Editor Odell Shepard says in a footnote that this entry from Alcott’s journal is “one of the clearest and most compact statements that Alcott ever made in writing of his main metaphysical idea.”
Reading it, I conclude that the guys upstairs that I have been in connection with for so long are themselves Transcendentalists. New England version? German idealists? Who knows? Who cares? All I know for sure is that the day I first opened Walden was a day of instant recognition, though it took me many a long year to grow into it.
Alcott, on Dec. 21, 1835:
I set out from the wide ground of Spirit. This is; all else is manifestation. Body is Spirit at its circumference. It denotes its confines to the external sense; it individualizes, defines Spirit, breaks the Unity into Multiplicity and places under the vison of man parts of the great Whole which, standing thus separate, can be taken in by the mind – too feeble to apprehend the whole at once and requiring all save an individual thing to be excluded at a single view. – Infinitude is too wide for man to take in. he is therefore permitted to take in portions and spread his vision over the wide circumference by little and little; and in these portions doth the Infinite shadow forth itself, God in all and all in God.
I wish the guys upstairs had been able to state so concisely their view of reality; it would have saved me an immense amount of writing and typing!
I’d strongly suggest that the reason we can understand and appreciate Alcott’s ‘concise view of reality’ is because of your “immense amount of writing and typing”, TGU and other non-3Der’s incredible patience and effort, and the work and study us 3-Der’s have done over the years.
“You know it don’t come easy …”
Thanks, Jim. And one reason i was able to persevere was the support of a few faithful readers like you, who made it possible to believe that i was not declaiming to the winds.