Transcendentalism by Jennifer Thompson

1. Quill and Musket Guest Lecturer Series Transcendentalismby Jennifer Thompson

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson Library of Congress

3. Idealism • Ralph Waldo Emerson, the central figure of the Transcendentalist movement did not like that term, “What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842….The first thing we have to say respecting what are called new views here in New England, at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times.” (Felton, 3) • Emerson described two types of thinkers: Materialists, who relied on sensory experience; and Idealists, who relied on intuition.

4. William Ellery Channing Wm. Ellery Channing statue, Boston, Mass. Library of Congress

5. “Likeness to God” • Unitarian minister, William Ellery Channing, in his 1828 sermon “Likeness to God,” stated, “We discern more and more of God in every thing; from the frail flower to the everlasting stars….What man can examine the structure of a plant or an animal, and see the adaptation of its parts to each other and to common ends, and not feel, that it is the work of an intelligence akin to his own, and that he traces these marks of design by the same spiritual energy in which they had their origin?” (Channing, “Likeness to God”)

6. “Nature” • Emerson was probably influenced by this sermon, when he wrote his 1836 essay “Nature,” which is viewed by many as the Transcendentalism founding document, “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe? ...In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” (Felton, 63)

7. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody • Elizabeth Palmer Peabody stated, “Transcendentalism belongs to not sect of religion, and no social party. It is the common ground to which all sects may rise, and be purified of their narrowness; for it consists in seeking the spiritual ground of all manifestations.” (Felton, 5, 7)

8. The key ministers in this movement were: William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederic Henry Hedge, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker and George Ripley. The key writers were: Ellery Channing, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller, Nathanial Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau and Jones Very. The key educators were: Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody and Franklin Sanborn. This group generally lived in Utopian societies within a fifty-mile area around Boston, Massachusetts between 1828 and 1854.

9. Harvard College Divinity [School] Library Library of Congress

10. Many Transcendentalists received their education at Harvard College, in nearby Cambridge. Harvard “hosted two Emersonian orations that set the direction for the Transcendentalist movement, ‘The American Scholar’ in 1837 and the ‘Divinity School Address’ in 1838.” (Felton, 7) • The small village of nearby Concord attracted many Transcendentalist visitors. The Lyceum Movement, a series of lectures for adults begun in 1828, quickly spread across the nation; nearly all of the Transcendentalist thinkers gave speeches at nearby lyceums. The Transcendental Club was begun September 19, 1836, as “a ‘symposium’ to discuss ideas of religion, philosophy, literature, education, and culture away from the restrictive arenas of the church and Harvard.” In 1840, they started a quarterly journal, “The Dial,” to publish their essays, but it was not a financial success and ran out of funds in 1844. The journal has been resurrected several times since then. Transcendentalists also became involved in the abolitionist movement, speaking out against slavery, hiding fugitives, participating in the Underground Railroad, and raising money to buy weapons for John Brown. (Felton, 21)

11. George Ripley Library of Congress

12. Transcendentalists attempted experiments in communal living at Brook Farm, which lasted from 1841 to 1847, and Fruitlands, which lasted seven months. George Ripley, who founded Brook Farm, tried unsuccessfully to convince Emerson to join him in the start of his ideal community, “Our objects, as you know, are to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away the necessity of menial services, by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions.” (Felton, 123-124)

13. Brook Farm grew to nearly two hundred people, mainly young people. They had highly successful schools: nursery school, primary school and a college preparatory school. The inhabitants were supposed to share in the work and leisure time; however, “The country members naturally were surprised to observe that one man ploughed all day and one looked out of a window all day, and perhaps drew his picture, and both received at night the same wages.” (Felton, 127) • To solve this problem, the community adopted standards requiring three hundred work days a year (ten-hour work days in the summer and eight-hour work days in the winter). Those who failed to meet the full year work standard paid four dollars a day for room and board. When fire destroyed the nearly completed Phalanstery building in 1846, the $7000 uninsured loss was too much for the community, forcing it to disband in 1847.

14. Amos Bronson Alcott Library of Congress

15. Emerson also declined to join Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in their Fruitlands utopian community. They tried to work the farm without using animals, but soon were forced to use cattle to till the ground. They “declared that ‘nothing was to be admitted [to the community] which has caused wrong or death to man or beast.’ Prohibited items included meat, dairy products, leather, and even lamp oil. Cotton, silk, and wool were also banned, because they were products of slave labor.” (Felton, 132) • The men “declared that ‘each member is to perform the work for which experience, strength, and taste best fit him.’ In practice, this meant that the men devoted themselves to their own self-improvement, leaving Abba Alcott to do almost all the hard physical work.” (Felton, 133)

16. Abba gave her husband her ultimatum at the end of the year: she and the children were leaving; he could join them or stay behind. He chose his family and Lane and his son moved to a nearby Shaker community. Alcott described the adventure, “Our ‘Fruitlands’ was an adventure undertaken in good faith for planting a Family Order here in New England, in hopes of enjoying a pastoral life with a few devoted men and women, smitten with the sentiments of the old heroism and love of holiness and humanity. But none of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart, some returning to the established ways, some soured by the trial, others postponing the fulfillment of his dream to a more propitious future.” (Felton, 133)

17. Emerson, in his 1844 “New England Reformers” essay, commented on these communities, “But in each of these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of the private man.” (Russell, 253)

18. Sources: • Channing, William Ellery. “Likeness to God.” (American Unitarian Conference, 2003) http://www.americanunitarian.org/likeness.htm (accessed 20 December 2010). • Felton, R. Todd. A Journey into the Transcendentalists’ New England. Berkeley, CA: Roaring Forties Press, 2006. • Russell, Francis. The American Heritage History of the Making of the Nation. New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1968.