The Society

 

               “The Philosophical Society was born into the world, and proceeded to its work under its two Leaders,” Brockmeyer and Harris (Snider 1920). St. Louis Movement not a doctrine for the few, but a “pervasive influence in the community.” Denton Snider, one of the younger members knew well that “philosophy brought not revenue, but rather expense.” Each member had a day time job “which gave him bread, but not the bread of life.” Only philosophy could do that. The president of the Group was Brokmeyer while the secretary was Harris. They were the officers because of their experience writing and reading Hegel, and other philosophers.  The group first met in 1858. Snider met them informally at a small gathering in North St. Louis the  autumn of 1865.

               “Harris was a zealous missionary by nature” and a great teacher, according to Snider (1920) “he was deemed the philosophic master.”  Harris had all of Hegel's Works in the original German. The primary task of the group was to translate and discuss Hegel's works. “The Book of Fate” or the bible of the group was Hegel's Larger Logic. The Logic was “declared to be the movement of the pure essences of the world, stripped from their outer illusory vesture.” The Larger Logic was known as the most difficult book in the world and Snider even says “My wrestle with it was long, intense, and not wholly victorious at the close.” But Snider pulls through “after years of entanglement (he) pulled through its magic web of abstractions and obstructions, and left them behind..., (he was) not lost but transcended.” The first English translation of the Logic existed only in writing, and it was made before the Civil War. After the Civil War the Logic became for Harris “his one Supreme Book, his Bible; it meant to him more than any other human production, and was probably the source of his great spiritual transformation from social hostility and inner discord and even anarchism, to a reconciliation with his government and indeed with the World-Order, after his two maddened the from civilization (Snider 1920).”