LEsson 3aThe TranscendentalMovement.As another straw showing which way the philosophicalwind is blowing, in these days of intellectual unrest,and as a corroboration of the statements made in thepreceding chapters of this book, I ask that you consider thefollowing quotations from the latest work of Professor WilliamJames, of Harvard University, which work is based upon a seriesof lectures upon the philosophical situation of the presentday. It should be stated, however, that these quotations do notnecessarily represent Professor Jamess own personal beliefsor opinions, but are merely expressions of his observationsregarding the prevailing spirit of modern philosophical thoughtin the universities and among men of advanced education.Professor James says:Those of us who are sexagenarians have witnessed in our ownpersons one of those gradual mutations of intellectual climate, due toinnumerable influences, that make the thought of a past generationseem as foreign to its successor as if it were the expression of adifferent race of men. The theological machinery that spoke so livinglyThe Crucible of Modern Thought26to our ancestors, with its finite age of the world, its creation out ofnothing, its judicial morality and eschatology, its relish for rewardsand punishments, its treatment of God as an external contriver, anintelligent and moral governor, sound as odd to most of us as if it weresome outlandish savage religion.Professor James then goes on to speak of the spirit of modernphilosophical thought in the universities, as follows:Dualistic theism is professed at all Catholic seats of learning,whereas it has of late years tended to disappear at our British andAmerican universities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheismmore or less disguised. I have an impression that ever since T. H. Greenstime absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendant at Oxford.It is in the ascendant at my own university of Harvard. Also: Ourcontemporary mind having once for all grasped the possibility ofa more intimate weltanschauung, the only opinion quite worthy ofarresting our attention will fall within the general scope of what mayroughly be called the pantheistic field of vision, the vision of God as theindwelling divine rather than the external creator, and of human life aspart and parcel of that deep reality.In the present chapter it is my purpose to consider one ofthe most direct and immediate of the innumerable influencesto which is due the present gradual mutation of intellectualclimate, that makes the thought of a past generation seem asforeign to its successor as if it were the expression of a differentrace of men, as Professor James has so well stated. This directand immediate influence of which I speak, which has hadso much to do with the bubbling of the Crucible of ModernThought, is the influence of the Transcendental Movement ofNew England of 18301850, and the influence of Emerson inparticular. I feel justified in asserting that the present conditionof spiritual unrest and the prevalence of monistic idealism, whilehaving its original source far back in the past history of thought,The Transcendental Movement.27nevertheless reached us through the direct channel of the greatTranscendental Movement in New England in the first half ofthe last century, and largely through the individual channel ofexpression of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The lovers and admirersof Emerson have long claimed this, and the opponents of themovement are now beginning to recognize it. As one disgustedorthodox speaker recently said: Emerson is the fellow who is atthe bottom of all this trouble. His pantheistic teachings are nowbearing fruit.The beginnings of the Transcendental Movement in NewEngland may be seen in the remarkable interest manifestedby educated New Englanders, during the first twenty-fiveyears of the nineteenth century, toward the classical literatureof England and Germany. Previous to that time the influenceof Locke and Bentham had been dominant in philosophicalthought in this country. The theory of innate ideas was denied,and there was a decided tendency in favor of the utilitarianbasis of ethics and morals. Protesting against this view, someof the American Unitarians advanced ideas which, even in thatearly day, were denominated the new thought and declaredtheir preference for the conception that man possessed innateideas and also higher faculties transcending the senses and theordinary understanding. These advocates of the earlier newthought felt that religion and morality had a higher sourcethan ordinary reason, and must be placed in the category ofrevelations of the intuition of man, arising from the presence ofthe Indwelling Spirit.The influence of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Herder, Goetheand others began to displace that of the old literary idols,and exerted a decided direction in the formation of the newthought which was supplanting the older philosophicalconceptions. Coleridge taught the doctrine of a higher reason,or transcendental intuition, by which he held the advanced soulmight exercise an immediate perception of things supersensible,and which was not a faculty or property of the mind, but ratherThe Crucible of Modern Thought28the manifestation of the Indwelling Spirit, which latter was aspark from the Universal Spirit. He held that there was butOne Spirit, which was shared in by all human beings; the Manybeing, in a sense, identical with the One. Wordsworth taught apoetical pantheism, with its conception of a nature animatedby the Universal Spirit, and as Universal Mind manifested as Lawand Order. The influence of Goethe and other German writerswere in the same general trendall pointed in the direction ofa new pantheistic philosophy. A new interest was awakened inPlato, and the Neo-Platonists, and a demand was shown for thewriting of the mystics and idealists of the past. In this fruitfulsoil, the roots of the New England Transcendental Movementfound that nourishment which led to its rapid growth.Transcendentalism has been defined, briefly, as thephilosophical conception that there can be knowledge oftranscendental elements, or matters wholly beyond theordinary experience of the human mind. The term was usedby Kant. As Wallace says: Kants philosophy describes itself asTranscendentalism. The word causes a shudder, and suggeststhings unutterable. Transcendentalism is diametrically opposedto the philosophical views which hold that all knowledgearises from sensation or experience, and is also opposed to theagnostic view that reality is unknowable. But the term itself hastaken on a wider and more general signification by reason ofits popular use by the New England Transcendentalists, and itsidentification with the philosophy of Emerson, in the popularmind. In fact, the English-speaking peoples now use the wordgenerally in the sense of designating the ideas and principlesof the New England School, rather than those of the Kantianphilosophy.Margaret Fuller, one of the prominent New EnglandTranscendentalists, in her Memoirs, says:Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable integrity ofman; of the immanence of Divinity in instinct.On the somewhatThe Transcendental Movement.29stunted stock of Unitarianism, whose characteristic dogma wastrust in human reason, as correlative to Supreme Wisdom, hadbeen grafted German Idealism, as taught by masters of most variousschoolsby 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 thegod-like nature of the human spirit. Transcendentalism, as viewed byits disciples, was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds andrituals to the Temple or the Living God in the soul.Herzog gives us the orthodox view of the philosophy, in hisReligious Encyclopedia, as follows:In religion, the typical Transcendentalist might be a sublimatedtheist; he was not, in any accepted sense, a Christian. He believed inno devil, in no hell, in no evil, in no dualism of any kind, in no spiritualauthority, in no Savior, in no Church. He was humanitarian and anoptimist. His faith had no backward look; its essence was aspiration,not contrition.This last quotation is particularly interesting, inasmuch as itproves the contention of the influence of Transcendentalismupon the modern philosophical and religious thought.Compare Herzogs statements of what the Transcendentalistdid not believe, and what he did believe, with the prevailingspirit of religio-philosophical thought, and see how thecriticism of Transcendentalism becomes the prophecy of thepopular thought of the early twentieth century! Surely this is aclear case of cause and effect.About 1830, and the years immediately following, the variouselements from which the Transcendental Movement wasafterward composed began to approach each other, drawntogether by the attraction of common interest. EmersonsNature, written in 1836, was an active element in thecrystallization, although the writings of others had much toThe Crucible of Modern Thought30