Transcendentalism

I suppose I should have started here, but the small portion of Emerson's essay Nature sparked my interest and I started with that. I am still trying hard to understand Thoreau's work on Civil Disobedience. I keep reading it over and over and I guess I just do not get it!

A small history of the term American Transcendentalists begins in the New England states with a group of well educated passive aggressive individuals in a time period before "the American Civil War and the national division that it both reflected and helped to create." These individuals tried to help lay the ground work for future spiritual and religious definition. Trancendentalists also based their beliefs on the notion that "an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is realized only through the individual's intuition, rather that through the doctrines of established religions. It also had a part in social reform movements such as women's rights and anti-slavery.

Many of these individuals got together to for m what was called the "Transcendental Club" in Cambridge, Massachusetts and wrote a journal called "The Dial".

This group of people influenced the "Mental Science or New Thought Movement". These movements gave credit to the individual's power that came about from the ability to believe.

"We work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men." This quote would do Justis in today's society. If we each take responsibility for ourselves and work towards a better tomorrow a rebirth could occur. Moreover, those who do not make it their existence meaningful should not be so willing to speak with their own minds. These two things should go hand in hand.