American Transcendentalism

by Philip F Gura

  1 Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, Madeleine Stern, eds. Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 126–28.

  2 James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1887), 1:249.

  3 Caroline Healey Dall, Transcendentalism in New England: A Lecture (Boston: Sold by Roberts Brothers, 1897), 16.

  4 William Henry Channing, in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, eds. R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clarke, 2 vols. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852), 2:14.

  5 “J,” “R.W.E.,” Arcturus 1 (April 1841), reprinted in Philip F. Gura and Joel Myerson, eds., Critical Essays on American Transcendentalism (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982), 20–21.

  6 Orestes Brownson, review of Two Articles from the “Princeton Review,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 (July 1840), 270.

  7 Memoirs of Ossoli, 2:15.

  8 Noah Porter, “Transcendentalism,” American Biblical Repository, n.s., 8 (July 1847), reprinted in Gura and Myerson, Critical Essays, 36.

  9 Francis Bowen, “Locke and the Transcendentalists,” Christian Examiner 23 (November 1837), 176, 184. Also reprinted in Bowen’s Critical Essays: On a Few Subjects Connected with the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy (Boston: H. B. Williams, 1842).

  10 “Senex” [Theodore Parker], “Transcendentalism,” Christian Register 25 (April 1840), reprinted in Gura and Myerson, Critical Essays, 4. The pamphlet in question was Two Articles from the Princeton Review (Cambridge: John Owen, 1840).

  11 Charles Mayo Ellis, An Essay on Transcendentalism (Boston: Crocker and Ruggles, 1842), 11.

  12 Ibid., 19.

  13 Ibid., 71.

  14 Ibid., 23–24.

  15 Ibid., 72; and J. A. Saxton, “Prophecy—Transcendentalism—Progress,” Dial 2 (July 1841), 87. This is an ambitious attempt to trace the history of Transcendentalism, as worthy of study as Ellis’s or Murdock’s offerings.

  16 James Murdock, Sketches of Modern Philosophy, Especially Among the Germans (1842; New York: M. W. Dodd, 1844), chapter xv, passim.

  17 Murdock probably took this approach because of the recent publication of several of Cousin’s works in George Ripley’s Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature; see chapter 2, note 2, below.

  18 Murdock, Modern Philosophy, 179.

  19 Ibid., 181.

  20 Perry Miller made this point in his seminal The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 8.

  21 Murdock, Modern Philosophy, 177.

  22 Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England: A History (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1876), 302, 136–37.

  23 William C. Gannett, Ezra Stiles Gannett: Unitarian Minister in Boston, 1824–1871 (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1875), 198.

  24 George Ripley in George Ripley and George P. Bradford, “Philosophic Thought in Boston,” in Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols. (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company, 1881), 4:305.

  25 Francis Bowen, review of Emerson’s Nature, Christian Examiner 21 (January 1837), 380.

  26 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Transcendentalist,” in Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 1, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures; Historical Introduction and Notes by Robert E. Spiller; Text Established by Alfred R. Ferguson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 201.

  27 Ibid., 201, 203.

  28 Ibid., 204–205.

  29 Ibid., 208.

  30 Ibid., 209–10.

  31 Ibid., 211.

  32 Ibid., 216.

  33 Robert N. Hudspeth, ed., The Letters of Margaret Fuller, 6 vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983–94), 2:108.

  34 B. B. Edwards and E. A. Park, Selections from German Literature (Andover, Mass.: Gould, Newman & Saxton, 1839), 4.

  35 Hudspeth, ed., Letters of Fuller, 2:135.

  36 Joseph Henry Allen, Our Liberal Movement in Theology (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1882), 71.

  37 Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England, 115, 106.

  1: SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES

  1 On Buckminster’s importance see Lawrence Buell, “Joseph Stevens Buckminster: The Making of a New England Saint,” Canadian Review of American Studies 10 (Spring 1979), 1–29.

  2 See William Bentley, Diary, 4 vols. (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1905–14), 4:112 for a description of the event.

  3 The best biography of Stuart is Jon H. Giltner, Moses Stuart: The Father of Biblical Science in America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). The sale is described at pp. 8–9.

  4 Moses Stuart, “The Study of the German Language,” Christian Review 6 (1841), 457.

  5 William C. Gannett, Ezra Stiles Gannett, Unitarian Minister in Boston, 1824–1871 (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1875), 63.

  6 On the background to early American Unitarianism, see Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston: Starr King Press, 1955).

  7 For the development of nineteenth-century American Unitarianism, see Daniel Walker Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).

  8 I have written about this subject at more length in The Wisdom of Words: Language, Theology, and Literature in the New England Renaissance (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981); and “The Transcendentalists and Language: The Unitarian Exegetical Background,” in Joel Myerson, ed., Studies in the American Renaissance, 1979 (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 1–16.

  9 John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Russell Kirk (Chicago: Gateway, 1956), 132, 137, 141, 172.

  10 Giltner, Moses Stuart, 9.

  11 Edward Everett, review of Goethe, North American Review 4 (January 1817), 217–62.

  12 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Historic Notes on Life and Letters in New England,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883), in Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, ed., 12 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903–04), 10:312.

  13 Elisabeth Hurth, “Sowing the Seeds of ‘Subversion’: Harvard’s Early Göttingen Students,” in Studies in the American Renaissance, 1992 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 93.

  14 Orie William Long, Literary Pioneers: Early American Explorers of European Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), 120–21.

  15 Caroline Healey Dall, Transcendentalism in New England: A Lecture (Boston: Sold by Roberts Brothers, 1897), 14–15.

  16 Karen Kalinevitch, “Turning from the Orthodox: Emerson’s Gospel Lectures,” Studies in the American Renaissance, 1986 (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986), 105, n. 11.

  17 Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson, The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 96.

  18 For a good biographical notice see William Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1859–69), 8:538–47.

  19 See Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W.M.L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 71–76.

  20 George Washington Spindler, The Life of Karl Follen: A Study of German-American Cultural Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1917), passim, esp. 71, 85, 98, 122, 142.

  21 Andrew P. Peabody, Harvard Reminiscences (Boston: Ticknor, 1888), 117.

  22 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, 2 vols. (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company, 1876), 1:352.

  23 Sprague, Annals, 8:547.

  24 Moses Stuart, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2 vols. (Andover, Mass.: Mark Newman, 1827–28), 1:v.

  25 Joseph Buckminster, Sermons by the Late Rev. J. S. Buckminster, with a Memoir of His Life and Character (Boston: John Eliot, 1814), 167.

  26 On Norton see Lillian Handlin, “Babylon est delenda—The Young Andrews Norton,” in Conrad Edick Wright, ed., American Unitarianism (Boston: Massachusetts Historical S
ociety, 1989), 53–85; and Howe, The Unitarian Conscience, 299–303. Howe also treats Ware’s appointment to the Hollis Chair; see pp. 4–5.

  27 Jaazariah Crosby, in Sprague, Annals, 8:432.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Orestes Brownson, review of Two Articles from the Princeton Review, Boston Quarterly Review 3 (July 1840), 269.

  30 George Ripley in George Ripley and George P. Bradford, “Philosophic Thought in Boston,” in Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols. (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company, 1881), 4:299.

  31 Henry A. Pochmann, German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences, 1600–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), 128–31.

  32 Moses Stuart, Letters to the Rev. Wm. E. Channing, Containing Remarks on His Sermon, Recently Preached and Published in Baltimore (Andover, Mass.: Flagg and Gould, 1819), 11.

  33 On Stuart’s use of these critics see Giltner, Moses Stuart, 45–55.

  34 Moses Stuart, Letters to Channing (1819), reprinted in Miscellanies (Andover, Mass.: Allen, Morrill, and Wardlaw, 1846), 156–57.

  35 Emerson quoted in Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Reminiscences of the Rev. William Ellery Channing, D.D. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880), 371.

  36 Andrews Norton, An Inaugural Address, Delivered Before the University of Cambridge, August 10, 1819 (Cambridge: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1819), 18–20.

  37 Andrews Norton, A Statement of Reasons for Not Believing the Doctrines of the Trinitarians (1819, rev. 1833; Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1859), 162. Norton had first responded to Stuart in two reviews in the Christian Disciple for 1819 and later expanded one of the pieces into A Statement of Reasons, which he continued to revise until it reached its final form in 1833.

  38 Norton, Statement of Reasons, 138, 149, 148.

  39 Orville Dewey, Autobiography and Letters (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883), 44.

  40 On Marsh see Peter Carafiol, Transcendent Reason: James Marsh and the Forms of Romantic Thought (Tallahassee: University of Florida Press, 1982).

  41 James Marsh, review of Stuart’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Quarterly Christian Spectator 1 (1829), 147, 116.

  42 See Hurth, “Harvard’s Early Göttingen Students,” 105, n. 7, for Everett’s translation of Herder’s Introduction to the Old Testament, dated 1818.

  43 See Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), 50, n. 14.

  44 George Ripley, review of Herder’s Sammtliche Werke, Christian Examiner 19 (May 1835), 178, 183, 172.

  45 For Peabody’s interest in language see Philip F. Gura, “Elizabeth Peabody and the Philosophy of Language,” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 23, 3rd qtr. (July 1977), 154–63.

  46 Elizabeth Peabody, “Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,” Christian Examiner 16 (May 1834), 174–75. This was the first of three essays on biblical criticism that Peabody published in subsequent numbers of the journal. She had intended a total of six, but the editor, Andrews Norton, had “cut off untimely my little series,” as she later wrote Orestes Brownson. Norton, she later explained, “was opposed to a series on any one subject” and did not even “condescend” to read the other three pieces “because, as he said, I must needs be incompetent to the subject from want of learning.” See Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Orestes Brownson [ca. 1840] in Bruce A. Ronda, ed., Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: American Renaissance Woman (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), 248; and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Reminiscences of the Rev. William Ellery Channing, D.D., 145.

  47 Peabody, “Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,” 175–76.

  48 Kalinevitch, “Emerson’s Gospel Lectures,” 89.

  49 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Lord’s Supper,” Miscellanies in Emerson, Complete Works, 11:10–11, 21. Also see Elisabeth Hurth, “William and Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Problem of the Lord’s Supper: The Influence of German ‘Historical Speculators,’” Church History 62, no. 2 (June 1993), 190–206.

  50 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Divinity School Address,” in Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 1, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures; Historical Introduction and Notes by Robert E. Spiller; Text Established by Alfred R. Ferguson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 81, 93.

  2: REINVIGORATING A FAITH

  1 George Ripley to Convers Francis, January 17, 1837, in Mathew David Fisher, “A Selected, Annotated Edition of the Letters of George Ripley, 1828–1841” (Ph.D. diss., Ball State University, 1992), 98–100.

  2 The series comprised Ripley’s Philosophical Miscellanies, translated from the French of Cousin, Jouffroy, and B. Constant, in two volumes (1838); John Sullivan Dwight’s Select Minor Poems, translated from the German of Goethe and Schiller (1839); Margaret Fuller’s Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life, translated from the German of Eckermann (1839); William Henry Channing’s Introduction to Ethics, Including a Critical Survey of Moral Systems, translated from the French of Jouffroy, in two volumes (1841; for some reason, these are listed next in the numbering of the series, although their publication date precedes the next title); Cornelius C. Felton’s German Literature, translated from the German of Wolfgang Menzel, in three volumes (1840); James Freeman Clarke’s Theodore; or, the Skeptic’s Conversion. History of the Culture of a Protestant Clergyman, translated from the German of De Wette, in two volumes (1841); Samuel Osgood’s Human Life; or, Practical Ethics, translated from the German of De Wette, in two volumes (1842); and Charles Timothy Brooks’s German Lyric Poetry. A Collection of Songs and Ballads, translated from the best German Lyric Poets (1842).

  3 George Ripley to James Marsh, February 23, 1838, in John J. Duffy, ed., Coleridge’s American Disciples: The Selected Correspondence of James Marsh (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), 192–93. As an indication of Ripley’s catholicity, he asked Leonard Woods, Jr., a professor at the conservative Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Maine, to translate some of the work of the German biblical scholar August Twesten; see Ripley to James Marsh, February 23, 1838, in Duffy, Coleridge’s American Disciples, 211.

  4 George Ripley to James Marsh, October 17, 1840, ibid., 240.

  5 Marsh first published his translation of The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry in The Biblical Repertory, a journal edited by Charles Hodge of Princeton and then in book form in 1833.

  6 James Marsh, “Ancient and Modern Poetry,” North American Review 6 (July 1822), 106, 123–28.

  7 Ibid., 123.

  8 Peter Carafiol, Transcendent Reason: James Marsh and the Forms of Romantic Thought (Tallahassee: University of Florida Press, 1982), 127.

  9 James Marsh, review of Stuart’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Quarterly Christian Spectator 1 (March 1829), 147.

  10 James Marsh, “Preliminary Essay,” in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (Burlington, Vt.: Chauncey Goodrich, 1829), xiv.

  11 Ibid., xxv.

  12 Ibid., xxxix.

  13 See Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 260, Marsh’s note.

  14 Marsh, “Preliminary Essay,” viii; and Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 261.

  15 Karl Follen, cited in Roland V. Wells, Three Christian Transcendentalists: James Marsh, Caleb Sprague Henry, Frederic Henry Hedge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 18.

  16 James Freeman Clarke, Autobiography, Diary, and Correspondence (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891), 39.

  17 James Marsh to Henry J. Raymond, March 1, 1841, in Duffy, Coleridge’s American Disciples, 256. Raymond later worked for Horace Greeley on The New Yorker and the Tribune. As an undergraduate he had been Greeley’s agent in northern New England. See ibid., 247, notes 1 and 3.

  18 Charles Follen to James Marsh, April 14, 1832, in Duffy, Coleridge’s American Disciples, 128. The editor of Marsh’s letters notes that although he never published a translation of Fries, a manuscript text of lectures survives, with an inscription on the cover indicating it is a translation
of Fries’s Logic. See Duffy, Coleridge’s American Disciples, 128, n. 7; and ibid., 138; and Joseph Torrey, The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh, D.D. Late President and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, in the University of Vermont; with a Memoir of His Life (Burlington, Vt.: Chauncey Goodrich, 1845), 118.

  19 See John W. Rogerson, W.M.L. de Wette, Founder of Modern Biblical Criticism: An Intellectual Biography (Sheffield, Eng.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) for the best biography.

  20 J. D. Morell, An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century (1841; New York: R. Carter & Brothers, 1847), 596.