And here we may say, in passing, that this brilliant Community has a right to complain that its story should have to be told by aliens. Emerson, who was not a member of it, nor in sympathy with the socialistic movement to which it abandoned itself, has volunteered a lecture of reminiscences; and Hawthorne, who joined it only to jilt it, has given the world a poetico-sneering romance about it; and that is all the first-hand information we have, except what can be gleaned from obsolete periodicals. George William Curtis, though he was a member, coolly exclaims in Harper's Magazine:
"Strangely enough, Hawthorne is likely to be the chief future authority upon 'the romantic episode' of Brook Farm. Those who had it at heart more than he, whose faith and energy were all devoted to its development, and many of whom have every ability to make a permanent record, have never done so, and it is already so much a thing of the past, that it will probably never be done."
In the name of history we ask, Why has not George William Curtis himself made the permanent record? Why has not George Ripley taken the story out of the mouths of the sneerers? Brook Farm might tell its own story through him, for he was Brook Farm. It was George Ripley who took into his heart the inspiration of Dr. Channing, and went to work like a hero to make a fact of it; while Emerson stood by smiling incredulity. It was Ripley who put on his frock and carted manure, and set Hawthorne shoveling, and did his best for years to keep work going, that the Community might pay as well as play. It was no "picnic" or "romantic episode" or chance meeting "in a ship's cabin" to him. His whole soul was bent on making a home of it. If a man's first-born, in whom his heart is bound up, dies at six years old, that does not turn the whole affair into a joke. There were others of the same spirit, but Ripley was the center of them.
Brook Farm came very near being a religious Community. It inherited the spirit of Dr. Channing and of Transcendentalism. The inspiration in the midst of which it was born, was intensely literary, but also religious. The Brook Farmers refer to it as the "revival," the "newness," the "renaissance." There was evidently an afflatus on the men, and they wrote and acted as they were moved. The Dial was the original organ of this afflatus, and contains many articles that are edifying to Christians of good digestion. It was published quarterly, and the four volumes of it (sixteen numbers) extended from July 1840 to April 1844.
The first notice we find of Brook Farm is in connection with an article in the second volume of The Dial (Oct. 1841), entitled, "A Glimpse of Christ's Idea of Society." The writer of this most devout essay was Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, then and since a distinguished literary lady. She was evidently in full sympathy with the "newness" out of which Brook Farm issued. Margaret Fuller, one of the constituents of Brook Farm, was editress of The Dial, and thus sanctioned the essay. Its reference to Brook Farm is avowed in a note at the end, and in a subsequent article. The following extracts give us
THE ORIGINAL IDEAL OF BROOK FARM.
[From The Dial, Oct. 1841.]
"While we acknowledge the natural growth, the good design, and the noble effects of the apostolic church, and wish we had it, in place of our own more formal ones, we should not do so small justice to the divine soul of Jesus of Nazareth, as to admit that it was a main purpose of his to found it, or that when it was founded it realized his idea of human society. Indeed we probably do injustice to the apostles themselves, in supposing that they considered their churches anything more than initiatory. Their language implies that they looked forward to a time when the uttermost parts of the earth should be inherited by their beloved master; and beyond this, when even the name, which is still above every name, should be lost in the glory of the Father, who is to be all in all.
"Some persons, indeed, refer all this sort of language to another world; but this is gratuitously done. Both Jesus and the apostles speak of life as the same in both worlds. For themselves individually they could not but speak principally of another world; but they imply no more than that death is an accident, which would not prevent, but hasten the enjoyment of that divine life, which they were laboring to make possible to all men, in time as well as in eternity. * * *
"The Kingdom of Heaven, as it lay in the clear spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, is rising again upon vision. Nay, this Kingdom begins to be seen not only in religious ecstasy, in moral vision, but in the light of common sense, and the human understanding. Social science begins to verify the prophecy of poetry. The time has come when men ask themselves what Jesus meant when he said, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these little ones, ye have not done it unto me.'