Transcendentalist Ascending a Staircase

AP III

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusion on profligacies with fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire since the word Go! ~Annie Dillard

So far, we have familiarized ourselves with the philosophical precepts of the American Romantic movement which found its most prominent expression in the early to mid-19th century. Through writers such as Hawthorne, we are able to discern fundamental themes of Romantic thought -- the importance of Nature in the spiritual development of man, the complex dynamics existing between the individual and society, and the determination of Truth through a harmony of intuition, action, and insight.

While Emerson's Transcendentalism bears many of the markings of American Romanticism, the spiritual character of Emerson's works is distinctly idealistic and unique -- even to the otherwise familiar themes of "enlightenment" dating back to the ancient East. One could easily view Emerson's Transcendentalism as the ultimate culmination of what had so far been characterized as Romantic thought into a distinctly spiritual philosophy -- though writers like Mr. Poe and Mr. Melville would be quite offended by this idea.

Fortunately, they are too dead notice.

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The following is an excerpt from a lecture given by Emerson in 1842. It was delivered at the Masonic Temple in Boston (anyone who knows my love of conspiracy understands the irony):

"It is simpler to be self-dependent. The height, the deity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign source. Society is good when it does not violate me; but best when is likest to solitude. Everything real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the self-existence of Deity. All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and those that are independent of your will. Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect and all things will go well. You think me the child of my circumstances: I make the circumstance. Let any thought or motive of mine be different from that they are, the difference will transform my condition and my economy. I -- this thought which is called I -- is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it is the power of me. Am I in harmony with myself? my position will seem to you just and commanding. Am I vicious and insane? my fortune will seem to your obscure and descending. As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar's history will paint out Caesar. Jesus acted so, because he thought so. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any reality; I say I make my circumstance: but if you ask me, Whence am I? I feel like other men my relation to that fact which cannot be spoken, or defined, nor even thought, but which exists, and will exist.

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual..."

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The following excerpt is taken from Emerson's essay, "Compensation":

"Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly, in the circumstance, or apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may fall late after the offence, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the ends preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed."

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Currently, on the forefront of theoretical physics, scientists who study Quantum Mechanics have made startling yet familiar observations regarding the nature of reality and the generative power of individual consciousness that bear a striking resemblance to Emerson's 19th century notions regarding the harmonic balance of nature and enlightened human awareness as the basis of ultimate reality.

It seems that Emerson's intuitions regarding the spiritual connection of all things finds an interesting counterpart in the 21st century. Perhaps this could serve as a form of testimony to Emerson's assertions connecting intuitive understanding with revelations of fundamental Truth. More than five decades before an unknown Swiss patent clerk posits his theory of Special Relativity -- Emerson echoes the ideas of Quantum Entanglement.

Indeed, the famous words from Shakespeare's Tempest ring true: What's past is prologue...