Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[133] strong side, which was statesmanship. She had thus learned that there was a department of American life which was not derivative and apologetic, but strong and self-relying; and she was just in the mood to be a literary pioneer.

What is called the Transcendental movement amounted essentially to this: that about the year 1836 a number of young people in America made the discovery that, in whatever quarter of the globe they happened to be, it was possible for them to take a look at the stars for themselves. This discovery no doubt led to extravagances and follies; the experimentalists at first went stumbling about, like the astrologer in the fable, with their eyes on the heavens; and at Brook Farm they, like him, fell into a ditch. No matter. There were plenty of people to make a stand in behalf of conventionalism in those very days; the thing most needed was to have a few fresh thinkers, a few apostles of the ideal; and they soon made their appearance in good earnest. The first impulse, no doubt, was in the line of philosophic and theologic speculation; but the primary aim announced on the very first page of the “Dial” was “to make new demands on literature.” Dial, i. 1. It is in this aspect that the movement must especially be treated here.

Even if they had not made this emancipation of literature one of their prominent objects, they still would have been laboring for it, even while unconscious.