originality of speech and conduct, exempt alike from apology or
dictation, from servility or scorn. Hence, too, among the weak,
whimsies, affectation, rude disregard of proprieties, slothful
neglect of common duties, surrender to the claims of natural appetite,
self-indulgence, self-absorption, and self-idolatry.

By their very posture of mind, as seekers of the new, the
Transcendentalists were critics and "come-outers" from the old.
Neither the church, the state, the college, society, nor even reform
associations, had a hold upon their hearts. The past might be well
enough for those who, without make-belief, could yet put faith in
common dogmas and usages; but for them the matin-bells of a new day
were chiming, and the herald-trump of freedom was heard upon the
mountains. Hence, leaving ecclesiastical organizations, political
parties, and familiar circles, which to them were brown with drought,
they sought in covert nooks of friendship for running waters, and
fruit from the tree of life. The journal, the letter, became of
greater worth than the printed page; for they felt that systematic
results were not yet to be looked for, and that in sallies of
conjecture, glimpses and flights of ecstasy, the "Newness" lifted
her veil to her votaries. Thus, by mere attraction of affinity, grew
together the brotherhood of the "Like-minded," as they were pleasantly
nicknamed by outsiders, and by themselves, on the ground that no two
were of the same opinion. The only password of membership to this
association, which had no compact, records, or officers, was a hopeful
and liberal spirit; and its chance conventions were determined merely
by the desire of the caller for a "talk," or by the arrival of some
guest from a distance with a budget of presumptive novelties. Its
"symposium" was a pic-nic, whereto each brought of his gains, as he
felt prompted, a bunch of wild grapes from the woods, or bread-corn