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[Illustration:

_Engd by H. B. Hall_

(signature O. B. Frothingham)

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.]




  TRANSCENDENTALISM

  IN

  NEW ENGLAND


  _A HISTORY_


  BY

  OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM

  _Author of "Life of Theodore Parker," "Religion of Humanity," &c., &c._

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  182 FIFTH AVENUE
  1876

  COPYRIGHT,
  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
  1876.




CONTENTS.


                         PAGE

  CONTENTS       iii

  PREFACE      v

  I.

  BEGINNINGS IN GERMANY      1

  II.

  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN GERMANY--KANT, JACOBI, FICHTE, etc.      14

  III.

  THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE--SCHLEIERMACHER, GOETHE, RICHTER, etc.      47

  IV.

  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRANCE--COUSIN, CONSTANT, JOUFFROY, etc.      60

  V.

  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN ENGLAND--COLERIDGE, CARLYLE, WORDSWORTH      76

  VI.

  TRANSCENDENTALISM IN NEW ENGLAND      105

  VII.

  PRACTICAL TENDENCIES      142

  VIII.

  RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES      185

  IX.

  THE SEER--EMERSON      218

  X.

  THE MYSTIC--ALCOTT      249

  XI.

  THE CRITIC--MARGARET FULLER      284

  XII.

  THE PREACHER--THEODORE PARKER      302

  XIII.

  THE MAN OF LETTERS--GEORGE RIPLEY      322

  XIV.

  MINOR PROPHETS      335

  XV.

  LITERATURE      357




PREFACE.


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
philosopher, not merely as throwing light on our own social problem, but
as illustrating the general law of human progress. This book is offered
as a modest contribution to that knowledge.

Transcendentalism, as it is called, the transcendental movement, was an
important factor in American life. Though local in activity, limited in
scope, brief in duration, engaging but a comparatively small number of
individuals, and passing over the upper regions of the mind, it left a
broad and deep trace on ideas and institutions. It affected thinkers,
swayed politicians, guided moralists, inspired philanthropists, created
reformers. The moral enthusiasm of the last generation, which broke out
with such prodigious power in the holy war against slavery; which
uttered such earnest protests against capital punishment, and the wrongs
inflicted on women; which made such passionate pleading in behalf of the
weak, the injured, the disfranchised of every race and condition; which
exalted humanity above institutions, and proclaimed the inherent worth
of man,--owed, in larger measure than is suspected, its glow and force
to the Transcendentalists. This, as a fact of history, must be admitted,
as well by those who judge the movement unfavorably, as by its friends.
In the view of history, which is concerned with causes and effects in
their large human relations, individual opinions on them are of small
moment. It was once the fashion--and still in some quarters it is the
fashion--to laugh at Transcendentalism as an incomprehensible folly, and
to call Transcendentalists visionaries. To admit that they were, would
not alter the fact that they exerted an influence on their generation.
It is usual with critics of a cold, unsympathetic, cynical cast, to
speak of Transcendentalism as a form of sentimentality, and of
Transcendentalists as sentimentalists; to decry enthusiasm, and
deprecate the mischievous effects of feeling on the discussion of social
questions. But their disapproval, however just and wholesome, does not
abolish the trace which moral enthusiasm, under whatever name these
judges may please to put upon it, has left on the social life of the
people. Whether the impression was for evil or for good, it is there,
and equally significant for warning or for commendation.

As a form of mental philosophy Transcendentalism may have had its day;
at any rate, it is no longer in the ascendant, and at present is
manifestly on the decline, being suppressed by the philosophy of
experience, which, under different names, is taking possession of the
speculative world. But neither has this consideration weight in deciding
its value as an element in progress. An unsound system requires as
accurate a description and as severe an analysis as a sound one; and no
speculative prejudice should interfere with the most candid
acknowledgment of its importance. Error is not disarmed or disenchanted
by caricature or neglect.

To those who may object that the writer has too freely indulged his own
prejudices in favor of Transcendentalism and the Transcendentalists, and
has transgressed his own rules by writing a eulogy instead of a history,
he would reply, that in his belief every system is best understood when
studied sympathetically, and is most fairly interpreted from the inside.
We can know its purposes only from its friends, and we can do justice to
its friends only when we accept their own account of their beliefs and
aims. Renan somewhere says, that in order to judge a faith one must have
confessed it and abandoned it. Such a rule supposes sincerity in the
confession and honesty in the withdrawal; but with this qualification
its reasonableness is easily admitted. If the result of such a verdict
prove more favorable than the polemic would give, and more cordial than
the critic approves, it may not be the less just for that.

The writer was once a pure Transcendentalist, a warm sympathizer with
transcendental aspirations, and an ardent admirer of transcendental
teachers. His ardor may have cooled; his faith may have been modified;
later studies and meditations may have commended to him other ideas and
methods; but he still retains enough of his former faith to enable him
to do it justice. His purpose has been to write a history; not a
critical or philosophical history, but simply a history; to present his
subject with the smallest possible admixture of discussion, either in
defence or opposition. He has, therefore, avoided the metaphysics of his
theme, by presenting cardinal ideas in the simplest statement he could
command, and omitting the details that would only cumber a narrative.
Sufficient references are given for the direction of students who may
wish to become more intimately acquainted with the transcendental
philosophy, but an exhaustive survey of the speculative field has not
been attempted. This book has but one purpose--to define the fundamental
ideas of the philosophy, to trace them to their historical and
speculative sources, and to show whither they tended. If he has done
this inadequately, it will be disclosed; he has done it honestly, and as
well as he could. In a little while it will be difficult to do it at
all; for the disciples, one by one, are falling asleep; the literary
remains are becoming few and scarce; the materials are disappearing
beneath the rapid accumulations of thought; the new order is thrusting
the old into the background; and in the course of a few years, even they
who can tell the story feelingly will have passed away. The author,
whose task was gladly accepted, though not voluntarily chosen, ventures
to hope, that if it has not been done as well as another might have done
it, it has not been done so ill that others will wish he had left it
untouched.

O. B. F.

NEW YORK, April 12, 1876.




TRANSCENDENTALISM.




I.

BEGINNINGS IN GERMANY.


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 concern us. We need not even submit John Locke to fresh
cross-examination, or describe the effect of his writings on the
thinkers who came after him.

The Transcendental Philosophy, so-called, had a distinct origin in
Immanuel Kant, whose "Critique of Pure Reason" was published in 1781,
and opened a new epoch in metaphysical thought. By this it is not meant
that Kant started a new movement of the human mind, proposed original
problems, or projected issues never contemplated before. The questions
he discussed had been discussed from the earliest times, and with an
acumen that had searched out the nicest points of definition. In the
controversy between the Nominalists, who maintained that the terms used
to describe abstract and universal ideas were mere names, designating no
real objects and corresponding to no actually existing things, and the
Realists, who contended that such terms were not figments of language,
but described realities, solid though incorporeal, actual existences,
not to be confounded with visible and transient things, but the
essential types of such,--the scholastics of either school discussed
after their manner, with astonishing fulness and subtlety, the matters
which later metaphysicians introduced. The modern Germans revived in
substance the doctrines held by the Realists. But the scholastic method,
which was borrowed from the Greeks, lost its authority when the power of
Aristotle's name declined, and the scholastic discussions, turning, as
they signally did, on theological questions, ceased to be interesting
when the spell of theology was broken.

Between the schools of Sensationalism and Idealism, since John Locke,
the same matters were in debate. The Scotch as well as the English
metaphysicians dealt with them according to their genius and ability.
The different writers, as they succeeded one another, took up the points
that were presented in their day, exercised on them such ingenuity as
they possessed, and in good faith made their several contributions to
the general fund of thought, but neglected to sink their shafts deep
enough below the surface to strike new springs of water.

Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding was an event that made an epoch
in philosophy, because its author, not satisfied to take up questions
where his predecessors had left them, undertook an independent
examination of the Human Mind, in order to ascertain what were the
conditions of its knowledge. The ability with which this attempt was
made, the entire sincerity of it, the patient watch of the mental
operations, the sagacity that followed the trail of lurking thoughts,
surprised them in their retreats, and extracted from them the secret of
their combinations, fairly earned for him the title of "Father of Modern
Psychology." The intellectual history of the race shows very few such
examples of single-minded fidelity combined with rugged vigor and
unaffected simplicity. With what honest directness he announced his
purpose! His book grew out of a warm discussion among friends, the
fruitlessness whereof convinced him that both sides had taken a wrong
course; that before men set themselves upon inquiries into the deep
matters of philosophy "it was necessary to examine our own abilities,
and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal
with." To do this was his purpose.

"First," he said, "I shall inquire into the original of those ideas,
notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes
and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the
understanding comes to be furnished with them.

"Secondly, I shall endeavor to show what knowledge the understanding
hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence and extent of it.

"Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith
or opinion; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition
as true, of whose truth we have yet no certain knowledge; and we shall
have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent."

Locke did his work well: how well is attested by the excitement it
caused in the intellectual world, the impulse it gave to speculation in
England and on the continent of Europe, the controversies over the
author's opinions, the struggle of opposing schools to secure for their
doctrines his authority, the appreciation on one side, the depreciation
on the other, the disposition of one period to exalt him as the greatest
discoverer in the philosophic realm, and the disposition of another
period to challenge his title to the name of philosopher. The "Essay" is
a small book, written in a homely, business-like style, without
affectation of depth or pretence of learning, but it is charged with
original mental force. Exhaustive it was not; exhaustive it could not
have been. The England of the seventeenth century was not favorable to
original researches in that field. The "Essay" was planned in 1670,
completed after considerable interruptions in 1687, and published in
1690. To one acquainted with the phases through which England was
passing at that period, these dates will tell of untoward influences
that might account for graver deficiencies than characterize Locke's
work. The scholastic philosophy, from which Locke broke contemptuously
away at Oxford, seems to have left no mark on his mind; but the
contemptuous revulsion, and the naked self-reliance in which the
sagacious but not generously cultivated man found refuge, probably
roughened his speculative sensibility, and made it impossible for him to
handle with perfect nicety the more delicate facts of his science. It
can hardly be claimed that Locke was endowed by nature with
philosophical genius of the highest order. While at Oxford he abandoned
philosophy, in disgust, for medicine, and distinguished himself there by
judgment and penetration. Subsequently his attention was turned to
politics, another pursuit even less congenial with introspective genius.
These may not be the reasons for the "incompleteness" which so glowing a
eulogist as Mr. George H. Lewes admits in the "Essay;" but at all
events, whatever the reasons may have been, the incompleteness was felt;
the debate over the author's meaning was an open proclamation of it; at
the close of a century it was apparent to at least one mind that Locke's
attempt must be repeated, and his work done over again more carefully.

The man who came to this conclusion and was moved to act on it was
IMMANUEL KANT, born at Koenigsberg, in Prussia, April 22d, 1724; died
there February 12th, 1804. His was a life rigorously devoted to
philosophy. He inherited from his parents a love of truth, a respect for
moral worth, and an intellectual integrity which his precursor in
England did not more than match. He was a master in the sciences, a
proficient in languages, a man cultivated in literature, a severe
student, of the German type, whose long, calm, peaceful years were spent
in meditation, lecturing and writing. He was distinguished as a
mathematician before he was heard of as a philosopher, having predicted
the existence of the planet Uranus before Herschel discovered it. He was
forty-five years old when these trained powers were brought to bear on
the study of the human mind: he was sixty-seven when the meditation was
ended. His book, the "Critique of Pure Reason," was the result of twelve
years of such thinking as his genius and training made him capable of.
In what spirit and with what hope he went about his task, appears in the
Introduction and the Prefaces to the editions of 1781 and 1787. In these
he frankly opens his mind in regard to the condition of philosophical
speculation. That condition he describes as one of saddest indifference.
The throne of Metaphysics was vacant, and its former occupant was a
wanderer, cast off by the meanest of his subjects. Locke had started a
flight of hypotheses, which had frittered his force away and made his
effort barren of definite result. Theories had been suggested and
abandoned; the straw had been thrashed till only dust remained; and
unless a new method could be hit on, the days of mental philosophy might
be considered as numbered. The physical sciences would take advantage of
the time, enter the deserted house, secure possession, and set up their
idols in the ancient shrine.

These sciences, it was admitted, command and deserve unqualified
respect. To discover the secret of their success Kant passed in review
their different systems, examined them in respect to their principles
and conditions of progress, with a purpose to know what, if any,
essential difference there might be between them and the metaphysics
which had from of old claimed to be, and had the name of being, a
science. Logic, mathematics, physics, are sciences: by virtue of what
inherent peculiarity do they claim superior right to that high
appellation? Intellectual philosophy has always been given over to
conflicting parties. Its history is a history of controversies, and of
controversies that resulted in no triumph for either side, established
no doctrine, and reclaimed no portion of truth. Material philosophy has
made steady advances from the beginning; its disputes have ended in
demonstrations, its contests have resulted in the establishment of
legitimate authority: if its progress has been slow it has been
continuous; it has never receded; and its variations from a straight
course are insignificant when surveyed from a position that commands its
whole career.

Since Aristotle, logic has, without serious impediment or check, matured
its rules and methods. Holding the same cardinal positions as in
Aristotle's time, it has simply made them stronger, the rules being but
interpretations of rational principles, the methods following precisely
the indications of the human mind, which from the nature of the case
remain always the same.

The mathematics, again, have had their periods of uncertainty and
conjecture. But since the discovery of the essential properties of the
triangle, the career has been uninterrupted. The persistent study of
constant properties, which were not natural data, but mental conceptions
formed by the elimination of variable quantities, led to results which
had not to be abandoned.

It was the same with physics. The physics of the ancients were heaps of
conjecture. The predecessors of Galileo abandoned conjecture, put
themselves face to face with Nature, observed and classified phenomena,
but possessed no method by which their labors could be made productive
of cumulative results. But after Galileo had experimented with balls of
a given weight on an inclined plane, and Torricelli had pushed upward a
weight equal to a known column of water, and Stahl had reduced metals to
lime and transformed lime back again into metal, by the addition and
subtraction of certain parts, the naturalists carried a torch that
illumined their path. They perceived that reason lays her own plans,
takes the initiative with her own principles, and must compel nature to
answer her questions, instead of obsequiously following its
leading-string. It was discovered that scattered observations, made in
obedience to no fixed plan, and associated with no necessary law, could
not be brought into systematic form. The discovery of such a law is a
necessity of reason. Reason presents herself before nature, holding in
one hand the principles which alone have power to bring into order and
harmony the phenomena of nature; in the other hand grasping the results
of experiment conducted according to those principles. Reason demands
knowledge of nature, not as a docile pupil who receives implicitly the
master's word, but as a judge who constrains witnesses to reply to
questions put to them by the court. To this attitude are due the happy
achievements in physics; reason seeking--not fancying--in nature, by
conformity with her own rules, what nature ought to teach, and what of
herself she could not learn. Thus physics became established upon the
solid basis of a science, after centuries of error and groping.

Wherefore now, asks Kant, are metaphysics so far behind logic,
mathematics, and physics? Wherefore these heaps of conjecture, these
vain attempts at solution? Wherefore these futile lives of great men,
these abortive flights of genius? The study of the mind is not an
arbitrary pursuit, suggested by vanity and conducted by caprice, to be
taken up idly and relinquished at a moment's notice. The human mind
cannot acquiesce in a judgment that condemns it to barrenness and
indifference in respect to such questions as God, the Soul, the World,
the Life to Come; it is perpetually revising and reversing the decrees
pronounced against itself. It must accept the conditions of its being.

From a review of the progress of the sciences it appeared to Kant that
their advance was owing to the elimination of the variable elements, and
the steady contemplation of the elements that are invariable and
constant, the most essential of which is the contribution made by the
human mind. The laws that are the basis of logic, of the mathematics,
and of the higher physics, and that give certitude to these sciences,
are simply the laws of the human mind itself. Strictly speaking, then,
it is in the constitution of the human mind, irrespective