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was also an ethical guide to life for a young nation of America. It preached the positive life and appealed to the best side of human nature. It insisted on the essential worth and dignity of the individual as a powerful force for democracy. It also advocated, and practiced, an idealism that was greatly needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity too often became mere opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.
New England Transcendentalism is important to American literature at least for two reasons. On the one hand, it is represented by two major writers of the country— Emerson and Thoreau. They became movers and shakers whose writings have had more and more impact with the passage of time. On the other hand, a new group of writers under the influence of Emerson and Thoreau began to apply transcendental ideas in their works. Almost all the writers of the period were more or less influenced by transcendentalist doctrines. They created one of the most prolific periods in the history of American literature.
4.1 The Manifesto of American Transcendentalism
Nature has been called the manifesto of American Transcendentalism, in which the main features of Transcendentalism were fully represented. First, it placed emphasis on spirit or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. Second, it stressed the power of intuition, believing that people could learn things both from the outside world by means of the five senses and from the inner world by intuition. But the things they learned from within were truer. It held that everyone has access to a source of knowledge that transcended the everyday experiences of sensation and reflection. Third, as romantic idealism, it placed spirit first and matter second. It believed that both spirit and matter were real but that the reality of spirit was greater than that of matter. Spirit transcended matter, and the permanent reality was the spirit one. It stressed essence behind appearance. Fourth, it emphasized the significance of the individual and believed that individual was the most important element in society and that the ideal kind of individual was self-reliant and unselfish. It held that there was a greatness in all human beings that needed only to be set free. People should depend on themselves for spiritual perfection. As the individual soul could commune with God, it was therefore divine. With the assumption of the innate goodness of humanity , it held that the individual soul could reach God without the help of clergy or churches. While stressing individuality, it rejected restraints of tradition and custom. The dignity of the individual remains a vital part of American creed of religious beliefs even today. Emerson’s Nature, no matter it is seen as a doctrine or a mystical theory or even from the philosophical perspective, it is all of a profound work. The call and main statements of Nature have illustrated the main idea of Transcendentalism. Thus, Nature, as the manifesto of New England Transcendentalism can not be replaced, it does play a vital part in American literature
4.2 A Fresh Perception—Nature as a Symbol of Spirit or God
The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as a symbolic of the Spirit or God, which was fully expressed in Emerson’s Nature. Nature was to them not pure matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence, it was