John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[35] settled. He was still growing and expanding, still striving to solve the riddles of life, testing all things and holding only to those he found satisfactory to his own ideals and to his own judgment. Hitherto he had been a faithful student and an omnivorous reader, to the neglect of bodily exercise, but now that his eyes had failed him, he was forced to reverse his mode of life and to give the preference to out-door work. This was perhaps the best thing for him, so long as his vision was impaired. He remained at Brook Farm altogether about five years, or from 1841 till 1846, and in order that his life there may be more fully understood, I subjoin a condensed account of the interesting experiment which was tried out at that place.

The movement which culminated in the Brook Farm Association grew primarily out of the Transcendental Club, which first attracted serious attention at Boston about the year 1840. It was sometimes called the “Symposium,” but whether it ever had a regular organization or title remains uncertain even to this day. Transcendentalism has been defined as an efflorescence of Aristotelian and German philosophy. It “was a reaction against the essential conservatism of both the Unitarian and the Trinitarian forms of Puritanism, neither of which cherished any belief in the self-sufficiency of the human mind outside of revelation.” Brook Farm, etc., by Lindsay Swift. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1900. This is the best account of Brook Farm extant.

The leading men in the movement were undoubtedly Emerson, Alcott, Channing, Hedge, and last, but not least, the Rev. George Ripley. Many other people of like temper and character, especially in New England, doubtless gave support to the cult, if it can be properly so designated. The subject of this memoir was undoubtedly in sympathy with the movement from the time he first began to understand its tendencies, and in order to inform