As stated above, the Transcendentalists had five basic beliefs. The are as follows: man is innately good, man is at his best when he refuses to conform to tradition, society was a source of evil, the purest place to which a person could go was nature, and that there existed the need for social reform. Not all of these ideas are inherently optimistic on their own, but as a whole they are. Where they say evil in society, they also saw the potential for reform. They saw a grim present but sought a brighter future. Throughout their writings, they explained their point of view. They told people what they saw was wrong, and told people how they might endeavor to make it right. These view truly were optimistic.
Yet they could not see through all this optimism and find the flaws in their reasoning. One of the flaws was saying that man is at his best when he refuses to conform. However, by asking people not to conform, they were basically asking people to conform to non-conformity. More than this, however, they were telling people how to not conform. Thoreau says in Walden "I say, let your affairs be as two or three, not a hundred or a thousand . . . Simplify, simplify"1 and "Cultivate poverty as a garden herb"2 and "Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."3 Thoreau is merely saying that one should break from tradition and follow no one, as long as it matches his ideas. This is merely conformity hidden behind a different guise.
Another flaw can also be found in the reasoning of the Transcendentalists. This group argued that the individual tends to be good, while society as a whole is a source of evil. This does make sense initially, if you take "the individual tends to be good" as meaning that as well as usually being good, the individual is also capable of evil. With all of the small amounts of evil brought together in one large society, this small amount individually becomes a large amount in society. Yet this society should tend to be good, because all of the individual good is also brought together. So perhaps the Transcendentalists are wrong: either the individual is evil and therefore so is society, or society isn't evil because the individuals forming this society aren't.
The human experience throughout the ages tends to discredit the second idea. There is evil present in society. The Transcendentalists saw it in their time and wanted to reform it. The Symbolists saw it and said that society couldn't be reformed. Evil can be seen in society today. The fact is, they are both slightly off the mark here. Society isn't all bad. Society isn't all good. Everyone has got the potential to do good, but everyone also has the potential to do bad. Some individuals lean toward evil; others lean toward good. The Transcendentalists and Symbolists tended to oversimplify these ideas, and that is where they went wrong.
The Symbolists, like the Transcendentalists, had their own set of beliefs and ideas. Their ideas, however, were basically a rejection of any Transcendental ideas. They rejected the idea that man is innately good and said that man tends toward evil. Society wasn't the reason for evil, the individual was. Nature wasn't a spiritual force to them, it was arbitrary. They believed that social reform could not work. They saw life not as a spiritual journey, but as an ambiguous mystery. To them, life just was, and more than that it tended to be bad.
In the eyes of a Symbolist, individuals tended to bad, and their works reflected this. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," for example, all of the test subjects of the water from the Fountain of Youth return to their evil ways after drinking it. In Moby Dick Captain Ahab is bent on revenge, and even Starbuck, who opposes Ahab's desire to go after Moby Dick only for revenge, is motivated by money. Society wasn't the source of evil in these stories, the individual was. Social reform wouldn't work, believed the Symbolists, because society wasn't the root of the problem.
As stated before, however, this is a narrow, oversimplified view. Society isn't the source of all evil because some individuals tend toward evil. However, on the flip side of the token, some individuals who are good might be influenced by society to do something bad. Individuals can both affect and be affected by society. There is not a clear cut answer to what causes the crime and evil in our society; it is a complex question which has no simple answer.
Nature was another topic upon which both the Transcendentalists and Symbolists gave their views. Nature was a good spiritual force as the Transcendentalists saw it. To the Symbolist, nature just was. Here again they were both not quite right. Nature can be an important force in human life, with all its majesty and beauty and awe-inspiring power. Human beings are a product of nature, of evolution. This evolution, though, has made humans social creatures. In the beginning it may have been for protection, or for safety, or so that they might help each other in some way. And today people can help each other (isn't that what Thoreau was trying to do in Walden?). Society is not to be shunned, but neither is nature. Both should be embraced, neither taken for granted.
Two major philosophies evolved in the mid 1800s. One belonged to the Transcendentalists, the other to the Symbolists. For the most part they were exact opposites, one embraced what the other rejected. The more perfect philosophy, however, lies in between the different view of the two groups. Neither was all wrong, but they did mess up in a few areas. Studying these philosophies can lead one to find his own ideas and maybe learn something along the way.
2Henry David Thoreau, Walden [excerpt], American Literature (Mission Hills, CA: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987) 176.
3Henry David Thoreau, Walden [excerpt], American Literature (Mission Hills, CA: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987) 176.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden [excerpt], American Literature. George Kearns (Director). Mission Hills, CA: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987.