A contemporaneous account of the movementTranscendentalism in New England is a history of the 19th-century philosophical and literary movement that had a profound influence on American literature and thought. The author of this history, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, was a Unitarian preacher like many of the leading Transcendentalists. This book was published in 1876, while pioneering American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Amos Bronson Alcott were still alive. Although it is unclear from the text if Frothingham ever met them personally, his writing indicates that he was definitely sympathetic to the movement. The relative contemporanaeity of this account is what makes it interesting, as Frothingham wrote this assessment of Transcendentalism shortly after the movement’s heyday, while its influence was still vibrant.
Frothingham begins by tracing the movement to its origins in Germany, particularly to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He then tracks the development of Transcendentalist thought through France and Britain to its appropriation by American clergy and scholars. Frothingham chronicles the establishment and progression of the movement in America, including a thorough look at Brook Farm, the experimental Utopian community founded by Transcendentalists in the 1840s. A series of chapters on individual Transcendentalists follows: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker and George Ripley; plus a chapter on “Minor Prophets” briefly covering several other members of the school. Frothingham closes with a chapter on Transcendentalist literature, but it really doesn’t include much literary criticism. Rather, half its length is occupied by Emerson’s reprinted sermon on why he left the Unitarian ministry.
This is not so much a literary history as a philosophical history. Frothingham doesn’t talk much about the books and articles these figures published, but rather tries to ascertain each individual’s belief system, assessing how closely they adhered to or where they differed from the Transcendentalist party line. In making his case, Frothingham uses way too many extensive quotes, many of them several pages in length. If he truly wanted to educate his readers on Transcendentalism, he would have done better to explain matters in his own words rather than reproducing pages of text verbatim.
The idea of what constitutes a Transcendentalist has changed somewhat from Frothingham’s day. He held a very exclusive view of who truly belongs to the club. Frothingham praises Emerson highly and devotes at least two chapters to him, but considers him an Idealist rather than a Transcendentalist. “A Transcendentalist, in the technical sense of the term, it cannot be clearly affirmed that he was.” As to Fuller, “Strictly speaking, she was not a Transcendentalist.” Frothingham doesn’t even consider Henry David Thoreau worthy of discussion. Thoreau’s name is only mentioned twice in passing.
For those interested in learning just what Transcendentalism is and its effect on American literature and society, the best book I’ve read on the subject is the Modern Library’s volume The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings. Although an anthology volume, editor Lawrence Buell provides a concise, enlightening introduction on the history, philosophical beliefs, and social agenda of the Transcendentalists that’s accessible to the general reader. Frothingham’s Transcendentalism in New England, on the other hand, will likely only appeal to historians of the era or theologians interested in splitting doctrinal hairs.
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An excellent guide to the movement as a whole
While Transcendentalism was an extremely important development in the history of American literature and philosophy, likely few readers today could define the movement beyond calling up the names of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. A few enlightened souls might stretch so far as to mention Margaret Fuller. Despite its name recognition, Transcendentalism is a very difficult school of thought to pin down. Many of the Transcendentalists themselves, and Emerson in particular, denied the existence of any “school” or “movement,” likening the group to an amorphously diverse congregation of vaguely like-minded individuals. Nevertheless, Transcendentalism was a genuine movement with concrete philosophical precepts and an agenda for social change. In the 2006 book The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings, editor Lawrence Buell not only amasses an excellent collection of writings but also delivers a thorough demystification of this crucial and confusing period of development in American thought.
Buell opens the book with an enlightening introduction that outlines the history of American Transcendentalism, its intellectual origins, and a summary of the philosophical views common to its members. The movement originally arose when a number of liberal Unitarian ministers including Emerson, influenced by German philosophers, departed from the strict confines of the Unitarian church to found their own independent congregations. These heretics embraced a more pantheistic conception of deity in which a divinity exists in all human beings. This philosophy emphasized the sacredness of the individual, who, to live up to the divinity within, must follow his or her own path to personal actualization and spiritual fulfillment. An intimate experience of nature, as evident from the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, was a means toward accomplishing this, as was a love for one’s fellow man exerted through virtuous social activism. Emerson at first was reluctant to get involved in social issues, wishing to keep Transcendentalism on a purely intellectual plane, but over time the movement’s members became more outspoken as advocates for religious liberty, educational reform, feminism, and the abolition of slavery.
The writings included here are a mix of essays, journal entries, memoirs, letters, aphorisms, utopian constitutions, articles from the group’s journal The Dial, and a generous helping of poetry. Many of the selections are relatively brief, well-chosen excerpts from longer works, but a few major manifestoes are reproduced in their entirety, such as Emerson’s “Nature,” “Divinity School Address,” “Self-Reliance,” and “The American Scholar,” and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” This collection goes well beyond the two household names to feature many of the movement’s lesser-known movers and shakers. Highlights include Fuller’s feminist manifesto “The Great Lawsuit,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s essay on nature and health “Saints, and Their Bodies,” Theodore Parker’s antislavery writings “The Function of Conscience” and “The Fugitive Slave Law,” and the poetry of William Ellery Channing II and Jones Very. Buell also includes commentary, some of it critical, from notable writers outside the movement such as Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James. In all cases, Buell provides excellent introductions that provide insightful historical context.
Not every selection in this volume is a pleasure to read, as some of the writers are deliberately obscure and overly mystical in their delivery. As a whole, however, this is an excellent collection that provides a fascinating and comprehensive education into the history, literature, and philosophy of the Transcendentalists.
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Hikes with Henry
Excursions, a collection of essays by Henry David Thoreau, was published in 1863, the year after the author’s death. The nine essays collected here had all been published previously in magazines and journals. The book opens, however, with a “Biographical Sketch” of Thoreau, written by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. This tribute, penned after Thoreau’s death, is far more than a “sketch” but rather a full-blown eulogy, and perhaps one of the greatest literary eulogies every written. Through personal anecdotes drawn from his close friendship with the deceased, Emerson really gives the reader a deep insight into Thoreau’s personality, convictions, philosophy, and humor.
Thoreau is of course best known for his classic memoir Walden, in which he combined vivid and poetic nature writing with his personal manifesto of individualism and nonconformity. Many readers may also be familiar with his more politically tinged works of social commentary like “Civil Disobedience” or “Life Without Principle.” The essays in Excursions, however, are absent of politics, light on philosophy, and almost solely concerned with nature. The contents really do represent a series of excursions in which Thoreau uses a particular hike as a starting point to expound on topics of natural history. Though Thoreau may offer the occasional poetic stanza or nugget of social commentary, here he primarily acts as naturalist, regaling the reader with his empirical observations of the woods, fields, and mountains. The one exception that does have the qualities of a manifesto is his 1862 essay “Walking,” in which Thoreau criticizes the culture of so-called civilized society as a shameful rejection of nature. He asserts that only by constructing a culture around nature rather than in spite of it can mankind truly advance intellectually.
The relative success of the other eight selections depends on how well Thoreau conveys the sublime experience of his walks and how much interesting scientific information he imparts in the process. “Wild Apples,” for example, is a pleasant read because you really do learn a lot about apple trees, and Thoreau makes apple-tasting sound like it’s the most enjoyable activity ever. “Autumnal Tints” is another fine piece in which he examines various species of colorful New England flora. Essays like “A Winter Walk” and “Night and Moonlight,” on the other hand, are less successful because they provide less practical naturalism and instead opt for more poetic observations and allusions to mythology, meaning the reader learns less about nature. “Natural History of Massachusetts,” “A Walk to Wachusett,” and “The Succession of Forest Trees” all strike a fine balance between keen empirical observation, home-spun wisdom, and charming travel writing. The one anomaly in the book’s contents is “The Landlord,” which isn’t nature writing at all but rather Thoreau’s tribute to the profession of country innkeeper.
In general I prefer Thoreau’s writings of the philosophical manifesto variety, so I was less impressed by this volume of nature writings. There are passages in Excursions where Thoreau’s descriptions of the natural world rival those found in his masterpiece Walden, but with the exception of “Walking,” the pieces here never ascend to the level of an inspirational guide to living or a stirring call to arms the way his greatest works do. Still, reading Excursions is often almost as enjoyable as a real walk in the woods, and if you consider yourself a nature lover, who better to guide you on your virtual hike than Thoreau?
Essays in this collection
Biographical Sketch by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Natural History of Masachusetts
A Walk to Wachusett
The Landlord
A Winter Walk
The Succession of Forest Trees
Walking
Autumnal Tints
Wild Apples
Night and Moonlight
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Mankind’s metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic relationship to the universe
Originally published in 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Nature had a profound impact on American literature and philosophy. Prior to this work, the arts of the Western world had been built upon centuries of cultural history, and American culture was little more than a redundant reflection of past civilizations. Emerson argued that, with the abundance of raw, untouched wilderness in the New World, American writers, artists, and scholars possessed a rare opportunity to build a uniquely American aesthetic, based not on the achievements of the past but drawn directly from nature itself. At the time, the concept of nature was little developed in the public psyche. Most people thought of nature simply as the provider of meat, produce, and timber. Emerson championed the appreciation of nature not only for the value of its commodities but also for the sake of its moral and spiritual benefits.
The philosophy that Emerson espouses in Nature reads like a mixture of the dualistic idealism of Plato and the monistic pantheism of Spinoza. Like Plato, Emerson believed that there is a higher reality, a divinity, that exists outside of the physical universe we perceive with our senses. Emerson refutes the assertion by many idealists, however, that sensual nature is simply a deceptive illusion which conceals true reality from us. Instead, Emerson insists that nature is the medium through which the divine speaks to us, that it is only by observing and loving nature that we can truly experience God. By accumulating empirical data of the natural world around us, we are able to ascertain the laws which govern the universe. It is through this exercise of reason that mankind is truly able to glimpse the divine. Thus, religions that emphasize an unseen kingdom of heaven over the perceptual world of nature do a disservice to man. Though Emerson was a Unitarian minister, the God of which he speaks does not resemble the Judeo-Christian deity, but rather a pantheistic universal soul which is synonymous with reason. Divinity is present throughout the universe, in all things, including humanity. Mankind must accept the fact that they themselves are a part of God, and having done so must live up to their own godliness. Emerson talks much of Spirit, which would lead one to believe he held a dualistic view of the universe, but since he provides a pantheistic conception of Spirit as an all-embracing unity that permeates the entire universe, it would seem, arguably, that he considers Spirit an inherent property of matter, and that the two substances of matter/spirit exist within one entity, rather than in separate realities.
Nature serves as the de facto manifesto of the Transcendentalist movement, as it is the most concise and comprehensive encapsulation of that movement’s ideals. To contemporary readers, the most familiar expression of Transcendentalism is Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. The appeal of Emerson’s work has not held up as well over the years as that of his protégé Thoreau, primarily because the language Emerson uses is far less accessible. Emerson liked to couch his philosophical concepts in poetic metaphor, and in Nature he even goes so far as to confess that he finds ambiguity more inspiring than clarity. Hence, Nature makes for a difficult read. To some extent it’s too poetic to be good philosophy, and too philosophical to be good poetry. Nevertheless, this brief book is loaded with passages of extreme beauty, eloquence, and wisdom. The time spent deciphering this complex work will be handsomely compensated by a rich yield of inspiration and enlightenment.
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