TRANSCENDENTALISM. A term applied in philosophy to Kant's system and to those like it in maintaining that there can be knowledge of transcendental elements. On account of the lit erary reputation of Emerson and of his col leagues in the Transcendental Club (organized in 1836), and in the Brook Farm (q.v.), the terms Transcendentalism and Transcendental School are now frequently used by English-speak ing peoples to designate the views of these thinkers. The so-called Transcendental Move ment in New England was mainly confined to that region, and especially to Massachusetts, and, in point of time, to the decades from 1830 to 1330. In its origin it dates much further back, and in its effects it can scarcely be said to be entirely extinct today. In character it was part ly philosophical, thus connecting with German and French thought; partly economic, thus con necting with French and English schemes of so cial reform ; partly literary, thus connecting with the poetry of such dissimilar characters as Words worth and Shelley, and with the gospel of Car lyle; partly theological in a loose sense, thus connecting with Unitarianism ; but on the whole, as Emerson averred, primarily spiritual, thus connecting with and finally coalescing in contem porary movements for regeneration of every kind. Putting the matter another way, we may perhaps say that New England Transcendental ism was in the main a result of a revolt from the formalism both of Unitarianism and of Cal vinism, which coalesced with a loose system of intuitional philosophy borrowed from Germany, and with the romantic revolt from classicism in literature, as well as with a contemporaneous American movement for securing the benefits of foreign culture (illustrated in Irving and Long fellow among non-Transcendentalist authors), and which finally more or less merged in the great anti-slavery agitation. But any effort to sum up in a single sentence the elements of such a movement for social and individual regenera tion must be both clumsy and misleading, and it will be necessary to dwell briefly on each element.
Transcendentalism in New England was in volved in the Great Awakening of a century before, for both were spiritual manifestations, the earlier of which did much to shake the hold of rigid Calvinism and to introduce the religions emotionality and liberalism that were later to culminate in men like William Ellery Charming (q.v.) and Theodore Parker (q.v.). Within twenty years after the Awakening, Arminianism and Arianism, through the agency of the Deists and other British writers, had made many con verts, especially in eastern Massachusetts. Jon athan Mayhew (q.v.) is typical of these early liberals or Unitarians. The followers of Jon athan Edwards struggled valiantly against the innovators, and held most of New England for orthodoxy, but by 1785 there was a distinctively Unitarian church (Icing's Chapel) in Boston, even if thirty years were to elapse before this name could be definitely fastened on the seceders from Calvinism. This change of faith was not
effected without heart-burning and a develop ment of religious unrest among New Englanders, which made the acceptance of new philosophical ideas, new literary standards, and new social theories all the easier when the time was ripe. The appointment of Unitarian professors at Har vard, resulting in the founding of Andover (q.v.) and t-he of such men as the younger Buckminster (q.v.) and Channing, undoubtedly prepared the way for Emerson (q.v.) and Al cott (q.v.), for Ripley (q.v.) and Parker.
But although by 1825 Unitarianism had won a decisive victory in Boston and its environs, it was not destined to maintain its ascendency for anything like so long a period as its foe, Cal vinism, had done. lt, too, showed a tendency to formalism, both in thought and in taste, and impressionable souls soon broke away into new paths of philosophy, theology, and literature. Some little knowledge of Kant and his suc cessors, of Sehleiermaeher, and of Goethe, had been obtained by a few persons prior to 1830. Before 1840 the labors of George Ripley, F. II. Hedge (q.v.), and other translators had con siderably increased this knowledge; in conse quence, the influence of German thought upon New England Transcendentalism cannot be ig nored, although it is easily exaggerated. French thought, as illustrated by Cousin, and more by Fourier, was less influential, but that there was a decided taste for foreign literature which gave an impetus to the contemporaneous movement for a greater and freer spiritual life seems to be clearly established. This meant dissatisfaction with eighteenth-century standards and with the colonial character of American literature, and thus involved the founding of The Dial (q.v.). Nor in this connection should we forget the in terest displayed by some Transcendentalists in the Oriental Scriptures, in Neo-Platonism, and in more or less occult literature. But behind the revolt from formal Unitarianism and the craving for new forms of philosophy and literature that characterized many young persons in New Eng land between 1830 and 1840, there was the gen eral uplift of the world's spirit that showed itself in revolutions and in other ways, and there was also on the part of aspiring souls a contempt for the vulgarity and selfishness of American political and business life during the Jacksonian epoch. It is no wonder that New England, which was old and homogeneous enough to produce thinkers and writers, and not merely men of action and affairs, was nevertheless unable to de velop orderly schools of thought and literature, and seemed for a time given over to extremists and faddists of all sorts.