This question has often been asked but seldom answered satisfactorily.Newspaper editors and correspondents have frequently attempted a practicalelucidation of the mystery, by quoting from their own brains therarest piece of absurdity which they could imagine, and entitling it‘Transcendentalism.’ One good hit of this kind may be well enough,by way of satire upon the fogginess of certain writers who deem themselves,and are deemed by the multitude, transcendental par excellence.Coleridge however thought that to parody stupidity by way of ridiculingit, only proves the parodist more stupid than the original blockhead.Still, one such attempt may be tolerated; but when imitators of theparodist arise and fill almost every newspaper in the country with similarwitticisms, such efforts become ‘flat and unprofitable;’ for nothing iseasier than to put words together in a form which conveys no meaningto the reader. It is a cheap kind of wit, asinine rather than attic, andcan be exercised as well by those who know nothing of the subject asby those best acquainted with it. Indeed, it is greatly to be doubtedwhether one in a hundred of these witty persons know any thing of thematter; for if they possess sense enough to make them worthy of beingranked among reasonable men, it could be proved to them in five minutesthat they are themselves transcendentalists, as all thinking men findthemselves compelled to be, whether they know themselves by that nameor not.
‘Poh!’ said a friend, looking over my shoulder; ‘you can’t prove mea transcendentalist; I defy you to do it; I despise the name.’
Why so? Let us know what it is that you despise. Is it the sound ofthe word? Is it not sufficiently euphonious? Does it not strike yourear as smoothly as Puseyite, or Presbyterian?
‘Nonsense!’ said he; ‘you don’t suppose I am to be misled by thesound of a word; it is the meaning to which I object. I despise transcendentalism;therefore I do not wish to be called transcendentalist.’
206Very well; but we shall never ‘get ahead’ unless you define transcendentalismaccording to your understanding of the word.
‘That request is easily made, but not easily complied with. Haveyou Carlyle or Emerson at hand?’
Here I took down a volume of each, and read various sentences andparagraphs therefrom. These passages are full of transcendentalideas; do you object to them?
‘No,’ said my friend; ‘for aught I can perceive, they might havebeen uttered by any one who was not a transcendentalist. Let me seethe books.’
After turning over the leaves a long while, he selected and read alouda passage from Carlyle, one of his very worst; abrupt, nervous, jerking,and at the same time windy, long-drawn-out, and parenthetical; a periodfilling a whole page.
‘There,’ said he, stopping to take breath, ‘if that is not enough to disgustone with transcendentalism, then I know nothing of the matter.’
A very sensible conclusion. Bless your soul, that is Carlyle-ism, nottranscendentalism. You said but now that you were not to be misledby the sound of a word; and yet you are condemning a principle on accountof th