Brook Farm at West Roxbury was larger and longer-lived than Fruitlands. It was established by George and Sophia Ripley in 1841 to promote a balance between intellectual exertion and manual labor. It continued until 1847, for part of its existence in accordance with the principles of Charles Fourier. Life at Brook Farm included entertainment and social life as well as back-breaking labor. Side-by-side with farming and other activities related to the necessities, there were dramatic productions, parties, singing, dancing, picnics, hikes, sledding, skating, reading and literature groups, and lectures.
Finally, although Thoreau's life at Walden Pond between 1845 and 1847 constituted a community of only one, his stay there was just as much an experiment in living and an attempt at applied idealism as were Brook Farm and Fruitlands. His Walden, or, Life in the Woods, based on his experience at the pond, was published in 1854. In the chapter "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau wrote:
Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star. . . . In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment. . . . And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us.
By living intimately with nature at Walden, Thoreau attained to the higher truths that so concerned all of the Transcendentalists.
