The Human Spirit

and the Natural World

Ralph Waldo Emerson• The son of a Unitarian minister

• Lived with his aunt after his father died; she encouraged his independent thinking

• Became pastor of the Second Church of Boston

• Resigned after 3 years because he was dissatisfied with spiritual restrictions in Unitarianism

• His controversial ideas attracted many young people of the time

• Highly individualistic and resisted conformity

• Writings express individuality and humanity’s spiritual connection to nature

Transcendentalists:

The Seekers of the Nature of Truth

Revolutionizing American Literature• The individual is at the center of the universe; no

institution (religious or political) is as powerful as the individual.

• At this time, many religious and scholarly institutions downplayed the importance of the individual.

• To the Transcendentalist, the mind is the most powerful and important force in the universe.

• The human mind is so powerful that it can unlock any mystery from Nature to God.

The “Over-Soul”

•Read Buddhist and Hindu religious texts to examine their own faiths

•Every soul and all of Nature is part of an “Over-Soul” We all come from the mind of God, and in death, we all return to it.

•Man, Nature, and the “Over-Soul” are all equally connected.

•Eastern Mysticism + Romantic Ideals = Transcendentalism!!

The Transcendental

Legacy• Ideas that the government should work to serve the people who created it

• Believed in nonviolent, civil disobedience• Fierce abolitionists• Considered a “ripple” in history, it lasted only 10

years and only produced only two major books: Emerson’s Self-Reliance and Thoreau’s Walden.

• Followers included Amos Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.

Emerson’s Self-Reliance

• Envy is ignorance

• Imitation is suicide

• Linguistic inversions – language inverted to prove a point

• You must follow your own path – not someone else’s.

• “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.”

• Trust thy self.

• Be a leader! Not a follower.

• If you truly want to be free, then you must be a nonconformist.

• The only person that you have to answer to in reality is yourself.

• “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

• To be great is to be misunderstood.

• DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE WRONG!

• Victory belongs to the daring or the bold!

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau p. 412

• Civil Disobedience is a work that encourages people to resist governmental policies nonviolently with which they disagree.

• Nonviolence is the key

• “Government is best that governs least…”

• The army is being used by the government to oppress people.

“Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau

• The danger of big government is that the government can act before citizens are asked whether or not they are in line with the particular action.

• Government itself is like a gun that can shoot those citizens which disagree with its actions – this is a perversion of what the founding fathers created our government for.

“Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau

• Government does not settle the West, does not educate the youth or future of America, and does not keep our country free – the American people do.

• Oftentimes government rewards the criminals of society – and he uses the world of business in America as an example – as opposed to those citizens who are actually working for the benefit of our country.