A core belief of transcendentalism is in the inherent goodness of people and nature. Adherents believe that society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, and they have faith that people are at their best when truly “self-reliant” and independent.
An ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the “radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts”, as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836).
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Referring to a kind of knowledge that is certain although intuitive. Belief in the absolute freedom of the individual.
Thoreau believed that Americans foolishly waste their lives in pursuit of worthless and unnecessary things, simply because they never permit themselves to pause and reflect their values. The lesson to be learned from nature is that life will sustain itself, and easily.
Transcendentalism was not merely a new way of organizing, understanding, and perceiving, but a new way of life. Nature, man, and God are all of one piece. The restoration of a universal unity.
A battle against society’s enforced conformity of opinion, of unexamined truth.
Suggested reading: Bloom’s Biocritiques Henry David Thoreau, edited by Harold bloom. Chelsea house publishers. 2003
Krista Marson 