According to transcendentalists like Emerson, a person who follows intuition and remains faithful to personal vision will become a more moral, idealistic individual. For many of Emerson's contemporaries, including Henry David Thoreau and Amos Bronson Alcott, such a course of action resulted in an idealism that formed the basis for their actions, especially actions that undertook to critique and change what was perceived as evil in society. For example, Thoreau went to jail rather than pay taxes to support America's involvement in the Mexican War. Transcendentalism also provided one major philosophical foundation for the abolition of slavery. However, while individuals such as Emerson combined transcendentalism with spirituality, the essentially pantheistic nature of the theory paved the way for more materialistic and exploitative expression. The doctrine of self-reliance mutated from an expression of moral integrity to a simple assertion of self-promotion and selfishness.
To a great extent, transcendentalism was a local phenomenon centered in Concord, Massachusetts, and was developed by a group of individuals from New England and New York who knew and communicated closely with each other. Their ideas were seldom successfully put into action, but at least one attempt is worthy of mention. Brook Farm, a utopian community founded on transcendentalist principles, lasted some six or seven years before it dissolved, to the financial loss of many who had invested in the venture. The novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived there for a time and later wrote about the experience in The Blithedale Romance (1852), felt that its weakness was its lack of government, and that the community failed because too few of its members were willing to do the physical work required to make it viable. Although it failed materially, Emerson, with his characteristic optimism, believed it to be a noble experiment that provided invaluable education and enlightenment for the participants. He did not live there, but he visited the site and included a brief, personal account of Brook Farm in one of his writings, Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England.
