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      Chapter I

      Transcendentalism: An Introduction

       Ralph Waldo Emerson.

       “[Transcendentalism is] the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times.”

      —Ralph Waldo Emerson

      It is a delightful irony that the central figure of the Transcendentalist movement—the minister, poet, and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson—did not particularly like the word “Transcendentalism.” The term wasn’t even his; it originally came from German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s 1781 Critique of Pure Reason. In Critique, Kant uses the term to refer to a class of ideas that “transcend” experience, but Emerson preferred to think of the Transcendentalist movement as one that looked toward a bright future: “What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842.”

      While some considered Transcendentalism alarmingly radical and new, Emerson felt quite the opposite: “The first thing we have to say respecting what are called new views here in New England, at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times.”

      The New Times

      When the nineteenth century dawned across the sixteen United States of America, the nation was only twenty-four years old. Although European settlers had been living in the “New World” for hundreds of years, the fledgling country had not yet made its mark on Western culture and art.

      By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the situation was quite different. In the intervening hundred years, the United States had produced important figures in every field of the arts and social sciences whose international reputations remain strong today. Because so many of these artists and thinkers were influenced by ideas and theories connected with Transcendentalism, understanding the movement’s central tenets can shed new light on works in the fields of literature, philosophy, theology, and social activism created during this time.

      It was also the unique combination of the “new times” with the particular ethos of New England that allowed the Transcendentalism of Emerson and other New England writers to play its central role in the “American Renaissance”—the flowering of arts and literature that took place in the 1800s. Exploring the interaction between place and idea can give us a deeper appreciation of the role of Transcendentalism as a defining cultural force in America.

      Transcendentalism Defined: An Original Relation to the Universe

      In his efforts to explain how Transcendentalism fit into the “new times,” Emerson identified two types of thinkers, Materialists and Idealists. The Materialists were rationalists, absorbing data from their senses and constructing the truth of the world from what they could hear, see, taste, smell, and touch. Rationalism, exemplified by the theories of British philosopher John Locke, was the bread and butter of the Unitarianism that had begun to dominate the theological landscape in the states that make up New England: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island.

      The Idealists (or Transcendentalists) believed, with Kant and Plato before them, that there are truths that come primarily from intuition rather than sensory experience. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant maintained that humans’ understanding of God came from an intuitive recognition of the inherent truth of his existence, not from external proof. This assertion, along with supporting ideas from philosophers such as Viktor Cousin, Madame de Staël, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as the British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, provided a theoretical basis for the literature, theology, and social activism that would define Transcendentalism.

      Although many literary critics view Emerson’s 1836 work Nature as the founding document of Transcendentalism, it is clear that the Reverend William Ellery Channing’s 1828 Unitarian sermon “Likeness to God” is the urtext of the canon. In it, Channing posited that there is a single spiritual entity present in all of us, which we are also all a part of (what Emerson later called the Oversoul). Moreover, Channing said that the best place to study and observe this spiritual unity was in nature.

      Although many literary critics view Emerson’s 1836 work Nature as the founding document of Transcendentalism, it is clear that the Reverend William Ellery Channing’s 1828 Unitarian sermon “Likeness to God” is the urtext of the canon. In it, Channing posited that there is a single spiritual entity present in all of us, which we are also all a part of (what Emerson later called the Oversoul). Moreover, Channing said that the best place to study and observe this spiritual unity was in nature.

      Mirroring such British Romantic poets as William Wordsworth, many Transcendentalist writers looked to nature for inspiration and signs of a divinity. Because they believed that Nature (now with a capital N) represented all of humankind as well as God, they felt that much could be learned by closely examining the minute elements of nature as microcosms of the larger world. In addition, much Transcendentalist literature encouraged and valued the creative individual who, spurred on by the muse of Nature, used prose and poetry to pose new ideas and new connections. There was also a concurrent turning away from the neoclassical values of order, abstraction, and symmetry toward a more organic, free-flowing art.

      The first widely distributed example of this more organic art came in 1836 with Emerson’s thin volume, Nature. This ninety-five-page extended essay provided in its first paragraph a central tenet of Transcendentalism: “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face.... Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” Indeed, much of Transcendentalism can be summed up as the individual’s quest for an “original relation to the universe.” This is much of what drove Emerson from the pulpit

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