Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

limitless, unpredictable dimensions, beyond the grasp of man’s measuringmind. However, Humanity, the primary creature, made in the image of theCreator, could conceivably use words (use the Word) in ways that reflect theinfinitely mobile, multidimensional capacity of the original Word to createthe living world. If the Spirit is multidimensional, endlessly vital, does notour language need to be multidimensional, endlessly vital?Hence, the human language that will be able to do justice to the livingspirit will not be simply rational exposition, nor will it be simply the almostarithmetic allegory, “rock equals steadfastness.” No, the human languagethat will reflect the divine spirit, in kind, will be quickening, suggestive,with layers of meaning coexisting, facets simultaneously reflecting, symbolssuggestive in numerous directions, a language luminous, numinous, notfixed but flowing, as the imagination of the ultimate I AM flows.Now, let us return to the Unitarian influence, because, as Philip Gurahas said, “Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, ElizabethPeabody, and other Transcendentalists who became concerned withthe problem of language (albeit to various degrees) were nurtured withinthe cocoon of the Unitarian Church.” 6 The Unitarian religion was based onJohn Locke’s empiricist philosophy. Just as Locke viewed the soul as tabularasa, a blank slate to be filled with impressions, so, echoing the medievalnominalists, Locke viewed language as an arbitrary group of signs arrangedfor external convenience.Elaborating upon Locke, the Scotsman Thomas Reid and other fellow“Common Sense” philosophers valued observation of the world through thesenses, experiencing language therefore as reflecting the human particularsof time and space, not as reflecting any eternal reality. Such attitudes, rootedin Locke, elaborated by the Scottish Common Sense philosophers, promulgatedthrough the Unitarian Church, powerfully permeated Harvard, Yale,and Princeton in the early 1800s.By the 1820s though, some Harvard students were becoming excitedby Kant and Coleridge, who articulated a knowing that preceded experience.One young Vermonter studied Divinity in both Andover and Cambridge,Massachusetts, publishing in fact an edition of Coleridge’s Aids to Reflectionin 1829. James Marsh wrote an essay exploring how an emerging modernsensibility resulted from a new relationship between faith, reason, andimagination. 7 Marsh saw the Enlightenment’s emphasis on logical rationalityleaving faith weakened. He felt Coleridge’s understanding of imaginationwas the key to healing the spiritual anemia of early 19th century America.Coleridge, reflecting on recent church history, recognized that, “Too soondid the Doctors of the Church forget that the heart, the moral nature, was154