Nothing can be more reasonable than this; and this is the tone of transcendental feeling and thought on the subject. The only criticism that can fairly be made on the Transcendentalist's idea of woman, is that it has more regard for essential capacities and possibilities, than for incidental circumstances, more respect for the ideal than for the actual woman. However grave a sin this may be against common sense, it is none against purity, nobleness, or the laws of private or public virtue. The dream, if it be no more than a dream, is beautiful and inspiring.
The Transcendentalist believed in man's ability to apprehend absolute ideas of Truth, Justice, Rectitude, Goodness; he spoke of The Right, The True, The Beautiful, as eternal realities which he perceived. The "Sensational" philosophy was shut up in the relative and conditioned; knew nothing higher than expediency; held prudence, caution, practical wisdom in highest rank among the virtues; consulted the revelations of history; recognized no law above established usage; went for guidance to the book, the record, the statute; it could not speak therefore with power, but could only consider, surmise, cast probabilities, devise plans and work carefully towards their execution. The Sensationalist distrusted the seer, rejected the prophet, and disliked the reformer. His aim was law; his work within easy distance; his object, some plainly visible and appreciable satisfaction. His faith in men and women was small; his trust in circumstances and conditions was unbounded; but as this faith had no wings, it could neither raise its possessor from the ground, nor speed him faster than a walking pace. He was easily satisfied with the world as it was; or if dissatisfied, had little hope of its being made better by anything he could do. His helplessness and hopelessness will make him in opinion an optimist, who finds it easier to assume that the order of the world is perfect and will so appear by and by, than that it is made imperfect for him to mend. Optimism is perhaps oftener the creed of the indolent than of the earnest.
The Transcendentalist was satisfied with nothing so long as it did not correspond to the ideal in the enlightened soul; and in the soul recognized the power to make all things new. Nothing will content him short of the absolute right, the eternally true, the unconditioned excellence. He prays for the kingdom of Heaven, lives in expectation of it; would not be surprised at its coming any day. For though the distance is immense between the world as it is and his vision of the world as it should be—a distance that the Evolutionist despairs of seeing traversed in thousands of years, if he believes it will be traversed at all,—still, as the power of regeneration is supposed to be in the soul itself, which is possessed of infinite capacities and is open continually to inspirations from the world of soul, the transformation may begin when least expected, and may be completed before preparation for it can be made. Hence his boundless enthusiasm and hope; hence the order of his feeling, the glow of his language. Hence his disposition to exaggerate the force of tendencies that point in his direction; to take the brightest view of events, and put the happiest construction on the signs of the times. In the anti-slavery period the Transcendentalist glorified the negro beyond all warrant of fact, seeing in him an imprisoned soul struggling to be free. The same soul he sees in woman oppressed by limitations; the same in the drunkard, the gambler, the libertine. His eye is ever fixed on the future.
RELIGION.
It was by no accident that the transcendental philosophy addressed itself at once to the questions of religion. It did so at the beginning, in Germany, and later, in England, and did so from the nature of the case. Its very name implied that it maintained the existence of ideas in the mind which transcended sensible experience. Such ideas fall within the domain of religion; ideas of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute; and the significance and import of these ideas exercised the minds of transcendental thinkers, according to their genius. Kant felt it necessary to reopen the problem of God and immortality; Fichte followed, Schelling and Hegel moved on the same plane.
Transcendentalism was, in fact, a reaction against the moral and political skepticism which resulted directly from the prevailing philosophy of sensation. Since Bacon's day, religious beliefs had been taking hold on the enlightened mind of England and Europe. The drift of speculation was strongly against, not the Christian system alone, but natural religion, and the ideal foundation of morality. The writings of Collins, Dodwell, Mandeville, expressed more skepticism than they created, and betrayed a deeply-seated and widely-spread misgiving in regard to the fundamental truths of theology. Hume's argument against the credibility of miracles was never answered, and the anxiety to answer it was a confession of alarm from the heart of the church. The famous XVIth chapter of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was assailed furiously, but in vain, each assault exposing the weakness of the assailants; and it was only by adopting his history, and editing it with judicious notes, that the church silenced the enemy it could not crush. The deists of the seventeenth century in no wise balanced their denials by their affirmations, but left Christianity fearfully shattered by their blows. The champions of the church fought skepticism with skepticism, conceding in substance the points they superficially attacked. Towards the close of the seventeenth century Cudworth confronted atheism with idealism, retreating upon Plato when the foe had carried the other works; early in the century following, Butler, in the celebrated "Analogy," fought infidelity with weapons that infidelity might have turned, and since has turned with deadly effect, against himself. The ablest representative of Unitarianism was Joseph Priestley, a materialist of the school of Hartley. The cardinal beliefs of religion were debated in a way that was quite unsatisfactory in the light of reason, showing the extent to which faith had been undermined. Indeed, had it not been for the power of institutions, customs, respectability, and tradition, the popular beliefs would have all but disappeared, so deep into the heart of the people unbelief had penetrated. The church stood fast, because it was allied with power and fashion, not because it was supported by reason or faith. The whole tone of feeling on sacred and ethical topics was low; divine ideas were defended by considerations of expediency; God was a probability; the immortality of the soul a possibility, a supplement to skepticism, an appendix to a philosophy which, finding no God here, presumed there must be one hereafter. There is no more soulless reading than the works of the Christian apologists of the seventeenth century. The infidels had more ideas, and apparently more sincerity, but in neither was there any spiritual impulse or fervor.
In Germany the philosophy of Bacon and Locke did not strike deep root. The day of Germany was to come later. Her thoughts were pent up in her own breast. She was isolated, and almost speechless. Her genius awoke with the new philosophy. Under the influence of idealism it bloomed in the richest of modern literatures. Her very skepticism, the much talked-of rationalism, had an ideal origin. Strauss was a disciple of Hegel. Bauer, and the "historical school" of Tübingen worked out their problem of New Testament criticism from the Hegelian idea, the constructive force whereof was so powerful, that the negations lost their negative character, and showed primarily as affirmations of reason. By being adopted into the line of intellectual development of mankind, Christianity, though dethroned and disenchanted, was dignified as a supreme moment in the autobiography of God.