Transcendentalism in New England: A HistoryFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Philosophy
Transcendentalism in New England: A History
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Transcendentalism (New England)
"Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom, both
cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of
liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the
soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world;
Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke
compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbes had
compared it to a slate on which time and chance might scrawl their
experience. To Penn the soul was an organ which of itself
instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical
instruments which are so curiously and perfectly formed, that when
once set in motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies
designed by the artist that made them. To Locke, conscience is
nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions; to Penn, it
is the image of God and his oracle in the soul.... In studying the
understanding Locke begins with the sources of knowledge; Penn with
an inventory of our intellectual treasures.... The system of Locke
lends itself to contending factions of the most opposite interests
and purposes; the doctrine of Fox and Penn, being but the common
creed of humanity, forbids division and insures the highest moral
unity. To Locke, happiness is pleasure, and things are good and
evil only in reference to pleasure and pain; and to "inquire after
the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish
be in apples, plums or nuts." Penn esteemed happiness to lie in the
subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct of Deity in the
breast; good and evil to be eternally and always as unlike as truth
and falsehood; and the inquiry after the highest good to involve
the purpose of existence. Locke says plainly that, but for rewards
and punishments beyond the grave, 'it is certainly right to eat and
drink, and enjoy what we delight in.' Penn, like Plato and Fenelon,
maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots, that God is to be
loved for His own sake, and virtue to be practised for its
intrinsic loveliness. Locke derives the idea of infinity from the
senses, describes it as purely negative, and attributes it to
nothing but space, duration and number; Penn derived the idea from
the soul, and ascribed it to truth and virtue and God. Locke
declares immortality a matter with which reason has nothing to do;
and that revealed truth must be sustained by outward signs and
visible acts of power; Penn saw truth by its own light and summoned
the soul to bear witness to its own glory."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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