Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/128

106 life and literature, Transcendentalism, despite some chiaroscuric phases, became for many years one of the strongest influences upon American character and letters.

One of the most vital and practical effects of Transcendental teaching was the wish to devise means to simplify life, both economically and socially. To so reduce the daily wants of individual and family that time and anxiety might be saved and greater opportunities given for education of the higher facilities, "the things of the intellect and soul,"—this represented the open and latent purpose of leaders of this thought-movement. Joined with this practical desire to lessen physical demands and financial strain, was the fontal norm in the primal philosophy from which this had been evolved,—"the return to nature," to her sanative influence in lieu of artificiality and luxury. Mr. Emerson, in that rhapsodic essay on "Nature," well characterized by Carlyle as "azure-colored," had emphasized the purifying and educative effects of nature on the senses, intellect, morals and will. He always questioned, however, the utility of communal schemes for simplification and social reform. In 1840, he wrote to Carlyle,—"We are all a little wild with numberless projects of social reform; not a reading-man but has a draft of a new community in his