Transcendentalism in New England: A History

Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangelists, namely, Matthew and John, were of the twelve disciples, and were present on that occasion. Neither of them drops the slightest int...

"Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing; to pass the brute body, and search the life and reason which causes it to exist; to see that the object is...

The community trafficked by way of exchange and barter with the outside world; sold its surplus produce; sold its culture to as many as came or sent children to be taught. It wa...

"Woman cannot complain that she has not had her share of power. This in all ranks of society, except the lowest, has been hers to the extent that vanity could crave, far beyond...

The belief in the spiritual eminence of woman was part of the creed of the Transcendentalist; it was intimately connected with his reverence for interior, poetic, emotional natu...

Chalybäus says of Jacobi: "With deep penetration he traced the mystic fountain of desire after the highest and best, to the point where it discloses itself as an immediate feeli...

The editors and reviewers of its day could make nothing of it. The most entertaining part of the present writer's task has been the reading of articles on Transcendentalism in t...

The chief sources from which the transcendental philosophy came from Germany to America have been indicated. The traces of Jacobi and Fichte are broad and distinct on the mind o...

"New England is now old enough, some there have leisure enough to look at all this, and the consequence is a violent reaction, in a small minority, against a mode of culture tha...

The Unitarians as a class belonged to the school of Locke, which discarded the doctrine of innate ideas, and its kindred beliefs. Unitarianism from the beginning showed affinity...

The invisible world is near us; or rather, it is here, in us and about us; were the fleshly coil removed from our soul, the glories of the unseen were even now around us, as the...

The project of a school on the new plan was started in Boston; Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Miss Hoar, Mrs. Nath'l Hawthorne being among the most deeply interested. It wa...

The chief mystic of the transcendental band has been the chief prophet of this innocent word. "The New Ideas," wrote Mr. Alcott, "bear direct on all the economies of life. They...

We each of us furnish to the angel who stands in the sun, a single observation. The reason why Homer is to me like dewy morning, is because I too lived while Troy was, and saile...

This was the aspect of Transcendentalism that fascinated Theodore Parker. His intellect was constructed on the English model. His acute observation; his passion for external fac...

"The first range of hills that encircles the scanty vale of human life is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its ridges the sun is born and departs. From them t...

Another remarkable man, of the same school, but of still different temper--a man who would have been greatly distinguished but for the disabilities of sickness--is David A. Wass...

"Of the great educators of antiquity, I esteem Pythagoras the most eminent and successful; everything of his doctrine and discipline comes commended by its elegance and humanity...

"That every mental state has a nervous state for its immediate antecedent, though extremely probable, cannot hitherto be said to be proved, in the conclusive manner in which thi...

The Transcendentalist keeps his essential faith. Generally the Transcendentalists have done this. It was a faith too deeply planted, too nobly illustrated, too fervent and beaut...

Struck with this idea, Kant undertook to transfer contemplation from the objects that engaged the mind to the mind itself, and thus start philosophy on a new career. He meditate...

The other branch of the Sensational school fell back on authority, and received on the tradition of history what could not be verified by science. Immortality was accepted as a...

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 "Sensati...

"There is a want of suitable aids to the studies of these mysteries. The best books I know are poor enough. In the want of a better, we name for the study of matter in its conne...

"Having gained these heights, philosophy becomes more luminous as well as more grand; universal harmony enters into human thought, enlarges it, and gives it peace. The divorce o...

While we are gathering up for exhibition before other nations, the results of a century of American life, with a purpose to show the issues thus far of our experiment in free in...

With the reactionary stage of Carlyle's career when, as a frank critic observes, "he flung away with a shriek the problems his youth entertained, as the fruit by which paradise...

As it is the prevailing opinion and feeling in our religious community, that it is an indispensable part of the pastoral office to administer this ordinance, I am about to resig...

Transcendentalism, chiefly communicated through German literature, 51; influence on German literature, 51; its apostles in the New World, 103; in New England, 105; borders on Pl...