Mr. Channing's reminiscences preserve for us a valuable _aperçu_ of the Transcendental movement in New England, and of Margaret's relation to it.
The circle of the Transcendentalists was, for the moment, a new church, with the joy and pain of a new evangel in its midst. In the very heart of New England Puritanism, at that day hard, dry, and thorny, had sprung up a new growth, like the blossoming of a century-plant, beautiful and inconvenient. Boundaries had to be enlarged for it; for if society would not give it room, it was determined to go outside of society, and to assert, at all hazards, the freedom of inspiration.
While this movement was in a good degree one of simple protest and reaction, it yet drew much of its inspiration from foreign countries and periods of time remote from our own. From the standpoint of the present it looked deeply into the past and into the future. Its leaders studied Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, among the classic authors, and De Wette, Hegel, Kant, and Fichte, among the prophets of modern thought. The _welt-geist_ of the Germans was its ideal. Method, it could not boast. Free discussion, abstinence from participation in ordinary social life and religious worship, a restless seeking for sympathy, and a constant formulation of sentiments which, exalted in themselves, seemed to lose something of their character by the frequency with which they were presented,--these are some of the traits which Transcendentalism showed to the uninitiated.
To its Greek and Germanic elements was presently added an influence borrowed from the systematic genius of France. The works of Fourier became a gospel of hope to those who looked for a speedy regeneration of society. George Ripley, an eminent scholar and critic, determined to embody this hope in a grand experiment, and bravely organized the Brook Farm Community upon a plan as nearly in accordance with the principles laid down by Fourier as circumstances would allow. He was accompanied in this new departure by a little band of fellow-workers, of whom one or two were already well known as literary men, while others of them have since attained distinction in various walks of life.
While all the Transcendentalists were not associationists, the family at Brook Farm was yet considered as an outcome of the new movement, and as such was regarded by its promoters with great sympathy and interest.