Rooted in Britain, and grown in the minds of two well-known philosophers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, a movement called transcendentalism sprouted and spread across New England through publications such as The Dial. Since its inception in early nineteenth-century America, many have tried to define this complicated and multi-faceted idea. One of transcendentalism's key components was that it recognized few absolutes; therefore contradiction was at the core of both its ideas and its language.
             Transcendentalism emphasized individualism at the same time it stressed community; it emphasized self-sufficiency at the same time it stressed responsibility to helps one's neighbor. Emerson specifies that even the individual self contains conflicting elements. We can and should change our minds completely: we should "think now" what today requires, and tomorrow we should think "what tomorrow thinks," even if it "contradicts everything" (p. 270) that we said before. Emerson states that such contradiction is essential to personal growth, and in Self-Reliance he refers to "consistency" as an obstruction to growth because it gives a person "nothing to do" (p. 271).
             Contradictory elements are written into the very language of transcendentalists. Both Emerson and Thoreau use aphorisms to articulate their philosophy. In Walden Thoreau uses aphorisms to explain the economy of a transcendentalist: "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone" (p. 282) because "it makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail" (p. 283). Thoreau's most powerful aphorism occurs in Civil Disobedience where he famously says, "that government is best which governs not at all" (p. 290). Emerson explains the self-contradiction inherent in his aphorisms in Self-Relian
             ...