"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men" As Ralph Waldo Emerson concluded his lecture at Harvard in 1837, he issued this challenge to all men, arguing for a new American culture, freed from European bondage and for the rebirth of an intellectual and artistic life that the society had previously lost. This renaissance was what would become known as modern transcendentalism: a complex, multi-faceted philosophy. Decades before, America had won its political independence, and unlike any European style, t