Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/197

 as by speech, not only by what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide in beauty and strength, to re-organize themselves in nature, to invest themselves anew in other, perhaps higher-endowed and happier-mixed clay than ours, in fuller union with the surrounding system.”

Thus says the noble idealist; and perhaps I have quoted too much from him, when I cannot at the same time show you what he is—because this is the most remarkable thing in him. I have nothing against his children—the transcendentalists; it is a refreshment both to hear and to see them, and they utter many a forgotten truth with new life. They are the element of youth in life, and always produce a renovating effect, and they behold many a beauty which older eyes are no longer clear enough to perceive. I remember to have heard that Schelling would not take as pupils young men above five-and-twenty years of age. He considered them after that age not to be so capable, not to be possessed of immediate perception and insight. But when these young pagan alp-natures say, “We have reached to the highest!” then, I say, “Nonsense! you have done nothing of the kind! You say, ‘We are gods.’ I say, ‘Descend from your elevation to the divinely made world, then will I believe you.’ You satisfy yourselves with your lofty, isolated position, believing that you do enough by showing the ideal. Ah! the ideal has never been unknown! You are poor, sinful, imperfect human creatures, like the rest, and your bravery does not come up to the heart of Christianity, which does not merely exhibit the ideal, but helps to attain it; not merely suffers all, but overcomes all; does not sit still and look grandly forth, but combats with its followers, admonishing them to overcome evil with good!”

If the transcendentalists will really create a new, a transcendental state, then they must create a something