Transcendentalism in New England: A History. Frothingham Octavius Brooks
or the reason of man so readily allied itself."
After quoting from "Meister's Apprenticeship" a noble passage on the spiritual function of art, Carlyle comments thus: "To adopt such sentiments into his sober practical persuasion; in any measure to feel and believe that such was still and must always be, the high vocation of the poet; on this ground of universal humanity, of ancient and now almost forgotten nobleness, to take his stand, even in these trivial, jeering, withered, unbelieving days, and through all their complex, dispiriting, mean, yet tumultuous influences, to make his light shine before men that it might beautify even our rag-gathering age with some beams of that mild divine splendor which had long left us, the very possibility of which was denied; heartily and in earnest to meditate all this was no common proceeding; to bring it into practice, especially in such a life as his has been, was among the highest and hardest enterprises which any man whatever could engage in."
From Schiller's correspondence with Goethe, Carlyle quotes the following tribute to the Kantean philosophy: "From the opponents of the new philosophy I expect not that tolerance which is shown to every other system no better seen into than this; for Kant's philosophy itself, in its leading points, practises no tolerance, and bears much too rigorous a character to leave any room for accommodation. But in my eyes this does it honor, proving how little it can endure to have truth tampered with. Such a philosophy will not be shaken to pieces by a mere shake of the head. In the open, clear, accessible field of inquiry it builds up its system, seeks no shade, makes no reservation, but even as it treats its neighbors, so it requires to be treated, and may be forgiven for lightly esteeming everything but proofs. Nor am I terrified to think that the law of change, from which no human and no divine work finds grace, will operate on this philosophy as on every other, and one day its form will be destroyed, but its foundations will not have this fate to fear, for ever since mankind has existed, and any reason among mankind, these same first principles have been admitted, and on the whole, acted on."
Of Richter he writes: "Richter's philosophy, a matter of no ordinary interest, both as it agrees with the common philosophy of Germany, and disagrees with it, must not be touched on for the present. One only observation we shall make: it is not mechanical or sceptical; it springs not from the forum or the laboratory, but from the depths of the human spirit, and yields as its fairest product a noble system of morality, and the firmest conviction of religion. An intense and continual faith in man's immortality and native grandeur accompanies him; from amid the vortices of life he looks up to a heavenly loadstar; the solution of what is visible and transient, he finds in what is invisible and eternal. He has doubted, he denies, yet he believes."
Of Novalis, scarcely more than a name to Americans, the same oracle speaks thus: "The aim of Novalis' whole philosophy is to preach and establish the majesty of reason, in the strict philosophical sense; to conquer for it all provinces of human thought, and everywhere resolve its vassal understanding into fealty, the right and only useful relation for it. How deeply these and the like principles (those of the Kantean philosophy) had impressed themselves on Novalis, we see more and more the further we study his writings. Naturally a deep, religious, contemplative spirit, purified also by harsh affliction, and familiar in the 'Sanctuary of Sorrow,' he comes before us as the most ideal of all idealists. For him the material creation is but an appearance, a typical shadow in which the Deity manifests himself to man. Not only has the unseen world a reality, but the only reality; the rest being not metaphorically, but literally and in scientific strictness, 'a show;' in the words of the poet:
'Sound and smoke overclouding the splendor of heaven!'
The invisible world is near us; or rather, it is here, in us and about us; were the fleshly coil removed from our soul, the glories of the unseen were even now around us, as the ancients fabled of the spheral music. Thus, not in word only, but in truth and sober belief he feels himself encompassed by the Godhead; feels in every thought that 'in Him he lives, moves, and has his being.'"
These declarations from a man who was becoming prominent in the world of literature, and whose papers were widely and enthusiastically read, had great weight with people to whom the German was an unknown tongue. But it was not an unknown tongue to all, and they who had mastered it were active communicators of its treasures. Carlyle's efforts at interesting English readers through his remarkable translation of Wilhelm Meister, and the "Specimens of German Romance," which contained pieces by Tieck, Jean Paul, Hoffmann, and Musæus, published in 1827, were seconded here by F. H. Hedge, C. T. Brooks, J. S. Dwight, and others, who made familiar to the American public the choicest poems of the most famous German bards. Richter became well known by his "Autobiography," "Quintus Fixlein," "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," "Hesperus," "Titan," "The Campaner Thal," the writings and versions of Madame de Staël. The third volume of the "Dial," July, 1841, opened with a remarkable paper on Goethe, by Margaret Fuller. The pages of the "Dial" abounded in references to Goethe's ideas and writings. No author occupied the cultivated New England mind as much as he did. None of these writers taught formally the doctrines of the transcendental philosophy, but they reflected one or another aspect of it. They assumed its cardinal principles in historical and literary criticism, in dramatic art, in poetry and romance. They conveyed its spirit of aspiration after ideal standards of perfection. They caught from it their judgments on society and religion. They communicated its aroma, and so imparted the quickening breath of its soul to people who would have started back in alarm from its doctrines.
The influence of the transcendental philosophy on German literature was fully conceded by Menzel, who, however, found little trace of it in Goethe. Of the author of the philosophy he wrote: "Kant was very far from assenting to French infidelity and its immoral consequences. He directed man to himself, to the moral law in his own bosom; and the fresh breath of life of the old Grecian dignity of man penetrates the whole of his luminous philosophy." Of Goethe he wrote: "If he ever acknowledged allegiance to a good spirit, to great ideas, to virtue, he did it only because they had become the order of the day, for, on the other hand, he has, again, served every weakness, vanity and folly, if they were but looked on with favor at the time; in short, like a good player, he has gone through all the parts." Menzel's book was translated by a man who had no sympathy with Transcendentalism – Prof. C. C. Felton; was admired by people of his own school, and was sharply criticised, especially in the portions relating to Goethe, by the transcendentalists, who accepted Carlyle's view. He and they put the most generous interpretations on the masterpieces of the poet, passed by as incidental, did not see, or in their own mind transfigured, the objectionable features that Menzel seized on. Too little was ascribed to the foreign French element that reached the literature of Germany through Prussia – to Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot – whose ideas fell in with the unworthier sceptical tendencies of the Kantean system, and polluted the waters of that clear, cold stream; too much was ascribed to the noble idealism that was credited with power to glorify all it touched, and redeem even low things from degradation. If therefore they apologized for what the sensational moralists blamed, they did it in good faith, not as excusing the indecency, but as surmounting it. What they admired was the art, and the aspiration it expressed. The devotees of the French spirit, in its frivolity and meretricious beauty, they turned away from with disdain. There was enough of the nobler kind to engage them. When they went to France they went for what France had in common with Germany – an idealism of the wholesome, ethical and spiritual type, which, whether German, French or English, bore always the same characteristics of beauty and nobleness. Much that was unspiritual, all that was merely speculative, they passed by. With an appetite for the generous and inspiring only, they sought the really earnest teachers, of whom in France there were a few. The influence of those few was great in proportion to their fewness probably, quite as much as to their merit as philosophers.
IV.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRANCE
From the time of Malebranche, who died in 1715, to Maine de Biran, Royer-Collard, Ampère and Cousin, a period of about a century, philosophy in France had not borne an honorable name. The French mind was active; philosophy was a profession; the philosophical world was larger than in Germany, where it was limited to the Universities. But France took no lead in speculation, it waited to receive impulse from other lands; and even then, instead of taking up the impulse and carrying it on with original and sympathetic force, it was content to exhibit and reproduce it. The office of expositor, made easy by the perspicacity of its intellect and the