The Origins of American Literature
members.
As the "movement" developed, it sponsored two important activities: the
publication of The Dial from 1840-44 and Brook Farm. Some of the various doctrines
which one or another of the American transcendentalist promulgated and which have
somehow been accepted as "transcendental" may be restated here. They believe in living
close to nature (Thoreau) and taught the dignity of manual labor (Thoreau). They
strongly felt the need of intellectual companionships and interests (Brook Farm) and
placed great emphasis on the importance of spiritual living. Man's relationship to God
was a personal matter and was to be established directly by the individual himself
(Unitarianism) rather than through the intermediation of the ritualistic church. They held
firmly that man was divine in his own right, an opinion opposed to the doctrines held by
the Puritan Calvinists in New England, and they urged strongly the essential divinity of
man and one great brotherhood
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