TRANSCENDENTALISM. 505 human knowledge, restricted to those conceptions and judgments which are universal and necessary, and which transcend the sphere of knowledge furnished by experience. Hence transcendentalism claims an original intuitional process for obtaining true knowledge of all things, material and immaterial, human and divine, as far as the mind is capable of knowing them. It denies a supernatural revelation, pronounces its miraculous sanctions to be philosophically impossible and absurd, and hence wholly discards the authority of the Scriptures. This doctrine appeared among a class of thinkers that arose among the New England Unitarians at this time. A few persons probably received it with little if any modifications; but in most minds at all influenced by it there were some modifying elements, on account of which this class of New England Transcendentalists has been regarded as somewhat peculiar and diversified in its character-" a school of idealists." For this reason, presumably, the term transcendental has come to be used for that which is vague and illusory in philosophy. The first meeting of what was later well known as "The Transcendental Club" was held in Boston, at the house of Mr. George Ripley, September 19, 1836; present, Messrs. Ripley, R. W. Emerson, F. H. Hedge, Convers Francis, James Freeman Clarke and A. Bronson Alcott. Subsequently Revs. J. S. Dwight, W. H. Channing and C. A. Bartol met with them, and a little later Orestes A. Brownson, and later still Miss Margaret Fuller, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Theodore Parker, etc., etc. In September, 1836, Mr. Emerson's first book, Nature, was published, and the same year Carlyle's Sartor Resartus; and Mr. Brownson was lecturing in the Masonic Temple, subsequently the United States Court House. In 1837 Mr. Brownson commenced his Quarterly Review. In 1837 Wendell Phillips bounded into oratorical prominence, and about this time Mr. George Ripley's Philosophical Miscellanies, translations from German philosophy, were published. In July, 1840, the Dial was first printed, a quarterly journal of remarkable brightness, keenness and originality, edited by Mr. Ripley and Miss Fuller, and extending to only sixteen numbers in four brief years. Thenceforth the transcendental views were more widely extended, permeating a considerable class of cultured minds. In 1841 a series of Mr. Emerson's Essays was published. The author might proudly say of these as Bacon said of his own, "that their matter could not be found in books." It is probable that they would have been at once widely welcomed as a positive addition to literature had it not been for some startling paradoxes and audacious statements, which, while they were in direct conflict with the theological beliefs of the people, were supported neither by facts nor arguments, but rested on the simple testimony of the author's individual consciousness.* Mr. Emerson's Peculiarities. It is not easy to give a clear and satisfactory digest of Mr. Emerson's views. He never grouped his thoughts together by methods of logic. Insight, not logical processes, was his method. The writer of the article on Mr. Emerson, in Appleton's Cyclopedia, says: System in his mind is associated with charlatanism. His largest generalization is "Existence" (a lecture). On this inscrutable theme his conceptions vary with his moods and his experiences. Sometimes it seems to be a man who parts with his personality in being united to God; sometimes it seems to be God who is impersonal, and who comes to personality only in man, and the real obscurity and vacillation of his metaphysical ideas is increased by the vivid and positive concrete forms in which they are successively clothed. Generally the Divine Being is felt or conceived as a life-imparting influence, divinizing nature and man, and as identical with both. In 1838 Mr. Emerson was invited by the graduating class of the Divinity School at Harvard College to deliver the annual address. While his audience admired and approved many things in his address, not a few were deeply pained by dangerous utterances against the supernatural element of Christianity. This was especially felt by Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., who had an interview with Mr. Emerson on the subject, which was followed by correspondence † and a sermon by Mr. Ware on the Personality of God. * Appleton's Cyclopedia. Article," Ralph Waldo Emerson." + Mr. Emerson's letter to Mr. Ware will show the peculiar character of his mind and his transcendental theories. He says: "I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been-from my incapacity of methodical writing—' a chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail-lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know that there is no scholar less willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the arguments' you so cruelly hint at on which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of thought. I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that, in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to make good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as I have always done glad when you speak my thoughts and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I can and telling what I see; and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me—the joy of finding that my abler and better brothers who work with the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unexpectedly confirm my perceptions, and find my nonsense is only their own thought in motley." (See Life of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr. Vol. II, pp. 188-9.) THEODORE PARKER. B07 Mr. Emerson's ideas have exerted a great influence in the Unitarian body and outside of it, and he may be regarded as one of the forerunners of the later "Free Religion" movement. An editorial in the Liberal Christian* said "Mr. Emerson must be regarded as the fountain-head of Rationalism"-meaning all use of reason which discards all testimony not its own-in this country, and especially in Boston. Theodore Parker. Before Dr. Channing's death a young man of remarkable genius and power appeared in this denomination, whose influence was destined to be widely felt, leading many minds to assert their independence of Christ and divine revelation. In 1837 Mr. Theodore Parker became the pastor of a Unitarian church at West Roxbury. According to the usual custom in the denomination, at his ordination no questions were asked in regard to his theological opinions. He had been a diligent student of the rationalistic literature of Germany, and had formed views radically subversive of historic Christianity which he hastened to proclaim. In his famous sermon on "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," at the ordination of Rev. Mr. Shackford in South Boston, May 19, 1841, he rejected and derided the supernatural elements in Scripture history. The Old Testament was treated as "a pile of gorgeous pictures," the New "as filled with mistaken legends and opinions," and Jesus Christ as only such a person as others might be if the hidden divinity within them were fully revealed. The congregation was astonished, and looked one to another, but the ordination went on. Boston Unitarianism was stirred; but freedom and progress had ever been the watchwords, and there was no remedy. Mr. Parker. had only advanced a little beyond many of his brethren, but he was practically disowned in various ways. A few years more sufficed to separate him wholly from the denomination, when he boasted that he "had thoroughly broken with the ecclesiastical authority of Christendom." In 1848 his name appeared in the published list of the clergy in the Unitarian Year Book for the last time. After Mr. Parker appeared as a bold champion of rationalism, a new influence was felt in the Unitarian denomination. Channing, who died in 1842, had been, more than any other man, the leader and prophet of the body, whose beautiful spirit was every-where felt, exerting its sweet, genial, and almost magical influence. But Mr. Parker strode forth into the field Goliath-like, rash, self-willed, *July 1, 1871. + Experience as a Minister. By Theodore Parker. without reverence for accumulated wisdom and experience, confident of superiority to the past, relying upon his own personal insight" a direct vision without the correcting testimony of ages." Channing's style was chaste, flowing, direct, elegant-that of "an ethical teacher by nature, a polemic by stress of circumstances." Parker was a natural polemic, scenting the battle from afar and neighing for the conflict. He loved sharp, incisive statements, had a fatal habit of gross exaggeration, often sacrificed truth on the altar of personal conceit, and often in attempts at bold and startling rhetoric. He was a man of moods marked by a double consciousness, at one time praising Christ as The great friend of all the sons of men, and on another occasion declaring: I have seen the gospel of God's love more clearly written in the life of a cold snake than even the Nazarene Jesus could tell the tale. Channing was a devout disciple of Christ, claiming him as the source of spiritual life. Parker was a merciless critic of Christ. Channing was a decided supernaturalist, though of the rational order. Parker openly denounced all supernaturalism. Strange contradictions* met in Mr. Parker: opposite extremes of opinion into which he ran, oftentimes with an inconsiderate haste; powers and attainments of a giant united at times with the intellectual weakness of a child. While stating one class of facts with remarkable clearness, at the same time he had a pre-eminent ability, or liability, whichever it was, for utterly overlooking other facts, no less evident, of an opposite character. With some indications of many-sidedness, he was nevertheless notoriously and incurably onesided. And this was the most conspicuous trait in his character. * Mr. Parker has been supposed by some to have been a man of prodigious learning. His wonderful library, vast reading, and extensive acquaintance with the world's faiths have been much spoken of. The Christian Register (Unitarian) took a different view of him, It says: "Mr. Parker was a devourer of books; an omnivorous reader. The natural result was a mental indigestion. He made his mind a perfect lumber-room. Had he read only a tenth part of what he credits himself with in his journal, he would have been wiser, purer, and clearer in his mental vision. Mr. Frothingham regards him as a thoroughly learned scholar, exact, exhaustive, and trustworthy in reporting his results. Such was not the judgment of his peers among his brethren-of scholars like Drs. Frothingham, Lamson, Noyes, Francis, Hodge. etc. It is curious, after his biographer has credited him with a course of French study and reading (he quotes subsequently from his journal in Paris), that 'a cabman took compassion on him for his ignorance of the language.' One of his warmest admirers, preaching upon him after his death, said that he had read all the books in his library of 17,000 volumes. The author of this preposterous statement, if he had seen, must have forgotten, that severely-wrought essay of De Quincey's on the number of books which the most diligent man can possibly read in a long life." See also an elaborate criticism and very able review of his life and works by Rev. Prof. George Prentice, D.D., in the Methodist Quarterly Review, January and April, 1873. He was an able, a decided, and an uncompromising representative of a system which was positively anti-Christian, and yet he claimed. to be a restorer of true Christianity. Historic Christianity and the historic gospels he rejected as the corruptions of the ages. True Christianity he claimed to be the absolute religion; the religion of the intuition, of individual insight; a direct vision which is in harmony with the intuitions of the original Christ. Of this he was a restorer; and in this sense he called himself a Christian, and not as a follower of what he termed "the dogmatic Christ" of history. While he quoted from the Scriptures, he nevertheless rejected large portions of both the Old and the New Testaments. Mr. Parker, however, clung to the doctrine of the providence of God and the immortality of the soul. But he seems to have had no fully matured system. He was rich in thought, but not logical and well defined; strong and forcible in style, but bold, erratic, paradoxical and irreverent. Emerson never defined his views on those questions of such profound interest to human hearts. He abhorred every thing in the shape of a system or a formula, and perhaps we may even say a method of thought. His genius delighted in vague but brilliant corruscations of mystical sentiment. His susceptibility to the sublime was very great, and there were, at times, indications of broad generalizations, but broken and fragmentary. His musings are cold, strangely beautiful, and sometimes austere. In short, he was a dreamer, and whatever semblance of system he has is dreamy and incoherent-a "gorgeous mysticism." Such were the prophets of Free Religion, and the Free Unitarianism of Parker was its prefatory stage. But it was not through Messrs. Parker and Emerson alone that these radical changes were effected. The germinal principle of rationalism inhered in the body itself, and the writings of Lessing, Herder, Eichorn, De Wette, Strauss, and other rationalistic writers, and the transcendental philosophy, extensively welcomed and admired by many Unitarian clergymen, have steadily fostered and carried forward the movement of which Mr. Parker was the open champion. Besides these, the phrenologists, represented by Spurzheim and Combe, the writings of Wordsworth, Carlyle, Coleridge and Cousin, just then very generally disseminated, increased and strengthened this tendency. Thus closes the classical era of Unitarianism. The Christian Examiner and The Religious Monthly Magazine were its leading periodicals, abounding in specimens of fine literature. |