On formal public occasions Emerson was often invited to give the address. There was authority in his utterances. That he was not unlikely to say something revolutionary seemed to make it the more important that he should be heard often. He gave the Historical Address at Concord at the Second Centennial Anniversary, the Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard on ‘The American Scholar’ (August, 1837), and the Address before the Senior Class in Divinity College (July 15, 1838), which brought down on him the wrath of Andrews Norton and a shower of remonstrances from Unitarian ministers who, however, loved him too much to be angry with him. At the time of the Divinity Hall Address the so-called Transcendental movement was in full progress. The movement grew in part out of informal meetings held by a group of liberal thinkers with a view to protesting against the unsatisfactory state of current opinion in theology and philosophy, and looking for something broader and deeper.[20] Transcendentalism was an intellectual ferment. Having a philosophical and religious significance, it was also notable for its effect on social, educational, and literary matters. Emerson defined it as faith in intuitions. It has been called an ‘outburst of Romanticism on Puritan ground.’ Certain historians connect it with German transcendental philosophy. That it was indigenous to New England appears to be the sounder view. According to a high authority,[21] ‘Emerson’s transcendentalism was native to his mind.... It had been in the life and thought of his family for generations.’ He was certainly regarded as the heresiarch. Like most complex movements Transcendentalism had a grotesque side. The enthusiasts, in their anxiety to be emancipated from old formulas, fell victims to ‘the vice of the age,--the propensity to exaggerate the importance of visible and tangible facts.’ Emerson laughs at them a little: ‘They promise the establishment of the kingdom of heaven and end with champing unleavened bread or dedicating themselves to the nourishment of a beard.’ The movement had an ‘organ,’ a quarterly magazine called ‘The Dial,’ the first number of which appeared in July, 1840. George Ripley was the business manager, Margaret Fuller the editor. It came under Emerson’s care two years later, and in 1844 was abandoned. An audience large enough to support the organ could not be found. Transcendentalism coincided chronologically with several plans for bettering the condition of the world. ‘We are a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has his draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself.’[22] Emerson was sympathetic with the community experiments at ‘Brook Farm’ and ‘Fruitlands,’ but not to the extent of joining them. He approved every wild action of the experimenters, nevertheless he had a work of his own.