When loneliness becomes too
oppressive, I feel Him drawing me nearer, to be soothed by
the smile of an All-Intelligent Love. He will not permit
the freedom essential to growth to be checked. If I can give
myself up to Him, I shall not be too proud, too impetuous,
neither too timid, and fearful of a wound or cloud.'
III.
TRANSCENDENTALISM.
* * * * *
The summer of 1839 saw the full dawn of the Transcendental movement in
New England. The rise of this enthusiasm was as mysterious as that
of any form of revival; and only they who were of the faith
could comprehend how bright was this morning-time of a new hope.
Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable integrity of
man, of the immanence of Divinity in instinct. In part, it was a
reaction against Puritan Orthodoxy; in part, an effect of renewed
study of the ancients, of Oriental Pantheists, of Plato and the
Alexandrians, of Plutarch's Morals, Seneca and Epictetus; in part, the
natural product of the culture of the place and time. On the somewhat
stunted stock of Unitarianism,--whose characteristic dogma was trust
in individual 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 Madame de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge,
and Carlyle; and the result was a vague yet exalting conception of the
godlike nature of the human spirit.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25