ers have also been precipitated, some crystals of poetry
translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome
was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a
record of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian philosophies,
and sects founded only to dwindle away or to be re-absorbed into some
form of orthodoxy. In the eyes of the conservative, or the
worldly-minded, or of the plain people who could not understand the
enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides
of transcendentalism were naturally uppermost. Nevertheless the
movement was but a new avatar of the old Puritan spirit; its moral
earnestness, its spirituality, its tenderness for the individual
conscience. Puritanism, too, in its day had run into grotesque
extremes. Emerson bore about the same relation to the absurder
out-croppings of transcendentalism that Milton bore to the New Lights,
Ranters, Fifth Monarchy Men, etc., of his time. There is in him that
mingling of idealism with an abiding sanity, and even a Yankee
shrewdness, which characterizes the race. The practical, inventive,
calculating, money-getting side of the Yankee has been made
sufficiently obvious. But the deep heart of New England is full of
dreams, mysticism, romance:

"And in the day of sacrifice,
When heroes piled the pyre,
The dismal Massachusetts ice
Burned more than others' fire."

The one element which the odd and eccentric developments of this
movement shared in common with the real philosophy of transcendentalism
was the rejection of authority and the appeal to the private
consciousness as the sole standard of truth and right. This principle
certainly lay in the ethical systems of Kant and Fichte, the great
transcendentalists of Germany. It had been strongly asserted by
Channing. Nay, it was the starting-point of Puritanism itself, which
had drawn away from the ceremonial religion of the English Church, and
by its Congregational system had made each church society independent
in doctrine and worship. And although Puritan orthodoxy in New England
had grown rigid and dogmatic it had never used the weapons of
obscurantism. By encouraging education to the utmost, it had shown its
willingness to submit its beliefs to the fullest discussion and had put
into the hands of dissent the means with which to attack them.

In its theological aspect transcendentalism was a departure from
conservative Unitar