RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Transcendentalism
by the traditions of Abby Hutchinson, Mary Dwyer, and the apostles of soul-freedom. Not that the positions taken by these men 3. The and women were the same as those "Tran- assumed by the transcendentalists. scendental They were indeed quite different, in Club. " fact precisely opposite ; for those all recognized some supernatural authority, whereas the transcendentalists as a class were pure " intuitionalists, " believers in the inspiration of the individual soul; but they looked only at apparent results, disregarding adjacent beliefs. The leaders were young men, almost without exception, educated for the ministry, Unitarians, members of the best class in society, eloquent speakers and talkers, scholars, men of liberal culture, outspoken in the declaration of their opinions. Of these Ralph Waldo Emerson was chief, most seraphic and persuasive, most uncompromising, too, in his ecclesiastical action. He resigned his charge as a Unitarian minister in 1832, because of scruples in regard to the " communion service," which he regarded as a spiritual rite and was willing to continue as such, but not as an ordinance imposed by Church or Scripture. Later, he was unwilling to offer public prayer, except when so disposed, and retired from the pulpit altogether, making the secular platform his sole visible elevation above the multitude — an elevation not of authority, but of convenience. A few young men gathered around him. In September of 1836, at the celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Harvard College, four persons — Emerson, Hedge, Ripley, and Putnam — met together in Cambridge, and, after discussing the theological and ecclesiastical situation, agreed to call a meeting of a few like-minded, with a view to strengthen each other in their opposition to the old way, and see what could be done to inaugurate a better. At a preliminary meeting at the house 0/ George Ripley, in Boston, there were present Emerson, Hedge, Alcott, Bartol, Brownson, and Bartlett (a young tutor at Cambridge). Then and there it was resolved, on invitation of Emerson, to hold a convention at his house in Concord during the same month of September. Invitations were sent to as many as were known or supposed to be in sympathy with the objects of the meeting. From fifteen to twenty came, among them, William Henry Channing, John Sullivan Dwight, James Freeman Clarke, Ephraim Peabody, Chandler Robbins, George P Bradford, Mrs. Samuel Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, perhaps Theodore Parker. Convers Francis and Caleb Stetson were the only men of the older generation who took a practical interest in the movement. Channing was in sympathy with its general aims, but took no active part at the time. His contemporaries either did not appear, or immediately withdrew. The public got intelligence of the Concord meeting, and gave to the little fellowship the name of the " Transcendental Club," why, it is not easy to discover; for a club it was not in any sense of the word. There was no organization, there were no officers, there was no stated time or place for assembling, there were no topics for discussion: in fact, there appears no good reason for calling it " transcendental," unless that term was
supposed to carry with it ridicule or opprobrium. The meetings were fitful, and hastily prearranged. In ten years there were scarcely more than as many convocations. Some members remained in the Church, attempting to combine transcendental ideas with ecclesiastical forms : others left the Church for other vocations. Each followed the leading of the individual disposition. The short-lived Dial and the shorter-lived Massachusetts Quarterly were results of the " transcendental " spirit.
At the time when the transcendental movement was at its height, the atmosphere of New England was filled with projects of reform. Every kind of innovation on existing social arrange- 4. The ments had its advocate, its newspaper, " Atmos- its meetings, its convention. Temperphere of ance, non-resistance, woman's rights, Reform." anti-slavery, peace, claimed attention from those concerned for the progress of mankind. Some of these projects were wild, visionary, and, in the eyes of some observers, grotesque. It is not unlikely that they owed their origin to the same impulse which produced transcendentalism, though the historical and logical connection has not been discovered. That a large part of the ridicule which was vented on the transcendentalists was owing to their presumed affiliation with these summary iconoclasts is more than probable. Nor was such a presumption unreasonable; for the transcendentalists not merely took no pains to correct the impression, but rather gave it encouragement. Emerson's lecture on " Man the Reformer " was an eloquent arraignment of society. " One day all men will be lovers," he wrote, " and every calamity will be dissolved in the universal sunshine." In his lecture on " The Times," delivered the same year (1841), he says:
" These reformers are our contemporaries; they are ourselves, our own light and sight and conscience; they only name the relation which subsists between us and the vicious institutions which they go to rectify. . The reforms have their high origin in an ideal justice; but they do not retain the purity of an idea. The reforming movement
is sacred in its origin; in its management and details, timid and profane. These benefactors hope to raise a man by improving his circumstances: by combination of that which is dead, they hope to make something alive. In vain. By new infusions, alone, of the spirit by which he is made and directed, can he be remade and reenforced."
The transcendentalists by virtue of the very principles which underlay their philosophy, and as the foregoing quotations indicate, were interested in reforms of all kinds, some of which were none too sane or sober. Most of them were 5. Relation Abolitionists, many of them were to Re- Woman Suffragists, and all of them forms and were free and radical thinkers in one Religion, direction or another. On the practical side the movement took interesting shape in the Brook Farm community, where a brave and self-sacrificing attempt was made to put into practise the principles of a social brotherhood. George Ripley, who had been settled over a Unitarian parish, was the leading spirit. Channing was deeply interested, and his hopes, though not extravagant, were very high. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a member of the community for a time. He found, however, that a mans soul may be " buried
Tran scendentalism Tran sfigxiration