Chapter Chapter 4 of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

Results of the Movement.

The general influence of the thought and labors of the transcendentalists was stimulating in high degree to the intellectual and moral growth of the period, in spite of the numerous "isms" which flourished among them. It stirred the minds of men, and in general wrought for culture and for philanthropic and progressive measures. It enlisted the eager enthusiasm of young Lowell in temperance reform and, for a brief period, in the agitation for woman suffrage; it labored with Whittier and Garrison and Phillips in the cause of abolition. It reflected the intellectual activity of Emerson; and if Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell (in maturer life) were not personally identified with the cult, their ideas were indirectly colored by the influences which transcendentalism set afoot. It was an important current in New England culture and was significant of what Mr. Barrett Wendell has appropriately called "the Renaissance of New England."

Emerson.

Of this latter phase of the movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson is the distinguished representative. A leader among these students of ideas, a preacher of moral and intellectual truths, a poet, a philosopher, a teacher, his influence upon the intellectual life of New England was stimulating in the extreme, while the effect of his writings on American thought and letters can hardly be reckoned.

The Transcendental Writers.

The Alcotts.

Among the minor authors in this interesting group there are three or four that call for comment, although necessarily brief. George Ripley (1802-80) was a Harvard graduate, and in 1826 became minister of a Unitarian Society in Boston. He became conspicuous as a leader among the transcendentalists with the founding of the Brook Farm community, was active as a writer, and together with Charles A. Dana edited the New American Cyclopoedia (1857-63). Like others of the Brook Farm colonists, Ripley enjoyed the helpful friendship of Horace Greeley, and wrote, under Greeley's patronage, scholarly reviews for the New York Tribune. He made, however, no permanent contribution to literature. Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), famous for his eccentricities and for the unintelligibility of his mystical utterances, set out at fifteen as a peddler. With the design of adding to the family income he traveled through a part of the South, but returned with an empty pack and four hundred dollars in debt. This experience was typical of later ones; he was nothing if not unpractical. At twenty-six, he tried school-teaching in Connecticut, but his peculiar ideas kept him moving from place to place. It is only fair to add that many of Alcott's original methods are established principles in the school systems of to-day. In 1834, he opened a school in Boston, which lasted for five years. Attracted by Emerson's presence in Concord, Mr. Alcott removed thither. The most extreme notions of the transcendental brotherhood were pushed by him beyond the extreme. With an idea of improving upon the Brook Farm experiment, he organized a new community at "Fruitlands." His idealism was so strong that he would not permit canker-worms to be disturbed, and forbade the planting of such vegetables and roots as grow downward instead of upward into the air. After the failure of this communistic experiment, he held "select conversations" which became a settled institution in Concord. Like Emerson, he traveled to some extent in the West, holding "conversations" and expounding the transcendental ideas. To The Dial he contributed his Orphic Sayings, which aroused much ridicule from those not of the elect. In 1879, the Concord Summer School of Philosophy and Literature was established, and of this Mr. Alcott was the recognized head. Alcott's essay on Emerson and his Concord Days (1872) are his most readable remains. A more practical member of the family wasLouisa May Alcott (1832-88), who struggled hard to offset her father's deficiencies on the bread and butter side of existence. She possessed talent as well as perseverance, and success came with the publication of her Little Women, in 1868. No more popular series of stories for young people has ever been produced than that which contains this book and its sequel, Little Men. Her later stories, Jo's Boys, An Old- Fashioned Girl, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom, have, with their naturalness, humor and humanness, well maintained the popularity of Miss Alcott's earlier work.