Jamie House
English III
29 April 2008
When I first heard the word “Transcendentalism,” I thought it had
something to do with building a railroad from one end of our country to another!
As it is said, “Not!” Later
I found out it was a literary and social movement of the 1800’s that can be
linked to many socially and philosophically revolutionary ideas.
Transcendentalism
is the belief that everything in the world including people is a reflection of
God or the Divine Soul. They also think the physical world is a doorway to the
spiritual world. Some characteristics are they think feeling and intuition are
superior to reason and intellect. People can use intuition to see God in nature
and in their own soul. A person is in charge of his own destiny and happiness.
Feeling plus intuition are better than reason and intellect (House, 1).
To
begin with, transcendentalism came from idealism, which was a philosophy created
by Immanuel Kant in the 1700s. Idealism
is the belief that a perfect world or person is possible through his or her own
mind and thinking (Cowles, 1618). Ralph
Waldo Emerson took idealism and created transcendentalism from Kant’s ideas.
He then applied them to the 19th century. This movement began
and grew in New England in the mid-1800s. It
began with a small group of people who developed their own faith from the
divinity of man and nature. Kant’s
philosophy was that a person takes what they see and uses their own inner
knowledge to draw conclusions to make their own choices and destiny (Columbia
Encyclopedia, 20685). Emerson
believed that God was present inside both man and nature, and he and his group
pursued practical goals to prove this. Their
goals were aimed at improving lives, developing plans for a perfect society and
working for social change. They
believed that humans were capable of being perfect because they came from God
and since He is perfect, man could be perfect.
Transcendentalists also believed that individual intuition was the
highest source of knowledge and stressed individualism, self-reliance and
rejection of traditional authority (Columbia Encyclopedia, 38728).
Even though this movement began in the 1800s, the basic ideas have been
applied by many others down through the years and are even present today.
An
early study of transcendentalism was the essay “from Nature”, written by
Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the essay
A
modern example of transcendentalism in action is John Muir and the founding of
the Sierra Club. John Muir became
interested in and studied transcendentalism from an early age.
He read all he could find on transcendentalism and eventually met and
talked with Emerson (Brannon, 4). As
a result of his interest and passion with transcendentalism, John Muir
transcended transcendentalism by becoming even more radical than Emerson.
John Muir came to believe in total immersion in nature (Brannon,
2). As a result of this immersion,
he did some very crazy and bizarre things. One
example of Muir’s total immersion was climbing into the top branches of a tree
during a windstorm to “feel what the tree felt”.
Another way of stating his belief would be, “See the tree, climb the
tree, BE the tree”. He also
rode an avalanche down a Yosemite canyon to see what the snow and the mountain
felt while an avalanche was happening. Told
you he was crazy. Another time he
crawled to the top of Yosemite Falls to look over the edge and “feel what the
water felt just the moment before it went over the falls”(Brannon, 3).
There were many different times when his life was in danger and when he
was injured, but he still continued trying to get as close to being one with
nature as he could.
Although
Muir considered himself a transcendentalist, he did not fully agree with
Emerson’s beliefs. The difference
in their opinions was that Emerson wanted to “think” about what happens in
nature, while Muir wanted to immerse and “live” in nature (Brannon 2).
The two men met only one time, in 1871, and spent a day riding horses in
Yosemite (Brannon, 2). They quickly
found out that they did not agree with each other’s points of view about
transcendentalism when it referred to nature, but they always respected each
other greatly.
John
Muir did other things besides physical adventures with nature.
He traveled to Australia, South America, and Africa, all through Europe,
China, and Japan. From these
experiences he learned all he could about nature.
He also provided written records of nature in action.
One example is that he wrote possibly the first written record of seeing
a moonbow at Yosemite Falls (Brannon, 3). These
travels and experiences turned him into a great conservationist and earned him
the nicknames “Wilderness Prophet” and “Citizen of the Universe” (John
Muir Exhibit, 1). The nickname
“Father of Our National Park System” came for Muir in 1890 when his efforts
to stop the destruction done by sheep and cattle in Yosemite, California,
resulted in the area being set aside as a national park (John Muir Exhibit, 1).
Muir also helped create other national parks, such as Sequoia, Mount
Ranier, Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon.
In
1892, Muir and some supporters founded the Sierra Club to “do something for
wildness and make the mountains glad” (John Muir Exhibit, 2).
When it was established, its only goal at the time was to save the
natural areas of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The purpose of the club was “to explore, enjoy and render accessible
the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast, to publish authentic information
concerning them, to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and
government in preserving the forest and other natural features of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains” (John Muir Exhibit, 1).
After its founding, members and supporters of the Club marked the paths,
scouted the passes, discovered the springs and taught others to honor the
wilderness. Their biggest
undertaking was to have parks established for preserving the majestic coast
redwood trees. This undertaking was
an eighty-year campaign that ended in 1968 with Redwood National Park being
established.
Since
its beginning, the Sierra Club has made many people aware of the beauty of
nature beyond what the eye sees. This
is a great example of how it ties into transcendentalism.
The Sierra Club still believes in putting transcendentalism to work over
100 years after its beginning. One
way they follow the beliefs is taking people into nature and letting them
experience more than just what they can see.
Members take expeditions through the forests, rivers and canyons that go
beyond physically “seeing” the world. Another
way they are tied into transcendentalism is that sometimes they “become the
bird at the top of the mountain” and also see what the mountain “sees and
feels” during a regular day of its life (John Muir Exhibit, 2).
Another
belief of transcendentalism is working for social change, and the Sierra Club
tries to make people aware of the harm they are doing to the environment, so
they can make it cleaner, purer and safer. The
Club has worked with industries to make them change some of their practices and
helped them become environmentally safer. They
have also have gotten the government to pass laws that clean up the environment
and make it a safer world for the children to grow up in and live.
As
you can see, transcendentalism is still present in the Sierra Club.
Transcendentalists believe that there is more in the world than meets the
eye and social change can be brought about by knowledge and experience.
The Sierra Club offers both adventure and satisfaction by immersing
yourself in nature and taking care of it at the same time.
Everyone should “see the tree, climb the tree, be the tree” and most
important of all, SAVE THE TREE.