a lecture read at the masonic temple, boston, january, 1842 the first thing we have to say respecting what are called new views here in new england, at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times. The light is always identical in its composition, but it falls on a great variety of objects, and by so falling is first revealed to us, not in its own form, for it is formless, but in theirs in like manner, thought only appears in the objects it classifies. What is popularly called transcendentalism among us, is idealism idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, materialists and idealists the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man the idealist on the power of thought and of will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture. These two modes of thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher nature.

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He concedes all that the other affirms, admits the impressions of sense, admits their coherency, their use and beauty, and then asks the materialist for his grounds of assurance that things are as his senses represent them. But i, he says, affirm facts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts which are of the same nature as the faculty which reports them, and not liable to doubt facts which in their first appearance to us assume a native superiority to material facts, degrading these into a language by which the first are to be spoken facts which it only needs a retirement from the senses to discern. Every materialist will be an idealist but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist. He does not deny the presence of this table, this chair, and the walls of this room, but he looks at these things as the reverse side of the tapestry, as the other end. This manner of looking at things, transfers every object in nature from an independent and anomalous position without there, into the consciousness. Even the materialist condillac, perhaps the most logical expounder of materialism, was constrained to say, though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves it is always our own thought that we perceive. What more could an idealist say? the materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks at fine spun theories, at star gazers and dreamers, and believes that his life is solid, that he at least takes nothing for granted, but knows where he stands, and what he does.

Yet how easy it is to show him, that he also is a phantom walking and working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily questions, to find his solid universe growing dim and impalpable before his sense. And this wild balloon, in which his whole venture is embarked, is a just symbol of his whole state and faculty. One thing, at least, he says is certain, and does not give me the headache, that figures do not lie the multiplication table has been hitherto found unimpeachable truth and, moreover, if i put a gold eagle in my safe, i find it again to morrow but for these thoughts, i know not whence they are. But ask him why he believes that an uniform experience will continue uniform, or on what grounds he founds his faith in his figures, and he will perceive that his mental fabric is built up on just as strange and quaking foundations as his proud edifice of stone. In the order of thought, the materialist takes his departure from the external world, and esteems a man as one product of that. The idealist takes his departure from his consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance. The materialist respects sensible masses, society, government, social art, and luxury, every establishment, every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of space, or amount of objects, every social action.

The idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical, namely, the rank which things themselves take in his consciousness not at all, the size or appearance. Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors. Although in his action overpowered by the laws of action, and so, warmly cooperating with men, even preferring them to himself, yet when he speaks scientifically, or after the order of thought, he is constrained to degrade persons into representatives of truths.

He does not respect labor, or the products of labor, namely, property, otherwise than as a manifold symbol, illustrating with wonderful fidelity of details the laws of being he does not respect government, except as far as it reiterates the law of his mind nor the church nor charities nor arts, for themselves but hears, as at a vast distance, what they say, as if his consciousness would speak to him through a pantomimic scene. His experience inclines him to behold the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard all things as having a subjective or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid unknown centre of him. From this transfer of the world into the consciousness, this beholding of all things in the mind, follow easily his whole ethics. The height, the deity of man is, to be self sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force.

Society is good when it does not violate me but best when it is likest to solitude. All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of those that are independent of your will. Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects let the soul be erect, and all things will go well. Let any thought or motive of mine be different from that they are, the difference will transform my condition and economy. I this thought which is called i, is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

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As i am, so shall i associate, and, so shall i act caesar's history will paint out caesar. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any reality i say, i make my circumstance: but if you ask me, whence am i? i feel like other men my relation to that fact which cannot be spoken, or defined, nor even thought, but which exists, and will exist. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? and so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own. In action, he easily incurs the charge of antinomianism by his avowal that he, who has the lawgiver, may with safety not only neglect, but even contravene every written commandment.