Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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Chapter 7: the Concord group

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Transcendentalism.

Before proceeding to deal with the individual members of the Concord group, we must understand what that “Tranenscendentalism” was with which we commonly associate their names. Perhaps one ought not to speak of understanding it, for it hardly understood itself. It was less a philosophy than an impulse, and our interest in it must now be due to the fact, first, that it was an impulse most useful to the America of that day, and, second, that it was strongly felt by many of the leading spirits of the time. It was, in brief, an impulse toward an absolute freedom, intellectual, spiritual, and social. Naturally, its best results were in the nature of subtle suggestion and inspiration to a generation which greatly needed to broaden its horizon. Its more concrete experiments were often fantastic and short-lived, though never ignoble. That