ARTICLE XI.

TRANSCENDENTALISM.

By the Rev. Noah Porter, Jr., Pastor of the Cong. Church, New Milford, Conn.

What is Transcendentalism? This question is often asked by intelligent men, and sometimes with great earnestness. As the movement indicated by the word is without doubt extensively to prevail, the question is constantly becoming a question of greater interest, and will force itself upon the attion of thinking men throughout our country.

We make no apology, therefore, for attempting to answer the question-which we shall aim to do with all possible honesty and truth, and in a direct and business-like manner.

The word Transcendentalism, as used at the present day, has two applications, one of which is popular and indefinite, the other, philosophical and precise. In the former sense it describes men, rather than opinions, since it is freely extended to those who hold opinions, not only diverse from each other, but directly opposed, not only in their statements, but in their bearings upon the most important interests of man. In its precise and strictly appropriate application, it denotes a class of philosophical opinions, concerning the principles of human knowledge, or the grounds of our faith in the world of sense, and also in those higher truths which make us capable of science and of religion, those truths which impart to our being, as men, all its dignity, and to our hopes and fears for the future, their interest. Our first concern will be with the term in its looser and more general sense, or rather with the men, who, in current phrase, are called Transcendentalists. And here it will doubtless be asked, how can such a term be applied to them at all, and especially with what propriety can it be used in respect to those who differ so widely in their intellectual and moral position and influence? To this we answer, that while we cannot feel ourselves bound to defend, or even to explain the popular use of every epithet, which may originate only in ignorance or confusion of thought, it is yet more frequently true, that such use is owing to a sufficient reason, which it is not difficult to detect and state.

In the

present instance this reason is obvious. Those called transcendentalists, while on the one hand they are Pantheists or social Reformers, receivers or rejectors of Christianity, unitarian or evangelical in their views of Christian truth, and in these respects, strangely unlike, are yet, in other points, as strikingly similar. These points are their intellectual and moral predispositions, their favorite philosophical and literary authors, and of consequence, their general cultivation and literary sympathies, with a strong family likeness in their modes of thought and expression. These striking and strong affinities make them of one school, and secure to it its peculiar name, while within that school, are heard the voices of many discordant and contending teachers.

Among these we mention the Pantheistic variety, with whom the name of Mr. Emerson is too intimately connected, to require that it should be concealed. This school, though not claiming to be learnedly or profoundly metaphysical, and apparently despising the logical processes, the acute criticism, and the scientific research of a Kant or Cousin, and in many respects, not to say in most, very unlike to Plato, do yet follow in their train and call themselves by their name. Seizing upon a fragment of the Platonic or Transcendental formula, that the ideas which the reason reveals to man are objectively the laws by which the universe subsists and proceeds, they boldly and dogmatically affirm that these forces constitute the supreme Reason, that besides these there is no Deity; that the Deity is no living person, no Eternal Jehovah. These eternal and unchanging laws, both physical and moral, thus revealing themselves to man and regulating his happiness here and deciding his destiny hereafter, are the only God whom their philosophy acknowledges or their religion adores. This doctrine they propound, rather than prove. They utter it forth with the sage solemnity, the authoritative wisdom, and the affected phrase of the mysterious oracle or the inspired prophet. When ridiculed, they will not condescend to retort, for it would be inconsistent with their dignity as prophets. When questioned, they will not give a reason, but emit other mysterious utterances, which, according to the mood of the listener, are received either as the voice of divinest wisdom, or the ravings of men inspired by no other afflatus than that of their own self-complacency.

Other peculiarities they have which are innocent, or rather

which almost makes them innocent, in the ancient sense of the word. They remove themselves from the stirring enterprises and the active benevolence of a bustling age, and can find in its science, its literature, and its religion, but little that suits their taste, or is worthy their notice. The transcendentalist, says their master and oracle, is content to wait in silence and seclusion for an age which shall be worthy of himself. From the past, also, he severs himself, by rejecting the record of its facts, when these facts contradict his philosophy, especially by denying the historic truth of the Christian revelation, by accounting for its miracles, by transmuting them into mythi, arising out of occurrences not in the least supernatural, and by making Christianity itself but the highest of all symbols of the higher and purer Pantheistic Truth. Indeed, all past ages and all by-gone enterprises, all the prayers and praises, the high aspirations, the deeds of overcoming faith and daring heroism which had distinguished the great men of other times-all these are worthy of consideration only as they faintly shadow forth the age which is to come, the times of "the restitution of all things," on the true foundations of Pantheism in Theology, of mysterious enigmas in science, and of unnatural energy and affected phrase in literature. With all these vagaries, there are intermingled, in their writings, many just and many striking sayings concerning man, many most worthy and noble principles in relation to the aims of life and follies of artificial society, expressed oftentimes with a delightful freshness of language. These give to their writings a high interest to ardent and youthful minds, and to the writers an influence that has no connection with the truth or error of their opinions. When this is termed the Pantheistic variety of the Transcendental school, it would be unjust, were the impression to be conveyed to our readers, that the dogma concerning the Deity, holds a conspicuous place in their writings. It is not properly a school in philosophy, as it is a school in literature. Its inspiring genius is rather Carlyle in his criticism on books and men, than Straus in his mythical exegesis, or Hegel in his philosophical chaotics. And yet Carlyle has a system in science, theology and exegesis, which, even if he has not dared to utter it to his own thoughts, or to propound it to his readers, does yet exist in its elements and principles, and which gives to his writings their spirit, their meaning, and,

we fear, much of their attraction. We care not to call his writings infidel writings, or their author a Pantheist or an unbeliever. In a certain sense he deserves neither of these appellations, while yet the influence of his writings and of the man pleases and fosters that current of feeling which is even now pressing on, with a silent, yet deep and powerful tide, which we call the practically infidel feeling of the literary men of the age. This infidelity is not metaphysical; it does not preach atheism with D'Holbach, nor Pantheism with Spinosa, nor man's irresponsibility with Hume; for metaphysics is not to its taste. It does not concern itself with the infidel exegesis of the German students of the Scriptures, for this is a study which it despises. Nor does it dishonor the moral effects of Christian truth or the record of its religious experience, as many an infidel churchman has done, for even Carlyle discourses of the regeneration of Cromwell, and with so much earnestness in his interpretation of the event, that many a Christian might not see the sneer behind. What, then, is it? How can it be infidelity? We reply; It is natural theology without a personal God. It is moral philosophy without a responsible agent. It is Christianity without the belief of its historic truths, acknowledging some of its effects, even those called spiritual, yet without connecting them with its facts, the government of a Holy God, and the redemption of a revealed Redeemer, and the cleansing of a Holy Spirit. It is rather unbelief than disbelief. Subtle, refining, symbolizing all living truths and real facts into inert and powerless mythi, and yet exerting its influence unconsciously to the man himself. Let the dreamers of Oxford, on both sides the Atlantic, understand it and ask themselves, whether Christianity has no work for them to do, except to make her more offensive to such men, by hanging about her neck other mill-stones than those which have well nigh sunk her already; and whether the Church has no demand for them, except to fill her courts with grotesque and chattering priests, and to busy their brains with inquiring what are the dimensions of that surplice which makes the wearer most devout, and what the size of the cross upon the back of the priest, that leads the spectator most effectually to put on Christ. Let hair-splitting and angry theologians ask themselves, whether Christianity and the Church had nothing for them to do, but to contract their influence, and narrow

their minds, and exhaust their energies. Amateur divines also, and petit maitres in the pulpit, may inquire with profit, whether, as they have to do with men, they had not best act the part of men, and arm themselves for manly

contests.

As next in order, we name the Transcendentalists in the Unitarian communion, of the different sorts of which class. Mr. Ripley and Mr. Parker may be taken as specimens. They are not Pantheists, and hence, deserve not to be classed with Mr. Emerson; while they are too decidedly theologians to be named with Carlyle. They take their character as a school, and perhaps their name, from the fact that while in the Unitarian connection they have gone widely aside from that exclusive reliance on the historical evidences of Christianity, which has been so characteristic of those divines, and have planted themselves on the moral evidence, not only as superior, but as supreme and decisive. The truth of its doctrines and its facts, they ground upon their fitness to the reason of man, and only so far as the reason sees and feels them to be true, so far are they to be received. So also they prove the being of God, from the wants and aspirations of our nature, rather than the fact of his existence from the visible universe, and the principles of his moral administration and his own moral attributes, from the course of his own actual providence with man. From the fact that they have rejected and labored to depreciate the only species of proof for the Christian system, which Unitarians have been accustomed to acknowledge, they have seemed to many Unitarians of the older stamp to be no less than rejectors of the system, and their principles have been called "The latest form of Infidelity."

In the writings and general course of thought of some of them, there is certainly much to approve, and we cannot but hail that distinct recognition which they allow to the facts of Christian experience, and to its authority and importance in interpreting the word of God, as well as the honor which they give to man's moral nature, the greatness of its wants, and the greatness also of the change within which it must experience to be the omen of a purer theology and a more spiritual religion. As far as they constitute reason, the voucher for all truth, both in Natural and Revealed Theology, so that of truths that are within her province, none