Emerson formulates the philosophy of transcendentalism in his essay "Nature"

Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia

"Emerson's Concord neighbors included Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott . . . No description of the environment can fully explain an extraordinary outburst of genius. . . . Transcendentalism was one of the many forms of religious awakening characteristic of the period . . . The Transcendentalists shared in the millennial mood of their times--not in a biblical or Christian way, but in the sense that they saw themselves initiating a new order of the ages, democratic and free, in harmony with the divine. . . . Their writings, even today, urge us to independent reflection in the face of fads, conformity, blind partisanship, and mindless consumerism. . . . 'In this continent,--asylum of all nations, --the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the European tribes,--of the Africans, and the Polynesians will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new literature.'" [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 618-26, 655]