IN NEW ENGLAND A HISTORY BY OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM Author of "Life of Theodore Parker," "Religion of Humanity," &c., &c. NEW YORK G.  P.   P U T N A M ' S   S O N S 182 Fifth Avenue 1876 Copyright , G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 1876....

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 institutions, it is fitting that some report should be made of the influences that have shaped the national mind, and determined in any important degree or respect its intellectual and moral character. A well-considered account of these influences would be of very great value to the student of history, the statesman and phi

To make intelligible the Transcendental Philosophy of the last generation in New England it is not necessary to go far back into the history of thought. Ancient idealism, whether Eastern or Western, may be left undisturbed. Platonism and neo-Platonism may be excused from further tortures on the witness stand. The speculations of the mystics, Romanist or Protestant, need not be re-examined. The idealism of Gale, More, Pordage, of Cudworth and the later Berkeley, in England, do not immediately con

There is no call to discuss here the system of Kant, or even to describe it in detail. The means of studying the system are within easy reach of English readers. [1] Our concern is to know the method which Kant employed, and the use he made of it, the ground he took and the positions he held, so far as this can be indicated within reasonable compass, and without becoming involved in the complexity of the author's metaphysics. The Critique of Pure Reason is precisely what the title imports—a sear

The first important step in the direction of pure transcendentalism was taken by Frederick Henry Jacobi, who was born at Düsseldorf, January 25, 1743. He was a man well educated in philosophy, with a keen interest in the study of it, though not a philosopher by profession, or a systematic writer on metaphysical subjects. His position was that of a civilian who devoted the larger part of his time to the duties of a public office under the government. His writings consist mainly of letters, treati

The transcendental philosophy received from Jacobi an impulse toward mysticism. From another master it received an impulse toward heroism. This master was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, born at Rammenau, in Upper Lusatia, on the 19th of May, 1762. A short memoir of him by William Smith, published in 1845, with a translation of the "Nature of the Scholar," and reprinted in Boston, excited a deep interest among people who had neither sympathy with his philosophy nor intelligence to comprehend it. He was

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 of the New World. Of Schelling little need be said, for his works were not translated into English, and the French translation of the "Transcendental Idealism" was not announced till 1850, when the movement in New England was subsiding. His system was too abstract and technical in form to interest any but his countrymen. C

One of the earliest students of the German language in Boston was Dr. N. L. Frothingham, Unitarian minister of the First Church. Among the professional books that interested him was one by Herder, "Letters to a Young Theologian," chapters from which he translated for the "Christian Disciple," the precursor of the "Christian Examiner." Of Herder, George Bancroft wrote an account in the "North American Review," and George Ripley in the "Christian Examiner." The second number of "The Dial" contains

From the time of Malebranche, who died in 1715, to Maine de Biran, Royer-Collard, Ampère and Cousin, a period of about a century, philosophy in France had not borne an honorable name. The French mind was active; philosophy was a profession; the philosophical world was larger than in Germany, where it was limited to the Universities. But France took no lead in speculation, it waited to receive impulse from other lands; and even then, instead of taking up the impulse and carrying it on with origin

The prophet of the new philosophy in England was Samuel Taylor Coleridge; in the early part of the present century, perhaps the most conspicuous figure in our literary world; the object of more admiration, the centre of more sympathy, the source of more intellectual life than any individual of his time; the criticism, the censure, the manifold animadversion he was made the mark for, better attest his power than the ovations he received from his worshippers. The believers in his genius lacked wor

The title of this Chapter is in a sense misleading. For with some truth it may be said that there never was such a thing as Transcendentalism out of New England. In Germany and France there was a transcendental philosophy, held by cultivated men, taught in schools, and professed by many thoughtful and earnest people; but it never affected society in its organized institutions or practical interests. In old England, this philosophy influenced poetry and art, but left the daily existence of men an

In order more effectually to promote the great purposes of human culture; to establish the external relations of life on a basis of wisdom and purity; to apply the principles of justice and love to our social organization in accordance with the laws of Divine Providence; to substitute a system of brotherly coöperation for one of selfish competition; to secure to our children and those who may be entrusted to our care, the benefits of the highest physical, intellectual and moral education, which

It was by no accident that the transcendental philosophy addressed itself at once to the questions of religion. It did so at the beginning, in Germany, and later, in England, and did so from the nature of the case. Its very name implied that it maintained the existence of ideas in the mind which transcended sensible experience. Such ideas fall within the domain of religion; ideas of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute; and the significance and import of these ideas exercised the minds of tra

A discerning German writer, Herman Grimm, closes a volume of fifteen essays, with one on Ralph Waldo Emerson, written in 1861, approved in 1874. The essay is interesting, apart from its literary merit, as giving the impression made by Mr. Emerson on a foreigner to whom his reputation was unknown, and a man of culture to whom books and opinions rarely brought surprise. He saw a volume of the "Essays" lying on the table of an American acquaintance, looked into it, and was surprised that, being tol

If among the representatives of spiritual philosophy the first place belongs to Mr. Emerson, the second must be assigned to Mr. Amos Bronson Alcott,—older than Mr. Emerson by four years (he was born in 1779), a contemporary in thought, a companion, for years a fellow townsman, and, if that were possible, more purely and exclusively a devotee of spiritual ideas. Mr. Alcott may justly be called a mystic—one of the very small class of persons who accept without qualification, and constantly teach t

Margaret Fuller—she was called Ossoli long after the time we are concerned with, in a foreign land and amid foreign associations—Margaret Fuller died July 16th, 1850. In 1852 her Memoirs were published in Boston, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing: each giving an individual and personal account of her. These three gentlemen—all remarkable for intellectual capacity, sympathetic appreciation, and literary skill—undertook their task in the spirit of lov

Transcendentalism is usually spoken of as a philosophy. It is more justly regarded as a gospel. As a philosophy it is abstract and difficult—purely metaphysical in character, resting on no basis of observed and scientifically-proven fact, but on the so-called data of consciousness, which cannot be accurately defined, distinctly verified, or generally recommended. It must be, therefore, inexact and inconclusive; so far from uniform in its structure, that it may rather be considered several system

The man who was as influential as any in planting the seeds of the transcendental philosophy in good soil, and in showing whither its principles tended, is known now, and has from the first been known, chiefly as a man of letters, a thoughtful observer, a careful student and a serious inquirer after knowledge. George Ripley, one year older than Emerson, was one of the forerunners and prophets of the new dispensation. He was by temperament as well as by training, a scholar, a reader of books, a d

The so-called Minor Prophets of the Old Testament owed that designation to the brevity, rather than to the insignificance of their utterances. They were among the most glowing and exalted of the Hebrew bards, less sustained in their flight than their great fellows, but with as much of the ancient fire as any of them. It is proper to say as much as this to justify the application of the title to the men who claim mention now as prominent in the transcendental movement. William Henry Channing is n

A few words on the literary fruits of Transcendentalism will fitly close this history. To gather them all would be exceedingly difficult, but that is not necessary, and will not be required. The chief results have already been indicated. The indirect influence may be left unestimated in detail. Transcendentalism has more than justified itself in literature. The ten volumes of Emerson's writings, including the two volumes of poetry, are a literature by themselves; a classic literature that loses