The surprising fact is how, in the name of all the philosophers and the muse that presides over them, did New England fall a victim to the “Apostles of the Newness”? It was worse than the Protestant Reformation, which is said to have developed more crazy and eccentric enthusiasts than any other physical or social convulsion recorded in history. The shrewd Yankee genius was supposed to be insured against spiritual lightnings. The cold and common-sense temperament of the people seemed farthest removed from the action of “celestial ardors.” But the fierce old Puritanism was taking only a new form. The spirit that sent Charles I. to the scaffold was nurtured amid the gloomy woods. Only that the sweet providence of God, mysteriously permitting and clearly punishing evil, is gradually withdrawing even the physical presence of that spiritually and intellectually unbalanced race, what chance would there be for the action of his all-holy will as wrought out by the church? New England is largely Catholic to-day, yet New Hampshire will have no popery in her councils. “This spirit is not cast out without prayer and fasting.” Milton, who lacks spiritual insight, fails to identify the spirit of pride with the spirit of impurity. New England, alas! has been filled with the spirit of pride, and of hatred against the City of God, and lo! now she is slain by the spirit of impurity, and the stranger within her gates has taken her place and will wear her crown. And that stranger is the despised and hated “Romanist,” who now enjoys the blessing foretold in that mystic Psalm whose counsels New England despised—the blessing of progeny. It is a prophecy and a history (Ps. cxxvi.): “Unless the Lord buildeth the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keepeth the city, he watches in vain that keepeth it. It is in vain for you to rise before the Light. Rise after ye have sat down, and eaten the bread of sorrow. Behold, children are an inheritance from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so are the children of them that were rejected.”
This is the divine “survival of the fittest.” Would to Heaven that the solemn significance of this great Psalm could sink into the heart of New England and cast out the foul demons that have so long lurked within it; that, having partaken of “the bread of sorrow,” she might rise to the contemplation of the true Light!
No sooner was the restraining power of Puritanism cast off than Transcendentalism, like the genie in the Arabian Nights, rose like an exhalation, and afterward defied the command of the invokers to return to its former limited quarters. The men who assisted at this liberation of a powerful and anarchic spirit soon discovered, to their fear and disgust, that they could not control it. It was worse than Frankenstein, for it appeared to have symmetry, and the land was quickly enamored with its beauty. Every theorist felt that the millennium had dawned. A truce to common sense was called. The leaders of the movement were put in the painful but logical predicament of inability to object to the consequences of their teachings. The over-soul was reduced to such limitations as the necessity and obligation of using bran-bread in preference to all other forms of food. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus happening to appear at a time when the inspiration was fullest, Sartorial heresies became the rage. Bloomer costumes asserted their rights. The old sect of Adamites revived, and nothing but tar and feathers, which hard-headed Calvinists bestowed with unsparing vigor and abundance, prevented many from rushing into a state of nudity. There arose prophets of vegetarianism, and, says Lowell, every form of dyspepsia had its apostle. Money, the root of all evil, was condemned by impecunious disciples, who drew largely upon treasures which they imagined they had laid up in heaven. Furious assaults were made upon the Bible, which was stigmatized as a worn-out and effete system. A crew of anti-tobacconists, who regretted that they could not find a condemnation of the weed in Scripture, were joined by a set of teetotalers, who did not hesitate to condemn our Blessed Lord’s use of wine, and, as they were unable to see the high, mystic significance of the Eucharist, they vented their foolish wrath upon such of the Protestant sects as retained wine in the Lord’s Supper, and this with such effect that it became quite common in New England to administer bread and milk instead of wine in the communion, thus destroying even the semblance to the blood which we are commanded to drink in remembrance of That which was shed for our redemption, and which, in the divine Sacrifice celebrated by Christ on Holy Thursday, was then really and truly poured forth, in the chalice, unto the remission of sin.
The revulsion from the unspeakable harshness of the Puritanic interpretation of the Scriptures was so complete that men cast about for an entirely new theological terminology. The transcendental pedants were ready for the want. What was grander than the old Scandinavian mythology? What is Jehovah to Thor? What is the Trinity to the sublimity of the Buddhistic teachings? The cardinal doctrine of the New Testament is the golden rule, which was familiar to the Greeks, and expressed in our own terms by Confucius. Satan’s master-stroke was thus levelled at the Bible, which was the word of life to the New-Englander. Take the written word away from the Protestant, and the gates of hell have prevailed against him. The inscriptions upon the Temple of Delphi preserved Greek mythology for centuries. Infantine belief in the poor, adulterated word of the Scriptures, which, after all, were never subjected to the full action of the Protestant theory, kept alive some remnants of Christian faith and hope. But to cast away the Bible for the Vedas, the Krishnas, the Mahabarattas, the skalds, and the devil knows what other vague and windy compilations of Scandinavian and Brahminical superstitions was to inaugurate a chaotic era, the like of which history does not record. There is no sympathy between the American mind and the Buddhism of the East, much less between the minds of the Yankee Transcendentalists and the wild beliefs of Danish sea-kings, who would have knocked their brains out, as puling and scholarly creatures unfit to wield a club or harpoon a seal, and consequently objects of the just wrath and derision of Odin and Thor. Yet these strange mythologies, intermixed with fatalism, Schellingism, and nature-worship, formed the olla-podrida to which New England for at least ten years sat down, after the unsavory dish of Puritanism had been thrown out of doors.
The spiritual squalor and intellectual poverty of most Transcendentalists were studiously kept out of sight, and the school—for it would be blasphemy to call it a religion—pushed forward into notice its exponents, who, under the stricter requirements of writing, considerably toned down their sentiments, and sought to give intelligible and literary form to their extravagances. A magazine, called the Dial, was published in Boston, in 1840 and a few following years, and notwithstanding the petulant genius of Emerson, its editor, who only now and then yielded to the spirit of newness, the strangest gibberish began to mumble in its columns. The following, from the “Orphic Sayings” of Bronson Alcott, who was considered to be one “overflowed with spiritual intimations,” is an illustration of the jargon. It might be proposed by a weekly paper as a puzzle to the readers:
“The popular genesis is historical. It is written to sense, not to soul. Two principles, diverse and alien, intercharge the Godhead and sway the world by turns. God is dual. Spirit is derivative. Identity halts in diversity. Unity is actual merely. The poles of things are not integrated. Creation is globed and orbed.”
The leaders of the movement cared nothing about letting their infidelity be known; but the mass following were loath to break completely with their religious traditions. They did not know what Kultur meant, and had neither knowledge of, nor sympathy with, Wilhelm Meister or Werther. The Atlantic Monthly, which may be regarded as having taken the place of the Dial, became the repository of Transcendental thought, though, with Yankee shrewdness and savoir faire, the editors managed to give it an unsectarian and, in time, even a national character.
The Atlantic never committed itself to Christianity, or, if it did so, it was to that spurious horror which in rhyme, idea, and general relativeness joins Jesus with Crœsus. A peculiar school of literature, marked with the patient study of German idealism, grew up around the Atlantic, which, with characteristic New England assertion, claimed to be the critic and model of American letters. The orphic style was sternly kept down in the Atlantic, but it would assert itself. Any one who cares about illustrating this idea has but to turn over the older Atlantics to see the painful efforts made to paraphrase the name of God, which, whenever boldly printed, has some title of limitation. We have any quantity of Valhallas and mythologies, and poems about the Christ that’s born in lilies, etc.; but it is tacitly understood that Kultur is the presiding genius. It must be admitted that New England Transcendentalism developed, or at least engaged, considerable literary and poetic talent. Not to speak of its High-Priest, Avatar, Inspirationalist, Seer, or Writer (with a big W), or Whatsoever you call him—Emerson, who has retreated from its altar and seems to be swinging his Thor-hammer wildly in every direction, there appeared a number of writers, all under the mystic spell. They aimed at a certain vague and beautiful language, and were given to pluralizing nouns which are one and singular in meaning. A certain kind of poetry, after the manner of Shelley, but not after his genius, sprang up and monthly bedecked the Atlantic with flowers. The literary men of New England were made to feel that inspiration sprang from Transcendentalism alone.
Nathaniel Hawthorne became its novelist, and Thoreau, whom we have been keeping at the door so long, suggested to him the idea of Donatello in The Marble Faun—a finely-organized animal, acted upon by human and otherwise spiritual influences. Hawthorne’s morbid genius, for which we confess we have little admiration, was unnaturally stimulated by the Transcendental seers. He is for ever diving into the depths of inner consciousness, and always appearing with a devil-fish instead of a pearl. His Note-Books show him to have been a spiritually diseased man, for whom the stench and ugliness of moral fungus growths had more charms than had the flowers. He has the besetting weakness of false reformers, chronic irritation, quite as vehement against the pettiest crosses and vexations of life as against its awful tragedies and crimes. This is the evolution of Transcendentalism. It began with enthusiasm and ended in worse than Reformation anger at everything and everybody, not excepting itself; but it was not an anger that sins not.
Theodore Parker was its theologian by excellence, and as the one god he believed in was himself, we suppose he may be allowed the title. Margaret Fuller Ossoli was co-editor with Emerson of the Dial, and was a strong-minded woman, whom her admirers insisted upon calling Anne Hutchinson come again—so strong, after all, were their New England traditions. Dwight wrote their music, if music can be limited in expression. William Ellery Channing was the poet of Transcendentalism, and Henry D. Thoreau was its hermit.