Yet this curious movement, bleak and squalid as it may seem to
men nurtured in the venerable decorum of ecclesiastical tradition, was
at bottom identical with the yearning for stronger spiritual emotions,
and the cravings of religious zeal, that had in older times filled
monasteries, manned the great orders, and sent wave upon wave of
pilgrims and crusaders to holy places. 'It is really amazing,' as was
said by Franklin or somebody else of his fashion of utilitarianism,
'that one of the passions which it is hardest to develop in man is the
passion for his own material comfort and temporal well-being.'
Emerson has put on record this mental intoxication of the progressive
people around him, with a pungency that might satisfy the Philistines
themselves.[5] From 1820 to 1844, he said, New England witnessed a
general criticism and attack on institutions, and in all practical
activities a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from the social
organisations. Calvinists and Quakers began to split into old school and
new school. Goethe and the Germans became known. Swedenborg, in spite of
his taint of craziness, by the mere prodigy of his speculations, began
'to spread himself into the minds of thousands'--including in no
unimportant degree the mind of Emerson himself.[6] Literary criticism
counted for something in the universal thaw, and even the genial
humanity of Dickens helped to break up the indurations of old theology.
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