Nothing of very decided mark has been contributed to dramatic literature by American writers, though this branch of letters has been cultivated with some success. John Howard Payne wrote several successful plays; George H. Boker is the author of many dramatic works which establish his claim to an honorable rank among the dramatic writers of the age. Single dramas by Bird, Sargent, Conrad, and other writers still keep their place upon the stage; with many faults, they abound in beauties, and they are valuable as indications of awakening genius.
5. THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND.—The Transcendental Philosophy, so-called, had its distinct origin in the "Critique of Pure Reason," the work of Immanuel Kant, which appeared in Germany in 1781, although, under various forms, the questions it discussed are as old as Plato and Aristotle, The first principle of this philosophy is that ideas exist in the soul which transcend the senses, while that of the school of Locke, or the School of Sensation, is that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses. The Transcendentalist claimed an intuitive knowledge of God, belief in immortality, and in man's ability to apprehend absolute ideas of truth, justice, and rectitude. The one regarded expediency, prudence, caution, and practical wisdom as the highest of the virtues, and distrusted alike the seer, the prophet, and the reformer. The other was by nature a reformer and dissatisfied with men as they are, but with passionate aspirations for a pure social state, he recognized, above all, the dignity of the individual man.
These two schools of philosophy aimed at the same results, but by different methods. The one worked up from beneath by material processes, the other worked down from above by intellectual ones. There had been in other countries a transcendental philosophy, but, in New England alone, where the sense of individual freedom was active, and where there were no fixed and unalterable social conditions, was this philosophy applied to actual life. Of late the scientific method, so triumphant in the natural world, has been applied to the spiritual, and the principles of the sensational philosophy have been, re-stated by Bain, Mill, Spencer, and other leaders of speculative opinion, who present it under the name of the "Philosophy of Experience," and resolve the intuitions of the Ideal into the results of experience and the processes of organic, life. Mill was the first to organize the psychological side, while Lewes, Spencer, and Tyndall have approached the same problem from the side of organization. Should these analyses be accepted, Idealism as a philosophy must disappear. There is, however, no cause to apprehend a return to the 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, and 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.
Early in the second quarter of our century the doctrines of Kant and of his German followers, Jacobi, Fichte, and Schelling, found their way into New England, and their influence on thought and life was immediate and powerful, affecting religion, literature, laws, and institutions. As an episode or special phase of thought, it was of necessity transient, but had it bequeathed nothing more than the literature that sprang 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.
Among the first to plant the seeds of the Transcendental Philosophy in New England was George Ripley (1802-1880), a philanthropist on ideal principles, whose faith blossomed into works, and whose well known attempt to create a new earth in preparation for a new heaven, although it ended in failure, commanded sympathy and respect. Later, as a critic, he aided the development of literature in America by erecting a high standard of judgment and by his just estimation of the rights and duties of literary men.
Theodore Parker (d. 1860) owed his great power as a preacher to his faith in the Transcendental philosophy. The Absolute God, the Moral Law, and the Immortal Life he held to be the three cardinal attestations of the universal consciousness. The authority of the "higher law," the absolute necessity of religion for safely conducting the life of the individual and the life of the state, he asseverated with all the earnestness of an enthusiastic believer.
A. Bronson Alcott (b. 1799) is a philosopher of the Mystic school. Seeking wisdom, not through books, but by intellectual processes, he appeals at once to consciousness, claims immediate insight, and contemplates ultimate laws in his own soul. His "Orphic Sayings" amused and perplexed the critics, who made them an excuse for assailing the entire Transcendental school.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) adopted the spiritual philosophy, and had the subtlest perception of its bearings. Her vigorous and original writings possess a lasting value, although they imperfectly represent her remarkable powers.
Among the representatives of the Spiritual Philosophy the first place belongs to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who lighted up its doctrines with the rays of ethical and poetical imagination. Without the formality of dogma, he was a teacher of vigorous morality in line with the ruling tendencies of the age, and bringing all the aid of abstract teaching towards the solution of the moral problems of society.
The first article of his 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. His second 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.