presently became known to the world as the Transcendentalists; a word
borrowed from Germany and rather too formidable for general use in our
busy country.

Whether they were overweighted by their ponderous title or whether they
created an artificial atmosphere too etherial for common mortals, the
first generation of Transcendentalists was also the last. They had no
successors and _The Dial_, as their organ, was short lived. It
undoubtedly exercised a considerable influence in its day; and
individual members of the long-named fraternity did much to mould the
thought of the American people in after years. Among these were Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, George William Curtis, Francis George
Shaw, translator of Eugene Sue and of George Sand, and father of Colonel
Robert Shaw, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Dr. Howe and his fiancee
Julia Ward, Charles A. Dana, John S. Dwight and perhaps a score of other
bright spirits. Occasional attendants at their gatherings and
contributors to _The Dial_ were Horace Greeley, William Page,
afterward President of The National Academy of Design, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson and my father, Charles Sears. Their acknowledged leader was
the Rev. George Ripley, the founder of Brook Farm.

I do not know anything more about this old time Transcendentalism than I
do about the Pragmatism of our day, and that is not much. I believe the
two schools of thought were alike in this, they both held that modern
civilization has gone sadly and badly astray in the pursuit of wealth.
Not money but the love of money is, now as ever, the root of all evil.
The first work of the makers of America was necessarily the creation of
property, the accumulation of the means of life, but we have pushed this
pursuit too far, have gone money mad not knowing when we should stop
trying to get rich and give our time and attention to higher things.