Conclusion

Abstract Although in this survey of Transcendentalism and the Orient, I have sketched the connections between the various writers and traditions or currents of thought, I have not generalized much about the Transcendentalists and the East. In this conclusion, therefore, I will speak more generally, not only about Emerson and Thoreau and the late Transcendentalists, but also about the influences of Transcendentalist Orientalism that attempt, as Emerson put it, to cast “the very oldest of thoughts ... into the mould of these new times?”1 As I suggested earlier, Emerson and Thoreau could well be seen as the peaks in the Transcendentalist landscape, particularly in regard to Transcendentalist Orientalism. No one else even approaches their intuitive positive Orientalism among the Transcendentalists, early or late. Thoreau was a natural ascetic and influenced by Alcott’s Pythagoreanism, but he was deeply affected by his readings of Asian scriptures. A surveyor, a builder, and a farmer, Thoreau worked with what was at hand, and his assimilation of Eastern teachings was revealed simultaneously in his her mitage at Walden, his vegetarianism, his ethical purity, and his imaginative life. By contrast, Emerson was much more a visionary. Though the analogy is in some ways inadequate, Raphael’s depiction of Aristotle and Plato comes to mind, for Thoreau’s hand, like Aristotle’s, pointed out toward the world before him, whereas Emerson’s, like Plato’s, pointed up toward the Transcendent. Thoreau was the one who more clearly ignored the values of the world, whereas Emerson, some have argued, returned to being a member of the social elite.2 But in fundamental ways, Emerson and Thoreau were in agreement.