the
+solemnity of his lonely musings. But it was not this that gave him his
+great power as a preacher. That, we are persuaded, was due in chief part
+to the earnestness of his faith in the transcendental philosophy. How
+cordially he entertained that faith, what to him it signified in
+politics, ethics, religion, may be learned by any who will take pains to
+read a lecture by him on Transcendentalism, recently published by the
+Free Religious Association. That he ascribed the popular interest in his
+preaching to his philosophical ideas will not perhaps be accepted as
+evidence on the point, for men are apt to be mistaken in regard to the
+sources of their power; but it is interesting as a testimony to his own
+belief, to know that he did so. In a sermon preached on November 14th,
+1852, the occasion being his leaving the Melodeon for the Music Hall, he
+presents first the current modes of accounting for his success, and
+then his own.
+
+     "The first reason assigned for the audience coming together was
+     this: they came from vain curiosity, having itching ears to hear
+     'what this babbler sayeth.'
+
+     "Then it was said, men came here because I taught utter irreligion,
+     blank immorality; that I had no love of God, no fear of God, no
+     love of man; and that you thought, if you could get rid of your
+     conscience and soul, and trample immortality under foot, and were
+     satisfied there was no God, you should have a very nice time of it
+     here and hereafter.
+
+     "Then it was declared that I was a shrewd, practical man, perfectly
+     well 'posted up' in every thing that took place; knew how to make
+     investments and get very large returns,--unluckily it has not been
+     for myself that this has been true. And it was said that I
+     collected large headed, practical men to hear me, and that you were
+     a 'boisterous assembly.'
+
+     "Then, that I was a learned man and gave learned discourses on
+     ecclesiastical history or political history,--things which have not
+     been found very attractive in the churches hitherto.
+
+     "Again, that I was a philosopher, with a wise head, and taught men
+     theological metaphysics; and so a large company of men seemed all
+     at once smitten with a panic for metaphysics and abstract
+     preaching. It was never so before.
+
+     "Next it was reported that I was a witty man, and shot nicely
+     feathered arrows very deftly into the mark; and that men came to
+     attend the sharp shooting of a wit.
+
+     "Then there was a seventh thing,--that I was an eloquent man; and I
+     remember certain diatribes against the folly of filling churches
+     with eloquence.
+
+     "Then again, it was charged against me that I was a philanthropist,
+     and taught the love of men, but did not teach at all the love of
+     God; and that men really loved to love one another, and so came.
+
+     "Then it was thought that I was a sentimentalist, and tickled the
+     ears of 'weak women,' who came to delight themselves and be filled
+     full of poetry and love.
+
+     "The real thing they did not seem to hit; that I preached an idea
+     of God, of man and of religion, which commended itself to the
+     nature of mankind."
+
+The great preacher is always an idealist, and according to the fervor of
+his idealism is he great. This was the source of Channing's power; it
+was the charm of Emerson's. In reply to a friend who questioned her as
+to the nature of the benefits conferred on her by Mr. Emerson's
+preaching, Margaret Fuller wrote:
+
+     "His influence has been more beneficial to me than that of any
+     American, and from him I first learned what is meant by an inward
+     life. Many other springs have since fed the stream of living
+     waters, but he first opened the fountain. That the 'mind is its own
+     place' was a dead phrase to me till he cast light upon my mind.
+     Several of his sermons stand apart in memory, like landmarks of my
+     spiritual history. It would take a volume to tell what this one
+     influence did for me."
+
+Mr. Parker's ministry had three periods, in each of which the ideal
+element was the attraction. The first was the period of quiet influence
+in West Roxbury, where the stream of his spiritual life flowed
+peacefully through green pastures, and enriched simple hearts with its
+unintermitted current. Accounts agree that at this time there was a soul
+of sweetness in his preaching, that was a good deal more than the body
+of its thought. The second was the period at the Boston Melodeon, the
+first of his experience before the crowd of a metropolis. This was the
+controversial epoch, and, from the nature of the case, was largely
+polemical and negative as towards the popular theology. But even then
+the strain of spiritual faith was heard above the din of battle, and
+souls that were averse to polemics were fed by the enthusiasm that came
+from the inner heights of aspiration. The last period was that of the
+Music Hall--the famous period. Then the faith was defined and
+formulated; the corner-stones were hewn and set; the fundamental
+positions were announced with the fidelity of iteration that was
+customary with the "painful preachers of the Word" in churches where
+people were duly stretched upon the Five Points of Calvin. The three
+cardinal attestations of the universal human consciousness--
+
+  The Absolute God,
+  The Moral Law,
+  The Immortal Life,
+
+were asseverated with all the earnestness of the man, and declared to be
+the constituent elements of the Rock of Ages.
+
+Standing on this tripod, Parker spoke as one having authority; he judged
+other creeds--Orthodox, Unitarian, Scientific--with the confidence of
+one who felt that he had inspiration on his side. It was difficult for
+him to understand how, without his faith, others could be happy. The
+believers in tradition seemed to him people who walked near precipices,
+leaning on broken reeds; the unbelievers were people who walked near the
+same precipices, with bandaged eyes.
+
+     "If to-morrow I am to perish utterly, then I shall only take
+     counsel for to-day, and ask for qualities which last no longer. My
+     fathers will be to me only as the ground out of which my bread-corn
+     is grown; dead, they are like the rotten mould of earth, their
+     memory of small concern to me. Posterity--I shall care nothing for
+     the future generations of mankind. I am one atom in the trunk of a
+     tree, and care nothing for the roots below or the branches above; I
+     shall sow such seed as will bear harvest to-day; I shall know no
+     higher law; passion enacts my statutes to-day; to-morrow ambition
+     revises the statutes, and these are my sole legislators; morality
+     will vanish, expediency take its place; heroism will be gone, and
+     instead of it there will be the brute valor of the he-wolf, the
+     brute-cunning of the she-fox, the rapacity of the vulture, and the
+     headlong daring of the wild bull; but the cool, calm courage which,
+     for truth's sake, and for love's sake, looks death firmly in the
+     face, and then wheels into line, ready to be slain--that will be a
+     thing no longer heard of."
+
+     "The atheist sits down beside the coffin of his only child--a
+     rose-bud daughter, whose heart death slowly ate away; the pale
+     lilies of the valley which droop with fragrance above that lifeless
+     heart, are flowers of mockery to him, their beauty is a cheat; they
+     give not back his child, for whom the sepulchral monster opens his
+     remorseless jaws. The hopeless father looks down on the face of his
+     girl, silent--not sleeping, cold--dead.... He looks beyond--the
+     poor sad man--it is only solid darkness he looks on; no rainbow
+     beautifies that cloud; there is thunder in it, not light; night is
+     behind--without a star."
+
+This is the way the Protestant Christians spoke of him; the
+"Evangelicals" spoke thus of the Unitarians; the believers in miraculous
+revelations spoke thus of the rationalists. They that are sure always
+speak so of those who, in their judgment, have no right to be sure at
+all.
+
+Yet Parker had a hospitable mind, and his hospitality was due also to
+his faith. The spiritual philosophy which maintained the identity in all
+men of consciousness, and the eternal validity of its promises, which no
+error or petulance could discredit, was indulgent to the unfortunates
+who had not the satisfaction of its assurance. It pitied, but did not
+reproach them. They were children of God no less for being ignorant of
+their dignity. It was impossible for Parker to believe that rational
+beings could be utterly insensible to the essential facts of their own
+nature. Their error, misconception, misconstruction, to whatever cause
+due, could be no more than incidental. Skepticism might make wild work
+of definitions, but ultimate facts it could never disturb; these would
+thrust themselves up at last, as inevitably as the rocky substratum of
+the globe presents itself in the green field. In a thanksgiving sermon
+he thanked God that atheism could freely deliver its creed and prove
+that it was folly. He was persuaded that the disbelievers believed
+better than they knew; in their paroxysms of denial, he saw the blind
+struggles of faith; he gave the enemies of religion credit for qualities
+that made their hostility look like a heroic protest against the
+outrages inflicted in the name of religion upon religion itself.
+
+     "It is a fact of history, that in old time, from Epicurus to
+     Seneca, some of the ablest heads and best hearts of Greece and Rome
+     sought to destroy the idea of immortality. This was the reason:
+     they saw it was a torment to mankind; that the popular notion of
+     immortality was too bad to be true; and so they took pains to break
+     down the Heathen Mythology, though with it they destroyed the
+     notion of immortal life. They did a great service to mankind in
+     ridding us from this yoke of fear.
+
+     "Many a philosopher has seemed without religion, even to a careful
+     observer--sometimes has passed for an atheist. Some of them have to
+     themselves seemed without any religion, and have denied that there
+     was any God; but all the while their nature was truer than their
+     will; their instinct kept their personal wholeness better than they
+     were aware. These men loved absolute truth, not for its uses, but
+     for itself; they laid down their lives for it, rather than violate
+     the integrity of their intellect. They had the intellectual love of
+     God, though they knew it not, though they denied it.
+
+     "I have known philanthropists who undervalued piety; they liked it
+     not--they said it was moonshine, not broad day; it gave flashes of
+     lightning, all of which would not make light.... Yet underneath
+     their philanthropy there lay the absolute and disinterested love of
+     other men. They knew only the special form, not the universal
+     substance thereof.
+
+     "Men of science, as a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness
+     and the piety that are taught as religion, only on the errors, the
+     evil, the impiety which bear its name. Science is the natural ally
+     of religion. Shall we try and separate what God has joined? We
+     injure both by the attempt. The philosophers of this age have a
+     profound love of truth, and show great industry and boldness in
+     search thereof. In the name of truth they pluck down the
+     strongholds of error--venerable and old.
+
+     "All the attacks made on religion itself by men of science, from
+     Celsus to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring religion into
+     contempt as a single persecution for witchcraft, or a Bartholomew
+     massacre made in the name of God."
+
+Parker had human sympathies strong and deep, and could never have been
+indifferent to the pains and misery of his fellow creatures; yet these
+sympathies owed their persistency, their endurance, and their
+indomitable sweetness, to the spiritual faith which he professed. He had
+a passionate head-strong nature; he knew the charm of pleasant looks,
+congenial companions, elegant and luxurious circumstances. His love of
+leisure was keen; it was the desire of his life to enjoy the scholar's
+privilege of uninterrupted hours, in the delicious seclusion of the
+library. With a different philosophy he would have been a very different
+man. The creed he held made self-indulgence impossible.
+
+"I have always taught," he said--in a sermon before quoted, the last he
+preached in the Melodeon--"that the religious faculty is the natural
+ruler in all the commonwealth of man; the importance of religion, and
+its commanding power in every relation of life. This is what I have
+continually preached, and some of you will remember that the first
+sermon I addressed to you was on this theme:--The absolute necessity of
+religion for safely conducting the life of the individual, and the life
+of the State. You knew very well I did not begin too soon; yet I did not
+then foresee that it would soon be denied in America, in Boston, that
+there was any law higher than an Act of Congress." The allusion is to
+the Fugitive Slave Bill then recently enacted, which brought to a close
+issue the controversy between the Abolitionists and the Government, and
+imposed on Mr. Parker and the rest who felt as he did, duties of
+watchfulness and self-denial, that for years put to flight all thoughts
+of personal ease.
+
+He continues:
+
+     "Woman I have always regarded as the equal of man--more nicely
+     speaking, the equivalent of man; superior in some things, inferior
+     in some others; inferior in the lower qualities, in bulk of body
+     and bulk of brain; superior in the higher and nicer qualities--in
+     the moral power of conscience, the loving power of affection, the
+     religious power of the soul; equal on the whole, and of course
+     entitled to just the same rights as man; the same rights of mind,
+     body and estate; the same domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and
+     political rights as man, and only kept from the enjoyment of these
+     by might, not right; yet herself destined one day to acquire them
+     all."
+
+The belief in the spiritual eminence of woman was part of the creed of
+the Transcendentalist; it was intimately connected with his reverence
+for interior, poetic, emotional natures; with his preference for feeling
+above thought, of spontaneity above will. In the order of rank, Parker
+assigned the first place to the "religious faculty," as he termed it,
+which gave immediate vision of spiritual truth; the second place was
+given to the affections; conscience he ranked below these; and lowest of
+all stood the intellect. The rational powers were held subordinate to
+the instinctive, or rather the rational and the instinctive were held to
+be coincident. The feminine characteristic being affection, which is
+spontaneous, and the masculine being intellect, which is not, the
+feminine was set above the masculine--love above light, pity above
+justice, sympathy above rectitude, compassion above equity. Parker had
+feminine attributes, and was slightly enamored of them; thought, or
+tried to think them the glory of his manhood; but the masculine greatly
+predominated in him. To people in general he seemed to reverse his own
+order, in practice. Weak, dependent, dreamy men he had no patience with;
+sentimentalism was his aversion; the moral element alone commanded his
+absolute respect. Masculine women were equally distasteful; while he
+admired the genius of Margaret Fuller, his personal attraction toward
+her seldom brought him into her society. That a man constituted as he
+was, self-reliant to aggressiveness, inclined to be arbitrary,
+dogmatical, and imperious, of prodigious force of will and masterly
+power of conscience, entered as he did into advocacy of the rights of
+the African and the prerogatives of woman, is evidence of the
+whole-heartedness with which he adopted the transcendental philosophy.
+It was, indeed, a faith to him, that ruled his life and appointed his
+career. It gave him his commission as prophet, reformer, philanthropist.
+It was the consecrating oil that sanctified him, from the crown of his
+head to the soles of his feet.
+
+Parker believed in the gospel of Transcendentalism, and was fully
+persuaded that it was to be the gospel of the future. "The religion I
+preach," he was accustomed to say, "will be the religion of enlightened
+men for the next thousand years." He anticipated an earthly immortality
+for his thought, an extensive circulation of his books, a swift course
+for his word, among the people. The expectation seemed not unreasonable
+twenty years ago.
+
+The prediction has not thus far been justified. Parker died in 1860, on
+the eve of the civil war, which he prognosticated, sixteen years ago.
+The war fairly ended, efforts were made to revive the prophet's memory
+and carry out the cherished purpose of his heart. But their ill success
+has gone far to prove--what needed no evidence--that prophecies may
+fail, and tongues cease and knowledge pass away. The philosophy that
+Parker combated and ridiculed and cast scorn at, declared to be
+self-refuted and self-condemned, has revived under a new name, as the
+"philosophy of experience," is professed by the ablest thinkers of the
+day, taught in high places, in the name of science, set forth as the
+hope of man; the creeds he pronounced irrational, and fancied to be
+obsolete still hold nominal sway over the minds of men; the Christianity
+of the letter and the form is the only Christianity that is officially
+acknowledged; the gospel is an institution still, not a faith;
+revivalism has the monopoly of religious enthusiasm; preaching is giving
+place to lecturing; the pulpit has been taken down; science alone is
+permitted to speak with authority;--literature, journalism, politics,
+trade, attract the young men that once sought the ministry; the noble
+preachers of a noble gospel are the few remaining idealists, who have
+kept the faith of their youth; they are growing old; one by one they
+leave their place, and there are none like them to fill it. Parker was
+one of the last of the grand preachers who spoke with power, bearing
+commission from the soul. The commissions which the soul issues are, for
+the time being, discredited, and discredited they will be, so long as
+the ideal philosophy is an outcast among men. Should that philosophy
+revive, the days of great preaching will return with it. Bibles will be
+read and hymns sung, and sermons delivered to crowds from pulpits. The
+lyceum and the newspaper will occupy a subordinate position as means of
+social and moral influence, and the prophets will recover their waning
+reputation. Until then, the work they did when living must attest their
+greatness with such as can estimate it at its worth.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE MAN OF LETTERS.
+
+
+The man who was as influential as any in planting the seeds of the
+transcendental philosophy in good soil, and in showing whither its
+principles tended, is known now, and has from the first been known,
+chiefly as a man of letters, a thoughtful observer, a careful student
+and a serious inquirer after knowledge. George Ripley, one year older
+than Emerson, was one of the forerunners and prophets of the new
+dispensation. He was by temperament as well as by training, a scholar, a
+reader of books, a discerner of opinions, a devotee of ideas. A mind of
+such clearness and serenity, accurate judgment, fine taste, and rare
+skill in the use of language, written and spoken, was of great value in
+introducing, defining and interpreting the vast, vague thoughts that
+were burning in the minds of speculative men. He was one of the first in
+America to master the German language; and, his bent of mind being
+philosophical and theological, he became a medium through which the
+French and German thought found its way to New England. He was an
+importer, reader and lender of the new books of the living Continental
+thinkers. His library contained a rich collection of works in
+philosophy, theology, hermeneutics, criticism of the Old and New
+Testaments, and divinity in its different branches of dogmatics and
+sentiment. He was intimate with N. L. Frothingham and Convers Francis,
+the admirable scholar, the hospitable and independent thinker, the
+enthusiastic and humane believer, the centre and generous distributor of
+copious intellectual gifts to all who came within his reach. Theodore
+Parker was the intellectual product of these two men, Convers Francis
+and George Ripley. The former fed his passion for knowledge; the latter,
+at the period of his life in the divinity school, gave direction to his
+thought. The books that did most to determine the set of Parker's mind
+were taken from Mr. Ripley's library. For a considerable time, in
+Parker's early ministry, they were close and thoroughly congenial
+friends. They walked and talked together; made long excursions; attended
+conventions; were members of the same club or coterie; joined in the
+discussions at which Emerson, Channing, Hedge, Clark, Alcott took part;
+and, though parted, in after life, by circumstances which appointed them
+to different spheres of labor,--one in Boston, the other in New
+York,--they continued to the end, constant and hearty well wishers. At
+the close of his life, Parker expressed a hope that Ripley might be his
+biographer.
+
+Mr. Ripley prepared for the ministry at the Cambridge divinity school;
+in 1826 accepted a call to be pastor and preacher of the church,
+organized but eighteen months before, and within two months worshipping
+in their new meeting-house on Purchase street, Boston. The ordination
+took place on Wednesday, Nov. 8th, of the same year. "Under his
+charge," said his successor, Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, in 1848, "the
+society grew from very small beginnings to strength and prosperity. As a
+preacher, he awakened the deepest interest, and as a devoted pastor, the
+warmest affection, which still survives, deep and strong, in the hearts
+of those who were the objects of his counsel and pastoral care. After
+the lapse of almost fifteen years, the connection was dissolved, for
+reasons which affected not the least the relations of friendship and
+mutual respect between the parties. It has been a great satisfaction to
+me, as I have passed in and out among you, to hear again and again the
+expressions of love and interest with which you remember the ministry of
+your first servant in this church." That this was not merely the formal
+tribute which the courtesies of the profession exacted, is proved, as
+well as such a thing can be proved, by the published correspondence
+between the pastor and his people, by the frank declarations of the
+pastor in his farewell address, and by a remarkable letter, which
+discussed in full the causes that led to the separation of the pastor
+and his flock. In this long and candid letter to the church, Mr. Ripley
+declared himself a Transcendentalist, and avowed his sympathy with
+movements larger than the Christian Church represented.
+
+The declaration was hardly necessary. Mr. Ripley was known to be the
+writer of the review of Martineau's "Rationale of Religious Enquiry,"
+which raised such heated controversy; his translation of Cousin's
+"Philosophical Miscellanies," with its important Introduction, had
+attracted the attention of literary circles; a volume of discourses,
+entitled "Discourses on the Philosophy of Religion," comprising seven
+sermons delivered in the regular course of his ministry, left no doubt
+in any mind respecting his position. The controversy with Andrews Norton
+on "The Latest Form of Infidelity," was carried on in 1840, the year
+before Mr. Ripley's ministry ended. The calmness of tone that
+characterized all these writings, the clearness and serenity of
+statement, the seemingly easy avoidance of extremes, the absence of
+passion, showed the supremacy of intellect over feeling. Yet of feeling
+there must have been a good deal. There was a great deal in the
+community; there was a great deal among the clergy of his denomination;
+that it had found expression within his own society, is betrayed in the
+farewell sermon; that his own heart was deeply touched, was confessed by
+the fact that on the very day after his parting words to his
+congregation were spoken--on March 29th, 1841--Mr. Ripley took up his
+new ministry at Brook Farm.
+
+The character of that Association has been described in a previous
+chapter, with as much minuteness of detail as is necessary, and the
+purposes of its inaugurators have been sufficiently indicated. The
+founder of it was not a "doctrinaire," but a philanthropist on ideal
+principles. With the systems of socialism current in Paris, he was at
+that period wholly unacquainted. The name of Charles Fourier was
+unfamiliar to him. He had faith in the soul, and in the soul's prophecy
+of good; he saw that the prophecy was unheeded, that society rested on
+principles which the soul abhorred; that between the visions of the
+spiritual philosophy and the bitter realities of vice, misery, sin, in
+human life, there was an unappeasable conflict; and he was resolved to
+do what one man might to create a new earth in preparation for a new
+heaven. He took the Gospel at its word, and went forth to demonstrate
+the power of its principles, by showing the Beatitudes to be something
+more substantial than dreams. His costly library, with all its beloved
+books, was offered for sale at public auction, and the price thereof,
+with whatever else he possessed, was consecrated to the cause of
+humanity that he had at heart. He had no children, and few ties of
+kindred; but the social position of the clergy was above any secular
+position in New England at that time; the prejudices and antipathies of
+the clerical order were stubborn; the leaders of opinion in state and
+church were conservative, to a degree it is difficult for us to believe;
+the path of the reformer was strewn with thorns and beset with
+difficulties most formidable to sensitive spirits. Mr. Emerson had
+resigned his ministry nine years before, and for the reason too that he
+was a Transcendentalist, but had retired to the peaceful walks of
+literature, and had made no actual assault on social institutions. Mr.
+Ripley associated himself at once with people of no worldly
+consideration, avowed principles that were voted vulgar in refined
+circles, and identified himself with an enterprise which the amiable
+called visionary, and the unamiable wild and revolutionary. But his
+conviction was clear, and his will was fixed. Sustained by the entire
+sympathy of a very noble woman, his wife--who was one with him in
+aspiration, purpose, and endeavor, till the undertaking ended--he put
+"the world" behind him, sold all, and followed the Master.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Ripley were the life of the Brook Farm Association. Their
+unfaltering energy, unfailing cheer, inexhaustible sweetness and gayety,
+availed to keep up the tone of the institution, to prevent its becoming
+common-place, and to retain there the persons on whose character the
+moral and intellectual standard depended. It was due to them that the
+experiment was tried as long as it was--six years;--that while it went
+on, it avoided, as it did, the usual scandal and reproach that bring
+ruin on schemes of that description; and that, when finally it ended in
+disaster, it commanded sympathy rather than contempt, and left a sweet
+memory behind. The originator was the last to leave the place of his
+toil and vain endeavor; he left it, having made all necessary provision
+for the discharge of debts, which only through arduous labors in
+journalism he was able afterwards to pay.
+
+In Mr. Ripley's mind the Idea was supreme. In 1844 he, with Mr. Dana and
+Mr. Channing, lectured and spoke on the principles of Association,--the
+foreign literature on the subject being more familiar to him
+then,--commended the doctrine of Fourier, and was prepared for a more
+sympathetic propagandism than he had meditated hitherto. In 1845, the
+"Harbinger" was started,--a weekly journal, devoted to Social and
+Political Progress; published by the Brook Farm Phalanx. The
+Prospectus, written by Mr. Ripley, made this announcement: "The
+principles of universal unity taught by Charles Fourier in their
+application to society, we believe are at the foundation of all genuine
+social progress; and it will ever be our aim to discuss and defend those
+principles without any sectarian bigotry, and in the catholic and
+comprehensive spirit of their great discoverer." An introductory notice
+by the same pen, among other things pertaining to the aims and
+intentions of the paper, contained this passage:
+
+     "The interests of Social Reform will be considered as paramount to
+     all others in whatever is admitted into the pages of the
+     "Harbinger." We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste
+     for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories,
+     to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the
+     down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men.
+     Every pulsation of our being vibrates in sympathy with the wrongs
+     of the toiling millions; and every wise effort for their speedy
+     enfranchisement will find in us resolute and indomitable advocates.
+     If any imagine from the literary tone of the preceding remarks that
+     we are indifferent to the radical movement for the benefit of the
+     masses which is the crowning glory of the nineteenth century, they
+     will soon discover their egregious mistake. To that movement,
+     consecrated by religious principle, sustained by an awful sense of
+     justice, and cheered by the brightest hopes of future good, all our
+     powers, talents, and attainments are devoted. We look for an
+     audience among the refined and educated circles, to which the
+     character of our paper will win its way; but we shall also be read
+     by the swart and sweaty artisan; the laborer will find in us
+     another champion; and many hearts struggling with the secret hope
+     which no weight of care and toil can entirely suppress, will pour
+     on us their benedictions, as we labor for the equal rights of all."
+
+In the four years of its existence, the paper was faithful to this grand
+and high sounding promise. A powerful company of writers contributed
+their labor to help forward the plan. The Journal was affluent and
+sparkling. The literary criticism was the work of able pens; the musical
+and art criticism was in the hands of the most competent judges in the
+country; the aesthetics were not neglected; the verse was excellent; but
+the social questions were of first consideration. These were never
+treated slightingly, and the treatment of them never deviated from the
+high standard proposed by the editors. The list of its contributors
+contained the names of Stephen Pearl Andrews, Albert Brisbane, W. H.
+Channing, W. E. Channing, Walter Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Geo. H.
+Calvert, J. J. Cooke, A. J. H. Duganne, C. P. Cranch, Geo. W. Curtis,
+Charles A. Dana, J. S. Dwight, Horace Greeley, Parke Godwin, F. H.
+Hedge, T. W. Higginson, M. E. Lazarus, J. R. Lowell, Osborn Macdaniel,
+Geo. Ripley, S. D. Robbins, L. W. Ryckman, F. G. Shaw, W. W. Story,
+Henry James, John G. Whittier, J. J. G. Wilkinson--a most remarkable
+collection of powerful names.
+
+The departments seem not to have been systematically arranged, but the
+writers sent what they had, the same writer furnishing articles on a
+variety of topics. Mr. F. G. Shaw published, in successive numbers, an
+admirable translation of George Sand's "Consuelo," and wrote against the
+iniquities of the principle of competition in trade. C. A. Dana noticed
+books, reported movements, criticized men and measures, translated
+poetry from the German, and sent verses of a mystical and sentimental
+character of his own. C. P. Cranch contributed poems and criticisms on
+art and music. J. S. Dwight paid attention to the musical department,
+but also wrote book reviews and articles on the social problem. W. H.
+Channing poured out his burning soul in denunciation of social wrong and
+painted in glowing colors the promise of the future. G. W. Curtis sent
+poetry and notes on literature and music in New York. T. W. Higginson
+printed there his "Hymn of Humanity." Messrs. Brisbane, Godwin and
+Greeley confined themselves to social problems, doing a large part of
+the heavy work. Mr. Ripley, the Managing Editor, supervised the whole;
+wrote much himself on the different aspects of Association; reported the
+progress of the cause at home and abroad; answered the objections that
+were current in the popular prejudice, and gave to the paper the
+encouraging tone of his cheery, earnest spirit.
+
+As interpreted by the "Harbinger," the cause of Association was
+hospitable and humane. The technicalities of special systems were
+avoided; dry discussions of theory and method were put aside; generous
+sympathy was shown towards philanthropic workers in other fields; the
+tone of wailing was never heard, and the anticipations of the future
+were steadily bright and bold. When reformers of a pronounced type, like
+the abolitionists, spoke of it slightingly as a "kid glove" journal that
+was afraid of soiling its fingers with ugly matters like slavery, the
+Associationists explained that their plan was the more comprehensive;
+that they struck at the root of every kind of slavery; and that the
+worst evils would disappear when their beneficent principle should be
+recognized. That the "Harbinger" should have lived no longer than it
+did, with such a corps of writers and so great a cause,--the last number
+is dated February 10, 1849,--may be accounted for by the feeble hold
+that Socialism had in this country. In Europe the hearts of the working
+people were in it. It originated among them, expressed their actual
+sorrows, answered their living questions, promised satisfaction to their
+wants, and predicted the only future they could imagine as in any way
+possible. Here it was an imported speculation; the working people were
+not driven to it for refuge from their misery; they did not ask the
+questions it proposed to answer, nor did it hold out prospects that
+gladdened their eyes. The advocates of it were cultivated men, literary
+and aesthetical, who represented the best the old world had to give,
+rather than the worst the New World had experienced; and their words met
+with no response from the multitudes in whose behoof they were spoken.
+America was exercised then by questions of awful moment. The agitation
+against slavery had taken hold of the whole country; it was in politics,
+in journalism, in literature, in the public hall and the parlor. Its
+issues were immediate and urgent. People had neither heads nor hearts
+for schemes of comprehensive scope that must be patiently meditated and
+matured for generations. No talents, no brilliancy, no earnestness even,
+would engage interest in what seemed visionary, however glorious the
+vision. The socialistic enterprises in America were all short lived.
+Brook Farm was an idyl; and in the days of epics, the idyl is easily
+forgotten.
+
+The decease of the "Harbinger" was the end of that phase of
+Transcendentalism. The dream of the kingdom of heaven faded. The
+apostles were dispersed. Some kept their faith and showed their fidelity
+in other places and other work. Three or four went into the Roman
+Church, and found rest on its ancient bosom. Others found a field for
+their talents in literature, which they beautified with their genius,
+and ennobled by their ideas. Others devoted themselves to journalism. Of
+the last was George Ripley. _The New York Tribune_ offered him the post
+of literary critic on its editorial staff. That position he has occupied
+for twenty-five years, in a way honorable to himself and to good
+letters. It has been in his power to aid the development of literature
+in America, in many ways, by encouraging young writers; by giving
+direction to ambitious but immature gifts; by erecting a standard of
+judgment, high, without being unreasonable, and strict, without being
+austere. A large acquaintance with books, a cultivated taste, a
+hospitable appreciation, a hearty love of good literary work, a cordial
+dislike of bad, a just estimation of the rights and duties of literary
+men, and the office they should fill in a republican community, have
+marked his administration of the department assigned to him. He has held
+it to be his duty to make intelligent reports of current literature,
+with enough of criticism to convey his own opinion of its character,
+without dictating opinions to others. Worthless books received their
+due, and worthy books received theirs in full measure. The books in
+which worth and worthlessness were united were discriminatingly handled,
+the emphasis being laid on the better qualities. Many of the reviews
+were essays, full of discernment. All showed that respect for mind which
+might be expected from one so carefully trained.
+
+Mr. Ripley has been true to the ideas with which he set out in his early
+life. His period of philosophical propagandism being over; his young
+enthusiasm having spent itself in experiments which trial proved to be
+premature, to say the least, if not essentially impracticable; his
+dreams having faded, when his efforts ended in disappointment, he
+retired from public view neither dispirited, nor morose. His interest in
+philosophy continues undiminished; his hope of man, though more subdued,
+is clear; his faith in the spiritual basis of religion is serene.
+Disappointment has not made him bitter, reckless or frivolous. His power
+of moral indignation at wrong and turpitude is unimpaired, though it no
+longer breaks out with the former vehemence. A cheerful wisdom gained by
+thought and experience of sorrow, tempers his judgment of men and
+measures. His confidence is in culture, in literature, generously
+interpreted and fostered, in ideas honestly entertained and freely
+expressed.
+
+The Transcendentalist keeps his essential faith. Generally the
+Transcendentalists have done this. It was a faith too deeply planted,
+too nobly illustrated, too fervent and beautiful in youth, to be laid
+aside in age. James Walker died in the ripeness of it; Parker died in
+the strength of it; others--old and grave men now--live in the joy of
+it. The few who have relapsed, have done so, some under pressure of
+worldly seduction--they having no depth of root--and some under the
+influence of scientific teaching, which has shaken the foundation of
+their psychology. The original disciples, undismayed by the signs of
+death, still believe in the Master, and live in the hope of his
+resurrection.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+MINOR PROPHETS.
+
+
+The so-called Minor Prophets of the Old Testament owed that designation
+to the brevity, rather than to the insignificance of their utterances.
+They were among the most glowing and exalted of the Hebrew bards, less
+sustained in their flight than their great fellows, but with as much of
+the ancient fire as any of them. It is proper to say as much as this to
+justify the application of the title to the men who claim mention now as
+prominent in the transcendental movement.
+
+William Henry Channing is not quite fairly ranked among minor prophets,
+even on this explanation, for he has been copious as well as intense. A
+nephew of the great Doctor Channing--a favorite nephew, on account of
+his moral earnestness, and the close sympathy he felt with views that
+did honor to human nature and glorified the existence of man,--he grew
+up in the purest atmosphere that New England supplied--the most
+intellectual, the most quickening. He was born in the same year with
+Theodore Parker, and but three months earlier, and was native to the
+same spiritual climate. He was educated at Harvard, and prepared for the
+ministry at Cambridge Divinity School, where the new ideas were
+fermenting. He was graduated the year before Parker entered. His name
+was conspicuous among the agitators of the new faith. He was a
+contributor to the "Dial." In 1848 he published the Memoirs of his
+uncle, in three volumes, proving his fitness for the task by the
+sincerity in which he discharged it. In 1840 he translated Jouffroy's
+Ethics, in two volumes, for Ripley's "Specimens of Foreign Standard
+Literature." In 1852 he took part in writing the Memoirs of Margaret
+Fuller, the second volume being chiefly his work. "The Life and Writings
+of James H. Perkins," of Cincinnati, a pioneer of rationalism at the
+West, came more fitly from his pen than from any other. In the "Western
+Messenger," which he edited for one year; the "Present," and the "Spirit
+of the Age," short-lived journals, of which he was the soul; in the
+"Harbinger," to which he was a generous and sympathetic contributor--he
+exhibited a fine quality of genius. The intensity of his nature, his
+open-mindedness, frankness, and spiritual sensitiveness, his fervency of
+aspiration and his outspokenness, made the office of settled pastor and
+steady routine preacher distasteful to him. He was a prophet who went
+from place to place, with a message of joy and hope. Meadville,
+Cincinnati, Nashua, Rochester, Boston, and New York, were scenes of his
+pastoral service. His preaching was every where attended by the clearest
+heads and the deepest hearts. In New York his society was composed of
+free elements altogether, come-outers, reformers, radicals of every
+description. His command of language, his free delivery, his musical
+voice, his expressive countenance, his noble air, his extraordinary
+power of kindling enthusiasm, his affluence and boldness of thought, his
+high standard of character, made him in his prime an enchanting speaker.
+
+Very early in his career Mr. Channing committed himself to the
+transcendental philosophy as interpreted by the French School, for he
+possessed the swiftness of perception, the felicity of exposition, the
+sensibility to effects, the passion for clean statement and plausible
+generalization that distinguish the French genius from the German and
+the English. The introduction to Jouffroy's Ethics contained the
+principles of the French school of philosophy, which, to judge from his
+approving tone, he had himself accepted:
+
+That Psychology is the basis of Philosophy.
+
+That the highest problems of Ontology may be solved by inductions from
+the facts which Psychology ascertains.
+
+That Psychology and the History of Philosophy reciprocally explain each
+other.
+
+With these ideas firmly fixed in his mind he went forth on a prophetic
+mission, to which he remained unfalteringly true.
+
+We saw him first at a convention in Boston called by the reformers who
+demanded the abolition of the gallows. There were several
+speakers--Edwin H. Chapin, then in the days of his moral enthusiasm,
+Wendell Phillips, already known as an agitator and an orator--all spoke
+well from their different grounds, but the image of Channing is the most
+distinct in mind to-day. His manner, attitude, speech, are all
+recalled. The arguments he used abide in memory. He wasted words on no
+incidental points of detail, but at once took his stand on the principle
+of the idealist that man is a sacred being, and life a sacred gift, and
+love the rule of the divine law. Chapin thundered; Phillips criticized
+and stung; Channing burned with a pure enthusiasm that lifted souls into
+a celestial air and made all possibilities of justice seem practicable.
+He did not argue or denounce; he prophesied. There was not a word of
+scorn or detestation; but there were passages of touching power,
+describing the influence of gentleness and the response that the hardest
+hearts would give to it, that shamed the listeners out of their
+vindictiveness. On the anti-slavery platform his attitude was the same.
+There was no more persuasive speaker.
+
+In the controversy between the Unitarians of the transcendental and
+those of the opposite school, Mr. Channing's sympathies were with the
+former, but he took no very prominent public part in it. He was averse
+to controversy; questions of sectarian opinion and organization had
+little interest for him. His mind lived in broad principles and positive
+ideas; the method he believed in was that of winning minds to the truth
+by generous appeals, and so planting out error. Against everything like
+injustice or illiberality, his protest was eager, but he was willing to
+leave polemics to others; what he said was in the strain of faith in
+larger and more inclusive beliefs. He had a passion for catholicity,
+which came partly from his temperament, and partly from the eclecticism
+he professed. His word was reconciling, like his influence, which was
+never associated with partisanship.
+
+Mr. Channing was early attracted to the bearings of the spiritual
+philosophy on the problems of society, the elevation of the working
+classes, the rescue of humanity from pauperism and crime. As an
+interpreter of Christian socialism his activity was incessant. He took
+part in the discussions that led to the experiment of Brook Farm, and
+was acquainted intimately with the projecting of it, having himself
+entire faith in the reorganization of society on principles of equity.
+Had circumstances permitted--he was then minister to a church in
+Cincinnati, and much occupied with professional duties--he would have
+connected himself with the Brook Farm Association. As it was, he visited
+it whenever he could, spending several days at a time. In 1844, when the
+union was formed with the New York Socialists and the leaders went out
+to enlighten and stimulate public sentiment on the subject, Mr. Channing
+did faithful work as a lecturer. He was president of the Boston Union of
+Associationists, and wrote a book on the Christian Church and Moral
+Reform. From the first, being of a speculative, philosophical and
+experimental turn of mind, he entertained more systematic views than
+were common among New England socialists, but the principle of love was
+always more to him than opinions or schemes. His views coincided with
+Fourier, but his heart was Christian. On the failure of the associated
+plans of his friends, and the cessation of interest in Socialism on this
+side of the Atlantic, his thoughts turned towards the Christian Church
+as the providentially appointed means of obtaining what the Utopians had
+failed of reaching. He was never a Churchman; never abandoned the views
+that made him an independent preacher; but he never lost faith in the
+ministry; his hopes turned toward the institutions of religion as having
+in them the ideal potencies he trusted; he looked for faith and love in
+the Gospel, and sought to draw out the lessons of charity that were
+inculcated by Jesus; to deliver these from the hands of the formalists
+and sectarians; to make peace between parties and churches; to discover
+common ground for all believers to stand and labor on--was his aim. Had
+his faith not been inclusive of all forms of the religious sentiment, he
+might, in England, where he resided so long, have been a
+broad-churchman. But Christianity, in his view, was but one of many
+religions, all essentially divine, and he could not belong to any church
+less wide than the church universal.
+
+During a portion of the civil war, Mr. Channing was in Washington
+preaching the gospel of liberty and loyalty, and laboring in the
+hospitals with unflagging devotion, thankful for an opportunity to put
+into work the enthusiasm of his passionate soul. Later, he revisited his
+native country, and showed his interest in the cause of religious
+freedom and unity.
+
+The name of Channing is conspicuous in the history of American idealism.
+Another nephew of Dr. Channing, William Ellery Channing,--a man of
+original force of mind and character, a bold adventurer in literature
+and life, of independent ideas, principles and deeds, an abolitionist,
+a friend of Garrison and Parker, reformer and philosopher, author of
+many volumes--wrote poetry and prose for the "Dial" and, in 1873, a life
+of Henry Thoreau.
+
+In the list of the Transcendentalists Cyrus Augustus Bartol must not be
+forgotten, a soaring mind enamored of thoughts on divine things,
+inextricably caught in the toils of speculation. Acute and brilliant,
+but wayward; with a quick eye for analogies, fanciful and eccentric, of
+clear intuitions, glimpses, perceptions astonishingly luminous; but
+without fixed allegiance to system, and therefore difficult to classify
+under any school. In the Unitarian controversy, which was a tryer of
+spirits, it was not always plain to observers in which camp he belonged;
+not that his fundamental principle was unsteady, but because his curious
+and critical mind was detained by considerations that others did not
+see; and his absolute sincerity gave expression to the moods of feeling
+as they passed over him. Some words in Parker's farewell letter to him
+seem to imply that at critical junctures they had been on opposite
+sides, but the difference could scarcely have touched fundamental
+truths. No man was further from the school of Locke, Paley or Bentham
+than C. A. Bartol. His Transcendentalism had a cast of its own; it was
+not made after any pattern; it took its color from an original genius
+illuminated by various reading of books, and by deep meditation in the
+privacy of the closet, and the companionship of nature of which he is a
+child-like worshipper. No wealth of human sympathy prevents his being a
+solitary. His song is lyrical; his prophecy drops like a voice from the
+clouds. In the agitations of his time he has had small share; organized
+and associated effort did not attract him. To many he represents the
+model Transcendentalist, for he seems a man who lives above the
+clouds,--not always _above_ them, either.
+
+His faith in the soul has never known eclipse. It waxes strong by its
+wrestling, and becomes jubilant in proportion as nature and life try to
+stare it out of countenance. Ballast is wings to him.
+
+     "Transcendentalism relies on those ideas in the mind which are laws
+     in the life. Pantheism is said to sink man and nature in God;
+     Materialism to sink God and man in nature, and Transcendentalism to
+     sink God and nature in man. But the Transcendentalist at least is
+     belied and put in jail by the definition which is so neat at the
+     expense of truth. He made consciousness, not sense, the ground of
+     truth; and in the present devotion to physical science, and turn of
+     philosophy to build the universe on foundations of matter, we need
+     to vindicate and reassert his promise. Is the soul reared on the
+     primitive rock? or is no rock primitive, but the deposit of
+     spirit--therefore in its lowest form alive, and ever rising into
+     organism to reach the top of the eternal circle again, as in the
+     well one bucket goes down empty and the other rises full? The
+     mistake is to make the everlasting things subjects of argument
+     instead of sight."
+
+     "Our soul is older than our organism. It precedes its clothing. It
+     is the cause, not the consequence, of its material elements; else,
+     as materialists understand, it does not exist."
+
+     "What is it that accepts misery from the Most High, defends the
+     Providence that inflicts its woes, espouses its chastiser's cause,
+     purges itself in the pit of its misery of all contempt of His
+     commands, and makes its agonies the beams and rafters of the
+     triumph it builds? It is an immortal principle. It is an
+     indestructible essence. It is part and parcel of the Divinity it
+     adores. It can no more die than he can. It needs no more insurance
+     of life than its author does. Prove its title? It is proof itself
+     of all things else. It is substantive, and everything adjective
+     beside. It is the kingdom all things will be added to."
+
+This was published in 1872, and proves that one Transcendentalist has
+kept his faith.
+
+James Freeman Clarke as little deserves to be ranked among the Minor
+Prophets as any, for he was one of the earliest Transcendentalists, a
+contemporary and intimate ally of Parker, a co-worker with Channing, a
+close friend and correspondent of Miss Fuller, a sympathizer with Alcott
+in his attempts to spiritualize education, a frequent contributor to the
+"Dial," the intellectual fellow of the brilliant minds that made the
+epoch what it was. But his interest was not confined to the school, nor
+did the technicalities or details of the transcendental movement
+embarrass him; his catholic mind took in opinions of all shades, and men
+of all communions. His place is among theologians and divines rather
+than among philosophers. But, though churchly tastes led him away from
+the company of thinkers where he intellectually belonged, and an
+unfailing common sense saved him from the extravagances into which some
+of them fell, a Transcendentalist he was, and an uncompromising one. The
+intuitive philosophy was his guide. It gave him his assurance of
+spiritual truths; it interpreted for him the gospels and Jesus; it
+inspired his endeavors to reconcile beliefs, to promote unity among the
+discordant sects, to enlighten and redeem mankind. His mission has been
+that of a spiritual peace-maker. But while doing this, he has worked
+faithfully at particular causes; was an avowed and earnest abolitionist
+in the anti-slavery days; was ever a disbeliever in war, an enemy of
+vindictive and violent legislation, a hearty friend and laborer in the
+field of woman's election to the full privileges of culture and
+citizenship; a man in whom faith, hope and charity abounded and abound;
+a man of intellectual convictions which made a groundwork for his life.
+
+Mr. Clarke is a conspicuous example of the way in which the intuitive
+philosophy leavened the whole mind. It associated him closely both with
+radicals and conservatives; with the former, because his principle
+involved faith in progress; with the latter, because it implied respect
+for the progress of past times which institutions preserved. His
+conservatism attested the fidelity of his radicalism, and both avouched
+the loyalty of his idealism. The conservative aspect of
+Transcendentalism which was exhibited in the case of Mr. Channing, who
+never left the Christian Church, was yet more strikingly illustrated by
+Mr. Clarke. All his books, but particularly the "Ten Great Religions,"
+show the power of the transcendental idea to render justice to all forms
+of faith, and give positive interpretations to doctrines obscure and
+revolting. It detects the truth in things erroneous, the good in things
+evil.
+
+A more remarkable instance of this tendency is Samuel Johnson's volume
+on the religions of India. None save a Transcendentalist could have
+succeeded in extracting so much deep spiritual meaning from the symbols
+and practices of those ancient faiths. The intuitive idea takes its
+position at the centre, and at once all blazes with glory.
+
+     "Man is divinely prescient of his infinity of mind as soon as he
+     begins to meditate and respire."
+
+     "That a profound theistic instinct, the intuition of a divine and
+     living whole, is involved in the primitive mental processes we are
+     here studying, I hold to be beyond all question."
+
+     "From the first stages of its growth onwards, the spirit weaves its
+     own environment; nature is forever the reflex of its life, and what
+     but an unquenchable aspiration to truth could have made it choose
+     Light as its first and dearest symbol, reaching out a child's hand
+     to touch and clasp it, with the joyous cry, 'Tis mine, mine to
+     create, mine to adore!'"
+
+     "Man could not forget that pregnant dawn of revelation, the
+     discovery of his own power to rekindle the life of the universe."
+
+     "Man is here dimly aware of the truth that he makes and remakes his
+     own conception of the divine; that the revealing of duty must come
+     in the natural activity of his human powers."
+
+     "As far back as we can trace the life of man, we find the river of
+     prayer and praise flowing as naturally as it is flowing now; we
+     cannot find its beginning, because we cannot find the beginning of
+     the soul."
+
+These passages give the key to Mr. Johnson's explanation of the oriental
+religions, and to his little monograph on "The Worship of Jesus," and to
+the printed lectures, addresses, essays, sermons, in which subjects of
+religion, philosophy, political and social reform have been profoundly
+treated.
+
+Mr. Johnson came forward when the excitement of transcendentalism was
+passing by; the "Dial" no longer marked the intellectual hours; the
+Unitarian controversy had spent its violence. It was in part owing to
+this, but more to the spiritual character of his genius, that his
+Transcendentalism was free from polemic and dogmatic elements; but it
+was none the less positive and definite for that--if anything, it was
+more so. In the divinity school he was an ardent disciple of the
+intuitive philosophy. On leaving Cambridge he became an independent
+minister of the most pronounced views, but of most reverent spirit; a
+"fideist" or faith man, he loved to call himself; his aim and effort was
+to awaken the spiritual nature, to interpret the spiritual philosophy,
+and to apply the spiritual laws to all personal, domestic and social
+concerns. Like all the Transcendentalists, he was a reformer, and an
+enthusiastic one; interested in liberty and progress, but primarily in
+intellectual emancipation and the increase of rational ideas. The
+alteration of the lot was incidental to the regeneration of the person.
+So absolute is his faith in the soul that he renders poetic justice to
+its manifestations, seeing indications of its presence where others see
+none, and glorifying where others are inclined to pity. The ideal side
+is never turned away from him. He discerned the angel in the native
+African, the saint in the slave, the devotee in the idolater. During the
+civil war, his faith in the triumph of justice and the establishment of
+a pure republic, converted every defeat into a victory; as in the vision
+of Ezekiel, the Son of Man was ever visible riding on the monstrous
+beasts. If at any time his sympathy has seemed withdrawn from any class
+of social reformers, it has been because the phase of reform they
+presented held forth no promise of intellectual or moral benefit.
+
+Mr. Johnson illustrates the individualism of the Transcendentalist.
+While Mr. Channing trusted in social combinations, and Mr. Clarke put
+his faith in organized religion, he had a clear eye to the integrity of
+the separate soul. He attended no conventions, joined no societies,
+worked with no associations, had confidence in no parties, sects,
+schemes, or combinations, but nursed his solitary thought, delivered his
+personal message, bore his private witness, and there rested.
+
+Were Mr. Johnson more known, were his thoughts less interior, his genius
+less retiring, his method less private, his form of statement less close
+and severe, he would be one of the acknowledged and conspicuous leaders
+of the ideal philosophy in the United States, as he is one of the most
+discerning, penetrating, sinewy, and heroic minds of his generation.
+
+A contemporary and intimate friend of Johnson, a Transcendentalist
+equally positive, but of more mystical type, is Samuel Longfellow. The
+two are interestingly contrasted, and by contrast, blended. Between them
+they collected and published a book of hymns--"Hymns of the Spirit"--to
+which both contributed original pieces, remarkably rich in sentiment,
+and of singular poetical merit. Johnson's were the more intellectual,
+Longfellow's the more tender; Johnson's the more aspiring, Longfellow's
+the more devout; Johnson's the more heroic and passionate, Longfellow's
+the more mystical and reflective. Like his friend, Longfellow is quiet
+and retiring--not so scholarly, not so learned, but meditative. His
+sermons are lyrics; his writings are serene contemplations, not white
+and cold, but glowing with interior and suppressed radiance. A recluse
+and solitary he is, too, though sunny and cheerful; a thinker, but not a
+dry one; of intellectual sympathies, warm and generous; of feeble
+intellectual antipathies, being rather unconscious of systems that are
+foreign to him than hostile to them. He enjoys his own intellectual
+world so much, it is so large, rich, beautiful, and satisfying, that he
+is content to stay in it, to wander up and down in it, and hold
+intercourse with its inhabitants; yet he understands his own system
+well, is master of its ideas, and abundantly competent to defend them,
+as his essays published in the "Radical" during its short existence,
+testify. He has published little; ill health has prevented his taking a
+forward place among reformers and teachers; but where he has ministered,
+his influence has been deep and pure. Not few are the men and women who
+ascribe to him their best impulses, and owe him a debt of lasting
+gratitude for the moral faith and intellectual enthusiasm he awakened in
+them.
+
+Another remarkable man, of the same school, but of still different
+temper--a man who would have been greatly distinguished but for the
+disabilities of sickness--is David A. Wasson. Though contemporary, he
+came forward later; but when he came, it was with a power that gave
+promise of the finest things. As his latent faith in the intuitive
+philosophy acquired strength, he broke away from the Orthodoxy in which
+he had been reared, with an impulse that carried him beyond the lines of
+every organized body in Christendom, and bore him into the regions of an
+intellectual faith, where he found satisfaction. He has been a diligent
+writer, chiefly on Ethical and Philosophical themes, on the border land
+of theology. His published pamphlets and sermons on religious questions,
+even the best of them, give scarcely more than an indication of his
+extraordinary powers. He is a poet too, of fine quality; not a singer of
+sentimental songs, nor a spinner of elegant fancies, but a discerner of
+the spirit of beauty. "All's Well," "Ideals," "The Plover," "At Sea,"
+are worthy of a place in the best collections.
+
+It has been the appointed task of Mr. Wasson to be on the alert against
+assaults on the intuitive philosophy from the side of material science.
+Like Transcendentalists generally, he has accepted the principles of his
+philosophy on the testimony of consciousness and as self-evidencing; but
+more than most, he has regarded them as essential to the maintenance of
+truths of the spiritual order; and as a believer in those truths, he has
+been holily jealous of the influence of men like Herbert Spencer, Mill,
+Bain, and the latest school of experimental psychologists. His doctrine,
+in its own essence, and as related to the objective or material system,
+is closely stated in the essay on the "Nature of Religion," contained
+in the volume, entitled "Freedom and Fellowship in Religion," recently
+published by the Free Religious Association. It is not easily quotable,
+but must be read through and attentively. Whoever will take pains to do
+that, may understand, not merely what Mr. Wasson's position is, but what
+fine analysis the intuitive philosophy can bring to its defence. A
+volume of Mr. Wasson's prose essays and poems would be a valuable
+contribution to the literature of Transcendentalism; for he is, on the
+whole, the most capable critic on its side. Unfortunately for the
+breadth of his fame and the reach of his power, he writes for thinkers,
+and the multitude will never follow in his train.
+
+The names of the disciples and prophets of Transcendentalism multiply as
+they are told off. There is T. W. Higginson, the man of letters--whom
+every body knows--a born Transcendentalist, and an enthusiastic one,
+from the depth of his moral nature, the quickness of his poetic
+sensibility, his love of the higher culture. His sympathies early led
+him to the schools of the ideal philosophy. He edited the works of
+Epictetus; speaks glowingly on the "Sympathy of Religions;" is
+interested in the pacification of the sects and churches on the basis of
+spiritual fellowship in truths of universal import; lectures
+appreciatingly on Mohammed and Buddha; holds Spencer in light esteem by
+the side of Emerson. In the controversial period--which was not ended
+when he left the Divinity School--he was entirely committed to the party
+of progress. Hennell's "Christian Theism" lay on his table at Divinity
+Hall. He was an ally of Parker; an abolitionist; the colonel of a black
+regiment in the civil war; and from the first has been a champion of
+woman's claim to fulness of culture and the largest political rights. A
+clear and powerful mind, that in controversy would make its mark, if
+controversy were to its taste, as it is not.
+
+Earlier mention should have been made of John Weiss, who wrote
+philosophical articles thirty years ago, that won encomiums from the
+most competent judges--a student at Heidelberg, a scholar of Kant, and
+an admirer of his system. He too has a paper on "Religion and Science,"
+in the volume of "Freedom and Fellowship," which will convince the most
+skeptical that the days of Transcendentalism are not numbered; a man of
+insight; poetical, according to Emerson's definition; supremely
+intellectual, capable of treading, with steady step, the hair lines of
+thought; a poet too, as verses in the "Radical" bear witness. The
+Philosophical and AEsthetic Letters and Essays of Schiller were presented
+to the American public by his hand. He wrote the preface to the American
+edition of Smith's Memoir of Fichte. The "Boston Quarterly," the
+"Massachusetts Quarterly," the "Christian Examiner," the "Radical," were
+illuminated by his brilliant thoughts on subjects of religious
+philosophy. The volume entitled "American Religion," published in 1871,
+shows the power of the spiritual philosophy to extract noble meanings
+from the circumstances of the New World. Weiss treads the border-land
+between religion and science, recognizing the claims of both, and
+bringing to their adjustment as fine intellectual scales as any of his
+contemporaries. His method is peculiar to himself; his is not the
+exulting mood of Emerson, or the defiant mood of Wasson; it is purely
+poetic, imaginative. The doctrine of the divine immanence is glorious in
+his eyes; the faith in personal immortality is taken into the inner
+citadel of metaphysics, where Parker seldom penetrated.
+
+These men, Weiss and Wasson and Higginson, nursed in the transcendental
+school, thoroughly imbued with its principles, committed to them, wedded
+to them by the conflicts they waged in their defence when they were
+assailed by literalists, dogmatists, and formalists, look out now upon
+the advancing ranks of the new materialism as the holders of a royal
+fortress looked out on a host of insurgents; as the king and queen of
+France looked out on the revolution from the palace at Versailles: the
+onset of the new era they instinctively dread, feeling that dignity,
+princeliness, and spiritual worth are at stake. They will fight
+admirably to the last; but should they be defeated, it is yet possible
+that the revolution may bring compensations to humanity, which will make
+good the overthrow of their "diademed towers."
+
+In these sketches of transcendental leaders--as in this study of the
+transcendental movement,--few have been included but those whom the
+intuitive philosophy drew away from their former church connections and
+gathered into a party by themselves--a party of protestants against
+literalism and formalism. The transcendental philosophy in its main
+ideas, was held by eminent orthodox divines who accepted it as entirely
+in accordance with the Christian scheme, and used it in fact as an
+efficient support for the doctrines of the church. The most eminent
+divines of New England did this, and were considered entirely orthodox
+in doing it, their Christian faith gaining warmth and color from the
+intuitive system. As has already been said, the Trinitarian scheme has
+close affinities with Platonism. But none of these men called themselves
+or were called Transcendentalists. The Transcendentalist substituted the
+principles of his Philosophy and the inferences therefrom for the creed
+of the church, and became a separatist. With him the soul superseded the
+church; the revelations of the soul took the place of bible, creed and
+priesthood. The men that have been named all did this, with the
+exception of James Freeman Clarke, who adhered to the ministry and the
+church. But his intimacy with the transcendental leaders, and his
+cooperation with them in some of their most important works, to say
+nothing of the unique position his transcendental ideas compelled him to
+assume, as well in ecclesiastical matters as in social reform, entitle
+him to mention. Convers Francis--parish minister at Watertown from 1819
+till 1842, and Parkman, professor of Pulpit Eloquence and the Pastoral
+Care at Cambridge from 1842 till 1863--though never conspicuous either
+as preacher or minister, and never recognized as a representative
+apostle, was influential as a believer in the spiritual philosophy,
+among young men. To him Theodore Parker acknowledged his debt; to him
+successive classes of divinity students owed the stimulus and direction
+that carried them into the transcendental ranks; Johnson, Longfellow,
+Higginson were his pupils at Cambridge, and carried thence ideas which
+he had shaped if not originated. In many things conservative,
+disagreeing on some points with Emerson, whom he revered and loved as a
+man, regretting much that seemed sarcastic, arrogant, derisive in
+Parker's "Discourse of Religion," he gave his full assent to the
+principles of the intuitive philosophy, and used them as the pillars of
+Christianity. Had he been as electric and penetrating as he was truthful
+and obedient, high-minded and sincere, hearty and simple, he would have
+been a force as well as an influence. In 1836 he foresaw the rupture
+between "the Old or English school belonging to the sensual and empiric
+philosophy,--and the New or German school, belonging to the spiritual
+philosophy," and gave all his sympathy to the latter as having the most
+of truth. He was the senior member of the "Transcendental Club,"
+composed of the liberal thinkers who met to discuss literary and
+spiritual subjects on the ground of reason and the soul's intuitive
+perceptions. With deep interest he followed the course of speculative
+and practical reform to the close of his life. Some, of whom he was not
+one, engaged in the discussions for a little while, attended the
+meetings, and set forth bold opinions, but retired within their close
+fellowships as soon as plans for propagandism or schemes of organization
+were proposed. Their sympathies were literary and within the recognized
+limits of literature; but they had either too little courage of
+conviction, or too little conviction, to depart from accustomed ways or
+break with existing associations. The number of professed
+transcendentalists in the restricted sense, was never large, and, after
+the first excitement, did not greatly increase. There was but one
+generation of them. The genuine transcendentalists became so in their
+youth, ripened into full conviction in middle life, and, as a rule,
+continued so to old age. The desertions from the faith were not many.
+Half a dozen perhaps became catholics; as many became episcopalians; but
+by far the greater part maintained their principles and remained serene
+dissenters, "in the world, but not of it."
+
+Transcendentalism was an episode in the intellectual life of New
+England; an enthusiasm, a wave of sentiment, a breath of mind that
+caught up such as were prepared to receive it, elated them, transported
+them, and passed on,--no man knowing whither it went. Its influence on
+thought and life was immediate and powerful. Religion felt it,
+literature, laws, institutions. To the social agitations of forty years
+ago it was invaluable as an inspiration. The various reforms owed
+everything to it. New England character received from it an impetus that
+never will be spent. It made young men see visions and old men dream
+dreams. There were mounts of Transfiguration in those days, upon which
+multitudes thought they communed visibly with lawgivers and prophets.
+They could not stay there always, but the memory will never cease to be
+glorious. Transcendentalism as a special phase of thought and feeling
+was of necessity transient--having done its work it terminated its
+existence. But it did its work, and its work was glorious. Even its
+failures were necessary as showing what could not be accomplished, and
+its extravagances as defining the boundaries of wise experiment. Its
+successes amply redeemed them all, and would have redeemed them had they
+been more glaring and grotesque. Had it bequeathed nothing more than the
+literature that sprung from it, and the lives of the men and women who
+had their intellectual roots in it, it would have conferred a lasting
+benefit on America.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+LITERATURE.
+
+
+A few words on the literary fruits of Transcendentalism will fitly close
+this history. To gather them all would be exceedingly difficult, but
+that is not necessary, and will not be required. The chief results have
+already been indicated. The indirect influence may be left unestimated
+in detail. Transcendentalism has more than justified itself in
+literature. The ten volumes of Emerson's writings, including the two
+volumes of poetry, are a literature by themselves; a classic literature
+that loses no charm by age, and which years prepare new multitudes of
+readers to enjoy.
+
+The writings of Theodore Parker contain much that entitles them to a
+permanent place in letters. Could they be sifted, compressed, strained,
+the incidental and personal portion discarded, and the human alone
+preserved, the remainder would interest, for many years yet, a numerous
+class of men. In their present condition they are too diffuse, as well
+as too voluminous and miscellaneous to be manageable. The sermon style
+is unsuited to literature, and Parker's sermon style was especially so,
+from its excessive redundancy. He paid little heed to the literary laws
+in his compositions, which were all designed for immediate effect.
+Aside from the fatal injury that the process must do to the intellectual
+harmony of the work, there is an objection to abbreviating and
+abstracting when an author does not perform the task for himself, for no
+other is credited with ability or judgment to do it for him. In Parker's
+case the difficulty would be more than commonly great, for the reason
+that it is not a question of omitting volumes, or even chapters, but of
+straining the contents of pages,--"boiling down" masses of material,
+till the spiritual residue alone is left. There is no likelihood that
+such a task will ever be performed, and therefore his writings must be
+placed in the rank of occasional literature, valuable for many days, but
+not precious for generations.
+
+Brownson's writings were astonishingly able, particularly his
+discussions in the Boston "Quarterly Review;" but their interest ceased
+with their occasion. His philosophical pieces have no value. They served
+polemically an incidental purpose, but having no merit of idea or
+construction, they perished.
+
+The papers of Mr. Alcott in "Tablets" and "Concord Days," are thoughtful
+and quaint, written with a lucid simplicity that will always possess a
+charm for a small class of people; but they have not the breadth of
+humanity that commends writings to the general acceptance; nor have they
+the raciness that makes books of their class spicy and aromatic to the
+literary epicures who never tire of Selden or Sir Thomas Browne.
+
+The writings of Margaret Fuller possess a lasting value, and will
+continue to be read for their wit and wisdom, when those of her more
+ambitious companions are forgotten. For she treated ever-recurring
+themes in a living way--vigorous and original, but human. Her taste was
+educated by study of the Greek classics, and she had the appreciation of
+form that belongs to the literary order of mind. Her writings are not
+for those who read as they run, but for those who read for instruction
+and suggestion. As the number of such increases, it is not unreasonable
+to expect an increase in her audience. With her, thinking and talking
+were serious matters. She discussed nothing in a spirit of frivolity;
+her thoughts came from a penetrating, and not from a merely acute mind;
+the trains of reflection that she started are still in motion, from the
+momentum she gave, and the goal she aimed at is not yet discerned by
+professed disciples of her own ideas.
+
+The "Dial" is a treasury of literary wealth. There are pieces in it of
+prose and verse that should not and will not be lost. The character for
+oddity and extravagance which Transcendentalism bore in its day, and has
+borne on the strength of tradition ever since, would have to be borne no
+longer, if the contents of that remarkable magazine could be submitted
+to the calmer judgment of to-day. Not that the sixteen rich numbers
+contain a great deal that would be pleasing to the hasty mental habit of
+this generation, but to the lovers of earnest thinking and eloquent
+writing they have the flavor of a choice intellectual vintage. It is the
+misfortune of periodical literature to be ephemeral. The magazine sows,
+but does not harvest. It brings thoughts suddenly to the light, but
+buries them in season for the next issue, which must have its turn to
+live. Volumes that are compiled from magazines have lost their bloom.
+The chapters have already discharged their virtue, and spent their
+perfume on the air; the smell of the "old numbers" clings to the pages,
+which are not of to-day, but of the day before yesterday. We call for
+living mind, and fancy that butterflies, because we see them fluttering
+in the garden, are more alive than the phoenix that has risen unscathed
+from the ashes of consuming fires.
+
+The thoughts of William Henry Channing, though keen, brilliant, of great
+potency in their time, and admirable in expression, were addressed to
+the exigencies of the hour, and absorbed by them. Such as were committed
+to paper in the "Harbinger," the "Spirit of the Age," and other
+periodicals, will never be heard of again; and such as were printed in
+books passed from memory with the themes he dealt with. His biographical
+works deserve a place with the prominent contributions of that
+department.
+
+The poetry of William Ellery Channing has a recognized place in American
+literature, though much of it has disappeared. Dana's "Household Book of
+Poetry" contains a single piece of his on "Death," that is characterized
+by a depth of sentiment and a richness of expression, which his more
+distinguished contemporary, Mr. Bryant, does not surpass. Mr. Emerson's
+"Parnassus" contains eight, the last of which, entitled "A Poet's Hope,"
+closes with the wonderful line--
+
+    "If my bark sink, 'tis to another sea."
+
+Of Cranch's poems, several have been adopted by collectors,--notably the
+lines--
+
+    "Thought is deeper than all speech--
+       Feeling deeper than all thought;
+     Soul to soul can never teach
+       What unto itself was taught."
+
+Weiss, Wasson, and Higginson are true artists in letters. The essays of
+the last named of the three are the best known, partly by reason of
+their greater popularity of theme; but Mr. Wasson's discussions on
+ethical and philosophical subjects are distinguished by their luminous
+quality. Except for the vein of unhopefulness--partly due to ill
+health--that pervades them, the chill communicated by the regions he
+sails by, three or four of them would, without hesitation, be classed
+among the gems of speculative literature. The best work of Weiss, his
+lectures on the Greek Ideas for example, stands apart by itself, perhaps
+unrivalled as an attempt to unveil the glory of the ancient mythology.
+The interpretation of religious symbols is his province, where, by the
+power of "sympathetic perception,"--to use Mr. Wasson's fine phrase--he
+penetrates the secret of mysteries, and brings the soul of dark enigmas
+to the light; and his beauty of expression more than restores to the
+imagination the splendors which the unpoetic interpreter reduces to
+meretricious fancy.
+
+The influence of Transcendentalism on pulpit literature--if there be
+such a thing--has probably been sufficiently indicated; but the
+privilege of printing a sermon of Mr. Emerson's--the only one ever
+published, the famous one, that was the occasion of his leaving the
+ministry and adopting the profession of literature--affords opportunity
+for a special illustration. The sermon--which is interesting in itself,
+from the subject, the occasion that called it forth, the insight it
+gives into Mr. Emerson's mind and character--is interesting as an
+example of the method and spirit which Transcendentalism introduced into
+discussions that are usually dry and often angry.
+
+     The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and
+     peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.--ROMANS XIV. 17.
+
+In the history of the Church no subject has been more fruitful of
+controversy than the Lord's Supper. There never has been any unanimity
+in the understanding of its nature, nor any uniformity in the mode of
+celebrating it. Without considering the frivolous questions which have
+been lately debated as to the posture in which men should partake of it;
+whether mixed or unmixed wine should be served; whether leavened or
+unleavened bread should be broken; the questions have been settled
+differently in every church, who should be admitted to the feast, and
+how often it should be prepared. In the Catholic Church, infants were at
+one time permitted and then forbidden to partake; and, since the ninth
+century, the laity receive the bread only, the cup being reserved to the
+priesthood. So, as to the time of the solemnity. In the fourth Lateran
+Council, it was decreed that any believer should communicate at least
+once in a year--at Easter. Afterwards it was determined that this
+Sacrament should be received three times in the year--at Easter,
+Whitsuntide, and Christmas. But more important controversies have arisen
+respecting its nature. The famous question of the Real Presence was the
+main controversy between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.
+The doctrine of the Consubstantiation taught by Luther was denied by
+Calvin. In the Church of England, Archbishops Laud and Wake maintained
+that the elements were an Eucharist or sacrifice of Thanksgiving to God;
+Cudworth and Warburton, that this was not a sacrifice, but a sacrificial
+feast; and Bishop Hoadley, that it was neither a sacrifice nor a feast
+after sacrifice, but a simple commemoration. And finally, it is now near
+two hundred years since the Society of Quakers denied the authority of
+the rite altogether, and gave good reasons for disusing it.
+
+I allude to these facts only to show that, so far from the supper being
+a tradition in which men are fully agreed, there has always been the
+widest room for difference of opinion upon this particular.
+
+Having recently given particular attention to this subject, I was led to
+the conclusion that Jesus did not intend to establish an institution for
+perpetual observance when he ate the Passover with his disciples; and,
+further, to the opinion, that it is not expedient to celebrate it as we
+do. I shall now endeavor to state distinctly my reasons for these two
+opinions.
+
+I. The authority of the rite.
+
+An account of the last supper of Christ with his disciples is given by
+the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
+
+In St. Matthew's Gospel (Matt. XXVI. 26-30) are recorded the words of
+Jesus in giving bread and wine on that occasion to his disciples, but
+no expression occurs intimating that this feast was hereafter to be
+commemorated.
+
+In St. Mark (Mark XIV. 23) the same words are recorded, and still with
+no intimation that the occasion was to be remembered.
+
+St. Luke (Luke XXII. 15), after relating the breaking of the bread, has
+these words: This do in remembrance of me.
+
+In St. John, although other occurrences of the same evening are related,
+this whole transaction is passed over without notice.
+
+Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangelists, namely, Matthew and John,
+were of the twelve disciples, and were present on that occasion. Neither
+of them drops the slightest intimation of any intention on the part of
+Jesus to set up anything permanent. John, especially, the beloved
+disciple, who has recorded with minuteness the conversation and the
+transactions of that memorable evening, has quite omitted such a notice.
+Neither does it appear to have come to the knowledge of Mark who, though
+not an eye-witness, relates the other facts. This material fact, that
+the occasion was to be remembered, is found in Luke alone, who was not
+present. There is no reason, however, that we know, for rejecting the
+account of Luke. I doubt not, the expression was used by Jesus. I shall
+presently consider its meaning. I have only brought these accounts
+together, that you may judge whether it is likely that a solemn
+institution, to be continued to the end of time by all mankind, as they
+should come, nation after nation, within the influence of the Christian
+religion, would have been established in this slight manner in a manner
+so slight, that the intention of commemorating it should not appear,
+from their narrative, to have caught the ear or dwelt in the mind of the
+only two among the twelve who wrote down what happened.
+
+Still we must suppose that the expression, "_This do in remembrance of
+me_," had come to the ear of Luke from some disciple who was present.
+What did it really signify? It is a prophetic and an affectionate
+expression. Jesus is a Jew, sitting with his countrymen, celebrating
+their national feast. He thinks of his own impending death, and wishes
+the minds of his disciples to be prepared for it. "When hereafter," he
+says to them, "you shall keep the Passover, it will have an altered
+aspect to your eyes. It is now a historical covenant of God with the
+Jewish nation. Hereafter, it will remind you of a new covenant sealed
+with my blood. In years to come, as long as your people shall come up to
+Jerusalem to keep this feast, the connection which has subsisted between
+us will give a new meaning in your eyes to the national festival, as the
+anniversary of my death." I see natural feeling and beauty in the use of
+such language from Jesus, a friend to his friends; I can readily imagine
+that he was willing and desirous, when his disciples met, his memory
+should hallow their intercourse; but I cannot bring myself to believe
+that in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the living
+generation, beyond the abolition of the festival he was celebrating,
+and the scattering of the nation, and meant to impose a memorial feast
+upon the whole world.
+
+Without presuming to fix precisely the purpose in the mind of Jesus, you
+will see that many opinions may be entertained of his intention, all
+consistent with the opinion that he did not design a perpetual
+ordinance. He may have foreseen that his disciples would meet to
+remember him, and that with good effect. It may have crossed his mind
+that this would be easily continued a hundred or a thousand years--as
+men more easily transmit a form than a virtue--and yet have been
+altogether out of his purpose to fasten it upon men in all times and all
+countries.
+
+But though the words, _Do this in remembrance of me_, do not occur in
+Matthew, Mark, or John, and although it should be granted us that, taken
+alone, they do not necessarily import so much as is usually thought, yet
+many persons are apt to imagine that the very striking and personal
+manner in which this eating and drinking is described, indicates a
+striking and formal purpose to found a festival. And I admit that this
+impression might probably be left upon the mind of one who read only the
+passages under consideration in the New Testament. But this impression
+is removed by reading any narrative of the mode in which the ancient or
+the modern Jews have kept the Passover. It is then perceived that the
+leading circumstances in the Gospels are only a faithful account of that
+ceremony. Jesus did not celebrate the Passover, and afterwards the
+Supper, but the Supper _was_ the Passover. He did with his disciples
+exactly what every master of a family in Jerusalem was doing at the same
+hour with his household. It appears that the Jews ate the lamb and the
+unleavened bread, and drank wine after a prescribed manner. It was the
+custom for the master of the feast to break the bread and to bless it,
+using this formula, which the Talmudists have preserved to us, "Blessed
+be Thou, O Lord our God, the King of the world, who hast produced this
+food from the earth,"--and to give it to every one at the table. It was
+the custom of the master of the family to take the cup which contained
+the wine, and to bless it, saying, "Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who givest
+us the fruit of the vine,"--and then to give the cup to all. Among the
+modern Jews who in their dispersion retain the Passover, a hymn is also
+sung after this ceremony, specifying the twelve great works done by God
+for the deliverance of their fathers out of Egypt.
+
+But still it may be asked, why did Jesus make expressions so
+extraordinary and emphatic as these--"This is my body which is broken
+for you. Take; eat. This is my blood which is shed for you. Drink
+it."--I reply they are not extraordinary expressions from him. They were
+familiar in his mouth. He always taught by parables and symbols. It was
+the national way of teaching and was largely used by him. Remember the
+readiness which he always showed to spiritualize every occurrence. He
+stooped and wrote on the sand. He admonished his disciples respecting
+the leaven of the Pharisees. He instructed the woman of Samaria
+respecting living water. He permitted himself to be anointed, declaring
+that it was for his interment. He washed the feet of his disciples.
+These are admitted to be symbolical actions and expressions. Here, in
+like manner, he calls the bread his body, and bids the disciples eat. He
+had used the same expression repeatedly before. The reason why St. John
+does not repeat his words on this occasion, seems to be that he had
+reported a similar discourse of Jesus to the people of Capernaum more at
+length already (John VI. 27). He there tells the Jews, "Except ye eat
+the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in
+you." And when the Jews on that occasion complained that they did not
+comprehend what he meant, he added for their better understanding, and
+as if for our understanding, that we might not think his body was to be
+actually eaten, that he only meant, _we should live by his commandment_.
+He closed his discourse with these explanatory expressions: "The flesh
+profiteth nothing; the _words_ that I speak to you, they are spirit and
+they are life."
+
+Whilst I am upon this topic, I cannot help remarking that it is not a
+little singular that we should have preserved this rite and insisted
+upon perpetuating one symbolical act of Christ whilst we have totally
+neglected all others--particularly one other which had at least an equal
+claim to our observance. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and told
+them that, as he had washed their feet, they ought to wash one another's
+feet; for he had given them an example, that they should do as he had
+done to them. I ask any person who believes the Supper to have been
+designed by Jesus to be commemorated forever, to go and read the account
+of it in the other Gospels, and then compare with it the account of this
+transaction in St. John, and tell me if this be not much more explicitly
+authorized than the Supper. It only differs in this, that we have found
+the Supper used in New England and the washing of the feet not. But if
+we had found it an established rite in our churches, on grounds of mere
+authority, it would have been impossible to have argued against it. That
+rite is used by the Church of Rome, and by the Sandemanians. It has been
+very properly dropped by other Christians. Why? For two reasons: (1)
+because it was a local custom, and unsuitable in western countries; and
+(2) because it was typical, and all understand that humility is the
+thing signified. But the Passover was local too, and does not concern
+us, and its bread and wine were typical, and do not help us to
+understand the redemption which they signified.
+
+These views of the original account of the Lord's Supper lead me to
+esteem it an occasion full of solemn and prophetic interest, but never
+intended by Jesus to be the foundation of a perpetual institution.
+
+It appears however in Christian history that the disciples had very
+early taken advantage of these impressive words of Christ to hold
+religious meetings, where they broke bread and drank wine as symbols.
+
+I look upon this fact as very natural in the circumstances of the
+church. The disciples lived together; they threw all their property into
+a common stock; they were bound together by the memory of Christ, and
+nothing could be more natural than that this eventful evening should be
+affectionately remembered by them; that they, Jews like Jesus, should
+adopt his expressions and his types, and furthermore, that what was done
+with peculiar propriety by them, his personal friends, with less
+propriety should come to be extended to their companions also. In this
+way religious feasts grew up among the early Christians. They were
+readily adopted by the Jewish converts who were familiar with religious
+feasts, and also by the Pagan converts whose idolatrous worship had been
+made up of sacred festivals, and who very readily abused these to gross
+riot, as appears from the censures of St. Paul. Many persons consider
+this fact, the observance of such a memorial feast by the early
+disciples, decisive of the question whether it ought to be observed by
+us. For my part I see nothing to wonder at in its originating with them;
+all that is surprising is that it should exist among us. There was good
+reason for his personal friends to remember their friend and repeat his
+words. It was only too probable that among the half converted Pagans and
+Jews, any rite, any form, would find favor, whilst yet unable to
+comprehend the spiritual character of Christianity.
+
+The circumstance, however, that St. Paul adopts these views, has seemed
+to many persons conclusive in favor of the institution. I am of opinion
+that it is wholly upon the epistle to the Corinthians, and not upon the
+Gospels, that the ordinance stands. Upon this matter of St. Paul's view
+of the Supper, a few important considerations must be stated.
+
+The end which he has in view, in the eleventh chapter of the first
+epistle is, not to enjoin upon his friends to observe the Supper, but to
+censure their abuse of it. _We_ quote the passage now-a-days as if it
+enjoined attendance upon the Supper; but he wrote it merely to chide
+them for drunkenness. To make their enormity plainer he goes back to the
+origin of this religious feast to show what sort of feast that was, out
+of which this riot of theirs came, and so relates the transactions of
+the Last Supper. "_I have received of the Lord_," he says, "_that which
+I delivered to you_." By this expression it is often thought that a
+miraculous communication is implied; but certainly without good reason,
+if it is remembered that St. Paul was living in the lifetime of all the
+apostles who could give him an account of the transaction; and it is
+contrary to all reason to suppose that God should work a miracle to
+convey information that could so easily be got by natural means. So that
+the import of the expression is that he had received the story of an
+eye-witness such as we also possess.
+
+But there is a material circumstance which diminishes our confidence in
+the correctness of the Apostle's view; and that is, the observation that
+his mind had not escaped the prevalent error of the primitive church,
+the belief, namely, that the second coming of Christ would shortly
+occur, until which time, he tells them, this feast was to be kept.
+Elsewhere he tells them, that, at that time the world would be burnt up
+with fire, and a new government established, in which the Saints would
+sit on thrones; so slow were the disciples during the life, and after
+the ascension of Christ, to receive the idea which we receive, that his
+second coming was a spiritual kingdom, the dominion of his religion in
+the hearts of men, to be extended gradually over the whole world.
+
+In this manner we may see clearly enough how this ancient ordinance got
+its footing among the early Christians, and this single expectation of a
+speedy reappearance of a temporal Messiah, which kept its influence even
+over so spiritual a man as St. Paul, would naturally tend to preserve
+the use of the rite when once established.
+
+We arrive then at this conclusion, _first_, that it does not appear,
+from a careful examination of the account of the Last Supper in the
+Evangelists, that it was designed by Jesus to be perpetual; _secondly_,
+that it does not appear that the opinion of St. Paul, all things
+considered, ought to alter our opinion derived from the evangelists.
+
+One general remark before quitting this branch of the subject. We ought
+to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions and
+practices of the primitive church, for our own. If it could be
+satisfactorily shown that they esteemed it authorized and to be
+transmitted forever, that does not settle the question for us. We know
+how inveterately they were attached to their Jewish prejudices, and how
+often even the influence of Christ failed to enlarge their views. On
+every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a judgment
+more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the
+practice of the early ages.
+
+But it is said: "Admit that the rite was not designed to be perpetual.
+What harm doth it? Here it stands, generally accepted, under some form,
+by the Christian world, the undoubted occasion of much good; is it not
+better it should remain?"
+
+II. This is the question of expediency.
+
+I proceed to state a few objections that in my judgment lie against its
+use in its present form.
+
+1. If the view which I have taken of the history of the institution be
+correct, then the claim of authority should be dropped in administering
+it. You say, every time you celebrate the rite, that Jesus enjoined it;
+and the whole language you use conveys that impression. But if you read
+the New Testament as I do, you do not believe he did.
+
+2. It has seemed to me that the use of this ordinance tends to produce
+confusion in our views of the relation of the soul to God. It is the old
+objection to the doctrine of the Trinity,--that the true worship was
+transferred from God to Christ, or that such confusion was introduced
+into the soul, that an undivided worship was given nowhere. Is not that
+the effect of the Lord's Supper? I appeal now to the convictions of
+communicants--and ask such persons whether they have not been
+occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of thought between the
+worship due to God and the commemoration due to Christ. For, the service
+does not stand upon the basis of a voluntary act, but is imposed by
+authority. It is an expression of gratitude to Christ, enjoined by
+Christ. There is an endeavor to keep Jesus in mind, whilst yet the
+prayers are addressed to God. I fear it is the effect of this ordinance
+to clothe Jesus with an authority which he never claimed and which
+distracts the mind of the worshipper. I know our opinions differ much
+respecting the nature and offices of Christ, and the degree of
+veneration to which he is entitled. I am so much a Unitarian as this:
+that I believe the human mind cannot admit but one God, and that every
+effort to pay religious homage to more than one being, goes to take away
+all right ideas. I appeal, brethren, to your individual experience. In
+the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a
+silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,--do
+you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your
+thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no
+more present to the mind than your brother or your child.
+
+But is not Jesus called in Scripture the Mediator? He is the mediator in
+that only sense in which possibly any being can mediate between God and
+man--that is an Instructor of man. He teaches us how to become like God.
+And a true disciple of Jesus will receive the light he gives most
+thankfully; but the thanks he offers, and which an exalted being will
+accept, are not _compliments_--commemorations,--but the use of that
+instruction.
+
+3. Passing other objections, I come to this, that the _use of the
+elements_, however suitable to the people and the modes of thought in
+the East, where it originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect us.
+Whatever long usage and strong association may have done in some
+individuals to deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their use is
+rather tolerated than loved by any of us. We are not accustomed to
+express our thoughts or emotions by symbolical actions. Most men find
+the bread and wine no aid to devotion and to some, it is a painful
+impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ
+and resolve to obey them is quite another.
+
+The statement of this objection leads me to say that I think this
+difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled to the greatest weight.
+It is alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance. It is my own
+objection. This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That
+is reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed that it was
+enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, and that he even contemplated making
+permanent this mode of commemoration, every way agreeable to an eastern
+mind, and yet, on trial, it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I
+should not adopt it. I should choose other ways which, as more effectual
+upon me, he would approve more. For I choose that my remembrances of him
+should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified
+friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign
+of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his
+discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting
+which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original
+design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.
+
+4. Fourthly, the importance ascribed to this particular ordinance is not
+consistent with the spirit of Christianity. The general object and
+effect of this ordinance is unexceptionable. It has been, and is, I
+doubt not, the occasion of indefinite good; but an importance is given
+by Christians to it which never can belong to any form. My friends, the
+apostle well assures us that "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink,
+but righteousness and peace and joy, in the Holy Ghost." I am not so
+foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies;
+but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to one form a moment after it
+is out-grown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.
+If I understand the distinction of Christianity, the reason why it is to
+be preferred over all other systems and is divine is this, that it is a
+moral system; that it presents men with truths which are their own
+reason, and enjoins practices that are their own justification; that if
+miracles may be said to have been its evidence to the first Christians,
+they are not its evidence to us, but the doctrines themselves; that
+every practice is Christian which praises itself, and every practice
+unchristian which condemns itself. I am not engaged to Christianity by
+decent forms, or saving ordinances; it is not usage, it is not what I do
+not understand, that binds me to it--let these be the sandy foundations
+of falsehoods. What I revere and obey in it is its reality, its
+boundless charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to my
+mind, the echo it returns to my thoughts, the perfect accord it makes
+with my reason through all its representation of God and His Providence;
+and the persuasion and courage that come out thence to lead me upward
+and onward. Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object
+simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions, then, should be as
+flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and
+suitableness have departed, should be as worthless in its eyes as the
+dead leaves that are falling around us.
+
+And therefore, although for the satisfaction of others, I have labored
+to show by the history that this rite was not intended to be perpetual;
+although I have gone back to weigh the expressions of Paul, I feel that
+here is the true point of view. In the midst of considerations as to
+what Paul thought, and why he so thought, I cannot help feeling that it
+is time misspent to argue to or from his convictions, or those of Luke
+and John, respecting any form. I seem to lose the substance in seeking
+the shadow. That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for
+which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the
+thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem
+us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the
+formation of the soul. The whole world was full of idols and ordinances.
+The Jewish was a religion of forms. The Pagan was a religion of forms;
+it was all body--it had no life--and the Almighty God was pleased to
+qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with
+the heart; that only that life was religious which was thoroughly good;
+that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows. This man lived and
+died true to this purpose; and now, with his blessed word and life
+before us, Christians must contend that it is a matter of vital
+importance--really a duty, to commemorate him by a certain form, whether
+that form be agreeable to their understandings or not.
+
+Is not this to make vain the gift of God? Is not this to turn back the
+hand on the dial? Is not this to make men--to make ourselves--forget
+that not forms, but duties; not names, but righteousness and love are
+enjoined; and that in the eye of God there is no other measure of the
+value of any one form than the measure of its use?
+
+There remain some practical objections to the ordinance into which I
+shall not now enter. There is one on which I had intended to say a few
+words; I mean the unfavorable relation in which it places that numerous
+class of persons who abstain from it merely from disinclination to the
+rite.
+
+Influenced by these considerations, I have proposed to the brethren of
+the Church to drop the use of the elements and the claim of authority in
+the administration of this ordinance, and have suggested a mode in which
+a meeting for the same purpose might be held free of objection.
+
+My brethren have considered my views with patience and candor, and have
+recommended unanimously an adherence to the present form. I have,
+therefore, been compelled to consider whether it becomes me to
+administer it. I am clearly of opinion I ought not. This discourse has
+already been so far extended, that I can only say that the reason of my
+determination is shortly this:--It is my desire, in the office of a
+Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart.
+Having said this, I have said all. I have no hostility to this
+institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither
+should I ever have obtruded this opinion upon other people, had I not
+been called by my office to administer it. That is the end of my
+opposition, that I am not interested in it. I am content that it stand
+to the end of the world, if it please men and please heaven, and I shall
+rejoice in all the good it produces.
+
+As it is the prevailing opinion and feeling in our religious community,
+that it is an indispensable part of the pastoral office to administer
+this ordinance, I am about to resign into your hands that office which
+you have confided to me. It has many duties for which I am feebly
+qualified. It has some which it will always be my delight to discharge,
+according to my ability, wherever I exist. And whilst the recollection
+of its claims oppresses me with a sense of my unworthiness, I am
+consoled by the hope that no time and no change can deprive me of the
+satisfaction of pursuing and exercising its highest functions.
+
+September 9, 1832.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The influence of Transcendentalism on general literature can be only
+indicated in loose terms. Its current was so strong, that like the
+Orinoco rushing down between the South American continent and the island
+of Trinidad, it made a bright green trail upon the dark sea into which
+it poured, but the vehemence of the flood forbade its diffusion. The
+influence was chiefly felt on the departments of philosophy and ethics.
+It created the turbulent literature of reform, the literature born of
+the "Enthusiasm of Humanity," the waves whereof are still rolling,
+though not with their original force. The literature of politics was
+profoundly affected by it; the political radicals, philosophical
+democrats, anti-slavery whigs or republicans, enthusiasts for American
+ideas, prophets of America's destiny, being, more or less wittingly,
+controlled by its ideas. In this department Parker made himself felt,
+not on the popular mind alone, but on the recognized leaders of opinion
+East and West. The writings of Sumner and his school owe their vigor to
+these ideas. In history Bancroft was its great representative, his
+earliest volumes especially revealing in the richness, depth, and
+hopefulness of their interpretations of men and measures, the faith in
+humanity so strongly characteristic of the philosophy he professed.
+
+In poetry the influence is distinctly traceable, though here also it was
+confined within somewhat narrow limits. Bryant betrays scarcely
+perceptible marks of it, though he ascribed to Wordsworth a fresh
+inspiration of love for nature. It is hardly perceptible in Longfellow,
+whose verse, bubbling from the heart, gently meanders over the meadows
+and through the villages, gladdening daily existence with its music.
+Neither Bryant nor Longfellow had the intellectual passion that
+Transcendentalism roused. The earlier pieces of Lowell, the anti-slavery
+lyrics and poems of sentiment, were inspired by it. Whittier was wholly
+under its sway. The delicious sonnets of Jones Very were oozings from
+its spring. Julia Ward Howe's "Passion Flowers," though published as
+late as 1854, burn and throb with feeling that had its source in these
+heights.
+
+The writers of elegant literature, essays, romances, tales, owed to
+Transcendentalism but a trifling debt, not worth acknowledging. They
+were out of range. It was their task to entertain people of leisure, and
+they derived their impulse from the pleasure their writings gave them or
+others. It was not to be expected that authors like Irving, Paulding,
+Cooper, would feel an interest in ideas so grave and earnest, or would
+catch a suggestion from them. But Lydia Maria Child, whose "Letters from
+New York"--1841, 1843--were models in their kind; whose stories for
+young people have not been surpassed by those of any writer, except
+Andersen; whose more labored works have a quality that entitles them to
+a high place among the products of mind, is a devotee of the
+transcendental faith. A very remarkable book in the department of
+fiction was Sylvester Judd's "Margaret; a tale of the Real and the
+Ideal; Blight and Bloom." It contained the material for half a dozen
+ordinary novels; was full of imagination, aromatic, poetical,
+picturesque, tender, and in the dress of fiction set forth the whole
+gospel of Transcendentalism in religion, politics, reform, social
+ethics, personal character, professional and private life.
+
+As has been already remarked, the transcendental faith found expression
+in magazines and newspapers, which it called into existence, and which
+no longer survive. Its elaborate compositions were, from the nature of
+the case, few; its intellectual occupancy was too brief for the creation
+of a permanent literature. Had Transcendentalism been chiefly remarkable
+as a literary curiosity, the neglect of the smallest scrap of paper it
+caused to be marked with ink would be culpable. As it was, primarily and
+to the end, an intellectual episode, turning on a few cardinal ideas, it
+is best studied in the writings and lives of its disciples. They knew
+better than any body what they wanted; they were best acquainted with
+their own ideas, and should be permitted to speak for themselves.
+Earnest men and women no doubt they were; better educated men and women
+did not live in America; they were well born, well nurtured, well
+endowed. Their generation produced no warmer hearts, no purer spirits,
+no more ardent consciences, no more devoted wills. Their philosophy may
+be unsound, but it produced noble characters and humane lives. The
+philosophy that takes its place may rest on more scientific foundations;
+it will not more completely justify its existence or honor its day.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  A.
+
+  Alcott, Bronson, contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    on the transcendental philosophy, tribute to Emerson quoted, 246;
+    the mystic, 249;
+    a follower of Pythagoras, 251;
+    "_Concord Days_" quoted, 255;
+    a leader of the transcendentalists, 257;
+    school in Cheshire, Conn., 262;
+    school in England named for, 267;
+    presides at reform meetings in England, 272;
+    superintendent of schools, 275;
+    his conversations, 283;
+    writings of, 358.
+
+  Alcott, Wm. A., writes on physical training, 262.
+
+  Alexandria, school of, 61.
+
+  American Unitarian Association, tract published by, 120.
+
+  Aristotle, categories of, 111.
+
+  Arius, advocate of Unitarian philosophy, 109.
+
+
+  B.
+
+  Bacon, Lord Francis, Macaulay on his philosophy, 139.
+
+  Bain, principles of the sensational philosophy stated by, 205.
+
+  Bancroft, George, his account of Herder, 47;
+    History of the United States quoted, 117;
+    champion of the spiritual philosophy, 117, 118;
+    traces of transcendentalism in his historical writings, 381.
+
+  Barni, Jules, translates Kant into French, 61.
+
+  Bartol, C. A., belongs to the transcendental school, 341.
+
+  Baur, follower of the Hegelian ideas, 186.
+
+  Biblical repository, articles on transcendentalism in, 137.
+
+  Bibliotheca Sacra, article on transcendentalism in, 92.
+
+  Biographia Literaria, of Coleridge, quoted, 82;
+    criticised by Edinburgh Review, 91;
+    Wordsworth's poetry considered in, 97.
+
+  "Blithedale Romance," published by Hawthorne, 175.
+
+  Blodgett, Levi, nom de plume of Theodore Parker, 125.
+
+  Boehme, Jacob, doctrine of, 257.
+
+  Boston Quarterly Review started by O. A. Brownson, 128.
+
+  Bouillet translates Plotinus, 61.
+
+  Brisbane, Albert, disciple of Fourier, 156.
+
+  Brook Farm, the experiment at, 157;
+    constitution quoted, 159;
+    mode of life there, 164-169;
+    breaking up of the society, 170.
+
+  Brooks, C. T., makes translations from German authors, 56;
+    German lyrics translated by, 116.
+
+  Brownson, Orestes A., description of, 128;
+    converted to Romanism, 131;
+    writings, 358.
+
+  Bruno, Giordano, founder of the Dynamic System, 81.
+
+  Bryant, Wm. C., transcendental spirit not found in his writings, 381.
+
+  Butler fights against infidelity in his _Analogy_, 185.
+
+
+  C.
+
+  Cabanis, philosophy of, 63;
+    skeptic of the 18th century, 187.
+
+  Cabot, Eliot, contributes to "The Dial," 133.
+
+  Calvin, denies doctrine of consubstantiation, 364.
+
+  Cambridge Divinity School, address before, by James Walker, 121-123.
+
+  Carlyle, Thomas, interprets the German thinkers, 52;
+    quoted, 52;
+    translates Wilhelm Meister, 56;
+    opinion of Coleridge quoted, 77-92;
+    change in his mode of thought, 94;
+    the preacher of transcendentalism, 103;
+    articles on Richter and German literature, 116.
+
+  Chalybaeus, his verdict on Jacobi quoted, 25.
+
+  Channing, Dr. William, not a transcendentalist in theory, 111;
+    feeling toward Christ, 111;
+    letters of, quoted, 112;
+    transcendentalist in sentiment, 113;
+    quoted, 113;
+    contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    tribute to Alcott, 259;
+    judgment of Margaret Fuller, 293;
+    writings of, 350.
+
+  Channing, William Ellery, writings of, 340.
+
+  Channing, Wm. H., version of Jouffroy published, 116;
+    contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    writes on social topics, 330;
+    works of, 336;
+    as an orator, 338;
+    writings of, 360.
+
+  Chapin, E. H., speaks against capital punishment, 337.
+
+  Chauvet, on philosophy of the ancients, 61.
+
+  Cheever, Geo. B., article in N. A. Review, 92.
+
+  Cheshire, Conn., school at, 262.
+
+  Child, Lydia Maria, a writer of the transcendental school, 382.
+
+  Christian Examiner, account of Herder in, 47;
+    article by F. D. Hedge in, 92;
+    article by James Walker in, 120;
+    articles on transcendentalism in, 137;
+    review on Emerson in, 138.
+
+  Clarke, James Freeman, edits De Wette, 116;
+    contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    judgment of Margaret Fuller, 293;
+    an early transcendentalist, 343.
+
+  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, influence of Schelling on, 40;
+    the prophet of transcendentalism in England, 76;
+    his studies in Germany, 79;
+    on Schelling's works, 80;
+    alleged plagiarism from Schelling, 81.
+
+  Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, quoted, 82;
+    the true founder of the Broad church, 89;
+    described by Talfourd and Hazlitt, 90.
+
+  Coleridge, Carlyle's verdict on, 92;
+    his sympathy with German literature, 96;
+    the philosopher of transcendentalism, 103;
+    makes Lessing's works familiar, 116;
+    article on by Mill, 206.
+
+  Coleridge, Sarah, note by, in Biographia Literaria, 88.
+
+  Communism in Massachusetts, 157.
+
+  _Concord Days_, by A. B. Alcott, quoted, 246.
+
+  Condillac, doctrine of, 62;
+    skeptic of the 18th century, 187.
+
+  Congregationalists, followers of Schleiermacher among, 50.
+
+  Constant, English translations from, by Geo. Ripley, 116.
+
+  Consubstantiation taught by Luther, 364;
+    denied by Calvin, 364.
+
+  _Consuelo_ translated by F. G. Shaw, 329.
+
+  Copernicus revolutionizes astronomy, 10.
+
+  Cousin, Victor, philosophical works of, 61;
+    French follower of the Scotch school, 66;
+    his system of philosophy, 67-75;
+    English translations from, 116;
+    philosophical miscellanies noticed by the press, 117.
+
+  Cranch, C. P., contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    lines from, quoted, 146;
+    writes for "The Harbinger," 330.
+
+  Curtis, Geo. Wm., writes for "The Harbinger," 330.
+
+
+  D.
+
+  Dana, Chas. A., writes for "The Harbinger," 330.
+
+  Degerando, lectures on Kant's philosophy, in Paris, 115.
+
+  Descartes, doctrine of innate ideas ascribed to, 15.
+
+  De Wette, students of, in the United States, 116;
+    Theodor and Ethics, English edition of, 116;
+    living faith in God aided by, 121.
+
+  D'Holbach, skeptic of the 18th century, 187.
+
+  Dial, the, publisher's letter on Herder, 47;
+    Tribute to Wordsworth in, quoted, 97-99;
+    articles in, 132;
+    writes for, 133;
+    ancient scriptures printed in, 135;
+    article on Margaret Fuller in, 176;
+    contains account of English reform meetings, 273.
+
+  Digby, Sir Kenelm, story related by, 199.
+
+  Dietetics, theory and practice of, introduced by transcendentalists, 150.
+
+  _Discourses on Religion_, work by Schleiermacher, 48.
+
+  Dwight, J. S., makes translations from German authors, 56;
+    edits selections from Goethe and Schiller, 116;
+    contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    quoted, 148;
+    writes musical articles for "The Harbinger," 330.
+
+  Dynamic system, the, begun by Giordano Bruno, 80.
+
+
+  E.
+
+  Eckermann's conversations with Goethe translated into English, 116.
+
+  Edinburgh Review contains article by Carlyle, 52;
+    criticises Biographia Literaria, 91.
+
+  Edwards, Jonathan, spirit of his writings, 108.
+
+  _Elements of Psychology_, work by C. S. Henry, published, 75.
+
+  Emerson, Charles, contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    articles quoted, 222.
+
+  Emerson, R. W., edits Carlyle's Miscellanies, 93-116;
+    on Wordsworth, 99;
+    an idealist, 115;
+    retires from the ministry, 120;
+    publication of "Nature," 122;
+    essays published, 127;
+    quoted, 142;
+    edits "The Dial," 132;
+    lecture on transcendentalism quoted, 135;
+    lecture on "The Reformer" quoted, 153;
+    address before Divinity College, 200;
+    tribute paid by Tyndall to, 214-243;
+    appreciation of by German readers, 218;
+    published works, 224;
+    works quoted from, 228;
+    letter to his church, 232;
+    judgment of Margaret Fuller, 285;
+    sermon of, reprinted, 363.
+
+  Encyclopaedists, influence of, in France, 187.
+
+  England, idealists of, 1;
+    metaphysical schools in, 2;
+    transcendentalism in, 78-105.
+
+  Epictetus, works of, edited by Higginson, 350.
+
+  Excursion, Wordsworth's, quoted, 101.
+
+
+  F.
+
+  Felton, Prof. C. C., translates Menzel, 58;
+    edits Menzel's German literature, 116.
+
+  Fichte, Johann Gotlieb, treatises of, 28;
+    effect of Kant's system upon, 28;
+    outline of his system of reasoning, 31-40;
+    the idealists of New England his followers, 46;
+    few copies of his works found in the United States, 116.
+
+  Fiske, John, cosmic philosophy quoted, 211.
+
+  Foreign Review, contains article on Novalis, 52.
+
+  Fourierism not welcomed by transcendentalists, 156.
+
+  France, philosophy in, 60;
+    transcendentalism in, 105;
+    skepticism in, 189.
+
+  Francis, Convers; apostle of transcendentalism, 353.
+
+  Franck, Adolphe, explains the Jewish Kabbala, 71.
+
+  Frederick the Great, court of, 187.
+
+  Frothingham, Dr. N. L., student of German literature, 47.
+
+  Fuller, Margaret, article on Goethe, 57;
+    translates from the German, 116;
+    edits "The Dial," 132;
+    _Women in the 19th Century_ quoted, 177-181;
+    memoirs of, published, 284;
+    judgment of, by Emerson, 285;
+    on metaphysics and religion, 286;
+    as a critic, 287;
+    edits "The Dial," 289;
+    biographical account of, 293;
+    writings of, 358.
+
+  Furness, W. H., maintains belief in the miracles, 202.
+
+
+  G.
+
+  Galileo, experiments of, 8.
+
+  Greaves, James Pierrepont, founds the Alcott School near London, 267;
+    letter of, 267.
+
+  Grimm, Herman, essay on R. W. Emerson, 218.
+
+  Grote, opinion on moral intuition, 216.
+
+  German Lyrics, translation by Chas. Brooks, 116.
+
+  Germany, transcendentalism in, 14-105;
+    philosophy of, 60;
+    under the influence of idealism, 186.
+
+  Gibbon, his history assailed by the church, 185.
+
+  Goethe, appreciation of, in New England, 57.
+
+
+  H.
+
+  Hamilton, Sir William, Mill's criticism of, 207.
+
+  Harbinger, The, started in 1845, 327;
+    list of contributors to, 329.
+
+  Haureau writes on philosophy of the middle ages, 61.
+
+  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, notes on Brook Farm quoted, 171;
+    _Blithedale Romance_, 175.
+
+  Hazlitt, William, account of Coleridge's preaching, 90.
+
+  Hedge, F. K., German translations made by, 56;
+    writes articles in "Christian Examiner," 92.
+
+  Hegel, the successor of Schelling, 43;
+    verdict on Jacobi quoted, 26;
+    system of philosophy, 43-45.
+
+  Helvetius, skeptic of the 18th century, 187.
+
+  Henry, C. L., publishes elements of psychology, 75;
+    his admiration for Coleridge, 89.
+
+  Herder, translations of, into English, 47;
+    works of, read in the United States, 116.
+
+  Higginson, T. W., a disciple of transcendentalism, 350.
+
+  History of Philosophy, by Cousin, 75.
+
+  Hume, his system of reasoning, 16.
+
+
+  I.
+
+  Idealism in England, 7;
+    in New England, 115;
+    in Germany, 186.
+
+
+  J.
+
+  Jacobi, Frederick, his system of faith, 24;
+    idealists of New England his followers, 46;
+    his works in the United States, 116.
+
+  Janet, Paul, explains Plato, 61.
+
+  Jeffrey criticised Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, 91.
+
+  Johnson, Samuel, work on the "Religions of India," quoted, 345;
+    belongs to the transcendental school, 347.
+
+  Jouffroy, Theodore, French follower of the Scotch school, 66;
+    _Introduction to Ethics_, English edition of, 114.
+
+  Judd, Sylvester, a novelist of the transcendental school, 382.
+
+
+  K.
+
+  Kant, Immanuel, publishes "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781), 6;
+    Character of his work, 6;
+    starting-point of his philosophy, 9;
+    _Critique of Pure Reason_ quoted, 14;
+    Outline of his system of reasoning, 16-21;
+    Carlyle on his philosophy, 53;
+    Menzel on his philosophy, 57;
+    translated into French, 61;
+    reintroduces the Dynamic system, 81;
+    lectures on his philosophy in Paris, 115;
+    few copies of his works in the United States, 116.
+
+  _Knickerbocker Magazine_, articles on transcendentalism in, 137.
+
+
+  L.
+
+  Laromiguiere, disciple of Condillac, 65.
+
+  Leibnitz, theory of, 15.
+
+  Letters to a Young Theologian, by Herder, 47.
+
+  Lewes, George H., criticism on John Locke cited, 5;
+    _Problems of Life and Mind_, quoted 212.
+
+  Linberg, H. G., translator of Cousin, 75.
+
+  Locke, John, _Essay on the Human Understanding_, 3;
+    called "Father of Modern Psychology," 3;
+    character of his work, 4;
+    opposes the doctrine of innate ideas, his ideas introduced into
+      France, 61;
+    piety of, 62;
+    framed a constitution for the New World, 117;
+    Bancroft on, 118.
+
+  Longfellow, H. W., the transcendental spirit not in his writings, 382.
+
+  Longfellow, Samuel, transcendentalist of the mystical type, 347;
+    hymns by, 347.
+
+  Lord, D. N., writer in Lord's _Theological Journal_, 92.
+
+  Lord's Supper, the, sermon on, by Emerson, 363.
+
+  Lord's Theological Journal, 92.
+
+  Lowell, J. R., his early poems breathe the transcendental spirit, 382.
+
+  Luther, Martin, teaches doctrine of consubstantiation, 364.
+
+
+  M.
+
+  Macaulay, T. B., article on Lord Bacon, quoted, 139.
+
+  Maine de Biran, philosophy of, 65.
+
+  _Margaret_, novel setting forth the gospel of transcendentalism, 382.
+
+  Marsh, Dr. James, translates Herder's Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 47.
+
+  Martineau, Harriet, calls Alcott the American Pestalozzi, 267.
+
+  Martineau, James, letter of Channing to, 112.
+
+  Mathematics, progress in, 7.
+
+  Maurice, Frederick Denison, admirer of Coleridge, 142.
+
+  May, Rev. S. J., account of Alcott's school, 262.
+
+  Menzel, opinion of Goethe quoted, 57;
+    German Literature, English edition of, 116.
+
+  Mill, principles of sensational philosophy stated by, 205;
+    article on Coleridge, 206;
+    work on logic quoted, 208;
+    commends Taine's work, 212.
+
+
+  N.
+
+  _Nature_, by R. W. Emerson, quoted, 312.
+
+  New England Maga., articles on transcendentalism in, 137.
+
+  New England, transcendentalism in, 105;
+    religion of, 107;
+    idealism in, 115.
+
+  New Hegelians, the, 45.
+
+  New York Review, 92.
+
+  Nominalists, the, tenets maintained by, 2.
+
+  North American Review, 92.
+
+  Norton, Andrews, assails Schleiermacher, 48;
+    attacks transcendentalism, 123;
+    controversy with George Ripley, 124.
+
+  Novalis, article on, by Carlyle, 52;
+    his philosophy defined by Carlyle, 55.
+
+
+  O.
+
+  _Orphic Sayings_ of Alcott quoted, 259.
+
+  Osgood, Samuel, edits DeWette, 116.
+
+
+  P.
+
+  Parker, Theodore, referred to by Channing, enters into the
+      transcendental controversy, 125;
+    contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    work meditated by, 192;
+    strong faith in immortality, 196;
+    "Levi Blodgett" letter quoted, 200;
+    blending of realism and transcendentalism in, 305;
+    as a preacher of transcendental views, 308;
+    writings of, 357.
+
+  Passover, the feast of, celebrated by Jesus, 364-366;
+    as kept by Jews, 368.
+
+  Paul of Samosata, advocate of Unitarian theology, 109.
+
+  Peabody, Elizabeth, writes record of a school, 265.
+
+  Pelagius, advocate of Unitarian theology, 109.
+
+  Penn, Wm., framed constitution for the New World, 117;
+    Bancroft on, 118.
+
+  Perfect Life, the work by Dr. Channing, 113.
+
+  Phillips, Wendell, speaks against capital punishment, 337.
+
+  Physics established as a science, 8.
+
+  Platonism, transcendental in its essence, 108.
+
+  Plotinus translated by Bouillet, 61.
+
+  Porter, Noah, writes article in Bibliotheca Sacra, 92.
+
+  Princeton Review, articles on transcendentalism in, 137.
+
+  Priestley, Joseph, able representative of Unitarianism, 185.
+
+  Pythagoras, the ancient teacher of dietetics, 151;
+    H. B. Alcott on, 251.
+
+
+  Q.
+
+  Quakerism, tribute to, by George Bancroft, 117;
+    compared with transcendentalism, 119.
+
+
+  R.
+
+  Rahn, Johanna, letter of Fichte to, 29.
+
+  _Rationale of Religious Inquiry_, by Martineau, 123.
+
+  Ravaisson, Felix, writes reports on French philosophy, 61.
+
+  Realists, the, tenets maintained by, 2.
+
+  Religious affections, the, treatise on, by Jonathan Edwards, 108.
+
+  Remusat, Charles de, writer on French philosophy, 61.
+
+  Review, North American, account of Herder in, 47.
+
+  Reymond, Dubois, address to German naturalists quoted, 250.
+
+  Richter, Carlyle on his philosophy, 55;
+    works of, 56.
+
+  Ripley, George, his account of Herder, 47;
+    account of Schleiermacher, 48;
+    estimate of Cousin's philosophy, 74;
+    edits specimens of foreign standard literature, 116;
+    review of James Martineau, 123;
+    reply to Andrews Norton, 125;
+    contributes to "The Dial," 133;
+    his influence in spreading transcendentalism, 322;
+    published works of, 324;
+    controversy with Andrews Norton, 325;
+    at Brook Farm, 325.
+
+  Ripley, George, edits "The Harbinger," 328;
+    literary critic of "The Tribune," 332.
+
+  Robbins, Samuel D., quoted, 145.
+
+  Romanism not at home in New England, 107.
+
+  Rousseau, J. J., the ideas of the new philosophy expressed by, 17.
+
+  Rousselot writes on philosophy of the middle age, 61.
+
+  Royer-Collard, French followers of the Scotch school, 66.
+
+  Russell edits first journal of education, 262.
+
+
+  S.
+
+  Saint Hilaire, Barthelemy, French philosopher, 61.
+
+  Saisset, Emil, translates Spinoza, 61.
+
+  Schelling, system of philosophy, 40-43;
+    _Transcendental Idealism_ published, 80;
+    few copies of his works found in the United States, 116.
+
+  Schiller, letter on Kant's philosophy quoted, 54;
+    on Richter, 54.
+
+  Schleiermacher, influence of, 48;
+    quoted, 49;
+    philosophy of, 50;
+    students of, in the United States, 116;
+    faith in God promoted by, 122.
+
+  Schoolmen, the, their use of the word transcendental, 11.
+
+  Sensationalism in England, 2;
+    reaction against, 188;
+    the God of, 190;
+    ideas of immortality, 193-197;
+    its philosophy revived by Mill and others, 205.
+
+  Shaw, Francis G., translates Consuelo for "The Harbinger," 329.
+
+  Simon, Jules, explains the Alexandrian school, 61.
+
+  Skepticism in France, 18th century, 187;
+    brought to America, 188.
+
+  Smith, William, publishes memoirs of Fichte (1845), 27.
+
+  Socialists, New York union of, 339.
+
+  Socinius, advocate of Unitarian theology, 109.
+
+  Southern Literary Messenger, 92.
+
+  _Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature_, edited by George Ripley, 116.
+
+  Spencer, principles of the sensational philosophy stated by, 205;
+    system of, hostile to intuitive philosophy, 208.
+
+  Spinoza, translated by Saisset, 61.
+
+  Spirit of Hebrew poetry, by Herder, 47.
+
+  Stael, Madame de, gives an account of Kant's philosophy, 115.
+
+  Stahl, experiments of, 8.
+
+  Stone, Thomas T., article in "The Dial" quoted, 144.
+
+  St. Paul, his view of the Lord's Supper, 371.
+
+  Strauss a disciple of Hegel, 186.
+
+
+  T.
+
+  Taine, principles of the sensational philosophy stated by, 205;
+    work on Intelligence quoted, 212;
+    criticism of Tyndall, 212.
+
+  Talfourd, Sergeant, his account of Coleridge, 90.
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, rising glory of, 103.
+
+  Thoreau, Henry D., contributes to "The Dial," 133.
+
+  Tissot translates Kant into French, 61.
+
+  Torricelli, experiments of, 8.
+
+  Transcendentalism, chiefly communicated through German literature, 51;
+    influence on German literature, 51;
+    its apostles in the New World, 103;
+    in New England, 105;
+    borders on Platonism, 107;
+    an enlarged orthodoxy, 108;
+    imported in foreign packages, 115;
+    Quakerism compared with, 119;
+    advocated by James Walker, 122;
+    attacked by Andrews Norton, 123;
+    legitimate fruits of, 143;
+    defined by Emerson, 127;
+    literary achievements of, 132;
+    essentially poetic, 134;
+    a distinct system of philosophy, 136;
+    misconceptions of, 138;
+    practical usefulness of the disciples of, 140;
+    objections to, 149;
+    inaugurated the practice of dietetics, 150;
+    favorable to all reform movements, 155;
+    ideas of women, 181;
+    relation to questions of religion, 184;
+    reaction against sensationalism, 189;
+    the faith of, 190-192;
+    asserts immortality of the soul, 193-196;
+    accepts the miracles, 201;
+    its view of Christianity, 204;
+    superseded by idealism, 215;
+    as a gospel, 302;
+    end of one phase of, 332;
+    defined by Bartol, 342;
+    minor followers of, 355-356;
+    literature of, 357-372.
+
+  Trinitarianism of Platonic origin, 107;
+    avowed by idealists, 109;
+    its debt to Unitarianism, 113.
+
+  Tuckerman, H. T., writes for Southern Literary Messenger, 92.
+
+  Tuebingen, follower of the Hegelian idea, 186.
+
+  Tyndall, John, address of, quoted, 210;
+    objections to, by Taine, 212.
+
+
+  U.
+
+  Unitarians, the, belong to the school of Locke, 109;
+    of New England, 110;
+    friends to free thought, 114.
+
+  Unitarianism represented in England by Priestley, 115.
+
+
+  V.
+
+  Vacherot, Etienne, explains the Alexandrian school, 61.
+
+  Vere, Aubrey de, lines on Coleridge, 78.
+
+  Volney popular in the eighteenth century, 187.
+
+  Voltaire introduces Locke's ideas into France, 61;
+    the great name among eighteenth century skeptics, 187.
+
+
+  W.
+
+  Walker, James, avows transcendental views, 120;
+    quoted, 120, 121;
+    his theory of moral intuition, 215.
+
+  Wasson, D. A., sermons and poems of, 349.
+
+  Wedgewood, Josiah and Thomas, send Coleridge to Germany, 79.
+
+  Weiss, John, philosophical writings and translations, 351.
+
+  Westminster Review contains article by Mill, 206.
+
+  Whig Review, articles on transcendentalism in, 137.
+
+  Whittier, John G., under the sway of transcendental ideas, 382.
+
+  Wordsworth, Wm., in Germany with Coleridge, 79;
+    kinship between Coleridge and, 96;
+    his poetry discussed in _Biographia Literaria_, 97;
+    preface to his poems quoted, 100;
+    _Ode to Immortality and Excursion_ quoted, 101;
+    the poets of the transcendentalists, 103;
+    lines from, quoted, 141.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY OCTAVIUS B. FROTHINGHAM.
+
+
+THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. AN ESSAY.
+
+Third Edition--Revised. Price, $1.50.
+
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+
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+
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+BY AND BY. AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE FUTURE.
+
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