Transcendentalism In The 1800's

Transcendentalist Era

In the 1830’s, a group called the transcendentalist arose. It lasted from 1836 to just about 1861. Some people were upset about how the Unitarian church was running things so instead people turned to nature. Basically they believed that any individual was more powerful than any institution. When they created this transcendentalist club they also created rules to go with it. Their rules were basically their beliefs. They believed in an individual’s inner soul leads to the truth. Individual relationships with God was much bigger than anything you could get in a church. Nature played a huge roll in their beliefs. They found the goodness of nature everywhere. To them, all we needed to survive was our mind. The mind is where they

He wrote about his experiment in the essay Walden which was published in 1854. He spent two years in a cabin in the woods by a pond named Walden Pond. This was his place to be one with nature and be completely self reliant. He wrote about the simplicity of nature as this reminded everyone that life is wasted pursing wealth and fame as he says, “Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.” (1574). Another famous essay Thoreau’s is Civil Disobedience. Civil Disobedience was published in 1849. In this essay he talks about his belief on how individuals shouldn’t blindly follow the government if they thought the rules and laws are unjust. This was partly motivated by Thoreau’s hatred towards slavery and the government support of it. Thoreau thought we would be better without the government as he mentions in the first paragraph of Civil Disobedience, “that government is the best which governs not at all.” (1577). He really believed that American citizens should follow their own