102 PROSPECT HILL ROAD.
HARVARD, MA,
United States of America
01451

For a brief seven months, from June 1843 to January 1844, Bronson Alcott and his “consociate” family at Fruitlands, he implemented a daily routine of education, diet and social responsibility that expressed his conviction that by reforming the individual, one could reform society. He believed that Fruitlands would stand out among the many other communal experiments of the day as an example of the great potential of the spirit at work. Bronson Alcott was an educator and philosopher. His Temple School in Boston gained him international fame. Alcott believed childhood education must be moral, intellectual, spiritual and physical.

At Fruitlands, Alcott was able to withdraw from institutions and social structures and try to re-create a new relationship between individuals and their world. Foremost in his vision for a new order was a philosophy that would explain and integrate changes in science, technology and man’s relationship to God. He believed that the universe was benevolent, or filled with goodness, and that this spiritual essence was a part of everything. He also believed that people’s lives were all part of “One Divine Nature that flows through all visible things.” The material world, especially nature, expressed another manifestation of the universal divinity -- ideas that became central aspects of Transcendentalism.

*taken from museum website*