It was, in short, thoroughly intelligible, just, and even benevolent: a low mood or a contradictory thought passing through the Oversoul for the sake of its ultimate enrichment. Bronson Alcott, The Doctrine and Discipline of Human Culture 167 A. The transcendentalist movement is generally recognized to be the first major watershed in American literary and intellectual history. Michael compiled and edited the metadata, conducted research on the collection, and created the home page; and Ashley reviewed and edited the collection. Lecturing is nothing more than educating audiences on days other than Sunday.
American Transcendentalism
The importance of this assimilation to our Creator, is a topic, which needs no labored discussion. Emerson complained of a see-saw in his voice. Every thing will seem to be conscious of its use; and man will become conscious of the use of every thing. Let a man's language be confined to the expression of that which actually belongs to his own mind; and let him respect the smallest blade which grows and permit it to speak for itself. Both he and Emerson kept journals from which their published works were derived.
Joel Myerson: Transcendentalism (PDF)
Causation seems to make certain outcomes unavoidable whether we like them or not. The reflective but deeply moral Emerson opposed slavery openly both in writing and in public lectures. It also shows how the world grows through organic means form follows function , how language begins and is used, and how spiritualism differs from materialism. Bosco and Joel Myerson Athens: University of Georgia Press, forthcoming. Both mankind, and the laws and principles by which they are governed, seem about to be redeemed from slavery. The text calls us to follow or imitate God, to seek accordance with or likeness to him; and to do this, not fearfully and faintly, but with the spirit and hope of beloved children.
Joel Myerson Collection of Nineteenth
The moral and intellectual character of man has undergone, and is undergoing a change; and as this is effected it must change the aspect of all things, as when the position-point is altered from which a landscape is viewed. It is the resemblance of a parent to a child, the likeness of a kindred nature. There is a point in moral improvement, in which the sensual will be subdued, and the sorrowful disappear; which will combine the pleasure of the one, with the sanctity of the other. We see however the tendency of the soul to the infinite in more familiar and ordinary forms. This purposiveness of form creates a universal disinterested satisfaction that is experienced as beauty. The transcendentalists sought to secure their practices to theoretical foundations, but their practices are independent of all attempts to develop a satisfactory account of them. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1887 , 1:249.
Transcendentalism: A Reader
To understand a great and good being, we must have the seeds of the same excellence. Her most recent book is Passage to Cosmos: Humboldt's American Horizons University of Chicago Press, 2009. Unfortunately, their marriage was quite short as she died of tuberculosis on February 8, 1831. He can communicate nothing so precious, glorious, blessed as himself. Army into the Cherokee Nation, where they rounded up as many remaining members of the tribe as they could and marched them west and across the Mississippi.
In these cases, the work itself is a seminal one, but the text is too long for inclusion. If I am capable of receiving and reflecting the intellectual and moral glory of my Creator, what else in comparison shall I desire? As the mind of man acknowledges its dependence on the Divine Mind, brutes may add to their instinct submission to human reason; preserving an unbroken chain from our Father in Heaven, to the most inanimate parts of creation. The rise of the middle class also paralleled the continued change in America from a subsistence to a market economy. These terms we have framed to express operations or faculties of our own souls. It is the production of a spiritualist, subordinating the visible and outward to the inward and invisible. Carlyle and Emerson: Their Long Debate. Their parents' generation believed in John Locke's view of the world, one in which all knowledge must be verified by the senses.
Reynolds and Susan Belasco Smith eds. But remember that God has a nobler work than the outward creation, even the spirit within yourselves; and that it is his purpose to replenish this with his own energy, and to crown it with growing power and triumphs over the material universe. Is it said, that the minister's proper work is, to preach Christ and not the dignity of human nature? We grow increasingly blind to the realm of imagination and possibilities. Thus it is that memory refers to the growth and expansion of the mind; and what is thus, as it were incorporated into its substance, can be forgotten only by a change in the direction of the affections, or the course of conduct of the individual analogous to that in his physical man, by which his very flesh and bones are exchanged for those of a different texture; nor does he then entirely cease to remember, inasmuch as he preserves a sense of his own identity. Emerson, Thoreau, and the Role of the Cultural Critic. Joel Myerson Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990 , pp.
Let it rise above the technical, obscure, and frigid theology which has come down to us from times of ignorance, superstition, and slavery. Emerson: Prophecy, Metamorphosis and Influence. And, in a way, reform is merely a democratic process that allows us to see the world through a different angle of vision; after all, if we look at the world in the same way in each generation, if we depend on the past for guidance rather than our selves, why would change or reform be necessary at all? The other side of this contribution, equally central, was a treacherous undercurrent of disappointment and sadness. There are certain operations in nature, which depending on fixed laws, are in themselves perfectly regular; if all things were equally so, the question how long? When the power of divine truth begins to dispel the darkness, the objects that are first disclosed to our view—whether men of strong understanding, or of exquisite taste, or of deep learning—are called geniuses. Through his energy, unconscious matter clothes itself with proportions, powers, and beauties which reflect his wisdom and love. Thinking America: New England Intellectuals and the Varieties of American Identity.