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"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men." Taken from the closing lines of American Transcendentalism's seminal text, "The American Scholar" by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836, this selection defines the movement in many fewer words than its author may have thought possible. For all his pomp and rhetoric, Emerson's message is rather simple: the individual is connected to the whole of humanity by shared reason.

At this highest (allegedly divine) level, all of mankind can converge over a single set of ideals, and work toward a common goal as one. But let's take a step back to Transcendentalism's most direct criticstwo men who wrote with a skeptical eye toward the head-in-the-clouds intellectuals of the movement itself: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, as he did in fact participate in the movement, is able to offer a rather unique take on its shortcomings. In his novel, The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne writes of a Transcendentally-geared New England farming commune called Blithedale. This account is, admittedly, based loosely on his experiences at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, MA circa 1841. It follows Miles Coverdale, the narrator, through a cast of self-interested characters that highlight the flaws in Emerson's optimism.

Coverdale, first of all, gives himself away within pages of the novel's exposition when asked for a favor from his neighbor: "I was ready to do the old man any amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself." He then comes down with an illness his first morning at Blithedale and is conveniently able to skip out on weeks of manual farm labor that the self-sustaining community relies on for food. This attitude sets the stage for the rest of the novel that, frighteningly, resembles The O.C. or Melrose Place.

One character, Mr. Hollingsworth, thinly veils his monomaniacal intentions of turning Blithedale into a colony for reforming criminals. This prison is much more than a passing interest for Hollingsworth and, Coverdale describes him as one of those men who "grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts into little else save that one principle." He falls into a love triangle with an empowered proto-feminist, Zenobia, and a young virgin, Priscilla. Coverdale spends the novel spying and feeling jealous, and

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