Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/193

Rh a tendency toward transcendentalism. This tendency was as marked a characteristic in New England middle-classes during the middle years of the last century as Puritanism was in England during the reign of Charles I, two centuries before. It made Unitarianism and Universalism possible as an outgrowth of Calvinism.

It may appear extravagant to credit with notions of transcendentalism a shoe-worker of Lynn; but in great mental movements in a nation such as the American, or in a race such as the Anglo-Saxon, history has shown that the artisans, craftsmen, and farmers share in the intellectual experience of the scholars, if that experience is more than a passing ripple. This is especially true in the United States. If they are somewhat later than the scholars in arriving at their convictions, the sympathies and antipathies of the laboring class go deeper and are more compelling. Their “feeling” has to be reckoned with. Thus it will be recalled that Cromwell sought religious men for his army, knowing that unless armed with some staying convictions his common soldiers could never stand against the gentlemen and cavaliers of the forces of the king.

Transcendentalism is a big mouthful of a descriptive; but this term had scholarly origin, being Germanic, not Yankee or British. A brief history of the word may not be impertinent. The term was first applied to Kantian philosophy which only a very exceptional shoe-worker of New England could have been expected to read. How then could a shoe-worker acquire tendencies toward such speculations?