Essays [First Series] (1841)

Summary

This volume contains twelve essays, which are severally entitled History; Self-reliance; Compensation; Spiritual Laws; Love; Friendship; Prudence; Heroism; The Over- Soul; Circles; Intellect; Art. The substance of some, if not of all, of them has been given to select audiences in the form of lectures in Boston and its neighborhood, and it may, we think without injustice, be considered as a cause, or certainly as the type of a somewhat novel and singular species of fanaticism now prevailing more or less in that region, under the name of transcendentalism. We call it fanaticism, as being a semi-philosophical theory strangely blended with certain elementary notions of religion, making as large demands on the conduct as on the faith of those who receive it, and leading to principles and forms of social organization which have no basis in the nature of man, and which experience has already condemned as impracticable. By what right this medley of opinion and fancies has received the sobriquet of transcendentalism, we are at a loss to understand. Kant, and Cousin, and Coleridge, would be puzzled to recognize in it any features of the system they have taught, and which has passed under that name, or if it be in any way a product of their system, it is by some equivocal generation, a lusus naturæ, feeble, and we trust short-lived. Once the attainment of the theory of man and of the universe, that was properly styled transcendental, was the result of patient meditation for many months, and years were not thought too long to prepare the mind for a competent judgment of it.