America’s Introduction to Transcendental Beliefs To trace the origin of the Transcendental movement one needs to go back to the city of Concord, Massachusetts. There during the early 19th century many well-known and world-renowned authors were following the practices of one man, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, who was considered America’s first philosopher, had earlier traveled to Europe and became fascinated by the concepts of one German philosopher known as Kant. According to Emerson’s understanding of Kant, there were two pure objects in the world in which are the bases of everything, nature and soul. He took this philosophy and brought it back to America where it later, with the help of Henry David Thoreau, revolutionized American literature. With the spread of the Transcendental philosophy, people started to believe that the important things in life are not material but, in a much grander scale, spiritual. In order to live truly spiritual lives one must dispose of all unneeded items and resort to living a simplistic life. This simplicity can be found by using nature. All of nature is pure and in it lives the soul of God. Not only does this soul live in nature it is also built up in every human being, and to free it one needs to find the truth inside oneself. To do this a human being needs rid of all the extra items that keep them from living simple lives and then listening to one’s inner-self. Intuition and self-reliance are the paths to true happiness because once someone has freed the spirit of God within, nothing else is needed.These beliefs of Transcendentalists were unofficially brought forth in Emerson’s Nature. Emerson went on to be the main source of most of transcendental belief’s exposure to the world by writing poetry and other forms of literature. He even founded the transcendental magazine, known as The Dial. In his collection of essays known as Self-Reliance, Emerson di...
