Various - The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

This question has often been asked but seldom answered satisfactorily. Newspaper editors and correspondents have frequently attempted a practical elucidation of the mystery, by quoting from their own brains the rarest piece of absurdity which they could imagine, and entitling it ‘Transcendentalism.’ One good hit of this kind may be well enough, by way of satire upon the fogginess of certain writers who deem themselves, and are deemed by the multitude, transcendental par excellence . Coleridge however thought that to parody stupidity by way of ridiculing it, only proves the parodist more stupid than the original blockhead. Still, one such attempt may be tolerated; but when imitators of the parodist arise and fill almost every newspaper in the country with similar witticisms, such efforts become ‘flat and unprofitable;’ for nothing is easier than to put words together in a form which conveys no meaning to the reader. It is a cheap kind of wit, asinine rather than attic, and can be exercised as well by those who know nothing of the subject as by those best acquainted with it. Indeed, it is greatly to be doubted whether one in a hundred of these witty persons know any thing of the matter; for if they possess sense enough to make them worthy of being ranked among reasonable men, it could be proved to them in five minutes that they are themselves transcendentalists, as all thinking men find themselves compelled to be, whether they know themselves by that name or not.

‘Poh!’ said a friend, looking over my shoulder; ‘you can’t prove me a transcendentalist; I defy you to do it; I despise the name.’

Why so? Let us know what it is that you despise. Is it the sound of the word? Is it not sufficiently euphonious? Does it not strike your ear as smoothly as Puseyite, or Presbyterian?

‘Nonsense!’ said he; ‘you don’t suppose I am to be misled by the sound of a word; it is the meaning to which I object. I despise transcendentalism; therefore I do not wish to be called transcendentalist.’

Very well; but we shall never ‘get ahead’ unless you define transcendentalism according to your understanding of the word.

‘That request is easily made, but not easily complied with. Have you Carlyle or Emerson at hand?’

Here I took down a volume of each, and read various sentences and paragraphs therefrom. These passages are full of transcendental ideas; do you object to them?

‘No,’ said my friend; ‘for aught I can perceive, they might have been uttered by any one who was not a transcendentalist. Let me see the books.’

After turning over the leaves a long while, he selected and read aloud a passage from Carlyle, one of his very worst; abrupt, nervous, jerking, and at the same time windy, long-drawn-out, and parenthetical; a period filling a whole page.

‘There,’ said he, stopping to take breath, ‘if that is not enough to disgust one with transcendentalism, then I know nothing of the matter.’

A very sensible conclusion. Bless your soul, that is Carlyle-ism , not transcendentalism. You said but now that you were not to be misled by the sound of a word; and yet you are condemning a principle on account of the bad style of a writer who is supposed to be governed by it. Is that right? Would you condemn Christianity because of the weaknesses and sins of one of its professors?

‘Of course not,’ replied he; ‘I wish to be fair. I cannot express my idea of the meaning of transcendentalism without tedious circumlocution, and I begin to despair of proving my position by quotations. It is not on any particular passage that I rest my case. You have read this work, and will understand me when I say that it is to its general intent and spirit that I object, and not merely to the author’s style.’

I think I comprehend you. You disregard the mere form in which the author expresses his thoughts; you go beyond and behind that, and judge him by the thoughts themselves; not by one or by two, but by the sum and substance of the whole. You strip off the husk to arrive at the kernel, and judge of the goodness of the crop by the latter, not the former.

‘Just so,’ said he; ‘that’s my meaning precisely. I always strive to follow that rule in every thing. ‘Appearances,’ you know, ‘are deceitful.’’

That is to say, you go beyond or transcend appearances and circumstances, and divine the true meaning, the substance, the spirit of that on which you are about to decide. That is practical transcendentalism, and you are a transcendentalist.

‘I wish you would suggest another name for it,’ said my friend, as he went out of the door; ‘I detest the sound of that word.’

I wish we could, said I, but he was out of hearing; I wish we could, for it is an abominably long word to write.

‘I wish we could,’ mutters the printer, ‘for it is an awfully long word to print.’

‘I wish we could,’ is the sober second thought of all; for people will always condemn transcendentalism until it is called by another name. Such is the force of prejudice.

‘I have been thinking over our conversation of yesterday,’ said my friend next morning, on entering my room.

‘Oh, you have been writing it down, have you? Let me see it.’ After looking over the sketch, he remarked:

‘You seem to have me fast enough, but after all I believe you conquered merely by playing upon a word, and in proving me to be a transcendentalist you only proved me to be a reasonable being; one capable of perceiving, remembering, combining, comparing and deducing; one who, amid the apparent contradictions with which we are surrounded, strives to reconcile appearances and discover principles; and from the outward and visible learn the inward and spiritual; in fine, arrive at truth. Now every reasonable man claims to be all that I have avowed myself to be. If this is to be a transcendentalist, then I am one. When I read that I must hate my father and mother before I can be a disciple of Jesus, I do not understand that passage literally; I call to mind other precepts of Christ; I remember the peculiarities of eastern style; I compare these facts together, and deduce therefrom a very different principle from that apparently embodied in the passage quoted. When I see the Isle of Shoals doubled, and the duplicates reversed in the air above the old familiar rocks, I do not, as I stand on Rye-beach, observing the interesting phenomenon, believe there are two sets of islands there; but recalling facts which I have learned, and philosophical truths which I have acquired and verified, I attribute the appearance to its true cause, refraction of light. When in passing from room to room in the dark, with my arms outspread, I run my nose against the edge of a door, I do not therefrom conclude that my nose is longer than my arms! When I see a man stumble in the street, I do not at once set him down as a drunkard, not considering that to be sufficient evidence, although some of our Washingtonian friends do; but I compare that fact with the state of the streets, and what I know of his previous life, and judge accordingly.’

Well, said I, you are an excellent transcendentalist; one after my own heart, in morals, philosophy and religion. To be a transcendentalist is after all to be only a sensible, unprejudiced man, open to conviction at all times, and spiritually-minded. I can well understand that, when you condemn transcendentalism, you object not to the principle, but to the practice, in the superlative degree, of that principle. Transcendentalism is but an abstract mode of considering morals, philosophy, religion; an application of the principles of abstract science to these subjects. All metaphysicians are transcendentalists, and every one is transcendental so far as he is metaphysical. There are as many different modifications of the one as of the other, and probably no two transcendentalists ever thought alike; their creed is not yet written. You certainly do not condemn spiritualism, but ultra spiritualism you seem to abhor.