THE SELF-CUWEJRE MGVEMENT
IN NEW $N€EL¢5NBz $820-$550

'E’hassis {‘1}? 9h: Dave?” s§ 2%. A.
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Raiser? mines. Rickards
1957

14"“

THE SELF‘CULTURE MOVEMENT;
IN NEW ENGLAND: 1820-1860

By
Robert Jamel Richards

AN ABSTRACTI
Submitted to the Cbllege of Science and Arts
Michigan State University of Agriculture and
Applied Science in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of;

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English
1957

Approved by MWC IS). 913/ x

Robert- J . Richards

ABSTRACT

In the four decades between Jackson and Lincoln,
Americans in general and New Englanders in particular
became preoccupied as never before or since with the-
idea cf disseminating the fruits of culture among
the masses. "Lacking adequate formal, institutional-
ized means to achieve their goal, they turned quite‘
naturally to a number of more or less informal, un-
institutionalized activities involving a measure of
self-directed effort. These activities, hitherto.re-
gared by scholars as disparate phenomena in our.cu1-
tural history, are here considered as related facets
of a more inclusive movement which I have chosen1to
call the Self-Culture Movement.

Such undertakings as the Lyceum, the museum and
library movements, Brook Farm and Fruitlands, Mechanics-
Institutes, etc., I.haveregarded as outgrowths of the?
same widespread ideal, receiving their impetus and in
return helping to reinforce the philosophy of.seif-
culture then being popularized by liberal thinkers and:
reformers, particularly Degerando, Ghanning, and the
transcendentalists.

In studyingthis aspect of the Romantic milieu, I have
also concluded that the Transcendentalists' interest in]
cultural activities was not, as many have supposed, a

mere adventitious corollary to their doctrines of individ-

Robert J. Richards
ualism but was instead a consuming preoccupation.
Emerson in his study, Parker and Clarke in their pul-
pits, Ripley and Alcott‘in their Utopian communities,
Fuller at her editorial desk and Thoreau at Walden,
were all seeking the same goal by different paths.

This thesis then, attempts to reconstruct a phase
of the Romantic milieu in the light of the then.current;
cultural ideals; and in the process it offers a monistic
interpretation of Transcendentalism which differs from'
the commonly accepted view of the West Street Circle:as
a group of idealistic theorists divorced from the realm:
of.practical realities.

I have traced the backgrounds of the self-culture
ideal in the seventeenth and eighteenth century; I have‘
noted its decline and virtual disappearance during the'
high tide of Calvinism; and I have shown how it re-
emerged with the revival of Puritan intellectualismzins
the era of Emerson and Mann. This thesis makes much of;
the popular writings on self-culture by Degerando, Chane
ning, Emerson and others, which provided a philosophical
rationale for the movement. Muchaalsc is said of the‘
practical activities by which reformers sought to imple-
ment:their ideals. The thesis concludes with an explan-
ation of the disappearance of the self-culture movement
(though not of the ideal) after the Civil War, and it
offers for the future course of the humanities several
suggestions arising from an understanding of the successes

and failures of reformers in the Romantic decades.

THE SELF-CULTURE MOVEMENT
IN NEW ENGLAND: 1820-1860

By
Robert James Richards

A THESIS

Submitted to the College of Science and Arts
Michigan State University of Agriculture and
Applied Science in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English
1957

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I should like here to asknowledge my indebtedness
to the following people for their advice and criticism
offered while this study was in progress: first, to
Dr. C. M; Newlin of Michigan State University, who
first encouraged me to undertake this study and who
offered many helpful suggestions in editing the final
draft; and to Patrick D; Hazard, a fellow graduate
student, who provided me with many bibliographical
suggestions and helpful insights.into the period under

consideration.

II.

III.

IV.

TABLE OF‘CONTENTS

PrefaGOOOOO0.0000000000000000000000000.0.0....1-v1

IntrOductioneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeee eeeeeeVii'X

Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century
Backgrounds of the Self-Culture Movement....l

The Nineteenth Century Revival
of Cultural Ideals.........................14

Philosophical and Moral Bases
Of the Self~cu1ture movementeeeeeeeeeeeeeee36

Practical Activities of the,
Self-mlture IflovementOOOOOOOOO00.000000000068

EpiloSUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...0.0.0.0000104

BibliogmthOOOO0.0000000000000000.0'OOOOOOOO...112

PREFAGE'

Bibliographies in recent years have abounded with
entries in the area of American Romanticism. Particu-
larly numerous, it seems to me, have been the articles
and dissertations dealing with various phases at Thane
scendentalism. Many also have undertaken a study of.
educational theories and practices of that period. In-
deed, to Judge from the number of such studies alone,
one might wonder if every possible avenue of approachw
in these fields has not been previously explored. Yet,
despite the tremendous volume of material already ins
existence, new areas of investigation continuallyzare:
opening to scholars. It is my hope that the following_
pages may serve such a purposeo-the opening of one ofi‘
these areas for future study.

Without trying to minimize the importance of many:
earlier studies of Transcendentalism and of early nine?
teenth—century cultural ideals, I must point out one:
striking inadequacy which most of them share.. In
treating the educational practices and theories of
Romantic New England, nearly all have concentrated on}
the more institutionalized aspects of education, while-
manifold ramifications of the ideal on an infbrmal,
uninstitutionalized level have been largely overlooked..
No one, moreover, has proved the Transcendentalists"
interest in cultural ideals to be more than adventi-

tious, perhaps a corollary to Transcendental individu-

ii

alism.

This thesis, then, attempts to correct one defi-
ciency of.many earlier works by concentrating on the-
more informal aspects of Romantic educational theory
and practice. The approach has been to bring tOgether.
several consequents of the then prevalenttcultural
ideal--the lyceum, the museum and library movements;
Brook Farm and Fruitlands, the Mechanics' Libraries,
etc.,--and to consider them not as disparate phenomena
in our cultural history but as related facets of a
much more inclusive movement which I have chosen to
call the Self-Culture Movement.

Partly as a result of my inquiries into these areas,
I have also drawn the conslusicn in the fellowing pages
that Transcendental interest in the cultural activities
of the period was not merely casual or accidental but:
entirely purposeful; that, indeed, for many of the Tran-
soendentalists culture of self and culture of others.
became an all-consuming preoccupation.

I do not wish to imply that the existence of a self,
culture motif in our country's development is a discoveryi
on my part. To be sure, most students of American cul-
tural history have recognized its existence; and many
have commented upon phases of the movement in the pres
cess of writing on the more general theme of our total
cultural heritage. But to the best of my knowledge, no,

one has yet undertaken to draw together the multifarious

iii

elements of the movement and to understand them as
related manifestations of a single ideal. On this basis
I think I can claim some degree of originality..

I believe that no other heretofore neglected as-
pect of the American Romantic milieu is more deserving
of attention than that which I have begun to examine:
here. I believe this not.only because of the insight;
into our cultural past which it can provide but because
of the important implications it has for the present;
and future state of the humanities. Surrounded as we:
are with the mass media of communication and other oppor-
tunites for self-culture that the nineteenth century,
never dreamed of, it would seem a shame if we could not
profit from their successes and failures;and approach
nearer to the goal for which they strove.

Involved as the idea of self-culture is with that;
considerable body of activities aimed at the diffusion.
of knowledge among the masses, it does not.seem improb-
able that a study of the movement might be of greaten'
value to the educational historian than to the student:
of American literature, though it is as the latter that:
I have approached the subject here. My primary obJec+~
tive has been to reconstruct an aspect of the Romantic:
milieu for the value it may have toward understanding:
the atmosphere in which nineteenth-century American
writers lived and worked.

To some extent the self-culture idea appears on

iv

the surface in a survey of American literatUre itself;
but a vast majority of the articles written on the subs
ject and.widely read one hundred years ago has not come
down to us in the form of what we would regard as-sigr
nificant literature. Innumerable pamphlets and newah
paper and magazine articles preaching the doctrine of
self—improvement have become lost or are buried in a
few major libraries so that one might be led to the:
erroneous conclusion that people living in the first;
half of the nineteenth century had no more stimulus than
that provided by the limited number of literary treat?
ments of the subject. It is on these literary sources,
however, that I have had to rely mainly for this thesis,
since much of the sub-literary material on.self—culture;
was inaccessible to me for the present. Yet it is;poss
sible, even with the limited data at my disposal, to:
sketch a fairly accurate picture of the movement and to)
begin fitting it into its proper place in America's-past;
development. The:following pages merely point the dines,
tion which subsequent studies of the selfeculture moveb
ment might pursue in much greater detail.

I have purposely limited the scope of this study to
new England between the years 1820 and 1860, the era
from Jackson to Lincoln, though it has been necessaryxtn
glance occasionally at other sections of the country, ate
England in the same period, and at other eras of history

in order to connect the movement with the broader framep

work of developments. Admittedly, the years with which
I have circumscribed the movement are somewhat arbitrary,
for it is impossible to say with certainty when any move-
ment begins or ends. I have tried merely to indicate by
these dates the general period during which the self—cul-
ture idea seems to have reached its fullest flowering.
Actually, the movement had its roots in a period long be-
fore 1820, as I will attempt to show in the beginning.
‘Mereover, it will be apparent that the movement has newer.
entirely disappeared from the American scene, even down.
to the present day.. Witness the multitude of correspond?
ence courses, adult extension programs and continuing;
education endeavors carried on by a number of colleges;
and universities for a single illustration. These I take:
to be outgrowths and extensions of the same set of values
and goals which became so firmly entrenched iniAmerican
thought in the crucial period shortly to be considered.
The self-culture movement did tend to fade from ViQWa
after the Civil War, but it was only because its goala,
like those of Transcendentalism, were quietly absorbed:
into the American way of life and needed no longer to be.
constantly paraded before the public eye.

Aside from the arbitrary dates with which Ilhave‘
circumscribed the movement, there is one other limita-

tion to which objection might be raised. That is the cone

finement of this study to New England. my only answer to

vi

this is that New England more than any other part of the;
country, was the real center of the movement, the source.

from which most of the influence emanated to other sec-

tions of the nation.

INTRODUCTION

Education is perhaps the most daring panacea ever
held before the multitude by devoted reformers andihu-
manitarians. The prophets seek to persuade the mass of
men that they can best govern themselves through their
own enlightened intellect; that the end of life itself
is the development of individual powers. And certainly
nowhere else have the prophets been more zealous or.the
mass of men more credulous than in America, particularly
during the first half of the nineteenth century.

It would be impossible to say with certainty that;
any single influence contributed most to the creation
of this passion for education. Perhaps that nebulous
influence we call the American Dream--the desire to rise
and make the most of one's self-~wou1d serve as well as
any other to explain the phenomenon; but whatever the:
real explanation may be, the fact remains that from the
very beginning of our national existence, the desire to.
cultivate one'ssself, intellectually, morally and phys—
ically, has been almost the American religion.

To say that this self-culture motive has been a
part of the American “climate of opinion! from the begin-
ning is to avoid one possibletmisconception at the outset;
of this study. It would be a mistake to assume that the.
movements for educational reform and the diffusion of

knowledge in the decades from Jackson to Lincoln were

viii

purely Romantic phenomena simply because they were more
pronounced then than ever before. The truth is that the.
goals and ideals of education which the Romantic period
brought to fruition have their roots deep in seventeenthr
and eighteenth-century backgrounds. The Puritans, from
the very nature of their faith, felt popular education

to be a necessity, because "that euldldeluder, Satan,'"
lay in wait for the souls of those who could not read the
Scriptures and thus come to know God and His word at first
hand.

It would also be a mistake, however, to go much be-
fore the seventeenth century and assume that the objec»
tive of widespread knowledge among the masses had always
been an avowed aim of our culture. In historical fact,
we have had only about two centuries of open acknowl-
edgment of a general right of access to the tools of?
learning. For at least ten centuries during the forms-
tive period of our Christian era, the widespread propa-
gation of critical and factual information was not only
physically difficult but was also anathema to all the;
powers that ruled the community of Christendom. The
idea of democratizing education is modern, scarcely yet
stable in the pattern of society.

It would appear, then, that the instruments for the
diffusion of knowledge are an organic part of the strucb
ture of relatively free civilisation. The great social

movements which rescued European culture from a form of

ix

tyranny, for example, were closely linked with the
principle of the popularization of knowledge. TherintEI-
lectual foundations of authoritarian churches and states
could not withstand the spread of methods of experimental
reasoning beyond the easily disciplined bounds of a nar-
row scholar caste.

The widening of popular ideas has always effected=
social change more efficiently than the power of armies
and the machinations of politicians. The diffusion of
learning is the only way in which free human societies
can ever hopsto achieve an intelligent adaptation to their
environment.

The theory mentioned earlier--that the instruments
for popularizing knowledge are an organic part of a free;
society--places these instruments in as close a relation
to the social pattern as political parties are. Their:
origin is linked with the emergence of democracy as an
ideal of social organization; so their development is;
linked with the same forces that extended economic andf
political opportunities to increasing numbers of the pop-
ulation.

But democracy would have fared badly in our country
if its flowering had been forced to wait solely upon the
creation of a large number of formal institutions for the
diffusion of learning. In America unorganized, informal
means of education have always been necessary for indi-

vidual survival. While the patterns were being laid out.

on which the formal education of the American people
has subsequently developed, it was to a number of

these informal agencies and to the whole program of
self-culture that people turned to keep their faculties
alert.

SEVENTEENTHgAND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURI-BACKGROUNDB
OFrTHE SELF-CULTURE MOVEMENT;

The differences between the settlers of the Ply-
mouth and MIssachusetts Bay colonies are less notable
than the ties which bound them together. The Pilgrims
who landed at Plymouth in 1620 were Separatists, i.e.,
they had broken away from the Anglican Church. The
Massachusetts Bay settlers of 1630 were reforming Angli-
cans and rejected the principle of Separatism. Indeed,
the circumstances of the migration of these two groups
had been different; yet they were united by a conscious-
ness of their common faith. Both groups accepted the;
congregational form of church polity; the.theocratic:
ideal and moral qualities of both groups were essentially
the same; and they had in common the Calvinistic creed,
environmental factors, and the Bible.Whatever differ-
ences existed were eventually obliterated, and we may
regard both as Puritan in the broad sense.1

It was no accident that;the desire fer higher educa-
tion expressed itself early among these colonists. Puri-
tanism had been strong in the universities of England,
and American historians have noted that a surprisingly
large proportion of Puritans who came to the new world;
were university graduates. It is probably safe to say
that no other community in the world had as high a per-

"“‘IT‘§EI5£7§EFEBE‘§EFF§, Puritanism and Democracy,
P. 72;. Hereafter referred to as Perry.

~2-
centage of learned men as did the Bay Colony in the,
first half of the seventeenth century. It is little}
wonder, therefore, that one of the first things the
HassachusettssPuritans did was to arrange in 1536ben'
the establishment of a college, which they named Hare
vard in honor of its benefactor.

But it was not only higher educationithat;conoermed
the Puritans. Popular eduoation was also rs1t to be an
necessity in order that all could at least read the:
scriptures and thus.come to know Ged'b bidding. As early
as 1642 the Bay Chleny decreed that.every town bezrespon-
siblesfor the education of the young; and in l6#7 the;
famous Act of the Massachusetts Bay colony formally pro»
vided that every town of fifty families should maintain
a teacher of reading and writing and that each town of?
one hundred families should establish a grammar school.2

Other colonies soon followed the example of mass-
achusetts. As one historian notes, every town in Connects
icut soon had its provision for elementary education and
each county its Latin school. Plymouth was fairly well
provided, at least on the statute books; and even Rhode
Island, which seems to have been a bit backward, had at.
least one school as early as 1640.3

‘Iet, despite all this expressed desire for wide?

spread education, one must not assume that the good in-

 

2. Massachusetts fiicords, II, 203.

3. James Truslow Adams The Founding of new Egg;§g_
p. 369. Hereafter referred’to as ounding. '

-3-
tentions were carried out immediately in practice., We
can, perhaps, take pride in the spirit which motivated?
the founding of.Harvard and the passing of the Acttof
1647; but the laws on the statute books by no means
reflect;the actssor habits of the community. James
Truslow Adams in his Frontiers ig American Chlture.caus
tions us wisely in this regard. “One of the very worst.
sources of.information fer the historian on1tha social
or cultural conditions ofqan‘earlier period,“'he says,
"are the statute books. This is most emphatically true
of.laws with regard to education. Lack of law observe
ance in this regard, more especially in New England:
states and in the state of New York until well into the-
middle. of the nineteenth century fies notorioug?!‘4

Ewen if we granttthis wide disparity between Puri-
tan theory and practice with regard to formal education,
however, there still remains the fact;of.Puritan intel-
lectualism which expressed itself variously in 1ess=fmr~
mal ways. 'Fhr onesthing, these colonists exercised their
minds to an unusual extent on the fundamentals of politics
and practical economics. Innumerable speeches on every
occasion, even if they did appeal too often to the:pasp
sions and prejudices rather than to intellect, succeeded:

in stirring things up and causing more discussion. Ah

immense amount of informal education must have come from

 

4. James Truslow Ifiams, Frontiers ig American Cul-
ture, p. 82. Hereafter referred to as Erontiers.

-4-
talk. In New England there were the town meetings,
which were superb schools in which to learn about selfe
government and public affairs. Extremely practical in:-
struction in economic theory resulted for the Jamestown
and Plymouth settlers-from the failure of the blue-
printers in England.. Then, too, for a long time in New
England there were the sermons, which often dealt withu
more than theology. The colonist had to go to church to
keep up on.politics and public affairs. The famous ser-
mon of Hooker in Cbnnecticut in 1638 is a good>example,
for on this occasion the whole plan and philosophy of“
the Connecticut government was announced to the people:
from the pulpit. There were also annual electionuser-
mons in both Cbnnecticut and Massachusetts and many
"artillery" sermons, all of which dealt with none theo-
logical subjects.

Mention of sermons, of course, reminds us that the
colonists also fbund ample opportunity for:intellectual
exercise in the labyrinth of theological disputation.

It behooved the New Englander, particularly at the manda-
tory church services of Massachusetts, to know what ortho-
doxy was; and he had to sharpen his wits onssermons in:
order to remain orthodox. To follow sermons hours long,
from point to point called for mental concentration which
is seldom required of adulttstudents today.

The opportunities.for self-culture which were avail-

able to the Puritans, however, had their disadvantages.

-5-

In the absence of almost any books other than theo-
logical and considering the powerful intellectual stimr
ulus of the sermons, the result of much early informal
education seems to have been mainly an intensified prep
occupation with the problems of.theologyand a notable
extension of the influence of the clergy. One student;
of the period put it this way:

Although her devotion to education was to

bear noble fruit in years to come, and is

one of the chief contributions of New Engc

land to our national life, its original

object, and almost the sole use to which

it was put,_was religious, and it may be-

questioned whether its earlier influence;

upon the people at largg was not narrowing

rather than broadening.

Aside from.the town meetings and sermons, colon-
ial America came under at least one other influence:
which contributed to the cause of popular education.
Through Robert Boyle, who served as governor of the
Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel in New;
England,,the impact of the Rosicrucians probablyxmadef
itself felt to a certain extent in this period.. An]
international secret society of the seventeenth cen-
tury which helped break down the barriers to popular:
education, the Resicrucians first made a slogan of the
term "diffusion of knowledge“; and it was their ”Ina
visible Cbllege””at oxford, founded about 1645, which;

later developed into the Royal Society of which Boyle~~

 

5. Foundin , p. 370.

-5-
wasra charter member.6 To what degree the Resicrucians’
doctrine was accepted in:seventeenth-century New England
one can only guess; butLit is more thanaprobable that;
many colonists knew of Boyle and the Royal Society's:
program.

Having traced some of the colonial backgrounds of’
our subject thus far.in point of time, we are faced with;
the fact of a rather sudden discontinuation of whatLap-
peared to be a growing movement for mass education.

Ebr a period beginning at the turn of the century” pro,
gress in New England seemed to come to a halt;*and-the‘
educational goals set ferth in the Act of 1617¥faded
from popular view. The most probable explanation of,
this phenomenoniseems to me to be related to a general
decline iniseal and a growing '1ukewarmness” among the
second and third generations after settlement, espee
oially in matters of religious observance. Ainumber
ofyadmonitory sermons of the period complained of this
lack of fervor, which, it seems likely, prevailed in
secular activities as well as in religion;

. Then; too, there were the cold realities of povp
erty, deprivation, hard work, and squalor which forced
their way into the New Englandiscene, leaving little

time or energy or incentive for cultural pursuits.

 

6. Hana Nicolas, ”The Rosicrucians of the 17th

century,” British Wlnstit%te of Adult Education Jour-
nal,m ( 93 35): 229’

-7-

Emen1in well-settled and prosperous Massachu-
setts; Adams observes, "the intellectual quality of.
the Puritan commonwealth had greatly deteriorated by:
the end of the third generation.'7- But whatever the;
real explanations may be for the dissipation of cul-
tural ideals in New England, it is a fact that the
revival of faith in the efficacy of education had to
await the revival of intellectualism in the era of
Emerson and Nann.

Meanwhile, outside New England certain other
developments were taking place which have a bearing
on our subject. In the eighteenth century one of the
leading advocates of education was Thomas Jefferson.
It would be difficult to overemphasize the impor~
tance of the place education held in Jefferson's phil-
osophy, for all during his mature life he worked for a
more general diffusion of learning among the people.
His connection with the University of Virginia and
with.William and Mary College need not be elaborated
upon here, but it might be well to note some of the
demands and expectations which Jefferson and others of
his time placed upon education. Foremost in the minds
of many was the realization that education is a neces-
sary adjunctzto the republican form of government.
Because it was believed that human institutions rest.

on principles and not mirely on historical accidents

 

"" """"‘7. Frontiers , ’p. 3‘1."

-g-
or irrational forces, it was also believed that the~
best guarantee of the soundness of human institutions
lay in the development and dissemination of knowledge.
As Jefferson himself said:

Enlighten the people generally, and tyr-
anny and oppressions of body and mind
will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn
of day. Although I.dc not, with some.
enthusiasts, believe that the human 6039
dition will ever advance to such a state:
of perfection as that there shall no long-
er be pain or vice in the world, yet‘I
believe it susceptible of much improves
ment, and most of all, in matters of gove
ernment and religion; and that the diffu-
sion of knowledge among the people is to
be the ingtrument by which it is to be
effected.

Elsewhere, in his report of the commission of.Educatien:
appointed in 1818 by the governor of Virginia, Jeffer-
son set forth the obJects of education. These are, he
said:

1. To give to every citizen the infor-
mation he needs for the transacticnt
of his own business;

2. To enable him to calculate for him?
self and to express and preserve his;
ideas, his contracts and accounts in
‘writing;

3. To improve, by reading, his morals
and faculties;

4. To understand his duties to his
neighbors and country, and to dine
charge with competence the functions
confided to him by either;

5. To know his rights; to exercise with
order and Justice those he retains;
to cheese with discretion the fidu-
ciary of those he delegates; and too
notice their conduct with diligence,
with oandor.and Judgment;

 

3. Thomas Jefferson, Writings, x, 25.

-9-
6. And, in general, to observe with ins

telligence and faithfulness all the.

social relations under which he shall

be placed.9
Jefferson, then, viewed an enlightened electorate as;
a prime necessity if democracy was to succeed. He saw-
in education the potentialities for creating national
unity and overcoming the divisive forces in society..
From the foregoing it is evident that the idea of edu-
cation as a panacea did not spring up overnight in the
romantic period. Rather it had a long background in«
Puritanism and Jeffersonianism.

Bht Jefferson,.for all his democratic ideals andi
talk about giving to every citizen the tools of learn,
ing, would scarcely have advocated the form which the
philosophy of mass education took in later years.
Jefferson looked to talent for leadership..‘While he:
embraced the idea that all talent does not reside withx
hereditary aristocracy, and:while he preserved an un-
shakable faith in the natural man, stripped of stations
and wealth,3he-did err in one particular, as Perryxcbe-
serves:

Like all doctrinaire exponents of democ-

racy, hegZEeffersog7fiwas too ready to

identify the universal man, definable31n7

termssof reason and conscience, with the

commonnman, forgetting that the commonp

ness of the common man connotes vulgar-
ity-~the average rather than the eminent:

 

9. Quoted by James C. carter, The University _3

Vir inia: Jefferson Its Father and‘ His gclitical
fhilosophy, pp. IO-Il.

-10-
quality--and that men in the mass are brought
even lower than their average by the effect
of emotional contagion...lo

In brief, a democracy which Jefferson never dreamed of,

or at least, never hoped to see, wrecked his scheme

for education founded on a selective basis of charac-
ter and ability.

More closely related to our subject of self-cul-
ture, perhaps, is another fact of eighteenth-century
background which must be noted. Merle Curti observes
of the century preceding the dawn of Romanticism that:
"almost every colonial town advertised private even-
ing schools where one might learn mathematics, ac-
counting, modern languages, and other subjects use-
ful to those seeking to climb in the ranks of com-
merce."ll Although the lower ranks of society did not
enjoy equal opportunities with those above them, par-
ticularly in the matter of libraries, they did have
certain facilities for acquiring knowledge. Ambi-
tious artisans might use what were known as proprie-
tary libraries by paying a specified fee for member-
ship. The majority may have found the fee too steep,
but in that case they could turn to other means fol-
lowing the example of the Junto organized in Phila-
delphia in 1727 by Benjamin Franklin. Originally the

Junto was a club consisting of twelve tradesmen who

 

10. Perry, p. 135.
ll. Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought,
p. 43. Hereafter referred to as Curti.

-11-
had banded together for the purpose of mutual self-
improvement. In his Autobiography Franklin describes:
the organization as “a club for mutual improvement;
‘Zin whicg7'each member, in his turn, should produce
oneaor more queries on any point;of morals, politics;
or natural philosophy, to be discussed by the com-

12 It was also a primary concern of the club

panyt.."
to acquire books for use by the general membership.
The Junto was thussa forerunner of the later mechan-
ics"Associations, and for that.matter, may be regard-
ed as an intermediary step between the Puritan mid-
week meeting and the Lyceum of the nineteenth century.

Still another fact of eighteenth-century back-
groundiwhich aided in the dissemination of knowledge
among the masses has been noted by Adams; By the time
of the Revolutionary war, hectserves, there were many'
weekly news sheets, iana t almost as many papers per
capita as there are now.13 On matters of importance<
there was also at;oertain periods, a large pamphlet?
literature.

Probably it was from such encouraging signs as
we have just noted that Washington was able-to cone
clude optimistically in a letter of June 8, 1783, to
the governors of the states: "The foundation of our.

empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance andi

superstition; but at an epochs when the rightazof man-

 

""‘I‘. Benjamin FFEEEIIn, Autobiography, pp. 80-81.
13. Frontiers, p. 91.

-12-
kind were better understood and more clearly defined,
than at any former period.'.'14 Washington did not ig-
nore the fact that Providence had been generous in the>
matter of resources; but he emphasized the "treasures=
of knowledge"which afforded Americans.the unique op-
portunity of combining the resources of nature with
those of the mind. He continues in the same letter:

The researches of the human mind after
social happiness have carried to a great;
extent. The treasures of knowledge...
are laid open for our use, and...may be:
happily applied in the establishment of
our forms of government.

This note of optimism is in direct contrast to the:
gloomy retrospection.of DeWitt:Olinton in viewing:ann
earlier era of our history:

The settlement of this country was...madt;
with a view to the acquisition of wealth;
knowledge was out of the question...This:
country was also planted at a time when
the intellectual world was involvediind
cimmerian darkness. The scholastic phil-
osophy was the reigning knowledge of the:
times;--a philosophy of words and notions,
conversant only in.logical distinctions,
abstractions;and subleties; which left
real science wholly uncultivated to hunt
after occult qualities, abstract notiigs,
and objects of impertinent curiosity. -

Genditions had obvdously changed a great deal between
the days of settlement to which Clinton alluded and

thei'foundation of our empire," that is, the creation:

 

14. George Washington, Writin s, x, 256.

15. DeWitt Clinton, "fig Introductory Discourse
delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society
of New'York, May 4, 1814,” North American Rev ew, I
(1815). 392. Hereafter referred to as CIinton.

-13-
of an independent nation of which‘Washington wrote.
Still discussing the pro-Revolutionary period, Clinton:
continues:

A provincial government,,,waa entirely in-
competent to call into activity the onus-
bling propensity of our nature. A small
population, scattered over an extensive-
country and composed almost entirely oft
strangers to literature; a government
derivative and dependent, without patron-
age and influence, and in hostility to the
public sentiment; a people divided into
political and religious parties, and a
parent country watching all their moves
ments with a stepmother'srfeelings, and;
keeping down their prosperity with the arm
or power, could not be expected to produce:
those literary worthies whg have illumina-
ted the other hemisphere. ~

Certainly by the time of Washington's letter
there was ample justification for a changed view ct?
conditions. The ”simmerian darkness“ had begun to
vanish; the veil of scholasticism was lifting; and}
the provincial government which had failed to arouse
the 'ennobling propensities'“of human nature was a
thing of the past. Viewing these facts p1us:a number
of previously noted conditions overlooked in Olinton'b
not altogether accurate.picture of the colonial period,
the mass of Americans<could, indeed, look forward to
greener days as the eighteenth century drew to a~

close.

 

l5. Elinton, p.:3§5.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY REVIVAL
OPECULTURAL IDEALS

The youth growing up between 1800 and 1830 were:
exhilarated by the breaking down of intellectual har-
riers andrthe opening of wide new fields.of specula-
tion. The discipline of Calvinism, with its social
order and habits of orthodoxy, remained for a time;
but the transition from American Puritanism to Amer-
ican democracy was nearly complete. This transition,
as Perry pointssout, was at once a revolution and an
evolution. "As a revolution," he says, “it repre-
sented the triumph of the Enlightenment over the:
Awakening of which the puritanism of Jonathan Edwards;

was an embodiment."1

‘Whereas Puritanism taughttreli-
anoe on faith, revelation, and authority; the Enlighte
enment proclaimed the accessibdlity of truth to the:
faculty of reason when freed of prejudice, tyranny;.
and superstition. Puritanism was theocratic, intoler-
ant, and distrustful of natural inclinations; the En-
lightenment was humane and optimistic. This, then,
was the revolutionary aspect of the transition. The:
change appeared to be abrupt, because the difference:
between the two orientations was thrown into sharp
relief.-

In dealing with the evolutionary aspect of the

transition, however, Perry shows the change to be more

 

I. Perry. p- 1i??—

-15-
gradual, more the result of a deep-seated kinship
between puritanism and democracy working like~a leav-
en from within. Perry's.analysis of the common bonds‘
between these two cults is a penetrating one, and I;
should like to quote from it at some length here.. He
bases his comparison on the premise that posterity has
lost sight of the close ties between Calvinism and the
ideas which constitute the basic creed of democracy
because of-the habit of identifying Calvinism with its
excesses. ”Memories of theocracy and dhcurinal bige

otry," he states, "have obscured the predisposition cf

puritanism to democracy.!'2

The deepest bond between puritanism and
democracy was their common respect for
the human individual irrespective of his
place in the ecclesiastical, political

or economic institutions....Placing the
Bible in the hands of every believer to
read and interpret encouraged the indi-
vidual to exercise his wits. This in-
tellectual self-reliance favored the cea-
lescence of the Puritan Awakening and the
democratic Enlightenment. In both cults.
there was a body of higher truths to
which the individual might aspire through
his own efforts. And both cultsnstimu-
lated popular education, because ccmmonv
men were assumed to have minds and were:
encouraged to use them.

The rest of Perry's analysis:I;have summarized here in
outline form for;the sake of brevity.

1. Beth cults provided a sublimation of‘
worldly success and both gave their‘
blessing to the doctrine of laiaeez-
faire.

a. To the Puritan, wealth got;

 

2.Perry, p. I97.
3. Perry, pp. 192-93

3.

6.

it have taken the space here to present Perry's views

Ijecause I think they help to explain the revival of

1:.
5.

-16;

through thrift and energy were
evidence of godliness in pursuing
his "calling."

b. Democracy saw the enlightened
pursuit of individual happiness”
conducixe to the happiness of
others.

Beth cults respected the dignity of man.
a. "The conception of progress through
enlightenment, and the conception”
of a universe contrived expressly
for the segregation of the saved
and the damned, testified alike to.
the individual's high glace in the
design of the cosmos."

Both cults accepted the principle of con?
tract in government.

a. Puritan theocracy was a contract;
among the believers by which they
agreed to obey God.

b. The democratic state was conceived
of as a contract among individuals»
by which they agreed to obey a
temporal authority.

As congregationalists, the Puritans, parb
ticularly the Separatists, were inclined
against monarchy and habituated to reprep
sentative or popular government.

Beth cults saw man as originally endowedw
with faculties requisite for his salva-
tion and by which he might be trusted to
govern himself. In both cults man had:
fallen from grace.

a. In the case of puritanism man had
fallen by pride and temptations of;
the flesh.

b. In the democratic orientation, man.
had fallen through abuses of in-
stitutional authority.

In both cults the condition of returning‘
to perfection was freedom.

Perry. pp. “193179 2
Perry, p. 194.

-I7-

Puritan intellectualism in the nineteenth century;
The best that was in Puritanism had simply lain dor-
mant for a time, submerged in the high tide of Cal-
vinistic dogma. It;took only the conspiring of kin-
dred forces in the nineteenth century to restore
these best qualities quite naturally to prominence,.
and thus to help pave the way for the tremendous ed-
ucational advances of succeeding decades..

‘What, then, were some of these kindred forces:
which contributed to the revival of the self-cul-
ture ideal in the nineteenth century7f F1rst,.ith
should be observed that the years from 1789 to 1830
were years of transition from the dominance of clas-
sicism to romanticism in American cultural life.
Once established, this new romanticism favored the
revival of education for the masses, because inherentc
in its doctrines was a changed view of mankind..
Young liberal preachers like Charles Chauncy and Uhi-
tarians like William Ellery Channing helped to bring
about the changed view by proclaiming that maniwas not:
only improvable but that man was, indeed, perfectible.
In Ralphiflaldo Emerson, the optimism, the self-confi-
dence, the sense of equality which were part of the new
romanticism flamed eventually into the doctrine that;
all men are divine. But while those in the liberal
theological movement flung their challenge in.the teeth
of Calvinism, they retained a central feature of Cal-

-18-
vinism's practical teaching, namely that the eleva-
tion of mankind could by attained only by effort.

That it was the duty of mannto control his conduct:
and that he possessed the:power to mold his characten'
had ever been a part of Calvinistic discipline” par-
ticularly in New England. The only differences in,
this doctrine as it came to be applied by nineteenthe
century liberals lay in the belief, first,.that the
elevation of mankind was open to all rather than toca:
body of “elect": and, second, that self-improvement
was not merely a solemn.duty but a thrilling oppor-
tunity. Under the impulse of national elation5andi
among a people imbued, like Emerson, withwoptimism:
and self-confidence, how much more appealing were the-
new liberal preachments than the dolorous version of:
Calvinism which had animated the clergy of_America

up to that time! It was like finding a sure key too
the treasures of earth and heaven.

The liberal theological movement which began
around the turn of the century as a denial of the prinr
oiples of Galvin gradually developed into a strong de-—
nomination itself. By 1832 its ideas were sufficiently.
formulated to cause Emerson to resign his Uhitarian:
ministry in Boston; for there had come to be, as Carl
iRussell Fish has commented, "a new orthodoxy amonggthe:
unorthodox.”5 Before this happened, however, the mova~

 

3: Carl Russell Fish, The Rise of the common Egg:
1820-1859, p. 187. Hereafter referred to as Fish.

-ra.

ment'srliberalizing influence had made itself felt,
and the cry had been taken up outside the pulpit.

If it was true, as the rising school of romanq
tic idealists maintained, that all creation was an
emanation from a Divine Source, then man, as the high-
est form of creation, must be a part of God and hence
not depraved but capable of rising toward perfectionz.
Transcendentalism thus provided a philosophical ra-
' tionale for American individualism, helped produce the‘
oult_of the common man, and contributed greatly to the:
cause of mass education. In the view of men like Em-
erson, who is generally regarded as the guiding spirit:
of Transcendentalism, learning and godliness were in-
separable. As he declared in gglf-Reliance, that op-
timistic statement of man's self-sufficiency, "Nothing
is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Again in the same essay he declared, “The power which:
resides in [fiag7 is new in nature, and none but he knows
‘what that is which he can do nor does he know until he?
has tried....We but half express ourselves.” such
premises made easy the step which Emerson took in The:
Agerican Scholar to a declaration of cultural independence.
Emerson decries imitation of foreign tastes and opinions
and declares that foreign travel adds nothing to our true.
self-revelation. ”It is for want of self-culture that
the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy”
England, and Egypt, retains its fascination for all edue

.20 ..
oated Americans,I Emerson concludes. Thus it would
seem that Emerson.placed a great deal of confidence;
in the self-culture ideal as a tool of self-conscious:
nationalism.

At least one, Thoreau, followed Emersonfs doc»
trines in practice. Together they taught the need for
self-realization through extreme individualism. Most
of their associates, on the other hand, leaned toward
collectivism, but their ultimate goal of selfeimprevee
ment was the same. Of Emerson, Thoreau, and their ass
sociates, and of Transcendentalism in general we shall
have more to say presently.

For the time being, let us examine some more of
the reasons for the revival of the cultural ideal in
the early nineteenth century. We have mentioned the
changed view of mankind, implicit in romanticism;_whieh
the liberal clergy promoted; we have mentioned the
philosophical rationale which transcendental idealismw
provided. Still a third factor in the revival lay inn
the doctrines of the Enlightenment. For if it was true”
as John Locke maintained, that the mind at birth was;az
tabula gag; upon which experiences recorded a story 01‘
character development, then it was largely up to educa-
tion to supply the right direction for experience. Here,
if one was needed, was the psychological rationale for
American individualism and the cause of mass education.

A fourth aspect of the romantic milieu favorable:

-21-
to the revival of educational goals was a kind of prime
itivism which expressed itself variously in the cultncf.
the common man, in manhood suffrage, abolitionism, fem-
inism, pacifism, utopia-building and in many other ways.
Inherent in most of these movements was the feeling of
need for diffusing knowledge among the masses.

Jacksonian liberalism, which came to the fore dur-
ing the romantic period, also played an important role.
Imbued with a sense of mission to put down tyrants and
aristocracy wherever they appeared, this new liberalism
viewed education as a potent class leveller. Not only
that, but the extensive reform sentiment which attended
the rising tide of liberalism viewed mass education as
the ideal medium through which to work changes without;
political revolution.

It was in a world-wide current of this liberalism.
that Jackson was elected in 1828 following the reaction
against the French Revolution. Up to that time the cul-
tural heritage of the American people had been largely
an aristocratic one; even the efforts of the preceding
generation for cultural independence had scarcely af-
fected the life of the masses. Now a renewed passion
for equality seized the imagination ef¢the populace,.and5
it became all-important to abolish special privilege,
not onlyin.respect to physical possessions but in re-
spect to political opportunity and cultural property as;
well. ”In America,” according to Ralph Barton Perry,

-2-
"the Jacksonian era represents the reaffirmation of
democratic principles in terms of the relatively un-
tutored and underprivileged masses.“7 The Jacksonian
spoils system was an assertion that the average rath~
er than the eminent man was qualified for office. As.
Jackson himself said, '...in a free government the de-
mand for moral qualities should be made superior to
that of talents."8 Thus was realised the idea expressed
in the Declaration of Independence that political power
ascends from those who live under it.

Democratization of culture presented a more diffi-
cult problem. Education was considered the key to suc»
cess and there was an overwhelming desire to possess it,
but the means were not immediately available outside
the realm of self-cultivation. The spirit of the times
was expressed in a report of the working men of Phila-
delphia two years after Jackson took.office. They
unanimously resolved that:

....there can be no real liberty without a

wide diffusion of real intelligence; that

the members of a republic should all be

alike instructed in the nature and charace

ter of their equal rights and duties as

human beings, and as citizens;...that until

means of equal instruction shall be equally:

secured to all, liberty is but an unmganing

word and equality an empty shadow...”

More vehement in his approach was Stephen Bimpson,

 

7. Perry, p. 137.

8. Quoted by Perry, p. 138.

9. J. R. COmmons, ed., A Documentary History 2;
American Industrial §ociet , V; 99-100.

-23-
who somehow felt that the right of the masses to cul-
tural equality was being obstructed by selfishness on]
the part of a privileged few:

...the most formidable obstruction to the
attainment of Justice in the distribution
of labor, and the consequent opinion of
honor and merit attaching to industry, in?
stead of disgrace, is to be found in the
pride and lofty bearing of the literary,
erudite, intellectual, and scientific clas-
ses. The educated are generally the rich;
and where the exception prevails, necessity,
or accident, as in the case of labor, soon,
brings the object under the influence and.
within the patronage of the affluent...

Literature and education, thus affi—
anced to opulence, naturally feel a strong
repugnance to share their intellectual do-
minion with the mass of society or to look
upon ignorance with a feeling of compla-
cency or even tolerance.

Further on Simpson succeds in pointing up the
strange paradox in the position of those who he can-
tends had a vested interest in education:

It is admitted on all hands by the phil-
'anthropists of the age that the condition
of society demands amelioration. They afa~
fact to sympathize with the misery and ex-
hort to reform the depravity of man. They‘
call upon the laboring mass to cease their.
crime and to study frugality, yet refuse
them education to give them a knowlege of
virtue, and deny them that Justice which
would rescue them from beggary. The probe
lem lies in the insincerity of their con-
cern and is solved by the pertinacity of
their injustice. By imposing the compul-

 

10. Stephen Simpson, "Political Economy and the
‘Horkers,’ The Working Man' s Manual: A.flgg Theogy of
Political Econggy, on the Principle 2; Production the'
‘Source of Wealth. Reprinted in Social Theories of
Jacksonian Democrac , edited with an introduction by
Joseph Elau, p. 159. Hereafter referred to as Blau.

-24-

sion to labor for a meager subsistence,

they have degraded the minds and obliterated
the principles of those upon whom they make
a requisition for qualities which can only
belong to intelligence and competence...lt
is, therefore, a mere pretense to affect
regard for the happiness of society and at
the same time deny the means by which alone
it can be made happy.11

Much of the same tenor is contained in an address
by Theophilus Fisk to the Mechanics of Boston on May
20, 1835. He congratulates this group on its recent
drive to reduce the working day to ten hours, for he
sees in such a step the promise of increased leisure to-
be expended in self-culture.

Knowledge and virtue being the only sure foun-
dations of American Liberty, you have taken the
proper steps toward resumption of your sacred
rights. By reducing the number of hours of
labor, you give yourselves opportunity to ob-
tain that knowledge which is power. They whose
god is gain have long feared that if the labor-
er should be allowed to take his nose from the
grindstone five minutes at a time, he would be
learning how to govern and provide for himself
so he must be compelled to toil on like a gal-
1eys slave at the car.12

Fisk, like Simpson, doubtssthe sincerity of reformers
and rather cynically imputes hidden motives to those who;
outwardly, at least, seem to favor an improved condition;
for the working man.
There is not a nabob in Boston that would
raise a finger to prevent the “ten hour
system” if he thought the great work of re-
form would stop there, for all that could

be remedied in a hundred ways by partial
legislation next winter. But the great fear

 

'Il. Blau, p.7155
12. Theophilus Fisk, "Capital against Labor,"New
TrorkiEvening Post. Reprinted in Blau, p. 204.

-25-

of those who grow rich upon your industry

is that if you get time to improve your

minds, you will get your eyes open to thee

monstrous frauds that have been perpetra-

ted upon you by the heathen idolaters, the:

worshippers of Mammon.13
Pronouncements like those of Simpson and Fisk were not
at all uncommon in the Jacksonian era. As we mentioned
before, there was a passion for equality, an urgenttin-
sistence that the fruits of culture be spread on the
public boards. Despite the strong language in which
much of the social protest was couched, however, andf
despite the bitter epithets about the educated class,
it was true that few, if any, would have suggested pull-
ing that class from its pedestal. The passion for equal-
ity took more the form of an insistence that all men
could become gentlemen rather than that gentlemen should
cease to be. To paraphrase a saying of that period
which wittily summed up the idea: every Tom, Dick, and
Harry wished to have knowledge meted out so that he;
might become Mr. Thomas, Hr. Richard, or Mr. Henry.

The most important single plank in the platform
for diffusion of knowledge among the laboring masses
was, of course, the tax-supported school. There were
some, to be sure, who expressed opposition on the
grounds that education had always been a family matter
and there was no need to change. Some argued that free

schools merely would fill the bellies of the indigent-

at the expense of the taxpayer, while others claimed‘

 

13. Blau, p. 267:

-25-
that schooling for the poor would result in the loss:
of self-respect and initiative and would pauperize
them. certain unenlightened industrialists, as Fisk
indicated, doubtless maintained that prosperity depend-
ed on an abundant supply of laboring persons compara-
tively uneducated.

Not all men and women of position and influence,
though, were convinced. Probably only a handful of
those who were accused of monopolizing culture would
have denied the laboring masses the chance, pg; 33, of
becoming gentlemen. It is doubtful that selfish mo-
tives were as much a deterrent as the labor propaganda
of the time declared they were. The question in the:
minds of many thinking people was not over the natural
right of every human being to moral and intellectual_
culture. The question was whether the finer fruits of;
civilization could be democratized without being vul-
garized. A form of intellectual snobbery, it would
appear,--a regard for themselves as the guardians of?
cultural purity--was more to be blamed in the educated
minority than selfishness..

Edward Everett, spokesman for the new England
industrialists, contradicts the impression that the
upper class was as base as labor seemed to think. He
could reject the doctrine that 5;; are entitled to ed-
ucation at the public expense, but he held that thes

responsibility for educating the masses rested on great

-27-
public, moral, and political foundations.

Catherine Beecher wrote in a letter to a friend:

The education of the common people, then,

who are to be our legislators, Jurymen,

and Judges, and to whom all our dearest-

interests are to be entrusted, this is the

point around which the wisest heads, thee

warmest hearts, the most powerful energies;

should gather, for conversation, for plan-

ning, for unity of fiction and for person

vering‘enterprise.1

George Emerson and Alonzo Potter in their book.
The gchcol and Schoolmaster wrote that a man with thrift;
honesty and obedience (which his schooling was expected
to provide) could be counted upon to work "more stead-
ily and cheerfully, and therefore, more productively,
than one who, when a child, was left to grovel in igno-
rance and idleness.'15

Romantic humanitarianism, which ran parallel to the
movement for class equality in the Jacksonian era, we
may take as another contributing factor in the revival
of the self-culture ideal. Humanitarianism, in factt
was bound up in the same spirit which produced equali-
tarianism; but where the latter was a harsh self-asser-
ticn ef the individual, the new humanitarianism repre-
sented democracy's benevolent and universalistic aspect.
As Jacksonian democracy was practical and realistic,

the humanitarian movement represented aspiration to

 

I3. Quoted by Curti, p. 352. The letter is now
housed among the Monroe Collection of Henry Barnard
Papers at New York University.

15. George Emerson and Alonzo Potter, The School
.ggg.§ghcolmaster, p. 113.

-28-

perfection. In the words of Ralph Barton Perry, the:
humanitarian movement “incited the individual to re-
form himself, and it was a part of his self-reform that
he should devote himself to the corrections of social
evil and to the making of a better society.“16

The humanitarian movement achieved enduring re-
eults. In addition to giving a new social impulse to
religion, it stimulated temperance reform; the appli-
cation of democratic principles to the status of women;
the creation of hospitals; prison reform; and above all,
under Henry Barnard and Horace Hahn, the expansion of
popular education and the foundation of colleges.

The movement, as Perry, again, points out, had its
humanistic as well as humanitarian aspect. It demanded-
that individuals should merit their liberty and utilize
it for the development of the higher potentialities of;
human nature. "It supplemented concern for men's bodies,
appetites, and needs with concern for personal develop-
ment.“17

In connection with the self-culture revival, which
we have seen was inextricably bound up in the whole
romantic spirit, it is necessary at this point to sketch
briefly the revolution in the philosophy of educational
methods which began to appear in the early 1800's. Ris-
ing up in opposition to the Lancastrian system of mass:

 

I3. Perry, p. 135.
17. Perry, p. 141.

-29..
education then current, the new Pestalozzian philos-
ophy took root in Europe, and before long ardent edu-
cational reformers began transplanting the ideas of the
famous Swiss pedagogue to American soil. complete dis-
regard fer the individual's personality had been the“
keynote of the Lancastrian system, the practice of which
involved one teacher training a few of the older and
brighter pupils who in turn.became "monitors" respon»
sible for drilling their younger schoolmates. It was
thus possible for one teacher to oversee the education
of as many as five hundred pupils at a time--a neat
arrangement from the economic standpoint, but hardly:
from an educational standpoint. And even where the Lan-
castrian system was not in vogue in many of the small
schools, rote memorizing prevailed. consequently,
Postalozzi established a school in his native land
where Rousseau's ideas could be put into practice and?
modified in the light of actual experience with chil-
dren. Pestalozzi believed that the development of man
proceeded according to natural laws and that the teach,
er's function was to assist nature in achieving the
harmonious development of all the faculties. Education
should be moral and religious, natural and not mechani-
cal, and it should be based upon the needs of the indi-
vidual. Intuition and reasoning should be developed so
that a man could continue his own education beyond

school; and mere memory work should be discouraged. It

-30-
was the work of the school to fit the child for future
self-culture.

In America one of the earliest reflections of
Pestalozzian teaching was in the school established by:
Joseph.Neef and William Maclure at New Harmony, Indiana,
in the regime of Robert Owen, who had himself used the
ideas of the Swiss educator in his schools at New Lan-
ark. The end of the New Harmony community terminated
this experiment in education, but the work of adapting:
the new ideas to American conditions was carried on by
others.18 In many ways the school at Brook Farm, of
which.we shall say more later, was the epitome of all
that was idealistic in American educational reform. An-
other experiment was the Temple School of Bronson Alcott,
who endeavored to put his Postalozzian theories into
practice despite the lack of encouragement for his inno-
vations.19

Elizabeth Peabody, one of the ablest and best in-
formed women of Boston, was Alcott's assistant in the
school; and it is her Careful fictations that provide
us with its history.2°There all of Alcott's theories
were applied. Children were taught as individuals, each

making progress at his own rate of speed. Discipline,

 

l8. Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment, p. 246.
:Hereafter referred to as Tyler.

19. Dorothy McGuskey, Bronson Alcott, Teacher,
ppe 87-90e

20. Elizabeth Peabody, Record 23,; Schog .

-31-

on the other hand, was considered a social matter, and
problems of that kind were referred to the whole school
for solution. There was no corporal punishment; a quiet,
harmonious atmosphere and an interesting round of activ-
ities were usually effective in maintaining order. There
was an obvious emphasis on self-analysis in the Temple
school curriculum.21 And the need for spiritual culture
in the harmonious development of children ranked foremost.
in Aloott's educational philosophy.22

Another ardent advocate of Pestalozzian methods was

George Bancroft, who, upon his return from thtingen
University, founded the Round Hill School at Northampton,

Massachusetts, in 1823. The twenty-page Prospectus pub-
lished by Bancroft and an associate named Gogswell sets
forth the Swiss ideal of schools as an instrument of
self-realization.23

Catherine Beecher likewise saw the major flaw in
the old Lancastrian system, and consequently she wrote:
in 1829 in "Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Edu-
cation": I

The time may come when the world will look

back with wonder to behold how much time

and effort have been given to the more cul-

tivation of the memory, and how little man-

kind has been aware of what every teacher,

parent, and friend could accomplish in form?
ing the social, intellectual, and moral

 

21. Tyler, p. 2577

22. A. Bronson Alcott, The Doctrine and Discipline
.2; Human Culture, passim.

23. Bancroft-Cogswell, Prospectus g; a School.

-32-

character of those by whom they are sur-
rounded.24

If a single name had to be chosen to representt
American educational reform in the romantic period, it»
would of necessity be Horace Mann, who in 1837 became;
the Secretary to the newly established Massachusetts .
Board of Education. It is not our purpose here to go
into Mann's total educational philosophy nor his rolezin.
the public education movement, but only to indicate some:
of his views related to the subject of self-culture.
Mann, in the first place, was an ardent environmentalist,,
believing that to improve man's environment was to im«
prove man himself. As he wrote in one of his educatienr
a1 documents, ”I would give to every human being the
best opportunities to develop and cultivate the facul-
ties which God has bestowed upon him....Having done this,
I would leave him...to find his level..."25 Here is the
clear-cut position of the nineteenthscentury liberal who
believed that once the artificial barriers were down,.
self-culture would do the rest. Popular education.was:
necessary if the seed implanted by the impartial hand of.
nature in the mind'of both the ignorant peasant and the
most profound philosopher were to germinate. Believing
as he did that an educated body of men could never res

main permanently poor, Mann could not be expected to

 

24. Quoted by Henry Steel Commager, Living Ideas
in America, p. 566. Hereafter referred to as Cbmmager.

25. Quoted by Harvey Wish, §ociety and Thought lg
Early America, p. 441. Hereafter referred to as‘Wish.

-33-

sympathize with means other than schooling for right-
ing economic injustices. Viewing education as "the bal-
ance wheel of the:social machinery," Mann thus wrote in
his famous Twelfth Annual Report of 1848:

Now surely nothing but universal education can

counterdwork this tendency to the domination

of capital and the servility of labor. If one

class possesses all the wealth and the education,

while the residue of society is ignorant and

poor, it matters not by what name the relation

between them is called...But, if education be

equally diffused, it will draw property after it

by the strongest of all attractions...Educationy

then, beyond all other devices of human origin,

is a great equalizer of the conditions of men,--

the balance wheel of the social machinery.25
Finally, it should be noted that the unqualified accept—
ance of education as a means of social amelioration was
the natural corollary to the dominant belief in individ-
ualism which Mann, like a good many other leading think-
ers, shared.27

Another educator who must be ranked second only to
Mann as an innovator and prophet was Henry Barnard, one-
time president of the University of Wisconsin and St:
John's Cellege and the first United States Commissioner
of Public Education. Barnard did not conceal his belief
that the great mass of the urban laborers would remain:
in the economic class of their parents; but he thought.

that however humble their circumstances, it was possible

for them to lead decent lives and to participate with

 

263 Commager, p. 557.
27. Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American
Educators, p. 125. Hereafter referred to as Social

Ideas.

-34-
the well-to-do in the cultural values and the activi-
ties of the mind. In Barnard's realistic view there is
thus attached an esthetic value to education for its own
sake, a value which is to be sought even if education
does not promise economic advancement. Nevertheless,
Barnard did share the deep faith that educators and the
American public have placed in the ameliorative aspects
of widespread enlightenment; and he could not altogether
escape the idea that self-culture is married to the pro-
fit motive:

As a laborer one should endeavor to culti-
vate inxhimself those qualities, to attain
that knowledge and skill which will make
his service most acceptable to the capital-
ist. He should serve his employer faith-
fully, bringing all his intelligence to
bear upon his work. He will then serve so-
ciety by making capital upon which he is
employed as productive as possible, and
will earn for himself the reward of high
wages. If his wages be lower than desir-
able, he should seek for the means of ob-
taining higher, taking care, at the same
time, not to engage in strikes or any other
means whose real tendency is the opposite
of the one sought for. Should there be no
means of immediately obtaining higher wages,
he should endeavor to increase his produc-
tiveness as the only means of increaséng the
store out of which wages are paid...2

The major reform Barnard advocated, an increasing emphb-
sis upon utilitarian disciplines in the curriculum, fa-
vored rather than militated against the new industrial

order which was rapidly becoming dominant. In opposing
the prevailing emphasis on book learning and in urging.

 

28. Social Ideas, p. 158.

-35-
that education promote whatever was practical and use-
ful, Barnard was indeed an innovator and a prophet.29

Finally, then, we see that the revolutionary edu-
cational philosophies of the early nineteenth century
along with the several other romantic phenomena discussed
in this chapter became the factors in a revival of the?
self-culture ideal. It would not be correct in conclu-
sion, however, to assume that these forces, which we have:
listed separately for the sake of analysis, existed in.a
vacuum or operated in a cause-and-effect relationship to
any single movement. Actually, all of theme-renewed puri-
tan intellectualism, theological liberalism, philosophical
idealism, extreme individualism, primitivism, educational
progressivism, Jacksonian democracy, humanitarianism (the
list of isms in the nineteenth century seems endless)--
all of them, I repeat, existed together, fixed upon many
and varied goals, and interacted mutually toward their.
attainment. Even the self-culture movement itself, which
we have regarded rather exclusively, cannot be isolated
from the rest of the milieu. But, as is the case with
fitting in a piece of a Jigsaw puzzle, we have to consider
it separately for a time in the relationship to other
single parts before its place in the whole can be properly

ascertained.

 

29. 801.1in Idegg, p. 158.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL.BASES
OF THE SELF‘OULTURE MOVEMENT?

It would be difficult to overestimate the impor-
tance of the part which many of the leading intellec-
tuals of the period played in the self-culture move-
ment. It was they who gave direction and purpose to
the aspirations and efforts of the average citizen. In-
deed, without the moral and philosophical bases which
the intelligentsia provided, it is safe to say that many
of the practical activities with which the movement was'
implemented would never have come to fruition; the move—
ment itself very likely would have atrophied midway in;
its development. T. Rm Adam in his ghg'Worker's 3259 32

Learning very correctly observes in this connection that:

 

There is scant evidence for the belief that
mature people long for specific opportuni-
ties to discipline their minds. The process
of continued learning is generally based onw

enticement; on some seductive promise of ma-

terial advantage or of social gain, or of in-

creased personal power. The inspiration

comes from without in the form of commands,

a challenge, or a promise.
It was the moral philosophers of the nineteenth century
who offered the challenge and the promise with their
teaching of the concept that man is a free agent de-
signed to achieve mental and spiritual progress on the
way toward perfection. Here in the work of leading think-

ers of the period was “the inspiration from without“ to

 

 

l. T. fi. Adam, The Worker's Road 32 Learning, p..30.
Hereafter referred to as Road.

-37..
which.Adam referred.

Fortunately, America in the 30's and 40's was con-
genial tc the ideas of many of these moral philosophers.
The deeply rooted Christian concept of moral self-improve-
ment was popularized by one Dr. Thomas Dick, a Scottish
writer celebrated for his reconciliation of science andi
religion. Harper's Family Library in 1833 published
Dick's Qg_thg Igprovement 2; Society py,thg Diffusion 9;
Knowledge in which the argument was advanced that the:
dissemination of learning together with the moral reno-
vation always accompanying such diffusion would eventually
overcome man's natural depravity. Dick's name, according:
to Merle Curti, was a household word in America during
the romantic era.2

Another of these moral philosophers, M. 1e Baron De-
gerando (also spelled De Gerando), is especially impor-
tant for the literary and cultural historian, both as an
influence in the thought of Emerson and as an author on
the subject of self-culture. His book Th3 Visitor 2; 3h;
{£225 had been translated from French (by “A Lady of Bos-
ton" with an introduction by Joseph Tuckerman, Boston,.
1832) and had attracted some attention in the Christian.
Examiner and the Eggth American Bgzigg. His work on the
history of philosophy was also well known in this country.3

But the work which concerns us here is his Concerning_

 

2. dirti, p. 3§§T"'

3. Howard Mumford Jones, America egg French culture,
115 -18#8, p. 450

-38-
‘ggggl Perfection, pg Self-Education, the translation of
which by Elizabeth Peabody was reviewed at length in the
Christian Examiner (1830) by the Rev. George Ripley, a
prominent Unitarian minister of Boston and later one of
the prime movers in the Brook Farm experiment in self-
culture. Ripley saw Degerando's book as a synthesis of
the optimistic faith in the perfectibility of human na-
ture, the romantic cult of individualism, and the moral

4 Ripley's es—

struggle implicit in Christian doctrine.
say became the subject of considerable discussion and’
helped to draw attention to the book, which, according
to Ripley, "certainly approaches more nearly to our
idea of a perfect treatise on the application of moral.
philosophy to human improvement, than any one with which
we are acquainted."5

Degerando begins by postulating five kinds of good,
the attainment of which is necessary to the perfection
of man. These five kinds of good are derived from the
senses, the affections, the intellect, the moral faculty,
and the religious faculty, respectively.

Two essential conditions, therefore, serve:

as a basis to our progress; one is, that

we should know how to find the end which is

best in itself; the other.is, that we should

be capable of attaining it. Hence we have-

two great moral powers, upon which seems to
depend our progress; namely, the Love of

 

'1. George-Ripley, "Begerando on Self Education,”
Chr;§tian Examiner, VIII - IX.(1830), 70-107. Here-
after referred to as Ripley, "Degerando'.

5. Ripley, ”Degerando," p. 76.

-39-

cooa, and Self-Government.6
Degerando then declares that by cultivating in ourselves:
the Love of Excellence as a substitute for the principle
of self-interest all communities instead of declaringr
war will be by ”one continued alliance, progressivelyv
developed upon the largest scale.'7 He thus appears to”
see self-culture of the individual as a necessary foun-
dation for peace and continued freedom.

Elsewhere Degerando sees self-culture as necessary
for political stability and for creative enterprise:

If you wish to teach obedience, you must:
teach two things, rectitude and self-con-
trol; the one as Law, t a other as the
means of fulfilling it.

Those alone persevere and finish, wh have
learned to be masters of themselves.

Regarding the proper conception of education, Degerando

has this to say:

Intellectual progress does not consist essen-
tially in the extent of acquired knowledge;
but in the harmonious development of the ins
tellectual powers. Intellectual progress is
one of the means of increasing knowledge;

but it especially contributes to our attain-
ing our knowledge complete, classified, ands
regulated in wise proportions; and secures
against the danger of superficial attainment,
which.is worse than ignorance.10

 

6} M. Le Baron Degerando, Concerning Moral Perfection;
.93 Self-Education, translated by Elizabeth Feabody, p..3.
Hereafter referred to as Degerando.

7. Degerando, pp. 29-30.

8. Degerando, p. 112.

9. Degerando, p. 122.

10. Degerando, p. 166.

-40-
In thus striking out against the superficiality of rota
learning which he observed going on about him, Degerando

was echoing the discontent which liberal educators felt‘
over the Lancastrian methods employed in many schools.
more memory lessons, he declares, are not real education
at all.

All education is but a succession of exercises,
rightly conceived and wisely graduated. Thea
great object of education is to make us acquire,
with good habits; more extensive capacities;
great errors have been committed in school ed-
ucation; and very serious mistakes may he made
for the same reason in self-education.1

The essential difference between the two kinds
of education [:is thig7: the one, founded
only upon the outward repetition of the same;
processes,...renders us incapable of inventing;
or bringing to perfection...; the other, go-
ing back to motives and principles, teaches:
us to do better...and to think better...The
former is but the tradition of pedantry; thar
latter, the art of wisdom: one makes auto-
mate, and trains animals; the other, anima-
ting and enlightening, forms men.

Degerando obviously was doubtful about the value of much
of the formal schooling available in his day. Perhaps
it was this very inadequacy of formal education that led
Degerando and others to lay so much emphasis on self-ed-
ucation; but even where formal education succeeded, it
did not relieve the individual, in the scheme of Deger-
ando, of the necessity for continued intellectual effort.

But if, by a happy chance, school education

should have given us the most appropriate

preparation, we must yet do for ourselves
what no instructor can do for us, we must

 

ll. fiegerando, p. 199.
12. Degerando, p. 202.

-41-

add to it our own labor, and make up beforee

hand a plan of conduct. By doing this well,

we may even supply the defects of imperfect

education.

In 1838 came William Ellery Channing's essay en-
titled Self-Culture, which may be regarded as the chart
acteristic expression of the fully developed American
philosophical version of the doctrine advanced by De-
gerando. Channing and the Transcendentalists in an
even more intense way declared that the ground of man's
culture lay not in his calling or station but in his
very nature. Because this essay is so important in
the history of New England's self-culture movement andi
because it is no longer widely known except among pro-
fessional scholars, I feel it will be worthwhile to
summarize here, in Channing's own words, the main points
of his thesis. The following excerpts are quoted se-
1ectively from Channing's Egggg, volumes I & II (Boston,
1871), pages 3A9-411:

In this country the mass of the people are dies
tinguished by possessing the means of improvement, of
self—culture, possessed nowhere else. Lectures have
their use. They stir up many, who, but for such outward;
appeals, might have slumbered to the end of life. But;
let it be remembered that little is to be gained simply
by coming to this place once a week, and giving up the

mind for an hour to be wrought upon by a teacher. (Chan-

ning was speaking to one of the many young Workman'ss

 

137FDegerando, p.3l3.

-42-
Associations then popular in New England). Unless what
we hear is made a part of ourselves by conscientious
reflection, very little permanent good is received.

Self-culture is something possible. It is not a
dream. It has foundations in our nature. There are
two powers of the human soul which make self-culture
possible, the self-searching and the self-forming power.
(Recall at this point the two powers, Love of Excellence
and Self-Government, which Degerando postulated.)

I am first to unfold the idea of self-culture.
Growth, expansion is the end. Nothing admits culture,
but that which has a principle of life, capable of be-
ing expanded. He, therefore, who does what he can to
unfold all his powers and capacities, especially his
nobler ones, so as to become a well proportioned, vir-
tuous, excellent, happy being, practices self-culture.
(The self-cultureamovement thus appears to have its
roots in Unitarianism's view of human nature,)

First, self-culture is Moral. No part of self-
knowledge is more important than to discern clearly
these two great principles, the self-seeking and the dis-
interested; and the most important part of self-culture
is to depress the former and to exalt the latter, or to
enthrone the sense of duty within us. (Degerando had
said the same thing in virtually the same words.)

In the next place, self-culture is Religious. We

have eight and other senses to discern, and limbs and

-43-
various faculties to secure and appropriate the materi-
al creation. And we have, too, a power, which cannot
stop at what we see and handle, at what exists within
the bounds of space and time, which seeks for the Infin-
ite, Uncreated Cause, which cannot rest till it ascend
to the Eternal, All-comprehending Mind. To develop
this is eminently to educate ourselves.

Again. Self-culture is Intellectual. When we speak
to men of improving themselves, the first thought which
occurs to them is, that they must cultivate their under-
standing, and get knowledge and skill. By education,
men mean almost exclusively intellectual training. Now
I reverence as much as any man the intellect; but let
usanever exalt it above the moral principle. One thing
above all is needful, and that is, the Disinterestedness
which is the very soul of virtue. The moral and reli-
gious principles of the soul, generously cultivated,
fertilize the intellect. Intellectual culture consists,
not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating
information.

Again. Self-culture is Social, or one of its great
offices is to unfold and purify the affections, which
spring up instinctively in the human breast, which bind
together husband and wife, parent and child, brother
and sister; which bind a man to friends and neighbors,
to his country, and to the suffering who fall under his

eye, wherever they belong.

-44-

Again. Selfeoulture is Practical, or it proposes
as one of its chief ends to fit us for action. Two
branches of self-culture which have been almost wholly
overlooked in the education of the people, and which
ought not to be so slighted, Zing? the sense or per-
ception of Beauty...and the power of Utterance. (Having,
expanded on the five-fold idea of self-culture, Channing
then proceeds to the means by which the self-culture
Just described may be promoted. It should be noted that;
the five divisions of the idea of self-culture, that is,
moral, religious, intellectual, social and practical,
which Channing sets forth in his essay correspond exactly
to the outline followed by Degerando, the only difference
being that Ghanning considers them in inverse order. Itt
would seem almost certain, therefore, that Channing used
Degerando's book as an outline for his own essay.)

First, the great means of self-culture, that which
includes all the rest, is to fasten on this culture as
our Great End, to determine deliberately and solemnly
that we will make the most of the powers which God has
given us.

I come now to another important measure of self-cul-
ture, and this is, intercourse with superior minds. It
is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with
superior minds, and these invaluable means of communica-
tion are in the reach of all. Toemake this means of cul-
ture effectual, a man must select gggg books.e

Another important means of self-culture, is to ffiee'

-45;
ourselves from the power of human opinion and example,
except as far as this is sanctioned by our own deliber-
ate Judgemmnt. You ought, indeed, patiently and cone
scientiously to strengthen your reason by other men'st
intelligence, but you must not prostrate it before them.

Another means of self-culture may be found by every
man in his Condition or Occupation, be it what it may..
Labor is a school of benevolence as well as Justice.

He ought to think of the benefit of those he works for,
as well as of his own; and in doing so, in desiring
amidst his sweat and toil to serve others as well as
himself, he is exercising and growing in benevolence.
This is an important means of self-culture. In this way
the idea of Perfection takes root in the mind and spreads
far beyond a man's trade.

Hardships are not to be sought for. They some fast
enough of themselves, and we are in more danger of sink-
ing under, than of needing them. But when God sends
them, they are noble means of self-culture, and as such,
let us meet and bear them cheerfully.

I have time to consider one more means of self-cul-
ture. We find it in our Free Government, in our Politi-
cal relations and duties. A republic is a powerful means
of educating the multitude. It is the people'sguniversity.
He is called by his participation in the national sever--
eignty to cherish public spirit, a regard to the general
weal. A Man who purposes to discharge faithfully theee'

-45-
obligations is carrying on a generous self-culture.
(Ghanning then cautions against party spirit as hostile
to moral self-improvement, proposes the use of publica
lands for the purpose of educational institutions, and
then passes on to the third main division of his essay.)

But to come nearer to the point. Are labor and eelfe
culture irreconcilable to each other? It is Mind, after
all, which does the work of the world, so that the more?
there is of mind, the more work will be accomplished..
Make men intelligent and they become inventive. Self-
culture multiplies and increases their pleasures. It:
creates new capacities of enJoyment. It saves their
leisure from being what it too often is, dull and weari—
some. It saves them from rushing for excitement to in-
dulgences destructive to body and soul.

It is monstrous, it approaches impiety, to suppose
that God has placed insuperable barriers to the expane
sicn of the free, illimitable soul. You have many and?
great deficiencies to be remedied; and the remedy lies,
not in the ballot-box, not in the exercise of your po-
litical powers, but in the faithful education of yours
selves and your children. Resolve on selficulture. Make
yourselves worthy of your free institutions, and strengths
en and perpetuate them by your intelligence and your

virtues.

“NI".

Here, it seems to me, is a clear statement by cne:in

-47-
the very midst of the self-culture movement of what I
have tried to demonstrate heretofore: that the movee
ment was an outgrowth of the anti-Calvinistic view of-
man and God and that it was viewed as a panacea for
social amelioration.

MMch the same thesis is developed by Channing in:
his ”On the Elevation of the Laboring Classeas' two lec-
tures delivered before The Mechanic Apprentices' Library
Association of Boston and published February 11, 1840.14
It will not be necessary, therefore, to quote from these
essays; they should be noted simply as added evidence of
Ghanning's intense interest in the subJect of self-cul-
ture. The same applies to his essay ”Remarks on Asses?
iations“15 and to a number of his sermons.

The doctrines advanced by Channing and Degerando
inspired the daily routine of many of their contemp09
raries, among them Elihu Burritt, who devoted himself to.
learning some thirty languages while working over a black-
smith's forge. Channing's ideas re-echoed in dozens of
periodicals and innumerable lectures. The idea of self-
culture was, indeed, in the air.

Burritt, the perfect example of self-culture, was
born in 1810 in New Britain, Connecticut, and enJoyed*
little in the way of formal schooling before entering the:

 

14. Essa s English and American, The Harvard Classics,

.XXVIII, 3 - O.
15. William Ellery Channing,‘Works, I-II, 281-332.

-48-

blacksmith'a trade. His Journals and letters, published
by Merle Curti, give a clear example of the rigid roue
tine Burritt set for himself by combining work and study.
One sample, which will serve to illustrate the whole, is
from his Journal of May, 1843:

The storm increased almost to a tempest this-

morning; read Arabic and translated from the

German until noon; worked upon my hoes till

ificfiil°éoiiidtflfiflnr22$§°3036mn°13“”
Self-culture was the theme of Burritt!s.first lecture;
when he later took to the platform. In his address;
"Application and Genius," which he delivered some sixty
times in one season, he advanced the theory that genius
is made, not inherited, and that strong motives, a perb
sistent will, and unflagging devotion and applications
are the chief factors in intellectual achievement.17

Parallel to the career of Burrnmfwas that of Robert
Gollyer, an English blacksmith who came to America in
1850 and through a program of self-education became a:
distinguished Uhitarian minister and friend of the under-
privileged.18

If Degerando and Channing laid the groundwork for.
the nineteenth-century "philosophy" of self-culture, be-

ing among the first to attempt to formulate the then prev+

alent ideas into a system of principles and tenets, it was

 

16. Herie Curti, The Learned Blacksmith, p. 19. Here-
after referred to as Blacksmith.

17. Blacksmith, pp. 5-6.

18. John Haynes Holmes, The Life and Letter! 2;

Robert Collyer 1821-12 g.

-49-
the Transoendentalists who to a greater degree and in a
multitude of more or less related ways carried the ideal
forward throughout New England. John Byron Wilscnain
an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation entitled Activitiee-cf

 

the New England Transcendentalists ig the Dissemination.
2; ;'Culture observes :

culture of self and culture of others became;

virtually the whole business of life for the

Transcendentalists. It involved the unfolds

ing of all one's powers, the process of be-

coming manlike, the aim of achieving th; beaue

tiful and the good in human character.

Few in numbers, the Transcendentalists were very:
able and concentrated in or about Boston. An informal
club, known originally among its members as the Symposium-
or Hedge's Club, the group united such of the interested
intellectuals as Emerson, George Ripley, Hhrgaret Fuller,
James Freeman Clarke, George Bancroft and others. Soon
the club acquired popularly the name of Transcendental-
ist, and in 1838 it brought out an ambitious fourteen-
volume shelf entitled Specimens 9; Foreign and Standard

_§iterature, which, it was hoped, might serve a number of

 

those who were bent upon a program of self-education..
culture became almost a watchword for the Transcen-
dentalists. They laid down broad programs of culture
raised to the level of philosophical idealism, employinge
book. actions, intuition, environmental forces, and
‘—'—-T§T-3EEE'BFESE’WTTEBn, Activities of the New England

Transcendentalists ;_ the Dissemination of Culture,
Hereafter referred to as Wilson.

-50..
physical and sensuous aspects of man'srnature. The
Transcendentalists did not stop at the mere advocating.
of plain living and high thinking. With them, thought;
produced action and action, thought. ‘While they agreed
largely as to the ends, however, they did not always.
agree as to means. Thoreau went to Walden and Alcott
to Fruitlands. Emerson preferred the confines of his:
own study at Concord, while George Ripley, believingrthat
culture of self and of others could go on simultaneously,
established Brock Farm on the principle of mutual instruce
tion advocated by Pestalozsi and William Russell, one of
Pestalozzi's American exponents.

Of all the strategies and campaigns worked out by
the Transcendentalists for the dissemination of culture,
perhaps the dominant note was sounded by Emerson. "we
are in a world for culture,” he said.20 And again in:
another place Emerson remarks that culture is "the chief
end of man."21 The important point about all of Emerson's
pronouncements was that he exalted man to the highest.
degree of attainment, emphasizing that he was born with
a spark of the divine instead of in sin.

Emerson in many of his early sermons and later ea-
saya is, like Channing, alive to the idea of self-culture;
and beyond a doubt he contributed his share toward influ-

 

 

20. Ralph waist Emerson, "Fugitive Slave Iaw,"ggg
‘Works of Emerson, Riverside edition, X1, 236.

2T7 Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, ed.,
43h; Journals of Ralph‘Waldo Emerson, IV% 376.

-51-
encing his hearers and readers toward that goal. One of
his first pronouncements on the subJect was the sermon
"Self-culture" first delivered on September 5, 1830, in.
which he says:

It is in the spirit of that master whose

principles of life he is expounding that

the apostle Paul enJoins us to present our-

selves living sacrifices. The duty to

which we are called is nothing less than

an unceasing effort at self-culture, or,

in the words of the apostle a patient

continuance in well doing.2é
That the self can be improved and that its improvements
is a natural desire of human beings is a thought char-
acteristio of the young Emerson's views of human nature..
He devotes other sermons to the development of the self-
culture theme, including “Self-Direction and Self-Come
mand,'(0ctober 12, 1828); "Self-Knowledge and Self-
Mastery,' (November 23, 1828); ”Man Is Improvable," (Au-
gust 20, 1829); “The Power of the Sbul," (February 28,
1830); "Spiritual Improvement Unlimitable," (July 25,
1830), and ”Self-Improvement," (February 12, 1832).

Several close parallels to Channing's thought can
be observed in some of Emerson's later essays pertaining
to our subJect. I have condensed the ideas into a COD?
tinuous sequence,using, as in the case of the Channing

essay, the author's:own words without indicating the

deletions. First from the essay "Culture” we hear.

 

22. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, ed., Yougg Emerson
Speaks, p. 101.

-52-
Emerson say:

”Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and
of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory
of success. We shall one day learn to supersede politics
by education. What we call our rooteand-branch reforms,
of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medi-
cating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namelyrin
Education. We only vary the phrase, not the doctrine;
when we say culture opens the sense of beauty. 1 man is
a beggar who only lives to the useful, and however he
may serve as a pin or a rivet in the social machine, he
cannot be said to have arrived at self-possession. And
if one shall read the future of the race hinted in the:
organic effort of nature to mount and meliorate, and—the~
corresponding impulse to the Better in human beings, we
shall dare to affirm that there is nothing he will not;
overcome and convert, until at last culture shall ab-
sorb the chaos and gehenna.“23

eee

Drawing upon the new evolutionary hypotheses then
in the air, Emerson thus apparently sees the desire for
self-improvement as a law of nature.

Next, in the essay “Natural History of Intellect"
Emerson is heard declaring:

"The intellect builds the universe and is the key

23.:éomp1ete Works, VI, 131-166. Hereafter referred
to as Emerson, Works.

 

-53..

to all it contains. Why should we be the dupes of our
senses, the victims of our own works, and always in-
ferior to ourselves? We do not yet trust the unknown
powers of thought. The whole world is nothing but an
exhibition of the powers of this principle, which dis-
tributes men."24

And finally, from the essay “Progress of Culture“:

"Culture implies all which gives the mind posses-
sion of its own powers. culture alters the political
status of an individual. It is too plain that a culti-
vated laborer is worth many untaught laborers; that a
scientific engineer, with instruments and steam, is
worth many hundred men, many thousands. Brothers, I
draw new hope from the atmosphere we breathe today,
from the healthy sentiment of the American people, and
from the avowed aims and tendencies of the educated
class. I read the promise of better times and of great-
er men.“25

Another member of the small but influential Tran-
scendentalist group who was no less devoted than Emerson.
to the cultural ideal was Sarah Mhrgaret Fuller. Early
in life she had become preoccupied with the idea of self-
culture, and eventually she evolved it into a doctrine
which James Freeman Clarke saw as the very root and

spring of her life. Something of the stern regimen Mar-

 

21». Emerson, Works, x11, 3-110.
25. Emerson, Works, VIII, 207-34.

-54-
garet Fuller set for herself can be seen in a letter to
a former teacher in which she describes her course of

self-culture:

I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and
then practice on the piano until seven, when
we breakfast. Next I read French--Sismondi's
Literature of the South of Europe-~ti11 eight,
then two or three lectures in Brown' s. philos-~
ophy. About half-past nine I go to Mr. Per-
kins' school and study Greek until twelve,
when, the school being dismissed, I recite,
go home, and practice again until dinner, at;
two. Sometimes, if the conversation is very
agreeable, I lounge for half an hour over

the dessert, though rarely so lavish of time.
Then when I can, I read two hours in Italian,
but I am often interrupted. At six I walk

or take a drive. Before going to bed I play
or sing for half an hour or so, to make all
sleepy, and about eleven, retire to write
awhile in my Journal, exercises on what I
have read, or a series of characteristics
which I am filling up according to advice.
Thus, you see, I am learning Greek, and mak-
ing acquaintance with magaphysics, and French.
and Italian literature.

Margaret Fuller as a leading feminist was above all 1hr
terested in abstract rights, and it was to this program
of Goethean self-culture that she looked for a solution
rather than to Fourieristic organization.27 She reJectsc
Fourier's program of reform--the removal of harmful ine

stitutions from man or vice versa---28 and approves of

 

26. Quoted by Mason Wade, Margaret Fuller: Whetstone
Lf Genius, pp. 13-l#.

27. This contradicts Wade, p. 131, where he declares
the GodwineWollstonecraft-Shelley group had already settled
the question of abstract rights of women, Fuller' s discuss
sion turning of the Fourieristic idea of ”Attractive in-
dustry."

28. Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century
a__n__d Kindred Papers..., edited by‘Irthur B. Fuller with“
and introduction by Horace Greeley, p. 76.

'55-
such plans as that of Maria Edgeworth in her Practical
Education, namely, "the development of a clear Judgment,
habits of liberal study, a capacity for friendship,.and
a hatred of falsehood, all these attitudes and ideals
to be nourished in a domestic environment, preferably
the home.”29

Margaret Fuller's devotion to self-culture, it must
be noted, was not without its pitfalls. James Freeman
Clarke, for one, was distressed by the contempt which
Miss Fuller's preoccupation sometimes caused her to dis-
play for the vulgar herd who lacked high aspirations.

But perhaps no one better understood the shortcomings of
her extremist viewpoint than another of her contempor»
aries, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Miss Peabody recog-
nized that Margaret Fuller "partook too largely of a cur-
rent fault of the time, a too conscious attempt at indi-
vidual self-culture versus the culture of that which is
alike in all men."30 Miss Peabody was warning of the:
danger of ”ego-theism“ to which she feared extreme indi-
viduality might lead.

As for her own philosophy in the matter of self-
culture, Miss Peabody succeeded perhaps as well as any‘
of the Transcendentalist in reaching a desirable synthesis
of widely disparate views. Cemmenting on the integration:

of all Miss Peabody's interests around a dynamic concept

 

29e “1161', pp. 130-31e
30. Queenie Bilbo, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, p. 167.

-55,
of culture, John Byron Wilson has this to say:

Recognizin the moral element [in individ-
ual culture to be paramount, she did not
allow it to nullify the aesthetic as did
Ripley and Parker. She preserved a gold-
en mean between Thoreau's withdrawal from:
society; and she avoided the selfish self-
culture advocated by Margaret Fuller as
well as Parker's “canine appetite for know-
ledge," always continuing her various phil-
anthropies and her attempts to diffuse
culture and to improve educational systems.
Perhaps of all the members of the Hedge
Club only Miss Peabody achieved a synthesim'
of what seem to some critics to be irrecon-
cilable elements in Transcendentalism--past;
and present, society and solitude, moral

and aesghetic, self-culture and culture of

others.
To what extent Miss Peabody's views influenced or'were‘
influenced by Bronson Alcott one can only guess; in all
probability during their association at Temple School
there was a mutual exchange of ideas on the subject of
culture. At any rate, in her writing about those days,
Miss Peabody prefers to remain in the background, giv-
ing Alcott credit for the innovations at the school.
Thus it is that through the pen of one devotee to the
high cultural ideal we begin to glimpse the views of
another. Miss Peabody comments on Aloott's conversa-
tions with the children at Temple School, Boston, dur-
ing the period when whe was assistant teacher there and
was more familiar with Alcott's teaching procedures and

ideals than anyone else. Alcott, she says, believed that
"contemplation of spirit is the first principle of human

 

31. Wilson, 135. 354-25.

-57-
culture, the foundation of selfueducation'."32

Alcott's concept of culture was founded on the
Platonic idea that all abstract truth exists ig the
£231 gf‘gag; and the aim of the teacher, he declared,
was not to impart knowledge from without but to educe
both truth and knowledge from the mind. As Alcott hime
self wrote in Principles and Methods 2; Infant Instruc-
pigg:

...infant instruction when adapted to the
human being, is founded on the great prinw
ciple, that every infant is alre eady in
possession of the faculties and apparatus
reguired for his education, and, that by
aw of his constitution he uses these to
fgpeat extent himself, that the office of
instruction is chiefiy to facilitate this

p_ocess, and to accompany the child in his
progress gather than to drive gr even “59
lead him

Alcott presented this thesis as a basis for his entire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

program of culture. His Platonic concept is also, it
should be observed, a philosophical basis for the en-
tire selféeulture movement, the idea being that if all
abstract truths are inherent in the mind, it is possible
for all to cultivate themselves, whether infants or a-
dults.

When enrollment at Tbmple School dwindled to fewer
than twelve pupils in 1838, Alcott began holding public

"conversations“ in Boston, The "conversation" was, he;

 

##32. Peabody, p. 2E3.

33. A. Bronson Alcott, Principles and Methods of
Infant Instruction, p. 27. Italics are Aloott‘s.

~58-
believed, "the best method of human culture.'34 These
were continued there and at Lynn, Massachusetts, until
1840. In 1838 Aloott's topic was "The Theory and Pres»
tics of Self-culture," perhaps suggested by Emerson'sr
lecture series on "Culture" in the same year.

.Btill another of the nineteenth-century intellec+
tuals who lent his authority to the cause of se1f¥cul-
ture was Theodore Parker, the advocate of ”plain living
and high thinking.” In an essay entitled "Safeguard:~
of Society” Parker seems in complete accord with his:
Transcendental contemporaries regarding man's potential-
ities.

What is man here on earth to accomplish? He

is to unfold and perfect himself, as far asr

possible, in body and spirit; to attain the

full measure of his corporeal and spiritual

powers, his intellectual, moral, affectional,

and religious powers; to develop the individ-

ual into a complete man.
Parker conceives of society as an instrument to achieve
‘Just two things: first, to defend itself and prevent:
menwfrom hurting one another; second, "to furnish op-
portunities for the mass, as such, to develop itself;
and the individual, as such, to develop himself, indi-
vidually and socially and exercise all his faculties in:

his own way."36

 

3K. Amos-Bronson Alcott, The Journals of Bronson.
Alcott, selected and edited by‘UdeII SEepard: p. 153.

35. Theodore Parker, §peeches, Addresses egg Qg-
casional Sermons, III, 297. Hereafter referred to as
Parker.

36. Parker, p. 300.

-59-

Parker is more explicit about the necessity for
self-culture inaan address entitled ”Public Education
of the People" delivered at a teachers' institute meet-
ing in Syracuse, New York, October 4, 1849.

After the grown men of any country have pro-

vided for their physical comforts, their

most important business is to educate them-

selves still further, and to train up the

rising generation to their own 1evel...The

highest use of material wealth is its edu-

cational function.37

In this same essay Parker declares that the public
education of men is influenced by four powers, corre-
sponding to four modes of national activity. He lists:
these as (1) political action of the people, represented-
by the State; (2) the industrial action of the people,
represented by Business; (3) ecclesiastical action of
the people, represented by the Church; and (4) literary:
action, represented by the Press.

What is col-only and technically called edu-

cation--the development and instruction of the

faculties of children, is only preparatory....

[The schoolmasterflg7‘business is to give the;

, child such development of his faculties...thatz

he can secure the influence of these [foqu

educat onal forces...and so continue his educa-

tion.3

After discoursing on the positive educational values
of Politics, Business, and the Church, Parker pauses to
:note the important part the infant mass publishing indus-
try was playing in the self-culture movement:

The press furnishes us with books exceedingly;

 

 

37. Parker, 11, 165.
38. Parker, 11, 156-57.

-50-

~cheap. lb manufacture literature cheaper
than any nation except the Chinese. Even;
the best books, the works of the great:
masters of thought, are within the reach
of an industrious farmer or mechanic, if
half a dozen families combine for that
purpose. The educational power of a few
good books scattered throughout a commune
ityiis well known.39

Yet with all his recognition of the self-cul-
ture possibilities in man's environment, Parker is not,
unmindful of the shortcomings which arise from a too
steadfast reliance on man-made institutions.

Bo, notwithstanding the good influence of
these four modes of national activity in
educating the grown men of America, they
yet do not afford the highest teaching
which the people require, to realize indi-
vidually the idea of a man, and Jointly
that of a democracy. The State does not
teach perfect Justice; the Church does not
teach that, or love of truth. Business
does not teach perfect morality, and the
average literature which falls into the
hands of the million, teaches men to re-
spect public opinion more than the word

of God, which transcends that. Thus these:
four teach only the excellence already or-
ganized or incorporated in the laws, the
theology, the customs, and the books of
the land. I cannot but think these four
teachers are less deficient here than in
other lands, and have excellences of their
own, but the faults mentioned are insepar-
able from such institutions. An institution.
in an organized thought; of course, no in.
stitution can represent a truth which is too:
new or too high for the existing organiza-
tions, yet that is the truth which it is
desirable to teach.40

The implication is clear. Belf-culture--true self-cul-
ture in the spiritual and moral as well as the intel-

390 iarkor. II, 1600
40. Parker, II, 176.

-51-

lectual sense--was for Parker and other leading thinks
ers of his day a never ending quest, a lofty ideal cone
stantly to be striven for yet perpetually Just beyond?
reach. To Parker the rise of the lyceums, lecture
courses, library association, and cheap colleges in New
England and elsewhere only expressed the want which oth-
er institutions for learning could not satisfy; but these,
too, tended to become institutionalized and sofell short:
of the ideal.

Somewhat akin to Parker by virtue of his adherence
to Transcendental beliefs was a New York clergyman, Caleb”
Henry, whose work entitled gggigl‘Welfare and Human Prog-
gggg (New York, 1861) has relevance for our study.
Henry classes as "civilization! the complete development
of material resources of the nation while the spiritual
elements of national well-being he calls "cultured?“1
National well-being means to him the proper blending of
civilization and culture, the latter dominating the form-
er. "Intellectual elevation" and “virtuous energy” in:
the people are the bases upon which to build, declares
Henry. Nor is this to be done by cultivating science,and
art and letters in the university. The reform, he believes,
must reach down into our "popular education.“ YOung minds
must be given resources for future “self-culture and Self-

guidance."42

 

‘51. Cited by Ronald vale Wells, Three Christian Tran-
scendentalists, p. 87. Hereafter referred to as Wells.
52. Wells, p. 87.

-52-

Frederic Henry Hedge, another New England mine
ister, clearly stated in one of his sermons printed in.
Boston in a volume dated 1891 the ideal of combining
work and self-cultural pursuits:

The false system of education which separates

the intellectual from the manual labor must

be replaced by a system which will embrace

the whole man in its scope and aim with the

result that it shall be equally rare to be

unskilled in sage mechanical art and to have:

a barren mind.

Writing in The Qial on another occasion, Hedge sum-
med up in a sentence the belief which was shared by an
important segment of his thinking contemporaries:

The work of life, so far as the individual

is concerned, and that to which the scholar
is particularly called, is self-culture--

the perizct unfolding of our individual
nature.

I have already mentioned George Ripley's interest'
in the self-culture ideal in connection with his approv-
ing view of Degerando's work. In another review ( off
J. L. 8. Vincent's 1335 53; lg Protestantigmg lg France)45
Ripley makes clear his own beliefs concerning the moral
and philosophical bases of the movement. He declares:
men to be free moral agents and therefore entitled "to”
the greatest development and to the free employment of
all their faculties, physical, intellectual, and moral,

 

E3. Quoted by Wells, p. 1&1.

44. F. H. Hedge, “The Art of Life--The Scholar's
Calling," The Dial, I (October, 1840), 176.

45. Christian Examiner, it (May, 1831). 273-96.
Hereafter referred to as Examiner.

in order to ameliorate their own personal condition

and that of society in general."46

Clearly Ripley saw
the widespread dissemination of learning as a necessary
instrument in the program of social reform. In this he
was in accord with most of his contemporaries; where he
differed from many of his fellow Transcendentalists,
particularly Emerson and Miss Fuller, was in his beliefsrv
with regard to the means by which man was to cultivate
himself. ‘Whereas to Emerson and Miss Fuller self-culture
was a highly personal matter to be carried on in the
sanctity of one's own study, Ripley believed that culture
of self and culture of others could go on simultaneously
and so embarked on the short-lived Brook Farm experiment.
In the next chapter I shall consider Brook Farm again
along with other utopian experiments as one kind of ac-
tivity with which men hoped to implement the writing of
moralists and philosophers and bring the self-culture
movement forth into a working reality.

The writing of two feminists whould serve to indie
cate how the self-culture movement became involved in:
the crusade for women's rights as well as for broader
programs of reform. Catherine Beecher's criterion for
the education of women as expressed in Suggestions Re-
_§pecting Improvements in Education, a brief tract of
1829, was the same humanistic ideal of well-rounded de-

velopment that characterized the views of Degerando,

 

E6.+§xaminer, p. 279.

 

 

 

I II ...'u'il.r.ll‘ illi- .. j.‘fl

 

-54-
Channing, Pestslozzi, Mann, Goethe, and the Transcen-
dentalists.

A well-balanced mind is the greatest and
best preparative for her varied and com»
plicated duties. Woman, in her sphere of
usefulness, has an almost e ual need of
all the several faculties.4

Emma Hart Willard also emphasizes the humanistic
ideal in Plan for Improving Female Education:

 

Education should seek to bring its subjects

to the perfection of their moral intellec-

tual, and physical nature: in order that

they may be of greatest possible use to

themselves and others; or, to use a differ-

ent expression, that they may be the means

of the greatest possible happiness of which

they are capable, both as to wggt they en-

Joy and what they communicate.

Recognizing the limited opportunities then avail-
able for women's formal education, Miss Willard and
other feminists advocated a program of self-culture to-
bridge the gap. Feminism thus strove as much for cul-
tural equality for women as for political and economic
equality.

Finally, we must list one other important work per-
taining to our subject, namely, James Freeman Clarke's
‘QQIf-Culturex Physical, Intellectual, Moral and §piri-
tual, a series of sermons which was published in Boston
by Ticknor & Co. in 1880. In one place Clarke poses-

the ideal in the light of religious obligation:

 

57. Tract reprinted in Willystine Goodsell, ed.,
Pioneers of Women s Education in the United States, p» 159.
lHereafter referred to as Geodsell.

48. Goodsell, p. 54.

 

-55-

God has placed us here to grow, Just as He

placed the trees and flowers....The duty of

self-culture is clearly taught in the Esra-

bloc of the talents and of the pounds.

One of the biographers of Clarke, Edward Everette
Hale, said of the book in 1892, "gglf-Culture, which
embodies not only his theories, but a great deal of
the practical experience of his life, has found, prob-
ably for that reason, a very general welcome. Up to
this present time it has passed through fifteen editions.
Perhaps this book may be considered one of his best con-
tributions to the cause of education."50

Clarke, who lived from 1810 to 1888, had early
shown a central interest in education. He began teach-
ing soon after leaving college, and at Louisville be-
came the superintendent of schools in 1839. He later'
settled in Jamaica Plain and for many years was chosen
upon the school committee until that community was ab-
sorbed by the city of Boston. In 1863 Clarke was ap-
pointed by Governor Andrew of Massachusetts to the State
Board of Education, and four years later he became a
professor in the Harvard Divinity School, serving sub-
sequently as an overseer of Harvard.51

Another critic of Clarke, John Wesley Thomas, come

ments that Self-culture, "his one purely philosophical

 

 

49. p. 31” Hereafter referred to as Self-Culture.

50. James greeman Clarke: Autobio ra h , Diary and
Corrggpondcnce,1r. 305. Hereafter referred to as Clarke.

51. Clarke, pp. 292-93.

-55-

work," was second only to his Ten Great Religions in
popularity.52 Van Wyck.Brocks calls the book, which
groups together the thought and ideas of Clarke's early
Transcendentalism, "a characteristic expression of the
West Street circle,"53 though it was published forty
years after the circle disintegrated. Clarke takes up
in separate chapters the factors which influence man's
development, that is, friendship, education, social
life, reading, intuitional nature, etc. His purpose is
not to present an abstract system of philosophy but to:
give a practical guide for the philosophically uniniti-
ated in their personal development. In the chapter on
"Reading" he says:

Read much but do not read many things...Se1ect.

the great teachers of the race, the great mas-

ters, and read them. Read Bacon, Milton,

Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Herodotus, Thucyd-

ides, Schiller, Goethe, and Leasing. Do not

read about these authors in magazines, but

read the authors themselves. 5

Clarke was not a great literary figure, but he did
exert a powerful influence on his age-~as writer, edi-
tor, Lyceum speaker, reformer, clergyman, and dissem-
inator of German culture. Thus, through his theolog-

ical works, says Thomas, he reached an audience “largely

unaffected by Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Hedge, Ripley

 

52. James Freeman Clarke: A ostle 9; German Culture
.ig America, p. 167. Hereafter regerred t as Thomas.

53. Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering 0 New En land,
p. 296.

54. SdlfeCulture,7p. 318.

o
f

-57-

and others whose writings were primarily literary."55

It should now appear that Emerson in his study,
Parker, Clarke and others in their pulpits, Ripley and-
Alcott in their Utopian communities, Fuller at her edi-
torial desk, and Thoreau at Walden were all seeking the
same goal by different paths. Each of them wished to
make actual what was potential in his own nature, and
at the same time each desired to point the way to his
fellow man how he could secure complete self-realiza-
tion.

John Byron Wilson says of the Transcendentalists"
efforts to disseminate culture:

This was Christian humanism, a fusion of the

Hebraic and the Hellenistic, in the sense

that their well-rounded man their "natural"

man, was also a moral man.55

Transcendentalism, then, began as a spiritual prep
test and ended as an effort to reconstruct society onw
the basis of ideal laws and practical duties. And, as

we have seen, a belief in the efficacy of self-culture

figured importantly in their thinking.

 

55. Thomas, p. 135.
56. Wilson, p. 361.

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES OF THE
SELF-CULTURE‘MOVEMENT

Out of the pattern of developments which is the
theme of this study one more central fact emerges--

a fact often overlooked by the self-styled realists
who would disparage the dreamers and visionaries for
their alleged disassociation from worldly affairs.

That fact is that idealism is capable of producing
solid, practical results when it is related to needs as
instinctive as peace and social stability. To romanti-
cism's newly acquired social outlook, education pos-
sessed a reality sometimes more apparent to the ideal-
ists than to the realists themselves. It represented
the major alternative to force in overcoming the injus-
tices of society. And in the light of this reality
movements were created for the widespread dissemination.
of learning among the masses.

The conception of idealistic thinkers that popular
education is a powerful instrument for the relief of
poverty-and social inequality was deeply ingrained dur-
ing the romantic era. Its impetus, in fact, has never
been exhausted even to the present day, as is evidenced
by the large volume of current articles which view edu-
cation as a panacea for everything from the establish-
ment of world peace to the solution of the Juvenile
delinquency problem. But one may well ask at this point
‘what men of good will in the nineteenth century actually

-59-

did by way of implementing their beliefs. How did the
visionaries relieve their distress at social suffering
other than through endless discussions and writing?
How did they recognize the fact that in education, as
in law, it is more important to invent a concrete remedy
than to proclaim a forceless right? The answer lies in
the manifold practical activities in the form of learned
societies, museums, libraries, lyceums, etc., which were
created as weapons of social action and which were to a
great extent motivated by the dynamic of melioristdc-
purpose. _

Now, all of the activities Just mentioned relate
to the self-culture theme in precisely the same way as
the movements of a symphony relate to the total work.
In a symphony each movement, as an expression of its own
set of specific ideas, has a kind of autonomous exist-
ence while contributing to the whole; yet it derives a.
part of its strength from its relation to the other move-
ments in the unfolding of the composer's grand idea.
Thus, in the case of the various romantic movements for
the dissemination of culture, each was in a way an inde-
pendent entity contributing to the total pattern; but at:
the same time each was reinforced by the already existing
cultural idea1.. Many of the great movements of the time
I view as outgrowtl'fi of a greater force: the mass desire
for the means of self-improvement. In return each in

its own way stimulated a fresh demand and attracted new.

-70..
adherents to the cult.

Thus to arouse and satisfy the intellectual curi-
osity of a weary, worry-ridden mass of men and women was
not easy. It is doubtful whether the machinery of £2;-
.ggl education, even if it had been adequate, could have
been entrusted with the task. or necessity, the media
had to be, at least at their outset, more or less igfgg-
231 in nature.

We cannot conclude from this, however, that the”
various movements succeeded entirely in imparting a high
degree of culture to the masses, even though they at-
tracted many who were eager for and content with what
they got. Numerous critics arose on all sides to lament
the superficiality of much that passed for self-culture.
An anonymous writer in 1844 was one of these critics:

We complain, and with Justice, of the uni-

versal diffusion of slight and superficial
knowledge--the neglect of philosophy, the

reign of empiricism in every branch of sci-
ence, the absence of all aesthetical culture,
the dearth of originality.1

Later in the same essay, the writer warns of a tendency
which soon appeared in several of the mass education.
movements~~a tendency to become institutionalized at;
the middle-class level:

We are convinced that the highest order of
minds must be produced by this process of
free internal development, yet there re-
mains a vast middle class who are not cap-
able of sufficient independent action to
carry them through such a process....There
are others whose reasoning faculty is too
sluggish to delight in combining and in»

 

l.ILitteIl's Idvifig Age, I (1844), 298.

-71-

ferring...or whose curiosity is not robust
enough to endure the fatigue of much toil
in search of sustenance. For such as these,
it is necessary to clear away the difficul-
ties which afford wholesome exercise for
stronger minds....It is not that much will
come of such training; but the faculties
which.would never struggle into life if
left to themselves, may be nurtured, not
into vigor, but at least into existence.
‘What we protest against is the tyranny of
preJudging the case, and subJecting all a-
like to a regimen fit only for the infirm.2

Philip Hone, whose diary gives us perhaps the best;
extant picture of New York life in the 1830's and 40's,
also observed the defect of cafeteriaastyle culture.
In'a rather testy entry for January 14, 1841, he writes:

There is one striking difference between the
peoplebf Europe and those of our own country,
which arises perhaps from the nature of our
political institutions, and the newness of
everything around us, which affords greater
freedom of action and a larger scope of im-
agination. The difference I allude to con-
sists in the larger proportion of men in the.
old countries who know each of them some one
thing better than any one else, in science,
mechanics, or philosophy; whilst they are
comparatively ignorant of everything else;...
We, on the contrary, know a little of every-
thing and nothing to perfection. Everybody
here of decent education writes tolerably
well, speaks with fluency, has a calculating
head, and skillful hands; but his knowledge
from being more diversified is more super-
ficial. An American blacksmith would think
meanly of himself if he could not argue a
point of law with the village lawyer.3

Not only was much of the endeavor in the field of

self-culture criticized; at about the same time the

 

2. Ibid., p. 300.
3. Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone 1828-
185 , pp. 516- 17. Hereafter referred to as Hone Qiggy.

 

 

-72-

entire basis for the endeavor, the movement itself,
was subjected to a harsh second look. No one put the
case more bluntly than Orestes Brownson.

Universal education we shall not be thought
likely to depreciate; but we confess that
we are unable to see in it that sovereign
remedy for the evils of the social state am:
it is which some of our friends do, or say
they do. We have little faith in the power
of education to elevate a people compelled
to labor from twelve to sixteen hours a day
and to experience for no mean portion of the;
time a paucity of even the negessaries of
life, let alone its comforts.

The great work of the age, Brownson agrees, is to raise
up the laborer and establish social democracy. But how?

Reformers in general answer this question,
or what they deem its equivalent, in a
manner which we cannot but regard as very
unsatisfactory. They would have all men
wise, good, and happy; but in order to make
them so, they tell us that we want not ex-
ternal changes, but internal. And there-
fore, instead of declaiming against society
and seeking to disturb existing social ar-
rangements, we should confine ourselves to
the individual reason and conscience, seek
merely to lead the individual to repentance
and to reformation of life, make the indi-
vidual a practical, a truly religious man;
and all evils will either disappear, or be:
sanctified to the spiritual growth of the
soul.

' For our part, we yield to none in our
reverence for science and religion; but we
confess that we look not for regeneration
of the race from priests and pedagogues....
They would change the consequents without
changing the antecedents, secure to men the
rewards of holiness, while the continue
their allegiance to the devil.

 

4. Orestes Augustus Brownson, "The Laboring Classes,"
a review of Thos. Carlyle's Chartism in Boston Quarterly
Review (1840), reprinted in Blau, pp. 301-319. Herea ter
referred to as Blau.

50 Blau, pe 310e

-73-
In so stating, Brownson allied himself with such re-
formers as Ripley, Robert Owen and others whose col-
lective communities he must have viewed as attempts

to change the consequents by changing the antecedents.
As for the kind of self-culture recommended by Channing,
however, Brownson could only admit its importance for
the individual; as for its being a solution to the-
evils in the existing social structure he remained skep-
tical.

Self-culture is a good thing, but it cannot:
abolish inequality nor restore men to their
rights. As a means of quickening moral and?
intellectual energy, exalting the sentiments,
and preparing the laborer to contend manfully‘
for his rights, we admit its importance and
insist as strenuously as anyone on making it:
as universal as possible; but as constituting
in itself a remedy for the vices of the social
state, we have no faith in it. As a means it'
is well, as the end it is nothing.

The truth is the evil we have pointed
out is not merely individual in its character;
It is not, in the case of any single individ-
ual, of any one man's procuring, nor can the
efforts of any one man,.directed solely to
his own moral and religious perfection, do
aught to remove it. What is purely individual
in its nature, efforts of individuals to per-—
foot themselves may remove. But the evil we
speak of is inherent in all our social ar-
rangements, and cannot be cured wgthout radi-
cal change of those arrangements.

Partly owing to the momentum which it had gained
by 1840, however, and partly owing to the strength of-
the converse argument that social arrangements, being
of human origin, cannot be changed for the better with-

out first improving the humans who make them, the self-

 

6. Blau, pp. 315-11.

-74-
culture-movement managed to survive the barbs of
critics such as Brownson and continued for another
twenty years as the focal point for considerable reform
activity.

One of the first recommendations of educational
reformers interested in implementing the ideal was that
America create a library system for public schools; and
accompanying this was a movement for a system of public
tax-supported libraries which would open to all the
ready means of self-culture.

The proprietary library system of an earlier day
had virtually broken down in periods of economic stress.
The eighteenth-century Juntos, as we have noted, bought
books for a little circulating library; and in 1807 the
Beaten Anthanaeum was incorporated and maintained by
private subscription. But now in the high tide of re-
manticism, thanks to the popularity of the philosophy»
of diffusion of knowledge and also to important changes
in the apprenticeship system, new Mechanics' Institutes
began to appear; and William Wood in 1820 established
the first Apprentices' Library in Beston. Before long
many cities boasted similar institutions, and frequently,
as Merle Curti observes, they sponsored lectures, debates,
and discussions, and in some cases, evening classes.7
In addition to the mechanics' Libraries, Mercantile L1-

braries sponsored by clerks and merchants made their

 

7'1: 6am, p._§54.

-75-
appearance in the 1820's and soon spread to every trade
center.8

But these traditional concepts of mutual associ-
ation and private responsibility did not hold the field
exclusively. In 1817 Dr. Jesse Torrey of New York urged
in a striking brochure the idea of a public library sup-
ported by government money. The first important steps
taken in this direction were in New York in 1838 when
the district school libraries were encouraged with public
funds. By 1850 more than 12,000 such libraries in New
York and New England stored some one and one-half mil-
lion books.9 These failed to meet the need, but they'
at least helped to prepare the way for the idea of public
responsibility for libraries.

Meanwhile, here and there in New England towns,
local government assumed its obligation. In 1827 castine,
Maine, acquired the shares of the Social Library, one of,
those typical proprietary institutions, and turned it
over to the public. Six years later Peterborough, New
Hampshire, voted to use state money for a free town li-
brary, and in 1846 Orange, Massachusetts, established a
town library.10 In 1848 the Massachusetts legislature
permitted Boston to use public funds for the support of
the projected Boston Public Library, the first important
institution to establish a pattern for the library system

 

8. Gurti, p. 354.
9. Curti, p. 364.
10. Curti, p. 365.

-75-
as we know it today. New Hampshire enacted the first:
state-wide law enabling any town to establish a tax-
supported library and soon Massachusetts and mains fol-
lowed suit. Ourti notes that between the years 1825
and 1850 some 550 libraries of all sorts were established--
more than twice the number founded in the preceding quar-
ter of a century.11 The fact may remain, as James Trus-
low Adams points out, that as late as 1870 “no American
public library had attained 200,000 volumes, although
there were more than twenty of that size scattered over
the countries of Europe."12 The rapid growth of the li-
brary movement in the thirties and forties, if not spear
tacular, was at least encouraging."

Something of the current ideal of self—culture and
the contribution which it was felt libraries would make
to that end is seen in the Report of the Trustees of the*
Boston Public Library in 1852. In that document Edward
Everett, George Ticknor, Sampson Reed, and Nathaniel
Shurtleff were of the opinion that

...the public makes no provision whatever,

by which the hundreds of young persons an-

nually educated, as far as the elements of

learning are concerned, at the public ex-

pense, can carry on their education and

bring it 0 practical results by private

study...1

After arguing the need for the proposed library as an

 

11. Curti, p. 265.—
12. Frontiggg, p. 87.
15. Quoted by Commager, p. 573.

-77-
adjunct to public school education, the four trustees
continue:

Nowhere are the intimations of this demand

more decisive than in our own city, nor, it

is believed, is there any city of equal

size in the world, where added means for

general popular instruction and self-cul-

ture...will be so promptly seized upon and

so effectually used, as they will be here.14

The same soil that produced the Mechanics' Ins
stitutes, Mercantile Libraries, and the public library
movement produced the lyceum system of popular lectures.
Originated 1826 by Josiah Holbrook, who brought togeth-
er thirty farmers and mechanics of Millbury, Massachu-
setts, to form the first local lyceum, the idea immedi-
ately won favor in New England.15 Within a few months
of the organization of the Millbury branch, fifteenz
villages had responded; and by the end of the second
year there were more than one hundred town lyceums.16

According to Holbrook's plan, there were to be
state and national lyceums as well as town lyceums..
The national organizations were to be composed of dele-
gates from the state lyceums, and the state lyceums
were to be composed of delegates from the country and
town institutions. In 1831 state lyceums were founded
in New York, Massachusetts, and Maine; and the first of

these called a convention the same year to orgaize the

 

14. Commager, p. 575.

p. 15. Hereafter referred to as Mead.
16. Henry Barnard, "The American Lyceum,“ Barnardfs

American Journal 2; Education, XLV (1864), 545.

-78-

National American Lyceum.l7 Regular conventions were
held annually thereafter until 1839 when the organiza-
tion went out of existence.

The professed aim of the national lyceum system
was ”the advancement of education--expecially in common
schools-~and the general diffusion of knowledge."18 The
annual membership fee was two dollars for adults and one
dollar for subscribers under eighteen years of age; life~
memberships cost twenty dollars.19 Groups as well as
individuals appear to have been encouraged to affiliate
with the national organization. One historian of the;
movement notes that in Boston alone five groups, including
the Boston Lyceum. The Society for the Diffusion of Use-
ful Knowledge, the Mercantile Library Association, the
Mechanics' Association, and the Historical Society, joined
with the American Lyceum.20

The lyceum program was an ambitious one, reaching
into many fields. As early as 1829 the movement declared
its multiple purposes: "to improve the mind and social
intercourse by study of worthwhile subjects, to use old
library facilities and create new ones, to encourage and

assist academies, to raise the character of public schools,

 

17. Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., "Lyceum," The Encyclopedia
Americana, XVII (1951), 733. Hereafter referred to as
fizstor.

18. Tyler, p. 262.

19. Mead, p. 15.

20. Anna L. curtis, ”A Brief History of the Lyceum,"

 

p. —23. Hereafter referred to as Curtis.

-79-
to compile materials for local histories, and to make
agricultural and geological surveys."21 Lyceums also
attempted to advance the establishment of museums and
seminaries.22

Addressing itself to the attainment of these sevp
eral ends, the lyceum succeeded remarkably during its
first decade. To the improvement of public schools the
lyceum contributed a great deal until 1837 when, upon
the establishment of the Massachusetts Board of Educa-
tion under Horace Mann, the initiative passed to that;
and similar bodies. Libraries and museums, also stimu.
lated by the lyceum, tended after a time to develop as
independent organizations, so that by 1840 the purposes
of the lyceum had narrowed considerably to the sponsorb
ship of regular lectures and discussion; nevertheless,
the movement remained for the succeeding twenty or
thirty years an effective instrument of adult education,
a sort of universal self-and-community-improvement asso-
ciation.

Always strongest in New England, there were in 1839
in Massachusetts alone 137 lyceums with a total average
attendance of nearly 33,000.23 Such statistics probably
prompted James Truslow Adams to remark, "Few educational
experiments have come more directly from the grass roots

of city sidewalks than did the Lyceum."24

 

21. Tyler, p. 262.

22. Mead, p. 15.

23. Tyler, p. 262.

24. Frontiers, p. 148.

 

-80-

An idea of the attraction which the popular lec-
ture held for the average citizen and of the kind of
fare it served him can be obtained in Philip Hone's
diary, which abounds in references to this sort of thing.
His entry for January 7, 1829, is representative:

After leaving Judge Betts‘ lecture (on commercial

law at the Mercantile Library)§1 went to Masonic

Hall to witness one of a nature widely different.

I found the large room crowded to excess to

hear Miss Frances Wright lecture on knowledge

and other matters. This female Tom Paine is

one of the disciples of the celebrated Robert.

Owen of Lanark. Her doctrines are similar to;

those of Paine, Godwin, and other modern philos-

ophers who would unsettle the foundations of
civil society, and subvert our fundamental
principles of morality if peOple were fools
enough to believe them. I found the rggm so

full that I remained but a short time.

Later that same month Hone noted again concerning Miss
‘Wright that she had commenced a ”course of lectures at
Park Theater, and I am sorry to learn that it was well
attended."26 On November 29, 1837, after attending a
dinner honoring John Bell of Tennessee, a “convert" from
Jacksonian democracy and later secretary of war under
President Harrison, Hone writes that about 220 persons
sat down at 7:30 and stayed all night to hear speeches
by assembled dignitaries. "The great gun of the eve-
ning...was Daniel Webster. He rose at two o'clock in
the morning, intending in consequence of its being, as
he said, tomorrow, to be brief; but his auditors insisted

'upon his going on...“ Hone records that Webster kept on

 

25. Home

_l§£li pp. 9‘10°
26. Hens i

D
D agy, p. 10.

.—_

-81-
"in a strain of universal and unwearying eloquence une
til four o'clock."

One hundred and fifty persons, most of them
men of sober, steady habits, fathers of fam-
ilies, remained immovable in their seats,
with no indications of fatigue or inatten-
tion, until he finished at an hour when

"ni ht was almost at odds with the morning
...' What a wonderful gift is this public.
speaking, and what gourmands we Americans
are when we get hold of a dish of popular
oratory£27

“IT-rs;
l ‘—

.Y‘ a; t
l. .4

In another characteristic entry in 1840 Hone observed

that

Lectures are all the vogue, and the theatersu
are flat onxtheir backs....Whilst the these
ters are thus deserted, the Tabernacle, spa-
cious as it is, is filged every night to hear
the lyceum lecture...2 .

Hone'sgprimary objection to both the number and the
quality of lyceum programs seems to have been that they
kept people away from legitimate stage productions,
which he felt deserved more attention. He voices this
opinion again in another entry:

The people will be amused; they must have
some way of passing their evenings besides
poking the fire and playing with the chil-
dren. The theater does not seem to be
exactly the right thing....It has to encoun-
ter a host of competitors, ready to admin-
'ister to the vitiated public taste....Reg-
ular courses have commenced at the Mercan-
tile Library Association, the Mechanics'
Institute, the Lyceum, and the Historical
Society, at all of which some of the ablest;
and most distinguished men of this and

other states have agreed to contribute their
learning and eloquence. Jared Sparks, for

the Historical Society, is engaged in a

 

28. Hone Diar , pp. 515-16.

-82-

course of eight lectures on the "Events of
the American Revolution," to which crowds

so numerous are attracted that the chapel of
the new University cannot hold them, and
they have to adjourn to the Tabernacle....
Cencerts, vocal and instrumental, are also
well attended...and ladies' recitations

come in for a good share of public patron-
age. This is all right; it is more rational
than the expensive parties for which New
York was formerly celebrated, where friend-
ly intercourse was stifled in a crowd of

oyster-eating parasites, modest merit put

to the blush by reckless extravagance, and

good fellowship voted vulgar by parvenu

pretension. But I cannot help thinking

that the theater, well conducted, should

come in for a better share of support.29
In places where there was no theater, however, the.
Lyceum helped to fill the need for diversion. In Cen-
cord alone, for example; between 1829 and 1870 the Ly-
ceum sponsored 784 lectures, 105 debates and 14 con-
certs.30 And despite outbursts at the "vitiated public
taste," the Lyceum did serve admirably as a liberalizing
influence in our intellectual history.

Lyceums as cultural agents were encouraged by
prominent thinkers and educators in both the East and
‘West. One William Russell publicized the Lyceum as:a
practical mode of raising the literacy level of a great
number of voters and potential office-holders. He point-
ed out in 1829 that the Lyceum was not restricted to a

class or a sex, as were the mechanics' institutes.31

 

29. Hone Diar , pp. 572-73.

30. Curtis, p. 24.

31. William Russell, "American Lyceum or the Society
for the Improvement of Schools," American Journal 2; Eg-
gcation, EV (1829), 41.

 

-83-
Thomas S. Grimke dedlared:

The Lyceum system is particularly a repub-
lican institution--the people's system--

and serves admirably to confer precisely
that degree and kind of knowledge which is:
so valuable to the people of this country,
which, without making them profound scholars,
will enlarge their minds so that they can
comprehend the value of learning and enable
them to discgver, in some measure, their own
ignorance...

:W
.. i
.

L

1r;
5‘— —. w-
_‘__‘ _

Emerson believed that "lyceums--so that people will let

- ‘ s’ ZFU'LA-

you say what you think--are as good a pulpit as any
other,"33 and Parker referred to the movement as "the
new schoolhouse."34 Alcott wrote that the lyceum was
"...our purest organ of intellectual entertainment for
New England and the Western cities."35

Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, however, did not
share this enthusiasm, remaining unconvinced that the:
lyceum was the best means of adult education. Miss Ful-
ler wrote in her essay "Entertainments of the Past Win-
ter":

[Ibeeum lectures argz the short way taken by

a business people to find out what there is

to be known, but to know in such ways cannot

be hoped, unless the suggestions thus re-

ceived are followed up By private study,

thought, conversation.

Thoreau, although he long served as secretary for his

local lyceum, grew disappointed in popular lectures to

 

32: Thomas S. GrimEE, "Lyceums," American Annals 2;
Education, V (1835), 197.
33. Quoted by Mead, p. 17.
34. John Weiss, The gdoge 2_rker, 11,478.
35. A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph‘Waldo Emerson: An
Estimate of His Character and Genius ppI‘lO-ll.
. Margaret FfiIIer, D a1, III (July, 1842), 49.

-84-

the point where he was compelled to write in his Journals:

...an audience will draw out of a lecture,

or enable a lecturer to read, onlg such

part of his lecture as they like. 7

The audiences do not want to hear any pro-

phets; they do not wish to be stimulated or

instructed, but entertained.3
At one point in Walden Thoreau deplores the condition;
to which the lyceum had fallen, but at the same time he
reflects the still pressing desire of the people for more
and better means of self-culture:

We have a comparatively decent system of com-

mon schools, schools for infants only, but

excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the win-

ter, and the puny beginning of a library

suggesteg by the State, no school for our-

selves.3
It was time, he thought, “that we had uncommon schools,
that we did not leave off our education when we beginu
to be men and women."40 Thoreau then outlined iniWalden
a program of adult education to be financed and conducted
by the villages of New England. Actually, though, he
was doing little more than restating the plan which
Josiah Holbrook had presented twenty-five years earlier.

It is true that by 1854 when Thoreau wrote Walden
lyceums had begun to degenerate into a mere lecture bur-

eau; that they were, as one early leader of the movement

said, ”no longer the New England conscience bound on a

 

37. Henry David Thoreau, Thg‘Writings 2; Henry David
Thoreau, Walden edition. Bradford Torrey, ed., XVIII,
II. Hereafter referred to as Thoreau Writin s.

38. Thoreau, Writings, XVIII, 327.

39. Thoreau, ELtings, II, 120.

40. Thoreau, Writin 8, II, 121.

 

 

-85-

voyage to convert the world,"41 but "a starring exhi-
bition approaching very nearly to theatricals.” But;
in an earlier day, lyceums, by stimulating the aver-
age man to desire and demand the privileges that had'
long been advocated by reformers, certainly had served
their purpose. Though the gap between the knowledge
of the middle class mass of people and that of the
upper class remained wide, nevertheless, thanks to the
lyceums' contribution to the democratization of learn-
ing, the gulf in the 1830's and 1840's was less deep
in America than in any other country in the world. As
Curti observes:

The common man might still disparage the

specialized knowledge of the scholar and

the culture of the well-to-do; and the upper

class might deplore the anti-intellectualism

:23 Eggggdkges of the masses, but a new era

cheums thus contributed to the continual process
of self-culture to which Americans with active minds
devoted so much of their time and energy in this peri-
od. Americans had become lecture addicts, listening
with unparalleled interest and patience to itinerant
scholars, who beginning their careers in the service of
the American Lyceum, continued to make annual lecture
tours long after the lyceum was no more. Emerson and

Thoreau, Holmes and Lowell, Agassiz, Beecher, Wendell

Phillips, and Horace Greely were all veterans of thef

 

'41. E. P. PoweII, quoted by Bestor, p. 734.
42. Curti, p. 367.

 

-86-
lyceum platform, who might justly be called, in the
words of Alice Felt Tyler, "the perennial and peri-
patetic sehoolmasters of America."“3

Aside from libraries and lyceums the period before
the Civil War saw the emergence of many other agencies
either directly or indirectly connected with the spread:
of the self-culture idea. Among these agencies were
the various museums, which, in their role as instru-
ments of democratic culture, flourished on American
soil from the first years of our national history. “Mu-
seums,“ according to T. R. Adam, "were in the past and;
perhaps always should be symptoms of a revolutionary
state of mind, rebelling against the confinement of
scientific and artistic knowledge within the narrow
prisons of class and privilege.'#4 The same, of course,
is true of any instrument of popular education, the
growth of which cannot be divorced from the social tur-
moils that parallel their birth.

The first American museum is generally credited to
the Charlestown Library Society, founded in 1773. There-
after a considerable number of small museums began to
appear, particularly in New England. The Peabody Museum
of Natural History founded at Yale in 1802; the Miner-
alogical Collection of the University Museum at Harvard,
begun in 1784; the Dartmouth College collection started

 

53. Tyler, p. 265.
44. T. R. Adam, The Museum and Popular Culture, p. 5.
Hereafter referred to as Museum.

 

-87-
around l783--these and other college museum collec-
tions accounted for a fair share of popular education
in natural history in post-Revolution days.

The early academies of sciences, particularly
those of New York and Philadelphia, were also important
landmarks in the diffusion of learning in America. The
New York Academy of Sciences, founded about 1815, ob-

tained a legislative charter in 1818 as a lyceum of

 

natural history, and it may be fairly ranked as the
spiritual parent of the American Museum of Natural His-
tory. The Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia
is noted for its participation in revolutionary move-
ments for popular education during the early nineteenth
century. William Maclure, the founder of the Academy,
and other leaders were all participants in Owen's ex-
periment at New Harmony.

The first half of the nineteenth century also witr
nessed the growth of many historical societies in the:
United States. The massachusetts Historical Society
led the way in 1790; and by 1822 the movement was fairly
launched with the appearance of the Essex (Massachusetts)l
Historical Society and similar institutions in New Hamp-
shire, Maine, and Rhode Island.45 Their appearance was
no accident of chance, for during this period men all
over the world were relying on the inspiration of the'

past to anchor than societies after the storm of the

 

I5' We PP. 8-90

.88.
French Revolution. With a veneration for tradition
this infant republic attempted to dig its roots into
stable intellectual soil, and these bands of historians
and antiquarians served a pressing social need.
The movement for dramatic, educational exhibitions
. likewise found fruitful soil in the young American re-

public. As a stimulus to science, commerce, and indus-

“Shh-"r.

r? I.

try, such events as the industrial fairs conducted by
the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia since 1824 and
the annual fairs of the American Institute of the City
of New York, dating from 1828, stand as important land-
marks in the social history of the nation. Adam calls
them "illustrations of dynamic methods of visual edu-
cation being applied to the attainment of direct social
objectives."46
Diffusion of knowledge of a classical sort through
popular visual display was arrested toward the middle
of the century by the sabbatizing of the museum, though
this fact was not to spell the end of museums' social
significance. Quite the contrary. It merely led to the
creation of a new instrument to meet the demand for
instructive pageants of the learning of the times. Thus,
the birth of a long succession of World's Fairs at the:
Crystal Palace in London in 1851 but marked a fresh chap-

ter in the development of visual display as an informal

medium of popular self-education.

 

46. Museum, p. 11.

-89-

Meanwhile, as the library. lyceum, and museum
.movements moved ahead, still another agency for pop-
ularizing learning came to the fore. The Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in Boston
in 1829,and seven years later a similarly titled group
was formed on a nationwide scale. Modelled on the pat-
tern of the British organization whose guiding spirit
was Lord Brougham, these societies republished a great
many of the informative British "penny pamphlets“ on
self-culture. The American Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, by distributing Brougham's Practical
Observations 2g Egg Education 9; thg People, saw to it
that his ideas were widely read in America.47

Lord Brougham urged as justification of the move-
ment the following arguments: (l) the diffusion of
knowledge would prevent crises in class relationships;
(2) education of adults might well lead to new discov-
eries; (3) education of the masses would reduce expend-
itures for charity by reducing idleness and crime and
improvident marriages; (4) general enlightenment would
undermine skepticism, superstition and intolerance.48
Here exemplified was the ardent, if somewhat naive, ro-
mantic faith in panaceas; and there is no reason to
doubt that Americans before mid-nineteenth century, in

search of panaceas, embraced Lord Brougham's arguments

 

giduru, p. ”C350.
. Curti, p. 350.

 

-90-
rather generally.

It should be clear by now that several aspects of
the self-culture movement were important expressions
of the growing power of the common mass of people and
of their desire to know and to share in the life of
the mind. Leaders within the ranks of the laboring
class, democratically minded intellectuals who depre-

cated the separation of theory and practice, and reform-

 

ers who believed that truth, if widely disseminated,
would set men free--all provided stimulation for the
movement.

Business, too, by taking advantage of the rapidly
expanding reading market, contributed its share in the
movement's progress. Aided by technological improve-
ments which facilitated mass communication, such as
new cheap printing processes, the publishing industry
expanded remarkably. This was the age of the penny
press, the popular magazines devoted to “the diffusion.
of practical knowledge," and the dime novel. It was
an age also which saw the increase of influential sec-
ular and non-political magazines like the New England
iMa azine, founded in 1831, and the Knickerbocker Maga-
.gigg, founded the next year. both periodicals of reas-
suring merit. Equally important was the religious
jpress with nearly every denomination publishing peri-
odicals which reached an astonishing proportion of the

jpopulation.

-91-

One of the first evidences of the publishing in-
dustry's efforts to capture the expanding reading audi-
ence was the literary annual or "gift book" which ap-
peared in 1826 in Philadelphia under the title of 53133-
tic Souvenir. From 1846 to 1852 alone an average of
sixty titles appeared each year in a number of cities.
"Galaxy," "Souvenir," "Keepsake"--no matter what the
title was, the contents were very much alike in all of
them. Usually they were filled with moral and senti- '1
mental verses, tales of death and attenuated love, pro-
verbs, and admonitions to virtue. But whatever their
defects may have been, the gift books performed at
least one valuable service. They gave Hawthorne his
first encouragement, and they familiarized the public
with such authors as Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Poe,
Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, Lamb, Ruskin,
Coleridge and many others.49

For those who could not afford the gift books,
publishers found cheaper disseminators of learning and
information; Harper's was quick to see the possibilities
for enterprise and so put out a series of Libraries
including the Boys' and Girls' Libraries, the Family
Library, and the Library of Select Novels. These publi-
cations, according to Curti, ran to a total of 615

titles.50

 

49.75urti, p. 345.
50. Curti, p. 346.

-92-

New "parlor magazines" also appeared in the 40's
and 50's and succeeded in taking a large portion of the
reading audience away from the high-brow Nogth Amerggan.

Among them Godey'g'Iady'g Book was enormously popular

 

in most well-to-do homes, and at the end of the period
its popularity began to be shared by Nathaniel P. Willie's
Home Journal. There also were such rival periodicals as

Grahamfg, Peterson'g, and Parley'g Magazines and the

 

Magazine 2; Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.

Somewhat more reassuring if one wished to use peri-
odicals of themid-nineteenth century as an index to pop-
ular culture was the appearance of Harperfg N3! Monthly
Magazine and Putnam'g Magazine (1853); Atlantic Monthly
and Harperfg Weekly (1857).

But lurid and sensational periodicals also achieved
success. Leslie'g gllustrated Newspaper appeared in
1855; and George Wilkes's National Police Gazette, star-
ted in 1845, continued to live up to its promise to pro-
vide "a most interesting record of horrid murders, out-
rageous robberies, bold forgeries, astonishing burglar-
ies, hideous rapes, and vulgar seductions.“51

Writer and publisher alike in the fifties seemed
to cater to the average reader's craving for hair-rais-
ing thrills and riotous fun. Edward Z. G. Judson, who

had started the ”Ned Buntline" series in the forties,

 

51. Walter Davenport, "The Nickel Shockers,”
Collier's, LXXXI (March 10, 1928), 26ff.

-93-
operated on the theory that "trash for the masses" in-
stead of art for the critical few was the secret to
literary success. The series appeared serially in sev-
eral Eastern weeklies.52

In 1860 Erastus F. and Irwin P. Beadle, following
their earlier success with the Dime Song Book and Dime
Joke Book, launched a large-scale distribution of cheap
novels. Filled with second-rate gentility, the Beadle
Dime Novels nevertheless sold five million copies in
four years. 53

It would appear at this point that a rather large,
share of the periodicals and other publishing ventures
which appeared in the romantic decades did not contri-
bute much to the kind of self-culture that intellectuals
tand idealistic reformers had in mind. Admittedly, they‘
did not; but they did both exemplify and contribute to
the widespread enthusiasm of the masses for some kind--
any kind--of edification. Many readers probably 32;},
at least, that they were partaking in self-improvement
be devouring the contents of the latest current periodi-
cal.

While the magazine was in the experimental stage
and not yet universally accepted, the newspaper arrived
daily or weekly almost everywhere and was read from be-

ginning to end. The first really new development in

 

52. Arthur Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict: 1850-
1865, p. 224. Hereafter referred to as Cole.
530 0°16, pe 225s

 

 

-94-
newspaper publishing in this period was the founding
of a low-priced paper maintained by advertising based
on large circulation. It was Benjamin H. Day who saw
the possibilities of such a venture, and his New York
SEQ issued in 1833 at one cent a copy paved the way
for other similar enterprises.

The SEQ made another innovation in seeking to at-
tract readers by the startling character of its news.
Its famous moon hoax, detailing the discoveries of the
astronomer Herschel, was a sensation. So sucnessful
was Day's experiment that others soon emulated him.
James Gordon Bennett's Herald, by its collection of
news and its brief, snappy editorials, gave an impres-
sion of sophistication and cosmopolitanism and rapidly
won a wide audience. In 1841 a Vermont printer's boy,

Horace Greeley, founded the Tribune to which he gave

distinction by his ardent advocacy of or opposition t0"

many of the movements of the day. The influence of

these papers extended far beyond New York and changed

the character of the whole press of the country. "They-

made Americans," says one student of the period, “a
nation of newspaper readers."54

What Americans were reading in their newspapers,
of course, was not always compatible with the highest
aims of self-culture, any more than was the fare in

many of the current magazines. Critics of the press

54.'FIsh, p. T43.

F... ". rah. h“
.
I u
.

-95..
sprang up in every quarter, though none was more out-
spoken than the voluble Philip Hone, whose 1828-1851
diary we have mentioned before. In an unusually vit-
riolic entry titled "Licentiousness of the Press" Home
criticized both a certain New York daily and reader
taste generally:

There is a paper published in this city. I ,-
am not in the habit of quoting from it, for ,
I consider it a disgrace to the city, nor
would I do it now, but to protest against 3
the depraved and vitiated taste of newspaper P“
readers which encourage and give currency to
such impious ribaldry, for it is an undeni-
able fact that this filthy sheet has a wider
circulation, not only here but in other
cities, than any other. It lives upon lying
abuse and libellous personalities, and is
sought after with avidity by all whose in-
significance preserves them from being made
its subjects, or whose cowardice prompts
them to purchase exemption from the attacks
of the miscreant who conducts it.55

 

Even allowing for the somewhat snobbish and often
testy nature of Hone's personality, one may believe
that there was ample truth behind his views regarding
the state of popular taste in journalism; for there was
as yet a wide gulf between reality and the dream of a
truly cultivated mass, though this observation, again,
is not to deny the fact that Americans everywhere were
caught up in the quest for whatever seemed to them to
hold promise of some measure of self-education.

The picture was not altogether discouraging, how-

ever, for the market for good literature was much larger

 

55. Hone Diar , p.518.

-95-

than it had ever been before. Whereas the preceding
generation had ordered quality books from England and
France, American publishers such as Harper and Bros.,

D. Appleton, Lea Bros., J. B. Lippincott, Little Brown,

a 00., and Ticknor and Fields were now publishing not
only American but foreign works. This was a period in:
which leading authorities on history, economics, science,

and politics were writing to be read, and to a large ex-

 

tent they were read.

Popular taste in music was also commendable.
"Music for the millions” was a slogan of the day. Bos-
ton acquired a new music hall in the early fifties and
opera became a regular part of the social season.56

There was also a considerable popular interest in
the stage during this period, though the interest may
have reflected more a desire for entertainment than an
enjoyment of artistic form. Nevertheless, in the for-
ties some fifty stock companies were supported in moder-
ation, and scores of Americans were beginning to be wil-
ling to pay prices before unkown in order to see famous
European actors who were coming to America to extend
their reputations and fill their purses. The plays, ac-
cording to Fish, were often of the classic type, all
such authors from Shakespeare to Bulwer Lytton being

represented. Still, melodrama was especially favored,

the humor tended to be broad,57 and other indications

 

56. Cole, p. 239-
57. Fish, p. 145.

-97-
pointed to a slow development of an appreciation of
dramatic art for its own sake. It is probably true,
as Fish observed, that art and science were respected;
in the abstract by most of the community, while an ap-
preciation of them came almost entirely from the dis-
credited aristocracy which thus found a new field for

the activity previously given to politics.58

_L-

The part philanthropists played in the self-culture

...~

movement can only be touched upon here. As if to demon-
strate that the riches newly acquired in the fabulous
fifties had not corrupted their souls, wealthy individu-
als more than ever become public benefactors, donating
lavishly to humanitarian and cultural endeavors. The
endowments of Rensselaer, Bussey, Sheffield, and Law-
rence to institutions for scientific training; the giftsr
of George Peabody to town libraries; the bequests of
Joshua Bates and Astor to the libraries of Boston and
New York; and the founding of the Lowell Institute for
bringing lectures to Boston--these were but a few evi-
dences that art and literature could flourish in America
alongside material prosperity.

We turn now to another type of activity with which
visionaries in the period under consideration tried to
implement the self-culture ideal. This activity took
the form of numerous co-operative community experiments

where it was hoped that some kind of utopian existence

 

58. Fish, p. 333?_

-98-
could be sought out unimpeded by the crass require-
ments of competitive society. In all, more than forty
such communistic projects were attempted on U. S. soil
between 1840 and 1850;59 but we shall mention here only
two of the most notable, namely, Brook Farm and Fruit-
lands.

The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Edu-
cation, as it was originally designated by its founder
George Ripley in 1841, was an outgrowth of the Tran-
scendentalist movement. For the first two or three
years of its existence, before it became allied to
Fourierism, it was, in the words of Fish, “the contro-
versial and joyous meeting place of many members of the
rising generation where they associated on terms of
equality regardless of social origin and of sex."60

Many of the leading thinkers of the day were in
sympathy with the goals projected by the original Brook
Farm. Among them was Orestes Brownson, who ridiculed
the Goethean self-culturists because they seemed to him
to forget that man is a social being and that isolation
is impossible. Writing in Democratic Review, Brownson
said: 4

We never cultivate ourselves by direct efforts

at self-culture; we cultivate one another--
ourselves only in seeking to cultivate others.61

 

“‘59. Fish, p. 189.
60. Fish, p. 253.
61. Orestes Brownson, "Brook Farm," Democratic Review,
XI (Nevember, 1842), 482. Hereafter referred to as"Brook
Farm.

Q

-99-

Another who felt sympathetic to the Brook Farm
experiment was Elizabeth Peabody. She argued, like
Brownson, that Brook Farm was a Christian and democra-
tic enterprise which was designed to provide many peo-
ple with opportunities for self-culture by removing the
impediments usually present in the social environment.
She writes:

The final cause of society is the unfolding

of the individual man into every form of

perfection, without lot or hindrance, ac-

cording to the inward nature of each. In

strict correspondence to this, the ground

Idea of the little communities, which are

the embryo of the Kingdom to come, must be

education.62
Indeed, at the outset education was the primary objec-
tive of Brook Farm; but when in 1844 it came in contact
with Brisbane and the “associationists" and transformed
itself into the Brook Farm Phalanx, interest in the edu-
cational aspect waned. Brook Farm by 1846 had died a
natural death after its alliance with Fourierism, which
Brownson had characterized as "too mechanical, counting
the individual as nothing, the system as all."63

To Emerson, Brook Farm had always seemed the an-
tithesis of his cherished doctrine of individualism.
It seemed little more to him than another rational-

istic effort to regiment men into goodness, an attempt

to work from without rather than from within in order

 

62. Elizabeth Peabody, "A Glimpse of Christ's Idea
of Societ ," Dial, 11 (October, 1841), 227.
63. 'Brook Farm,” p. 487.

-100-
to secure reform. It seemed, in short, an elevation

of means above ends. As Emerson remarked in his

Journals:64

Moreover, to join this body Brook Farm
would be to transverse all my long-trumpeted
theory, and the instinct which spoke from it,
that one man is a counterpoise to a city--
that a man is stronger than a city, that his
solitude is more precious and beneficent
than the concert of crowds.

Emerson mistook Ripley's aims, for Brook Farm was not
in conflict with transcendental individualism. It was
instead but a means to the end of individual culture.
Ripley had recognized the futility of external arrange-
ments as a route to reform when he said in a review of
Edward Palmer's "A Letter to Those Who Think":65

The heart must be set right....The social ideas

remaining the same, no good would come from the

adoption of a new system. You do not destroy

the love of gain by dispensing with the tokens

of value.
It was simply Ripley's conviction that men had allowed
the necessity of making a living to divert them from the
chief business of life--se1f-culture. This idea was
also stated by Emerson in his “American Scholar" essay
of 1837:

The tradesmen scarcely ever gives an ideal

worth to his works, but is ridden by the

routine of his craft, and the soul is sub-
ject to dollars.55

 

64._Emerson,‘ggg§p§1§, V, 474.
65. George Ripley, Dial, I (October, 1840), 254.
66. Emerson, Works, I, 86.

-10l-

Somewhat akin to Brook Farm, at least in its op-
position to Fourierism, was the community known as
Fruitlands which Bronson Alcott and a number of asso-
cites started in 1843 with the expressed aim of pro-
viding an atmosphere favorable to self-culture and free
interchange of ideas. Fruitlands was the result of Al-
cott's visit to Ham, Surrey, England, where he was as-
sociated with Henry C. Wright and Charles Lane, both
apostles of the English Pestalozzian, James Pierrepont
Greaves. Greaves, who had recognized Alcott as a kin-
dred spirit after reading Record 9: 2 School and Conver-
England; but Greaves died in 1842 before Alcott arrived.
Alcott returned to the United States in October, 1842,
bringing with him Wright, Lane, and Lane's son William.
They had projected a "Primitive Home” and had purchased
a library with which to equip it. Lane bought 100 acres
about two miles from Harvard, Massachusetts, and in June,
1843, he and his son,, Wright, the Alcott family, Samuel
Bower, Issaac Hecker, Christopher Greene, Samuel Larned,
Abraham Everett, Anna Page, Joseph Palmer, and Abraham

Wood took possession.67

 

67. Detailed accounts of the origins of Fruitlands
may be found in the following references: Charles Lane,
"James Pierrepont Greaves," Dial, III (January, 1843), 281-
296; R. W. Emerson, "English Reformers," Dial, III (Octo-
ber, 1842), 227-241; Frank Sanborn, Bronson Alcott at g;-
cott House, England, gag Fruitiargg,_'ggg Eng-”land, 1842-
1844,7'09' "dar Rapids, Iowa, 1908); F. B. Sanborn and Wil-
liam T. Harris, A. Bronson Alcott, Hg; Life Egg Philos-
ophy, (Boston, 1893 .

-102-

During the short life of Fruitlands the principal
means of instruction was the Transcendental "conversa-
tion" which Alcott had used so successfully earlier in
his infant school. Though Fruitlands was a radical
social experiment, it was conceived, like Brook Farm,
as but a means to the end of individual culture. A-
gainst critics who viewed it as an attempt to reform
man by altering external social arrangements Charles
Lane declared the philosophy behind Fruitlands and neat-
ly disposed of Fourierism: ‘

Change the present social order altogether,

and introduce forms entirely now; let the

organs of exhibition and imbibition for

social man be newly created, still man him-

self, who is the being in the organism, re-

mains unchanged. He is thereby made no

better, and it is his bettering which is the:

one desirable end. Whereas if he were ele-

vated, the organization and form of gociety

would necessarily also be elevated.5

On this note we may fittingly close our study of
the self-culture movement; for implicit in Lanes's
phrasing, it seems to me, is the epitome of what we
have been trying to say about the Romantic milieu. Simi-
lar pronouncements by other liberal reformers could, of
course, be cited; additional evidence of how men a hun-
dred years ago attempted to implement the cultural ideal
could be brought to bear, but probably enough has been
said already to illustrate the main point, namely, that

through the self-culture movement idealism and practical

 

68. Charles Lane, "Social Tendencies," Dial, IV
(January, 1844), 188.

-103-
common sense were faithfully united as never before
or since in our history; that improvement of the indi-
vidual and amelioration of social conditions were held
forth as companion aims toward the building of a new

and better America.

EPI LOGUE

It would be impossible to convey a complete or
wholly adequate impression of the hold which the cult‘
of self-culture had on the life of Romantic New Eng-
land without going far beyond the intended scope of
this study. I have merely tried here, by presenting
a synthesis of the more accessible materials, to give‘
an outline of the movement and to point the direction
for further study.

But can we not at this point reach some conclu-
sions, however tentative? Can we not, in retrospect,
see a pattern of the mainhopes which the ideal of self-
culture held out to the majority of serious thinkers
and from this pattern draw some inferences for the
present and future course of our cultural development?

First, I think we may observe the obvious fact
that present-day interest in adult education is not:a
transient fad. It is nothing new, but instead, as we
have shown, has always been an essential part of the
American democratic process. We have seen how from the
earliest days men began to gather for discussion of
matters not immediately connected with work and business;
how during the romantic decades the concern for individ-
ual improvement gathered momentum and became so wide-
spread as to constitute a movement of considerable
scope and importance.

We noted that much was made then, as now, of the

~105-
necessity for educating the workingman in particular
in order to prevent labor uprisings. The idea, of
course, was not uniquely American, for Lord Brougham
in England had clearly seen the conservative poten-
tialities of popular education. The position of those
who proclaimed such a doctrine indicates that the movea
ment for education of the masses was not totally in-
spired by democratic or idealistic motives. It was, in
part, a product of the industrial capitalism rapidly
becoming dominant throughout the western world.

We tend to think of our American system of public
education as having been founded out of a great zeal
for the welfare of the people, but actually this zeal
was tempered by concern for the welfare of the employers
and by a desire to maintain the political and social
status quo. Economic motives were frankly recognized
in the days of the movement's birth, though we tend to
rationalize and to recognize only the more idealistic
motives, which of course, were also operative.

From the workingman's viewpoint, oh the other hand,
the spread of knowledge was much to be desired. While
it would be too much to say that public education was
wrung from the privileged classes by American labor, we
certainly recognize that labor's contributions toward
the desired goal were not unimportant. Workers educated
their own class to appreciate the value of widespread

enlightenment and contributed to the popularization of

-lO6-
the movement among legislators and the general public
by selling the idea that a voting citizen could not
discharge his obligations without a minimum of edu-
cation and leisure time for self—improvement.

We have also noted that among the people of all
classes there was almost unanimous agreement that the
diffusion of knowledge would promote general prosperity..
Almost all contended that popular education would elim-
inate or at least ameliorate such social evils as crime,
poverty, intemperance, and the more crass practices of“
capitalism. All agreed, moreover, that enlightenment"
was necessary to safeguard republican institutions against
monarchy, mobocracy, and revolution. Others urged that
the free_common school would break down the barriers of
caste and promote a true democracy of equal opportunity.
For the more philosophically and religiously inclined
thinkers, self-culture of the moral faculties promisedl
a ready way to salvation and to the creation of a more
pious community.

It is correct, then, to conclude regarding the self-
culture movement that it was at once a reaction and a
positive venture. As a reaction it was the expression
of the revolt of the New England mind against Puritan
asceticism on the one hand and Yankee materialism on
the other. As a positive venture it aimed at raising
social, economic, political, religious, and aesthetic

standards among the masses.

-lO7-

The self-culture movement concerned itself with
every facet of human endeavor and spun Utopian dreams
of the life which would open to those who took its
preachments to heart. It was, as conceived by a few
intellectual leaders, an all-encompassing solution to
most of the problems besetting romantic America.

The movement was seized upon with a sense of mis-
sion by those who, dissatisfied with the present aspect
of things, would have moulded the future of America in.
accord with the ideal of human perfectibility.

And can we not also conclude that among the Beaten
intellectuals of this period, particularly among the
select group of Transcendentalists who met frequently
for purposes of discussion of their solitary studies,
there was, as Mason Wade puts it, "an insatiable lust
for conversation and self-culture"? I have tried to
show that Transcendentalism was reformative; that it
encouraged self-culture in the individual and social
reform in the community; that while it had no aesthetics,
it was a literary and artistic movement as well as a
philosophical and religious one; that, indeed, the
Transcendentalists' interest in cultural ideals should
no longer be regarded as a mere corollary to their deep
trines of individualism but rather as the very focal
point of much of their activity.

And finally, let us reiterate an idea suggested
at the beginning of this study: the many institutions

-108-
and media for disseminating learning in the romantic
era were not isolated phenomena but were actually re-
lated facets of a single cultural ideal. Opportunities
for sharing in the life of the mind presented themselves
on both the formal and the informal levels and in many:
different disguises. But we frankly recognize that,
despite a tremendous lot of humbug which has been talk-
ed about the public school system, education of a fora
mal sort made a poor showing until after the Civil War.
If it was true, as one observer commented, that the
American people by 1860 had become “the most generally
educated and intelligent people on the earth,“ it was
due mainly not to formal schooling but to the less fer-
mal intellectual and cultural influences which surround-
ed the average citizen and through which a measure of
self-culture could be realized. Such opportunities,
we have seen, were plentiful indeed.

There remains for us now only to inquire into the
fate of the movement. What happened to it after the
Civil War? Why, with so much encouragement from intel-
lectuals and with so many opportunities which seemed
to promise continued growth, did it tend to fade from
the foreground?

Several possible explanations may be offered. In
the first place, as already suggested, the self-culture
idea; has never really disappeared; but as a movement

it has declined partly because its goals have been

-lO9-
quietly absorbed into the total cultural scene and, thus
entrenched, need no longer to be continually driven
home.

Then, too, we might guess that improved facilities
for free public schooling after the Civil War had much
to do with the decline of the movement. There was far
less need to encourage people to embark on a program of.
self-culture, using any informal means at hand, when an
easier and more direct route seemed to open before them.

But in the final analysis the reasons may be sought.
in certain inherent weaknesses in the way the movement-
itself was conceived and carried out. Perhaps the fault
lay in the hypocrisy of the public mind which allowed
superficiality to pass for real intellectual achieve-
ment. The old values created by tradition were being
undermined by the mechanistic sciences natural to the
adolescence of industrial society; yet popular morality.
insisted on a surface observance of outmoded standards
even while applying the new knowledge to everyday liv-
ing. This hypocrisy was perhaps best reflected by the
millions who boasted of books they had never read simply
because the authors were on the traditional list of
"musts" for the cultured person.

The self-culture movement marked the growth of a
concept of social education, of learning as an instru-
ment of democratic action. But circumstances in the

nineteenth century made traditional academic practices

~110-
inadequate as guides to the new development. Leaders
of the movement recognized that formal methods of
schooling, philosophic divisions of subject matter, and
professional teaching institutions possessed too narrow
a base to satisfy the urgent social need for wider
sharing of knowledge. But what they did not recognize,
or at least did not do anything about, was the fact
that the new instruments that appeared in answer to press—
ing wants lacked clearcut form and proper co-ordination
with one another. To a certain extent the instruments
for diffusion of knowledge lacked planned social foun-
dations for their educational programs, and this lack
was partly due to the lack of theoretical material on
the relationship between the structure of a community
and the educational needs outside the formal school
system.

Facts and information provided must be capable of
being used as a basis for social action. Education
linked to a social purpose needs to develop methods and
teaching techniques peculiarly its own, for the old
rules and narrow disciplines seldom lead to effective
social action. They belong to a tradition which views
the development of the individual mind as the final and
of learning. This tradition, rather than any clear
social purpose, seemed to predominate in the self-cul-
ture movement and was, I believe, part of its undoing.

After all, when high sounding political and social

 

-lll—
aims are stripped from mass education, what remains is
the practical problem of how to convey the benefits of
learning to large numbers of people earning their liv-
ing by hard work. It cannot be solved byworkers them-
selves through any of their political or economic group-
ings. It Egg £23 solved completely or very satisfacto-
rily by the cafeteria-style of self-culture which ro-
mantic New England undertook with such hope and such
vigor. It is essentially a problem of teaching and edu-
cational organization. And here, we may conclude, the
implications for the present and future state of the
humanities are too painfully clear to need further

elaboration.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(A.)Works cited in this thesis.

Adam, T. R. The Museum and Po ular culture. For the
American Association for fault Education. New York,

1939.
. The Worker'g Road 39 Learni 5. For the Amer-
ican Association for Adult Education. New York, 1940.
Adams, James Truslow. Frontiers in American Culture.
New York: Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1954.
. The Foundipg 2: New England. Boston: At-
lantic Monthly Press, 1922. "
Alcott, Amos Bronson. Th2 Doctrine and Disci line of
Human culture. Boston: Jas. Munroe & Co., 1833.
. Spirit Cultupp. Boston: Joseph Dowe,.184l.
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