"But where Emerson advocated a life of withdrawal and contemplation, the better to tune one's ears to the still, small voice within, other Transcendentalists (and fellow travelers) heard that voice telling them to make the world a better place. What both sides of this divide objected to was pretty similar--the materialistic, status-conscious ruthlessness of life under the reign of industrial capitalism. The American promise of a better, fairer society had devolved, in the words of Transcendentalist minister and publisher George Ripley, into 'the inordinate pursuit, the extravagant worship of wealth,' rife with 'temptations to an excess of selfishness.' Transcendentalism offered the spiritual equivalent of political democracy, with each person empowered to find his or her own direct connection to the divine. But in order for everyone to avail themselves of this freedom, the more activist Transcendentalists felt, the inequities of 19th-century society had to be fixed."
In Salon, Laura Miller reviews Philip Gura's American Transcendentalism.
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