Transcendentalism in New England: A History

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

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,[Pg 121] 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[Pg 123] 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.