Transcendentalism in New England: A History

"Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements. It avoids argument, by finding a common basis of agreement; and thus escapes controversy by rendering it superfluous. Pertinent to the platform, debate is out of place in the parlor. Persuasion is the better weapon in this glittering game."

"Conversation presupposes a common sympathy in the subject, a great equality in the speakers; absence of egotism, a tender criticism of what is spoken. Good discourse wins from the bashful and discreet what they have to speak, but would not, without this provocation. The forbidding faces are Fates to overbear and blemish true fellowship. We give what we are, not necessarily what we know; nothing more, nothing less, and only to our kind; those playing best their parts who have the nimblest wits, taking out the egotism, the nonsense, putting wisdom, information in their place."

Mr. Alcott therefore forsook the platform, seldom entered the pulpit, adopted the parlor, and made it what its name imports, the talking place. Collecting a company of ladies and gentlemen, larger or smaller, as nearly as possible of similar tastes and culture, he started a topic of general interest and broad scope – usually one of social concern with deep roots and wide branches, – and began his soliloquy in a calm and easy strain, throwing out suggestions as he went on, and enticing thoughts from the various minds present. If none responded or accompanied, the discourse proceeded evenly till the measure of an hour was filled. If the company was awake, and sympathetic, the soliloquy became conversation and an evening full of instruction and entertainment followed. When circumstances favored – the room, decorations, atmosphere, mingling of elements – the season was delightful. The unfailing serenity of the leader, his wealth of mental resource, his hospitality of thought, his wit, his extraordinary felicity of language, his delicacy of touch, ready appreciation of different views, and singular grace in turning opinions towards the light, made it clear to all present that to this especial calling he was chosen. For years Mr. Alcott's conversations have been a recognized institution in Eastern and Western cities. Every winter he takes the field, and goes through the Northern and North Western States, with his scheme of topics. The best minds collect about him, and centres of influence are established that act as permanent distributors of culture. The noble idealism never pales or falters. Neither politics, science, financial convulsion, or civil war, disturb the calm serenity of the soul that is sure that mind is its own place, and that infinite and absolute mind is supreme above all.

XI.

THE CRITIC

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 loving admiration, and executed it with extraordinary frankness, courage and delicacy. No more unique or satisfactory book of biography was ever made. They had known Margaret personally and well; were intimately acquainted with her mind, and deeply interested in her character. They had access to all the necessary materials. The whole life – inward and outward – was open to them, and they described it with no more reserve than good taste imposed. Those who are interested to know what sort of a person she was, are referred to that book, from which the biographical materials for this little sketch have, in the main, been taken. Her place here is due to her association with the leaders of the Transcendental movement, and to the peculiar part she played in it.

Strictly speaking, she was not a Transcendentalist, though Mr. Channing declares her to have been "in spirit and thought pre-eminently a transcendentalist;" and Mr. Alcott wrote that she adopted "the spiritual philosophy, and had the subtlest perception of its bearings." She was enthusiastic rather than philosophical, and poetic more than systematic. Emerson's judgment is that —

"Left to herself, and in her correspondence, she was much the victim of Lord Bacon's idols of the cave, or self-deceived by her own phantasms… Her letters are tainted with a mysticism which, to me, appears so much an affair of constitution, that it claims no more respect than the charity or patriotism of a man who has dined well and feels better for it. In our noble Margaret, her personal feeling colors all her judgment of persons, of books, of pictures, and even of the laws of the world… Whole sheets of warm, florid writing are here, in which the eye is caught by 'sapphire,' 'heliotrope,' 'dragon,' 'aloes,' 'Magna Dea,' 'limboes,' 'stars,' and 'purgatory' – but one can connect all this or any part of it with no universal experience.

"In short, Margaret often loses herself in sentimentalism; that dangerous vertigo nature, in her case, adopted, and was to make respectable… Her integrity was perfect, and she was led and followed by love; and was really bent on truth, but too indulgent to the meteors of her fancy."

She said of herself:

"When I was in Cambridge I got Fichte and Jacobi; I was much interrupted, but some time and earnest thought I devoted; Fichte I could not understand at all, though the treatise which I read was one intended to be popular, and which he says must compel to conviction. Jacobi I could understand in details, but not in system. It seemed to me that his mind must have been moulded by some other mind, with which I ought to be acquainted, in order to know him well – perhaps Spinoza's. Since I came home I have been consulting Buhle's and Tennemann's histories of philosophy, and dipping into Brown, Stewart, and that class of books."

This was in 1832, before the transcendental movement began. At the same period, writing to a friend on the subject of religious faith – a subject intimately allied with philosophy – she said:

"I have not formed an opinion; I have determined not to form settled opinions at present; loving or feeble natures need a positive religion – a visible refuge, a protection – as much in the passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have yet experienced; my affection is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy. When disappointed, I do not ask or wish consolation; I wish to know and feel my pain, to investigate its nature and its source; I will not have my thoughts diverted or my feelings soothed; 'tis therefore that my young life is so singularly barren of illusions. I know I feel the time must come when this proud and impatient heart shall be stilled, and turn from the ardors of search and action to lean on something above. But shall I say it? – the thought of that calmer era is to me a thought of deepest sadness; so remote from my present being is that future existence, which still the mind may conceive; I believe in eternal progression; I believe in a God, a beauty and perfection, to which I am to strive all my life for assimilation. From these two articles of belief I draw the rules by which I strive to regulate my life; but though I reverence all religions as necessary to the happiness of man, I am yet ignorant of the religion of revelation. Tangible promises, well-defined hopes, are things of which I do not now feel the need. At present, my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as its rule; and in my opinion this is the natural and proper course from youth to age."

The tone of this extract is negatively transcendental; that is, it implies that the writer did not belong to the opposite school, in any sense; and that her mind was in condition to accept the cardinal truths of a philosophy, the special doctrines whereof she did not apprehend or feel interested in. Had she entertained a philosophical creed, it would have been the creed of Schelling, more likely than any other.

Margaret Fuller was a critic, and a critic rather from natural gift than from trained perception. Her genius was her guide. Persons and things came to her for judgment, and judgment they received. Searching and frank, but hearty and loving, she judged from the inside. To her, so her biographers tell, with unanimous voice, "the secrets of all hearts were revealed." In private intercourse, in letters, in parlor conversations on books, pictures, statues, architecture, she was ever the judge. The most unlike minds and characters receive their dues with entire impartiality; Goethe, Lessing, Novalis, Jean Paul, were each in kind honored. The last is "infinitely variegated, and certainly most exquisitely colored, but fatigues attention; his philosophy and religion seem to be of the sighing sort." She is steeped to the lips in enjoyment by Southey, whom she was inclined to place next to Wordsworth. Coleridge, Heine, Carlyle, Herschel, attract her mind. She ponders before Michael Angelo's sibyls; displays a singular penetration in her analysis of them, and makes them all interpreters of the genius of woman. The soul of Greek art, as contrasted with Christian, is disclosed to her with a clear perception; the Greek mythology gave up to her its secret; emblems, symbols, dark parables, enigmas, mysteries, laid aside their vails. A friend said of her: "She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion but by comprehension; and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to hope and faith. I have thought, sometimes, that her acceptance of evil was too great; that her theory of the good to be educed proved too much; but I understand her now better than I did." Atkinson, the "mesmeric atheist," struck her as "a fine instinctive nature, with a head for Leonardo to paint," who "seems bound by no tie, yet looks as if he had relatives in every place." Mazzini impressed her as one "in whom holiness has purified, but somewhat dwarfed the man." Carlyle "is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there is no bitterness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable energy that has given him power to crush the dragon." Dr. Wilkinson, the Swedenborgian, is "a sane, strong, well-exercised mind; but in the last degree unpoetical in its structure; very simple, natural, and good; excellent to see, though one cannot go far with him." Rachel, Fourier, Rousseau – she has a piercing glance for them all; a word of warm admiration, all the more weighty for being qualified by criticism.

It was probably this keen penetration, this capacity to appreciate all kinds, this inclusiveness of sympathy, that prompted the selection of Margaret Fuller as chief editor of the "Dial," the organ of transcendental thought. Thus she regarded the enterprise:

"What others can do – whether all that has been said is the mere restlessness of discontent, or there are thoughts really struggling for utterance, – will be tested now. A perfectly free organ is to be offered for the expression of individual thought and character. There are no party measures to be carried, no particular standards to be set up; a fair, calm tone, a recognition of universal principles, will, I hope, pervade the essays in every form. I trust there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism nor compromise, and that this journal will aim, not at leading public opinion, but at stimulating each man to judge for himself, and to think more deeply and more nobly, by letting him see how some minds are kept alive by a wise self-trust. We must not be sanguine at the amount of talent which will be brought to bear on this publication. All concerned are rather indifferent, and there is no great promise for the present. We cannot show high culture, and I doubt about vigorous thought. But we shall manifest free action as far as it goes, and a high aim. It were much if a periodical could be kept open, not to accomplish any outward object, but merely to afford an avenue for what of liberal and calm thought might be originated among us, by the wants of individual minds."

"Mr. Emerson best knows what he wants; but he has already said it in various ways. Yet this experiment is well worth trying; hearts beat so high, they must be full of something, and here is a way to breathe it out quite freely. It is for dear New England that I want this review. For myself, if I had wished to write a few pages now and then, there were ways and means enough of disposing of them. But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first. For this the world will not care much, so I shall hazard a few critical remarks only, or an unpretending chalk sketch now and then till I have learned to do something. There will be beautiful poesies; about prose we know not yet so well. We shall be the means of publishing the little Charles Emerson left as a mark of his noble course, and, though it lies in fragments, all who read will be gainers."

That these modest anticipations were justified and more, need not be said. The "beautiful poesies" came, and so did the various, eloquent, well-considered prose. The people who expected the whole gospel of Transcendentalism may have been disappointed; for the editor gave the magazine more of a literary than philosophical or reformatory tone. That she looked for from others, and was more than willing to welcome. She had a discerning eye for the evils of the time, and a sincere respect for the men and women who were disposed to counteract them. Another extract from her correspondence at this time – 1840 – taken, like the former, from the second volume of the memoirs, leaves no doubt on this point. After speaking of "the tendency of circumstances," since the separation from England, "to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally," she continues:

"New England is now old enough, some there have leisure enough to look at all this, and the consequence is a violent reaction, in a small minority, against a mode of culture that rears such fruits. They see that political freedom does not necessarily produce liberality of mind, nor freedom in church institutions, vital religion; and, seeing that these changes cannot be wrought from without inwards, they are trying to quicken the soul, that they may work from within outwards. Disgusted with the vulgarity of a commercial aristocracy, they become radicals; disgusted with the materialistic working of "rational" religion they become mystics. They quarrel with all that is because it is not spiritual enough. They would, perhaps, be patient, if they thought this the mere sensuality of childhood in our nation, which it might outgrow; but they think that they see the evil widening, deepening, not only debasing the life, but corrupting the thought of our people; and they feel that if they know not well what should be done, yet that the duty of every good man is to utter a protest against what is done amiss. Is this protest undiscriminating? Are these opinions crude? Do these proceedings threaten to sap the bulwarks on which men at present depend? I confess it all, yet I see in these men promise of a better wisdom than in their opponents. Their hope for man is grounded on his destiny as an immortal soul, and not as a mere comfort-loving inhabitant of earth, or as a subscriber to the social contract. It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul. Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual. In these principles I have confidence so profound, that I am not afraid to trust those who hold them, despite their partial views, imperfectly developed characters, and frequent want of practical sagacity. I believe, if they have opportunity to state and discuss their opinions, they will gradually sift them, ascertain their grounds and aims with clearness, and do the work this country needs. I hope for them as for the 'leaven that is hidden in the bushel of meal till all be leavened.' The leaven is not good by itself, neither is the meal; let them combine, and we shall yet have bread."

"Utopia it is impossible to build up; at least, my hopes for the race on this one planet are more limited than those of most of my friends; I accept the limitations of human nature, and believe a wise acknowledgment of them one of the best conditions of progress; yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifestation, prophesies to man his eventual destiny; and were not man ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify, he would remain torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is called the 'Transcendental Party,' and that I feel their aim to be the true one. They acknowledge in the nature of man an arbiter for his deeds – a standard transcending sense and time – and are, in my view, the true utilitarians. They are but at the beginning of their course, and will, I hope, learn to make use of the past, as well as to aspire for the future, and to be true in the present moment."

Margaret Fuller's power lay in her faith in this spiritual capacity. The confidence began with herself, and was extended to all others, without exception. Mr. Channing says:

"Margaret cherished a trust in her powers, a confidence in her destiny, and an ideal of her being, place and influence, so lofty as to be extravagant. In the morning hour and mountain air of aspiration, her shadow moved before her, of gigantic size, upon the snow-white vapor."

Mr. Clarke says:

"Margaret's life had an aim, and she was, therefore, essentially a moral person, and not merely an overflowing genius, in whom impulse gives birth to impulse, deed to deed. This aim was distinctly apprehended and steadily pursued by her from first to last. It was a high, noble one, wholly religious, almost Christian. It gave dignity to her whole career, and made it heroic.

"This aim, from first to last, was SELF-CULTURE. If she was ever ambitious of knowledge and talent, as a means of excelling others, and gaining fame, position, admiration – this vanity had passed before I knew her, and was replaced by the profound desire for a full development of her whole nature, by means of a full experience of life."

Speaking of her demands on others, her three biographers agree that they were based on the expectation in them of spiritual excellence:

"One thing only she demanded of all her friends – that they should have some 'extraordinary generous seeking;' that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of life – that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier, than they had now attained. Where this element of aspiration existed, she demanded no originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If these were found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where they were not.

"She never formed a friendship until she had seen and known this germ of good, and afterwards judged conduct by this. To this germ of good, to this highest law of each individual, she held them true.

"Some of her friends were young, gay, and beautiful; some old, sick, or studious; some were children of the world, others pale scholars; some were witty, others slightly dull; but all, in order to be Margaret's friends, must be capable of seeking something – capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did she glorify life to all! All that was tame and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her knowledge, and the copious rhetoric, which found words and images always apt and always ready."

"Margaret saw in each of her friends the secret interior capability, which might be hereafter developed into some special beauty or power. By means of this penetrating, this prophetic insight, she gave each to himself, acted on each to draw out his best nature; gave him an ideal, out of which he could draw strength and liberty, hour by hour. Thus her influence was ever ennobling, and each felt that in her society he was truer, wiser, better, and yet more free and happy than elsewhere. The 'dry light,' which Lord Bacon loved, she never knew: her light was life, was love, was warm with sympathy and a boundless energy of affection and hope. Though her love flattered and charmed her friends, it did not spoil them, for they knew her perfect truth; they knew that she loved them, not for what she imagined, but for what she saw, though she saw it only in the germ. But as the Greeks beheld a Persephone and Athene in the passing stranger, and ennobled humanity into ideal beauty, Margaret saw all her friends thus idealized; she was a balloon of sufficient power to take us all up with her into the serene depth of heaven, where she loved to float, far above the low details of earthly life; earth lay beneath us as a lovely picture – its sounds came up mellowed into music."

"Margaret was, to persons younger than herself, a Makaria and Natalia. She was wisdom and intellectual beauty, filling life with a charm and glory 'known to neither sea nor land.' To those of her own age, she was sibyl and seer, – a prophetess, revealing the future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself, she was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and Helen, – a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of romantic fulness and classic limitation. They saw with surprise her clear good sense, balancing her flow of sentiment and ardent courage. They saw her comprehension of both sides of every question, and gave her their confidence, as to one of equal age, because of so ripe a judgment."

"An interview with her was a joyous event; worthy men and women who had conversed with her, could not forget her, but worked bravely on in the remembrance that this heroic approver had recognized their aims. She spoke so earnestly, that the depth of the sentiment prevailed, and not the accidental expression, which might chance to be common. Thus I learned the other day, that in a copy of Mrs. Jameson's 'Italian Painters,' against a passage describing Coreggio as a true servant of God in his art, above sordid ambition, devoted to truth, 'one of those superior beings of whom there are so few;' Margaret wrote on the margin: 'And yet all might be such.' The book lay long on the table of the owner, in Florence, and chanced to be read there by an artist of much talent. 'These words' said he, months afterwards, 'struck out a new strength in me. They revived resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a flint.'"

"'Yes, my life is strange;' she said, 'thine is strange. We are, we shall be, in this life, mutilated beings, but there is in my bosom a faith, that I shall see the reason; a glory, that I can endure to be so imperfect; and a feeling, ever elastic, that fate and time shall have the shame and the blame, if I am mutilated. I will do all I can, – and if one cannot succeed, there is a beauty in martyrdom.'"

"'Would not genius be common as light if men trusted their higher selves?'"

"She won the confidence and affection of those who attracted her, by unbounded sympathy and trust. She probably knew the cherished secrets of more hearts than any one else, because she freely imparted her own. With a full share both of intellectual and of family pride, she preëminently recognized and responded to the essential brotherhood of all human kind, and needed but to know that a fellow being required her counsel or assistance, to render her not merely willing, but eager to impart it. Loving ease, luxury, and the world's good opinion, she stood ready to renounce them all, at the call of pity or of duty. I think no one, not radically averse to the whole system of domestic servitude, would have treated servants, of whatever class, with such uniform and thoughtful consideration – a regard which wholly merged their factitious condition in their antecedent and permanent humanity. I think few servants ever lived weeks with her, who were not dignified and lastingly benefited by her influence and her counsels. They might be at first repelled, by what seemed her too stately manner and exacting disposition, but they soon learned to esteem and love her.