"The spirit of the time is in every form a protest against usage and a search for principles." (The Dial, Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Transcendentalism, an American cultural movement formed in the early 19th century in New England, showed many ambitions. In the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the two most famous and influential Transcendentalists, we may see that they tried to reform the society they were born into. They discussed numerous disquieting topics in their writings. However, Transcendentalists put the greatest emphasis on the areas of the moral, cultural, and pol…
