Transcendentalism: Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller

This is Unit Seven of American Literature, part one of two: Transcendentalism, the first American philosophy to produce a literature. Unit six closed on writers naturalizing European forms. This unit is the movement that used European ideas to argue that nobody should be taking anything secondhand, and that is its governing idea, which part two pays off. Transcendentalism can be stated in one proposition: an individual can reach the truth directly, through intuition and through nature, and every institution offering to do it for them is in the way. The materials came from outside, from German and British Romanticism, from Kant, from the higher criticism of the Bible, and from a New England Unitarianism that had already loosened Calvinism. What Concord added was an insistence that the mind is active rather than a blank tablet receiving impressions. We take the doctrine first, then Emerson, who wrote the movement's founding statement and gave self-trust its permanent phrasing, then Thoreau, who tested the same doctrine by living it for two years in a cabin and keeping the accounts, and then Margaret Fuller, who extended the principle to the half of the population the others had overlooked. By the end you will be able to state what the movement claimed and where it came from. To account for Emerson's founding texts and his most famous image. To quote "Self-Reliance" accurately. To describe the Walden experiment and the book. And to place the civil disobedience essay and Fuller's work.

Three entries on the doctrine: what it claimed, which ideas it imported, and the word it gave to the spirit it believed in.

Truth reached without a mediator.

AML 0601 What Transcendentalism Claimed

Transcendentalism held that an individual can reach truth directly, through intuition and through nature, without a church or a book to mediate it. Its adherents rejected institutions and dogma in favour of their own independence, and the anchor lists the values Emerson distilled: individualism, self-reliance, self-education and non-conformity. It is a philosophy of intuition rather than of doctrine.

German idealism, arriving in Massachusetts.

AML 0602 Unitarianism, Kant, and the Road to Concord

The movement drew on German and British Romanticism, on the higher criticism that studied the Bible's origins, on Kant, and on German Idealism with its distinction between appearances and things in themselves. It began among New England Unitarians who had already loosened Calvinism's grip, so it grew out of liberal Christianity rather than against religion itself.

One spirit, shared by mind and nature.

AML 0603 The Over-Soul

Rejecting Locke's picture of the mind as a blank tablet passively receiving impressions, the Transcendentalists described an interchange between an individual mind and an animated nature, an exchange that both received and created a sense of spirit. That shared spirit is what Emerson calls the Over-soul. The mind here is active and never a receptacle.

Seven entries on Emerson: the book that started the movement, the image that got him mocked, the essays people still quote, and the scandal.

Nature as a text to read.

AML 0604 Emerson's *Nature*

Emerson published *Nature* in eighteen thirty-six, arguing that the natural world is not raw material but a language, and that a person who looks at it directly rather than through other people's books can read it. The essay became the movement's founding statement, and its complaint is against secondhand vision rather than against learning.

Nothing, and seeing everything.

AML 0605 The Transparent Eyeball

Crossing a bare common at twilight, Emerson's narrator reports that all mean egotism vanishes, that he becomes a transparent eyeball, that he is nothing and sees all, and that the currents of Universal Being circulate through him. The image was mocked at once and has outlived the mockery. The passage claims dissolution rather than observation.

Nature, books, and then action.

AML 0606 "The American Scholar" and Intellectual Independence

In this address of eighteen thirty-seven Emerson tells American thinkers to stop deferring to Europe and to their own libraries, calling books good only when they inspire rather than instruct. The scholar's duties are to observe nature, to read actively, and to act, since thought without action is incomplete. Books are useful only when they provoke.

Trust yourself against the crowd.

AML 0607 "Self-Reliance"

Published in eighteen forty-one, "Self-Reliance" argues that a person should trust their own intuition against the pressure of society, which it calls a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and each person must accept the place providence has found for them. The essay attacks conformity rather than community.

One dropped word changes everything.

AML 0608 "A Foolish Consistency"

Emerson's line that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds is usually quoted with the first word dropped, which turns a defence of changing one's mind into a licence for incoherence. The adjective is the argument: he defends revision rather than caprice. Foolish is the word people leave out.

A church school, told to stop mediating.

AML 0609 The Divinity School Address and the Scandal

Emerson's address to the Harvard Divinity School told the graduating ministers that historical Christianity had made a mistake about Jesus, and that each person must find the divine directly for themselves. The scandal kept him from speaking at Harvard for decades, and it marks the movement's break with the churches becoming formal.

Sentences that travel without paragraphs.

AML 0610 Emerson's Style: The Aphorism as Argument

Emerson's essays advance by sentences rather than by paragraphs, and his best lines are portable enough to survive on their own. The method has a cost, since an essay assembled from aphorisms can seem to contradict itself, and a reader has to follow the movement rather than extract a doctrine from it. The contradictions are method rather than oversight.

Five entries on Thoreau: a cabin, a set of accounts, a year of seasons, and a doctrine put to the test.

A cabin, and a doctrine tested.

AML 0611 Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond

Thoreau sought a life stripped of what society loads onto a person, and in eighteen forty-five he built a cabin at Walden Pond on Emerson's land and lived there for two years. The experiment tested whether the doctrine of self-reliance could be carried out rather than only written about. The pond is a mile from town.

Two years, told as one.

AML 0612 *Walden*: The Experiment and the Book

*Walden, or Life in the Woods* appeared in eighteen fifty-four, compressing two years into a single turning year and organizing itself by the seasons. It is one of only two books Thoreau published in his lifetime, and it mixes account-keeping, natural history and sermon inside one cover. The compression is a literary choice.

A house, itemized to the half-cent.

AML 0613 "Economy" and the Cost of a Life

The long first chapter prices a life, listing what the cabin cost down to the half-cent and asking what a farm costs in the years spent paying for it. The claim underneath the arithmetic is that the cost of a thing is the amount of life exchanged for it. The accounting is an argument about time.

Live deliberately, and simplify.

AML 0614 "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"

Thoreau says he went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts, and to avoid discovering at his death that he had not lived. The chapter's instruction is to simplify, and its complaint is that people have become the tools of their tools. Deliberate here means chosen rather than slow.

Beans, ice, and a thaw.

AML 0615 The Bean-Field, the Pond, and the Seasons

The middle chapters work outward from a bean-field Thoreau hoes and a pond he sounds, and the book closes by moving through winter into a spring thaw. The observation is exact and figurative at the same time, so a measurement of ice is also a claim. Renewal is the thaw's other meaning.

Four entries to close: one refused tax, an essay that outgrew it, and the woman who edited the movement and extended its principle.

Conscience first, the law second.

AML 0616 "Resistance to Civil Government"

Published in eighteen forty-nine under the title "Resistance to Civil Government" and long known as "Civil Disobedience", the essay argues that a citizen's first duty is to conscience rather than to law, and that unjust government should be met with deliberate, peaceful refusal rather than with waiting. The familiar title is not the original one.

One night, one tax, one argument.

AML 0617 Thoreau's Night in Jail and Its Long Influence

Thoreau refused a poll tax in protest against slavery and the war with Mexico, and spent a night in jail before somebody paid it for him. The essay built from that small refusal became the standard argument for nonviolent resistance and reached readers far outside American literature. The essay outgrew the incident entirely.

Self-reliance, claimed for women.

AML 0618 Margaret Fuller and *Woman in the Nineteenth Century*

Margaret Fuller, whom the witness calls the movement's feminist writer, published *Woman in the Nineteenth Century*, an argument that women should have the same access to self-development the Transcendentalists claimed for the individual. It applies the movement's central principle to the half of the population it had overlooked. Fuller's book is named from the survey witness.

Editor, critic, foreign correspondent.

AML 0619 Fuller at *The Dial* and in Italy

The Transcendentalists published a quarterly called *The Dial*, which lasted four years and was first edited by Fuller and later by Emerson. Fuller went on to work as a journalist, reported from Europe during the Italian revolutions, and died in a shipwreck on her way home. She was the movement's first editor.

That is the doctrine and the three who made it. Part two takes the institutions, the critics and the procedures. You can state the one proposition the movement rests on, that an individual reaches truth directly through intuition and nature, and name its imported materials in German Romanticism, Kant, the higher criticism and a liberal New England Christianity. You can explain the Over-soul as a shared spirit produced in an exchange between an active mind and an animated nature, against Locke's blank tablet. You can account for *Nature* as a founding statement, for the transparent eyeball as a claim of dissolution rather than observation, for "The American Scholar" telling thinkers that books are good only when they provoke, and for "Self-Reliance" calling society a conspiracy against its members, with the word foolish restored to the hobgoblin line. You can describe two years at Walden compressed into one, a cabin priced to the half-cent, a life measured in time exchanged, and a thaw that means renewal. And you can place the essay written after one night in jail over a poll tax, and Margaret Fuller, the movement's first editor, claiming self-development for women.