I need hardly say how
perfectly this expedient suited the needs of philosophers in America,
and it is no accident if the influence of Kant soon became dominant
here. To embrace this philosophy was regarded as a sign of profound
metaphysical insight, although the most mediocre minds found no
difficulty in embracing it. In truth it was a sign of having been
brought up in the genteel tradition, of feeling it weak, and of
wishing to save it.
But the transcendental method, in its way, was also sympathetic to the
American mind. It embodied, in a radical form, the spirit of
Protestantism as distinguished from its inherited doctrines; it was
autonomous, undismayed, calmly revolutionary; it felt that Will was
deeper than Intellect; it focussed everything here and now, and asked
all things to show their credentials at the bar of the young self, and
to prove their value for this latest born moment. These things are
truly American; they would be characteristic of any young society with
a keen and discursive intelligence, and they are strikingly
exemplified in the thought and in the person of Emerson. They
constitute what he called self-trust. Self-trust, like other
transcendental attitudes, may be expressed in metaphysical fables. The
romantic spirit may imagine itself to be an absolute force, evoking
and moulding the plastic world to express its varying moods.
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