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Updated: July 26, 2025
Emerson was closely associated with these "same Transcendentalists," and a leading contributor to "The Dial," which was their organ. The movement borrowed its inspiration more from him than from any other source, and the periodical owed more to him than to any other writer.
They call some of the residents here "Transcendentalists." You may judge from the name that they must be either very good or very bad people, but they represent people of education who are a little "high stilted" in their religious views, and do not take in all the wonderful Mosaic traditions. At least, this is as near as I can explain it to you.
He was a great artist, and as such he was a complete being. No one could give to him nor take from him. His yearnings found fruition in expression. He was sure of his place and of his use in this world. But the Transcendentalists were neither geniuses nor artists nor complete beings. Nor had they found their places or uses as yet. They were men and women seeking light.
It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the New England transcendentalists and the German school of philosophy, from which they are supposed to have derived their inspiration. A German critic has said of them that they were not so much philosophers as poetical rhapsodists, and this is about the truth of it. Their business was not so much thinking, as to celebrate thinking.
But the hero of literature outlives his assassins, and might address them in that language of poetry and affection with which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous counsellors: "You were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of my eyes." It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron, whom some transcendentalists have attacked.
What wonder that they laughed, frolicked and sang, and got up little parties and masquerades to entertain the wonderful, wonderstruck and remarkable visitors who came to see them? The place was a "milk farm" when the "Transcendentalists," as they were often called, entered on it. The surroundings were picturesque.
They result from the application of an inflexible will, and always inflict discomfort. The Transcendentalists found themselves all but stifled in a society as artificial in its decorum as the court of France during the last years of Louis XIV. Emerson was in no way responsible for the movement, although he got the credit of having evoked it by his teaching.
Their philosophizing is often the highest form of mysticism; and our dear surgeon declares that they are all natural transcendentalists. The white camps seem rough and secular, after this; and I hear our men talk about "a religious army," "a Gospel army," in their prayer-meetings.
Viewed as an act of justice, obedience is the payment of due service to one's superior, who holds his office by appointment of God." "The essential mistake of the transcendentalists is the taking for their guide the instincts of the soul instead of the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. They are moved by the natural instincts of human beings instead of the instinct of the Holy Ghost.
She would knit socks while she talked Plato: but the best testimony to her character is the character of her friends. People are known by the company they keep. The one quality which Hawthorne had in common with the transcendentalists, except such qualities as are common to all good people, was ideality.
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