God and Communes

Hawthorne’s polemic against mesmerism and his rejection of the Brook Farm community are tied closely together, then, biographically as well as intellectually. His encounter with the reformers at Brook Farm may have helped him articulate the error at the core of the transcendentalist Newness: it undermines the metaphysical foundation for mysterious personhood and responsible moral agency, and is thereby unable to fulfill its own promise of deepening the experience of both individuality and love.

Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance