And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.
- Yaeshua in Mark 7:7
And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of worship?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, June 15, 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address
Foreward:
By writing this essay, I am not trying to bring back the message of Transcendentalism. Moreso, I will show you that, if anything, I am exposing what has been living inside you all along. The old souls of Thoreau, Alcott, Emerson, and mostly Ellery Channing, have been ushering me to the proper ideas as I wrote. God has guided me to an honest appraisal of what these men sought; and I write based first on my impressions.
But alas, the information in the Concord Library archives chimed & echoed these impressions continually! For these men lived truely, and in living exposed everything perfect from our creation within.
That is to say, as our society forgets about these things, the more information becomes fleetingly concrete, the more will our admiration grow for "the child that's got his own." Impressions do not lie: they are the Nature from within' attempt to match your environment. Neither can we tell ourselves that we can truly know what these surging forces mean (with a formal education).
Sonnet for the Transcendentalists
history has built a bridge
here to you from author's ridge
when a hero makes a stand,
words of wisdom to overstand
a reminder to God's truimphant soul
who gives mercy to the meek & low,
and to us our daily bread
so that inspiration fills our head
emerson showed us nature's law
alcott kindled children small
thoreau blessed this fertile ground
channing always dancing round
and 'course the church some recompense:
a wish to fill it with living sense!
A man began and remains as a boy, contrary to anything else you have heard. A man must retain the instincts from boyhood: boisterousness, guile, curiousity, ambitiousness, and oblivious wit. By adding to the form of boyhood the essentials of prudence, he learns to see the world beyond the scope of self-interest, becoming worthy of husbandry to all things. At the same time, this is not a lofty view of total self-sufficiency which Henry David Thoreau attested in his experiment on Walden Pond.
With manhood, inevitably comes the view, nay the intuition, that all things have arrived from one source: the Father of creation. This act is humbling as in order for him to provide, he will draw utterly on this for nurturance and support. Manhood, then, is to forthrightly and intentionally live & build, utterly knowing there is nothing to live & build better than what God would live & build. Men, through surrender, build the body of the Church.
How do I know what to do at any given moment? I trust in my own sense! I do not need any symbol, any person, to provide the answer, in any way! The Bible itself is like a crutch! If I have broken my legs, I will use the crutch and try to recover. When the time comes for me to love again, what can the Bible actually show me? Only I can decide the best way to care for Creation!
The Bible is only a map of the Truth. Sure, a map is something in itself. But if you are paying too much attention to the map, you may miss what you are actually seeing! The Transcendentalists came to enlighten the common man of Boston and the West from the subversive intellelectualization of government and religion. They were all geniuses, but they teach how we are all genius when we discover the perfection that already exists.
The Church at the time (and how much more do they still do it!) held out salvation like a worm on the hook for people. It was always so excruciatingly near & yet unattainable, and you would have to stay tuned for another week to see if you would get into heaven. But when you realize how the priest himself is not happy, you may become alarmed! Where is the answer when a thorough search of every possibility society offers winds up hollow & unfulfilling?
When the Student is ready, the Master appears. There comes a point when the outward searching for us all is exhausted, and we finally crumble. That's when a light comes to us in our dreams and reminds you of an eternal spring built within you. As the Christ says, "Whatever Treasure is in your heart, so shall you find." Boston priests desired to keep its congregation as its fear-filled prize, and the congregation grew into the dull satisfaction of only daily bread.
Truth can be found inside you, and whenever thirsty, here is where you return. No matter how weary you become, the Source will never deplete. It is no different then as it is today, but let's all give credit to Emerson for having the courage to travel into Boston, freeing with rancor the youth of his day.
One thing that is clear from the first Transcendentalists is that if anything, they would become much more religious. Maxims that drew a veil between man & Nature would pass. Although doctrine could no longer bind them, they would all retain a strong sense of faith in One God. To commune with the water, to dance into the butterflies, to begin to grow a natural presence as strongly-spined as the great Oaks: these are the potentials of men, ones that were built upon individual discovery, meant to be sought & found.
Transcendentalism was Church leaders' coining term for a group of young radical thinkers from New England. Enflamed and with no trace of ennui, the movement began when Ralph Waldo Emerson preached to many young people to unlock inner power by castigating the tenets of their church which stymied spiritual growth, and to trust that God is within and alive. In an essay entitled self-reliance, he writes,
"Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, - but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, ... Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing."
This is a common sentiment: to break the ties of those closest to us, in order to assert that we are children of an eternal nature, not so much bound by a temporal existence in this body. In this passage, you could take his words to be reflective towards any person, but mostly, this was his sentiment for the Church as he saw it.
In the 1830's Boston was an affluent community, but extremely rigid when it came to its own ethics. Churches here relied on dogma and doctrine to keep their congregation as unquestioning sheep. When Emerson gave his speeches, he was so strongly rejected that he drew more than a handful of citations for every one he gave. He held great interest and attention, but many times would resort to overt generalisations that alienated his audience, "For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles."
While Emerson spent his early years uprooting doctrines of the church, he uprooted himself. "The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door on himself, in striving to shut out others," as he says. It is a tricky proposition to not get your hands dirty while tending your father's garden. Ralph Waldo himself was the son of the preacher William Emerson in Concord who died when Ralph was 8, then raised by an aunt who knew he was born to preach. He would dissolve notions of original sin, of the eternal guilt of a man's soul, of any notion of conscience that would keep a man from living. He also had some vaguer schema of Karma working through his understanding. He makes this clear in an essay entitled, 'Compensation.'
Spiritually, most people at first were unwilling to abandon the answers which they and their ancestors held for so many generations. Their ancestors themselves were rebels of the Catholic church, while they had settled into contentment. When they heard Emerson's message, there is no doubt that something had stirred from inside them, yet it was immediately insufficient to immulsify their subconscious doctrine.
In 1840, Emerson started a quarterly magazine, known as The Dial, which sought stories from anyone who could cant upon the Divine within Nature, while Bronson Alcott wrote letters to numerous other magazines and writers, finding material to publish and keeping up to date with social and religious issues. At the time, Channing began to send in poems from Cincinatti, and Thoreau was just out of college at Harvard. Margaret Fuller was the editor, and the magazine enjoyed mild success.
Emerson became an intellectual whipping post. His music made many New Englanders, mostly young and collegiate, follow his tune. But older parishoners and priests alike refuted angrily; in efforts to keep their young children in the flock, they made Emerson into a Pied Piper. As Peter warns in his scripture, the priests at the time had been false teachers because they spoke evil of things they did not understand. The result? There are many, and the effect is lived by the increasing diversity of Protestant churches. But at the time, the immediate result was that Emerson and his inward wisdom lured many into a searching for God in nature, in meditation, and through the unconscious.
Now I must admit, history is yet to aptly question the undercurrents, the spiritual battle (which is still fought today, mind you) that sprang forth from this rift. I am speculating, but I feel strongly that the reformed Church had in Emerson a message to bring itself closer to living God's will. But they denied Emerson; they denied Emerson's friends; they began to deny anyone who came to them, speaking through Intuition with radical abandon. So they came with contempt to Emerson and his peers, and they shut the front door. They did so by striking at Emerson's words, saying they were unfounded in scripture, and thus the Word itself became a tool used to deny the Transcendental movement.
Before I say any further the actual effects and evidences for my claims, it is time for me to introduce Emeron's contemporaries in Concord. Here is a list of few notable writers, who became the foundation of modern philosophy, and others who had stirred the intellectual atmosphere of Harvard University. It is time to speak of childhood.
Long before any Americans were born to this earth, there lived a very polite & friendly man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg. He is a delightful fellow to read. He was not particularly smart. He was no prophet. He had, though, utter trust of this inner world of Love & Light, in which we are all One. He trusted his dreams. He spoke to many angels, and drew a map of Heaven. He explains to us all that heaven exists here, now, but within us to lesser or greater degrees. He describes three levels of heaven: angelic (in which angels have entirely placed trust upon intention, and live solely through love), spiritually, and naturalistic. He says that the more people trust the inner world, the more they let God's love shine through them. After our earthly life, our souls enter a spiritual realm, where we wait to be taken by either heaven or hell, depending on our tendencies to love & be truthful. The higher the heaven one is in, the more truthfully one lives and the more one would chooses God's words over her own.
It seems like an intellectual contradiction, but the more we forgo the answers that we think are right, and merely trust God, the more eloquent our spoken answers become. This is because no matter how much we know, if we are wise, we know that it is nothing compared to what God knows. So it is in fact an intellectual contradiction: living God's will requires abandoning completely self-seeking motives & the satisfaction that is derived from the illusion of concrete knowledge.
Emerson, his peers, I, and everyone is in agreement with Swedenborg's position, when we say something to the extent of, "I need not know the answer to speak it; I merely need the desire to speak the truth, to let the truth speak through me." Swedenborg confirms this by explaining that before truth is spoken, it exists in the inner state as intention or volition (the two are practically the same). And by speaking truth with its corresponding intention, the truth and intention are of one goodness. There is a man, who loved dearly both Socrates and Jesus, by the name of Amos Bronson Alcott, whose life and entire works prove this concept.
Amos Bronson Alcott was rejected in his own time, but his philosophy has become the foundation of our modern educational system. His style has been described as "the Socratean Questioning method." Indeed, this was his style, but we must maintain certain attributes of this person to show how he is truly different from anyone who might simply attempt at this style. These qualities must not be in contradiction to Socrates' own style:
1. The faith that the soul of every person has been created wise
2. Thus, gaining knowledge is not a matter of dictating it, but letting one reveal it to themselves
3. This is done by asking questions, which are asked with the motive to lead from simpler matters to more esoteric
The foundations of logic are predicated upon two things: soundness of one's own logical algorithms & a faith that the premise must be true. Many people in the modern day are quite swift upon the first, yet oftentimes, as the teaching of logic in classrooms involves arbitrary examples, with such 'given's as, "George likes bananas," the latter and most crucial foundation of logic will be taken for granted. To Mr. Alcott, however, this is not so, for he leads people back to the given. He admired God's children so. He saw every person with inherent divinity, and in his questioning, did so with the utmost faith that each one could reach the conclusions of Absolute Truth.
Although in our modern day, we are so prone to believe that we decide the truth for ourselves, that we in fact choose which truth we want to believe, there exists one common set of laws, the spiritual laws that cannot be broken, by which we consciously or unconsciously must follow. That is to say, there is an One Truth to be found. Any time we would believe otherwise, we can enter the seemingly benign, yet dangerous realm of moral relativity, where the truth we define for ourselves actually limits who we are to become because it is idea working backwards into intention. Needless to say, when we come to believe that we have found the truth, we are in fact only seeing an infinitesmal fraction of the actual Truth; consequently people subconsciously choose only friends whom bear a likeness to themselves. And the dangers of such are self-evident.
Mr. A. B. Alcott wrote numerous articles, but the merit of his work came from his discussions, where many people were allowed to engage him and thereby come to the novel course of proving Alcott's conclusions in much the same manner as Socrates once did. Perhaps his most noteworthy piece is his "Conversations with Children on the Gospels," which was held in a Sunday School-type venue. He had asked his children questions, and they were able to reveal that Life existed within themselves, and although they called it many things, like God, Spirit, Heart, they nevertheless ventured inwardly into a much better understanding and realization of the wisdom inside of them. Like most of Emerson's works, Alcott's proof was rejected by most congregations of New England as radical and blasphemous.
Alcott believed all people were created with Divinity within. As one of his "Orphic Sayings" elaborates upon how we are to live it out, "The heart is the prophet of the soul."
Perhaps, if at all there was a drawback to his methods, it was that he had trusted people too much. Naivete, though, would protect him, but it would not protect those who had abandoned it in order to chisel out their own map of the universe. His panel discussions with adults, unlike children, nearly always possessed the quality of the speakers, who wished to steer knowledge seeking towards the knowledge they believed to possess. Their intentions were not on discovering God's truth, as Alcott intended, but for people who listened to accept, through either force of character or logical superiority (in an other word, selfishness), their own views.
This contradicts the way of the Socratean Questioning Method. For in this method, the discussion will always be geared towards discovery. Without it, (supposing we are seeking a conclusion already known to the mind), then upon arriving at the conclusion, then one would lose the essence or the Spirit of the knowledge, thereby nullifying any gain that could happen in the discussion.
There was an one, Orestes Brownson, who had participated in many of Alcott's panel discussions, whose intention, through publication, was to popularize the Transcendentalist movement. But he was never fully accepted by these thinkers: in 1838 he started the Boston Quarterly, an opus of his own mind, but it didn't find any success in the streets of Boston. Alcott made contributions at the beginning, but overall, the Quarterly could not house the Intuition of religious thinkers. In 1836 he promoted the coining term 'Transcendentalism'. Before and after this, Brownson jumped through an assortment of religious identities, and Transcendentalism was just a pit-stop for liturgical career from Unitarian to Catholic, where he remained from 1844 through 1876.
Seems in him is the instinct for propagation. What religious ideas to Propagate was his question until middle-age, and he peddled a vast many structured arguments in his time. When he started the Boston Quarterly, with tremendous expectations, he basically sat in an empty office waiting for quiet despairers to begin a long-winded discourse upon their own philosophy. He did not seek the answers within himself, so at the foot of Peter's gates (God's gate which is stewarded by Peter) will he remain. And his contribution to these people is that he confirmed their name, to which most founders were indifferent.
The greatest emphasis of thought itself for Transcendentalists, is that we are born of the Soul, of the Spirit. And Brownson's method of discourse throughout his life squarely opposes this. At 14, he would go to every church, returning home to compare the sermons. He at once said he was a part of Transcendentalism, but contrary to confidence in the blessedness of people, he saw man's nature as sinful. By treating the thoughts as things in themselves, he neglected the intentions of preacher's words, and so could not truely understand what Emerson posited.
If the Concord authors' expressions were like the ocean, Brownson himself would be that solid rock, which when dropped into it, would sink directly to the floor. He had participated in numerous private discussions with these men, remarking with glee thereafter that in them, "the only thing not tolerated was intolerance." Of course, this says much more about Brownson himself than his group at the time.
Tolerance, contrary to the popular view, is a horrid quality to possess. The convention of tolerance, enacted in Post-Modern times, is to allow everyone time to speak, and to respect their views, whatever they may be. But my concern, for myself, for you dear reader, for anyone who might adopt such a notion, is that a personal view is not altogether benign. Indeed, no matter how lofty or noble our perceptions may become, if they are not open to discovering yet more, than they are 0 in proportion to the Infinite!!
Disciples of the premise of Tolerance acknowledge that any view may be in some way a shade of the Eternal Truth, and as thus, must contain good qualities of its own. By overvaluing a personal truth, you are engaging in a form of idolatry! If I were to overvalue harmony, I may become unable to perceive dischord, which is part of why harmony is so beautiful! As we identify ourselves, so to does our inner world conform. So if we are to believe at all, believe in the Absolute, the Infinite, & the Eternal! The One! I believe in suffering in All things, for it is not trusting in a superficial doctrine of redemption, but in truly suffering that we are redeemed.
People who believe in tolerance deceive themselves thus: they think to tolerating others, they are becoming superior in their capacity to endure them. To do so, they create an intellectual distance from those who they disagree with. People still share fellowship with others, and too often, they overlook how the Spirit mixes with all things. While tolerant people's views seem open, doubt fills their mind over everything that instinctively contradicts what they have built of their personal views. Over the long run, the intentions of both parties becomes the same, though 'my veiws are the best.' Each person loving their own views and not the other's... believing in only selfishness.
Effectually, they are loving the sin and not the sinner, when we all know deep down, it is to love the sinner, and not the sin.
I exposited this necessarily, for, now a word upon the history of reform within the reformed Church. Tolerance is, if it is not the greatest, is an high value of the Unitarian Universalist Church. If one considers how invention and progress works, they might say, "in order to invent metallurgy, a person would need knowledge of gunpowder and a greater knowledge of smything." To take into an analogy, I say, "in order to invent the Unitarian Universalist Church, a community would need Transcendentalism and Unitarianism." In the mid-19th century, when Transcendentalism had its rebellious boyhood, its views are diametrically opposed by to this tenet of the Unitarian church. The growth of UU church involved a huge compromise that could only be abstracted by the passing of time, which washes the face of all things temporal.
Thus said, there may be some inkling of tolerance within some of you the reader. Know that INtolerance can be even more dangerous...
What can be done? Go back to the Source of all things, and live again in your eternal infancy! The answers to the right way may be painfully distant to you now, but they are meant to be discovered upon living forwardly.
No, I don't have the answer for a perfect correction of things. And there may not be (save through Grace) any instantaneous healing of false-belief. But I will confess now, I had indulged that at once, I was fooling myself to believe that I could shop around for whatever answer was most convenient to me. Living the wrong way teaches nothing of how to live the right way (contrary to popular views), but it will teach you how to recognize in others the same afflictions which you have intentionally or not chosen for yourself.
It is time for the world to put down the shield of tolerance, that blocks words and physical things, while letting the spirit slip through unawares. Now, we must put on the armor of Christ!
In the fall of his life, Brownson shot one last arrow with his, "A Note on Emerson." He did so while safely within the walls of Vanderbilt University. On the surface, he speaks soothing words, but preambles, "any understanding we have of Emerson can only be understood intellectually". Thus, mos of his arguments fall short, except I think one legitimate criticism of Emerson's Nature. Here, Emerson made a crucial omission that for the sake of history, I will remit:
Emerson wrote a companion book for the youth of his day, entitled Nature, in which he briefly exposits the notion of correspondence. Again, correspondence is the idea that any material thing the God created corresponds to a spiritual reality. In the same chapter, Emerson speaks about the natural world & the spiritual world, while Swedenborg's vision of heaven contained again, 3 parts: angelic, spiritual, & natura. If the piece intends to be instructive along the same lines of Swedenborg, millions of youth may have grown up thinking only of the lower two, forgetting the innermost heaven.
If Brownson tells us that Emerson can only be understood intellectually, though, the vast majority of Emerson's intentions and ideas could not have passed through a skull as thick as his. Because the Concord writers attempted to speak to the Soul, through intentions, not to be fused directly to man's operative schema, most of the things that they said to young Orestes had no way to be understood.
In any failing of perfection Emerson may have had, I wish to amend it now so as to not perpetuate further folly. Let us remember the innermost heaven. But let history also note how much Emerson lived, and how much Brownson sat in an ivory tower, thinking himself alive!
There was an one W. Ellery Channing, the younger (as he had an uncle also William E. Channing), whose life and works became veritably entwined with Thoreau, Hawthorne, & Emerson. He went to Illinois to start a farm and left in a year, then he moved to Cincinatti to court a woman, but he could never stay in one town for too long and be satisfied. He was mostly a desperate soul: a college drop-out from Harvard and a poet whose works were courted by Emerson in 1840. From his middle to later years, his interests shifted from desperately searching through Nature to find the answers, to having consolance with his friends.
He sat in at a great many panel discussions with Alcott, whom with he quarreled intellectually. In history, he seems a renegade; perhaps he would have found fame inevitably, and as a man and poet, but his works preferred to exist in their own solitude: self-evident and uncriticisable. His time spent in Concord was ushered by the invitation of Ralph Waldo Emerson; his role there was as a child who brought each mind together through genuine affection and playful industriousness.
Moreover, it was his boyishness that carried the day in Concord. He was great friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. They went on a great many walks, conversed into the later evening hours after dinnertime, and through this, he gave them the gift of understanding human Nature. Also, Channing may have inherited the Swedenborgian spirit in his time at Harvard.
Channing wrote an unfinished autobiography, in 3rd person. It never was completed; it ended one and a half paragraphs into the 7th Chapter. Puer Aeternus he was, always moving upon brilliant Steed to his next pursuit! In the tale, you can see his perspective of himself while at Illinois & Cincinatti. In Chapter 2, we see the magnitude of his angst towards becoming: "he was wrapped in his sorrow, & his solitude, which neither crowd nor desert could subdue." Likewise, he became totally disenchanted with his contemporaries: "To them the answer of life is, remain where you are; you cannot better yourself by wandering And they believe it. Why did I not believe it? Why am not I this day one of the rising lawyers of New York, enterprising, encouraged, & connecting myself with those profitable routines which acquire the solidity of granite foundations for the edifice of existence?" There is a continuous ascent into Professionalism until we find the protagonist in Chapter 6. An abstinent & brilliant youth becoming birthed (to manhood, the 2nd baptism) through a night engaged in spirits at a tavern with the General. The next chapter is a brief scene setting into a world in which he must suffer through in order to redeem society.
The one problem that may be inherent in his autobiography is not the question of 1st person non-fiction, vs. 3rd person fiction, but that he wrote it in retrospect. He may have attributed with some slight distaste the way he was, in order to more rightly present to himself as a hero. Nevertheless, the work is authentic and truthful, though it may be an one-tenth-taller-than-itself-tale.
Nathaniel Hawthorne threw his hat into the cast of Transcendentalist characters, and today collects credit. A philosopher of life he was, through and through, yet I feel he is more of a Romantic or Idealist than Transcendentalist. He often remarks upon the forest in his stories as having foreboding 'infinitude.' Thus, while curiousity of Nature alighted his peers, he always averted from its nightfall. Thus, he lacked the courage needed to transcend.
Happiness to him, was found through his relationships. While he was not a lover of God, he was a tremendous lover of humanity. In a quick tale, he sheds a note of idealism he felt as a father to his son. From a father's perspective, Reuben Bourne's son Cyrus: "The boy was loved by his father with a deep and silent strength, as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature had been transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it." This is the way we all want to be remembered by loved ones: somehow, by God, they will keep only & all the goodness within us. His stories are dark, because they portray the equilibrium of how the bad still exists when none of the characters are able to recognize it.
The other writers were not intending to write any 'fiction,' though. He was only briefly in Concord; he wrote an autobiography entitled, "Salem is my home." Yet, for some reason, all the librarians in Concord relish him. I read one note Channing wrote, where he says while Thoreau could not read a single line of Hawthorne's writing, yet to the young lasses, "he carried the day."
The tragedy of Hawthorne is the reality of his fiction. He later reflected that he saw in himself most of the attributes Goodman Brown had. His habit was to observe acquaintences and strangers for mannerisms to become fodder for new characters. He had became a character himself; thus he had been confused into not knowing whether his characters were born of himself, or if they had their own separate existence. His own objective longings prepared the modern era for the fiction of William & Henry James, who also but rather than Hawthorne intentionally distorted the perceptions of the American populace.
He was an avid student of the psyche, before psychology became a science. He lived 50 years before Wilhelm Wundt, and regarded the word psyche, as the Greeks meant, "Soul." Hawthorne's study of psyche though was subjectified into maximizing his story-telling strategy. That is, it was utilized to help him create a sense of mood. Although he theorized and commented passionately about society & its woes, he never began to surmount the greater objective questions of life as his contemporaries had.
The dream of being the best story-teller may be a nice goal, but if it is the ultimate goal, then it is vanity. That is my note on Hawthorne. I do not know whether his intentions were thus or if he dreamed of a better world. I cannot say much about his writings like many who have become enchanted by him.
Which brings us to the eternal Henry David Thoreau. And before I speak a word upon him, know that no matter how lofty my praise of him may be, it would somehow fall short of honor the man. He preferred to drink water instead of coffee or spirits for the same reason he preferred the blue sky of Nature over the smoggy city streets, as he says in Walden. However much he may have chided his pre-Modern times, he did so with the pure intentions of bettering his fellow men.
Henry David Thoreau met Emerson his elder after having found employment in the schoolhouse at Concord. Emerson became greatly fond of the young man, and they both agreed that a night spent looking at the stars with a telescope would be of more worth than any astronomy course. History states that Emerson guided Thoreau into more appreciation of Nature, though in my research, it is most certainly that Emerson bent more to Thoreau's conceptions.
Thoreau always enjoyed hard manual labor, but the work he performed was never menial. While he was doing every chore, from pulling weeds dusting his furniture, I can imagine how observant he must have been. Who is better at showing how the smallest things are still reflections of the greatest Love?
Objectively, his real work can only be described as husbandry, and perhaps you could even say that husbandry was his religion. Husbandry towards children as a teacher, when he commanded attention and taught a responsibility towards the eternal. Husbandry towards the land, as both a farmer, and an objective observer. Husbandry towards men, in guiding us towards wisdom.
Oh, you will say that one cannot be a husband of men! You are mistaken. Husbandry is seeing the great oak in the seed, and abiding the seed in its course to become that. Husbandry to a woman is to see the children that will become from her, and to prepare the home so that it is so, even if the woman is not your wife. So you see it is not some selfish notion of how to satisfy your woman after dinner.
What is the method of husbandry? Read Thoreau.
He acquainted himself to the spirit of what he observed before he spoke an word upon any physical characteristics. "Only a great poet can read a great poet," as he explains. That is because the poet reads new worlds while the educated man is only reading new words.
His physical description of things was such that anyone can intuitively imagine both the character & feeling to which he writes. He ranks with Basho & Rumi the way he captured "the moment," as New Age poetricians say.
In Concord, there will always be a feeling of peaceful serendipity, which writers cherish & cultivate. The rivers are so lallygagging, the wind ever placid. A wonderful place to raise children, for the children are only 15 miles from Harvard in Cambridge. Channing, Thoreau, and Emerson all went to Harvard, although Channing dropped out after just one semester. Paul Revere finished his ride to warn villagers upon a Redcoat Invasion of April 1775 here. The townsfolk are ever-so-sleepy-eyed to knowing the true richness of the village. So rich is this town's history that I must again digress into another, more social issue of slavery.
While Concord writers had their minds suitably entwined upon religious bouts, Concord wives and women were perhaps evenmore enmeshed with social moralities. Beginning in this period, H. D. T.'s mother, aunt, and sisters would give his room to abolitionist speakers who passed through town while he was at Harvard. Lidian Emerson was bold to solicit many speakers, including William Garrison of the Bostonian Liberator magazine, the boldest in American History for its demands of immediate emancipation. All in all, 61 women had entwined their intentions as one to abolishing slavery. From the group of authors I spoke of earlier, Bronson Alcott worked hand in hand with these women, while Emerson and Thoreau began to give support at first grudgingly, then more and more violently after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
I will not say much about this, except that although slavery and religion do not EXACTLY go hand in hand in Boston, the resistance thereof was basically married to each other. Mind you, these were happy marriages in fidelity and love (unlike the lot of yours today.) So basically, the men had their religious battles, and the women had their social battles, and with great reluctance (save Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott) would a man be fighting socialities or a woman be fighting ideals. And it is slightly grudgingly that these men were moved to become involved when they witnessed the abhorring sight of freed black men being dragged into the trenches of the South.
Concord is narrowly beyond the outskirts of Boston, and the writers will always compete and attempt to refine Boston's hard-nosed attitude. Even today, Boston is the most traditionally-minded city in America outside the Mid-West & the South. Back then, with the exception of Garrisonians, most of the Boston populace seemed content to go through life with modest pay unquestioningly. This left the urgency to be felt in Concord, so that it was too much for them to remain as bystanders.
How does this relate to my tale of the pressure Transcendentalists felt? Well, it is important to know that their wives loved them all dearly, that if anything their wives became much like the Transcendentalist husbands in character. And also, there was not only pressure coming into Concord from religious institutions, but also the traditionalist populace as well. In a way, it made their households somewhat into islands, where much needed respite for not only themselves, but politicians, scholars, and, later, fugitive slaves as well.
Many if not most of Concord townspeople were perturbed and even angry that these movements were beginning in their own sleepy town. Abolitionist ministers, at the request of Transcendentalist wives (so to speak), would come in from time to time, but the populace only tolerated a brief stay for each.
Though religion was the more thoughtful's subject of the day, abolition was the predominating issue in New England. Though there were numerous arguments and scowls received from religious citizens, Emerson was never threatened to be tarred & feathered; Alcott was for his abolitionist endeavors.
Concord wives learned a few tips from the philosophy of the Transcendentalists. Largely, though, the abolitionist movement retained a Christian character, but worked upon the public with a deeper, colloquial message. They would change views through country fairs; they would change views through an appeal to sensibility, not cheap rhetoric as the men partook.
Women took this message of a Living Present God and applied it to more practical issues. To the men of the Concord day: thoughtful ones. As Swedenborg explains, it is in our creation for men to focus more on thoughts & women intention, but through Love, these are one. So there was overlay of course:
Thoreau was an ardent abolitionist, and Emerson had his qualms. In the 1840's he would not speak on the issue, though his wife Lidian Jackson Emerson pleaded for him to do so. He chided the appearance and demeanor of some freed slaves in actual encounters. Thoreau would live on as giving every Massachusetts resident the personal mandate to oppose all things opposed to the free man.
It is thus that the women would suffer more on behalf of the unconscious undercurrent of the time. Margaret Fuller grew up on Cambridge and forayed into Concord before becoming America's best literary critic. She one time criticized Boston poet & preacher James Russell Lowell's volume as having stereo-typed verse. While she may have been faulting him upon genderification & she a feminist, the spat became heated. New Englanders who supported Lowell rallied behind him to support all their crazy ways: slavery, man-serving, and blind sheepish church-going were all popular because they had something new to chide (for what they could not accept in themselves).
She died in 1850, and 1850 marked the year of a serious shift for Thoreau in the tone of his abolitionist speeches; 1850 had seen the bulk of Transcendentalism's practi-deology fermented, where they shifted from work on idaeology to practical matters.
It is the feelings, attitudes, and enthusiasms of a person that I embrace, and I am obliged by God to embrace all of them, though I will suffer malignity until it is seen that righteousness and wholesomeness is not only more expedient to productive endeavors, but also more pleasurable.
Anyhow, Thoreau's old room was now being rented out to fugitive slaves instead of lecturers. It took time to convince Emerson to join the cause. And meanwhile, the undercurrents of Boston were beginning to open to new possibilities. Religiously, they were adopting the sensuality of a spiritual instinct; morally, the cause of humanity was ringing at their door. Eventually, New Englanders would open the door to emancipation, though only as an idea.
Slavery relates to Transcendentalism & Transcendentalism relates to Slavery. Transcendentalism is breaking free of mental fetters while Slavery requires the breaking of physical chains. To break free of the mental fetters, it requires that one experiences Spirit in the physical of Nature. To break free of physical fetters, it requires that one discovers Spirit in the mind of the Slave. As the freer we are to experience & discover, the truer is our impression, the deeper is our Love.
The Spirit of life opened Transcendentalists to God, and so they wrote to promote this potential in others, and to destroy the dogma that stood against them. In an effort to draw contrast, they may have displaced New Englanders. Whatever of Truth that the mind cannot accept, the body will compensate with angst. This was the angst that became of the Boston public, that forced many to changed, and others to become more ignorant.
The anger & refutation for what Transcendentalists from the surrounding Churches came from all around. But wisdom is uncriticisable. Mostly, their words were a reflection of Truth the preachers could not live themselves. Many people hid behind Jesus, calling Emerson blasphemous, and was he?
Well, he said Jesus was a man & "part of that true race of Prophets," but that we are all part of God. Alcott abetted him to say Jesus' life was a perfect example of the way we should live. He said that the Bible, or Word as he called it, was a good book where wisdom can be found. He also noted that wisdom is contained in many other works as well, and spent much time translating works of the Occident.
In his defense, I will give my own note upon this matter. The word, Bible, means in Hebrew, the Book. And there are 27 authors of said Book in the Christian Bible. The irony of it all is that the Book speaks of an ongoing tale, but almost all Christian faiths no longer allow any further books to be appended. The saints of the Catholic church are allowed their own spin; the 'prophets' of new Protestant faiths are allowed to add a book, but all in all, the stringing of wisdom between one sage or another sufi or a brilliant professor is strictly forbidden.
The Transcendentalist authors intentions rectified this, to allow wisdom to be a palpable possibility for anyone to speak. These men in their own time were held to a higher standard, yet the people who held them thus would not live according to their own standard received in their own Bible.
I believe that any account, any witness attesting to God's Love in the world, whether his words are inscribed to the books of history or not, partakes upon the ongoing tale of God's Love. To God, this is all of one account, for to testify in the name of God is to have God's words speak through you.
In conclusion, I arrive at something of philosophy. When Jesus spoke, saying, "Consider the birds: they neither toil nor spin..." was it not God reminding us that He was tending many an unwatched field? The Transcendentalists were those who had rediscovered God in nature, but were rejected when they tried to bring this back to their Church. In our modern day, so too in the mid 19th century, I feel that people are so prone to admire nature, but have we forgotten that it was God incarnate who was speaking these words which freed our soul?
So yes, the words of Jesus confirm the words of the Transcendentalists, but they not confirm the actions of preachers attacking them intellectually for what of the Mystery they could not accept for themselves. To speak one truth can only uphold and confirm all Truths.
God's Church is a cathedral of pine trees where Thoreau lectured; it is a church in our hearts, the prophets of the individual; it is a church built with love, more lasting than the stone of the builders.
To the Underlaying Unity
of All Life
so that the Voice of Intuition
may guide us
closer
to our common Keeper