An excellent original exposition of much of this
philosophy may be found in Emerson's _Nature_ (1836) and in his lecture on
_The Transcendentalist_ (1842).
THE ECSTASY OF THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS.--Any age that accomplishes great
things is necessarily enthusiastic. According to Emerson, one of the
articles of the transcendental creed was a belief "in inspiration and
ecstasy." With this went an overmastering consciousness of newly discovered
power. "Do you think me the child of circumstances?" asked the
transcendentalist, and he answered in almost the same breath, "I make my
circumstance."
The feeling of ecstasy, due to the belief that he was really a part of an
infinite Divine Power, made Emerson say:--
"I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house,
from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The
long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light.
From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to
partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my
dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind."
The greatest of the women transcendentalists, MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850),
a distinguished early pleader for equal rights for her sex, believed that
when it was fashionable for women to bring to the home "food and fire for
the mind as well as for the body," an ecstatic "harmony of the spheres
would ensue.
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