Impact on America
Despite the fact that Transcendentalism lasted only ten years, yet it greatly influenced the society of America and later help the evolution of other literary movements. It was believed that Transcendentalism directly influenced the New Thought Movement, which was a spiritual movement originated from the United States around 19th century. The New Thought Movement promotes similar ideas compare to Transcendentalism, such as intelligence within our own minds and the existence of spirits. This movement was later known to be the mental science, in which people believes that sickness originated from our mind and mind has its ability to repair it. Another idea originated from the mental science is that mind has the capacity to overdrive matter.
Transcendentalism not only influenced New Thought Movement, but also greatly affected people's approach to philosophy, politics, and religion. Although the Transcendentalists constructed a manifesto with rules that one would need to follow in order to become one;however, one could clearly see the stress on ideas like challenging authorities higher than you just for moral reasons and believe in your intuition not your knowledge in their articles. Although Transcendentalism only lasts for a few years, yet these ideas were certainly passed down and greatly influenced different religious groups like Buddhism and Hinduism.
Civil Disobedience written by Henry David Thoreau greatly influenced people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi. People believe that civil disobedience campaigned by these people could greatly affect the existence of government structure. By conducting these somewhat rebellious actions , we could probably reach a stage in which government loses the power to govern its citizens, and people has the ability to rule themselves instead of relying on a system to do so and this is just like what Thoreau stated in his article.
Transcendentalism not only affected the growth of other movements or religion, it also has an impact on the behavior of American citizens. Although the beliefs of Transcendentalism did not quickly change the thoughts of Americans, yet it helped them to build a stronger foundation on the idea of judging people with moral values and not by the idea of whether they are right or wrong.