William Atkinson - The Complete Works of William Walker Atkinson

“Dualistic theism is professed at all Catholic seats of learning, whereas it has of late years tended to disappear at our British and American universities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheism more or less disguised . I have an impression that ever since T. H. Green’s time absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendant at Oxford. It is in the ascendant at my own university of Harvard.” Also: “Our contemporary mind having once for all grasped the possibility of a more intimate weltanschauung , the only opinion quite worthy of arresting our attention will fall within the general scope of what may roughly be called the pantheistic field of vision , the vision of God as the indwelling divine rather than the external creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep reality.”

In the present chapter it is my purpose to consider one of the most direct and immediate of the innumerable influences to which is due the present “gradual mutation of intellectual climate, that makes the thought of a past generation seem as foreign to its successor as if it were the expression of a different race of men,” as Professor James has so well stated. This direct and immediate influence of which I speak, which has had so much to do with the bubbling of the Crucible of Modern Thought, is the influence of the Transcendental Movement of New England of 1830–1850, and the influence of Emerson in particular. I feel justified in asserting that the present condition of spiritual unrest and the prevalence of monistic idealism, while having its original source far back in the past history of thought, nevertheless reached us through the direct channel of the great Transcendental Movement in New England in the first half of the last century, and largely through the individual channel of expression of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The lovers and admirers of Emerson have long claimed this, and the opponents of the movement are now beginning to recognize it. As one disgusted orthodox speaker recently said: “ Emerson is the fellow who is at the bottom of all this trouble. His pantheistic teachings are now bearing fruit .”

The beginnings of the Transcendental Movement in New England may be seen in the remarkable interest manifested by educated New Englanders, during the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century, toward the classical literature of England and Germany. Previous to that time the influence of Locke and Bentham had been dominant in philosophical thought in this country. The theory of innate ideas was denied, and there was a decided tendency in favor of the utilitarian basis of ethics and morals. Protesting against this view, some of the American Unitarians advanced ideas which, even in that early day, were denominated the “new thought” and declared their preference for the conception that man possessed innate ideas and also higher faculties transcending the senses and the ordinary understanding. These advocates of the earlier “new thought” felt that religion and morality had a higher source than ordinary reason, and must be placed in the category of revelations of the intuition of man, arising from the presence of the Indwelling Spirit.

The influence of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Herder, Goethe and others began to displace that of the old literary idols, and exerted a decided direction in the formation of the “new thought” which was supplanting the older philosophical conceptions. Coleridge taught the doctrine of a higher reason, or transcendental intuition, by which he held the advanced soul might exercise an immediate perception of things supersensible, and which was not a faculty or property of the mind, but rather the manifestation of the Indwelling Spirit, which latter was a spark from the Universal Spirit. He held that there was but One Spirit, which was shared in by all human beings; the Many being, in a sense, identical with the One. Wordsworth taught a poetical pantheism, with its conception of a nature animated by the Universal Spirit, and as Universal Mind manifested as Law and Order. The influence of Goethe and other German writers were in the same general trend—all pointed in the direction of a new pantheistic philosophy. A new interest was awakened in Plato, and the Neo-Platonists, and a demand was shown for the writing of the mystics and idealists of the past. In this fruitful soil, the roots of the New England Transcendental Movement found that nourishment which led to its rapid growth.

Transcendentalism has been defined, briefly, as “ the philosophical conception that there can be knowledge of transcendental elements, or matters wholly beyond the ordinary experience of the human mind .” The term was used by Kant. As Wallace says: “Kant’s philosophy describes itself as Transcendentalism. The word causes a shudder, and suggests things unutterable.” Transcendentalism is diametrically opposed to the philosophical views which hold that all knowledge arises from sensation or experience, and is also opposed to the agnostic view that reality is unknowable. But the term itself has taken on a wider and more general signification by reason of its popular use by the New England Transcendentalists, and its identification with the philosophy of Emerson, in the popular mind. In fact, the English-speaking peoples now use the word generally in the sense of designating the ideas and principles of the New England School, rather than those of the Kantian philosophy.

Margaret Fuller, one of the prominent New England Transcendentalists, in her “Memoirs,” says:

“Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable integrity of man; of the immanence of Divinity in instinct.…On the somewhat stunted stock of Unitarianism, whose characteristic dogma was trust in human reason, as correlative to Supreme Wisdom, had been grafted German Idealism, as taught by masters of most various schools—by Kant and Jacobi, Fichte and Novalis, Schelling and Hegel, Schleiermacher and de Wette, by Madam de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge, and Carlyle; and the result was a vague, yet exalting, conception of the god-like nature of the human spirit. Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the Temple or the Living God in the soul.”

Herzog gives us the orthodox view of the philosophy, in his “Religious Encyclopedia,” as follows:

“In religion, the typical Transcendentalist might be a sublimated theist; he was not, in any accepted sense, a Christian. He believed in no devil, in no hell, in no evil, in no dualism of any kind, in no spiritual authority, in no Savior, in no Church. He was humanitarian and an optimist. His faith had no backward look; its essence was aspiration, not contrition.”

This last quotation is particularly interesting, inasmuch as it proves the contention of the influence of Transcendentalism upon the modern philosophical and religious thought. Compare Herzog’s statements of what the Transcendentalist did not believe, and what he did believe, with the prevailing spirit of religio-philosophical thought, and see how the criticism of Transcendentalism becomes the prophecy of the popular thought of the early twentieth century! Surely this is a clear case of cause and effect.

About 1830, and the years immediately following, the various elements from which the Transcendental Movement was afterward composed began to approach each other, drawn together by the attraction of common interest. Emerson’s “Nature,” written in 1836, was an active element in the crystallization, although the writings of others had much to do with the amalgamation. These several books were so closely identified in their general philosophies and tendencies, that their readers began to form a loosely connected cult. Channing and Ripley, both prominent in Unitarianism and the “new thought” of the day, finally got together and formed a society for mutual endeavor and philosophical inquiry. Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Channing, Ripley, Brownson and Hedge, all prominent in the general movement, met and discussed the formation of a society. The term “Transcendentalism” was then first applied to the movement. Emerson says of this: “Nobody knows who first applied the name.” The society was first called “The Symposium” and afterward “The Transcendental Club.” Among the general subjects forming part of the earlier discussions were those of “Pantheism” and “Mysticism,” respectively. The interest in the movement grew rapidly, and many of the brightest minds in New England were attracted to it. While the subjects discussed, taught and considered were various, it is safe to say that as a whole they were most unorthodox and contrary to the general public belief and opinion. Many of the ideas and opinions so advanced are quite familiar to the people of the present day, and are taught in many pulpits, but at the time of the Transcendental Movement they were regarded as heretical and atheistic, and aroused the fiercest denunciation and antagonism from the orthodox pulpit and press.