James's father, Henry James, Sr. (1811-1882), revolted against the rigid Calvinism of the family into which he had been born but was happy that the family's money (though split among thirteen heirs) enabled him to graduate from Union College (1830) and then study for a couple of years at the theological seminary in Princeton. He found orthodoxy just as unpalatable and American pedagogical methods thin: so he voyaged to England and was soon influenced by Robert Sandeman, an anti-Calvinist Scotsman whose letters the elder James edited in 1838. A more positive source of religious inspiration for him was Emanuel Swedenborg. James was impressed by the Swedenborgian doctrine that God is a God of love not terror and by the ideas that a spiritual cause lies behind every natural object, that the Trinity is a division of essences only, and that Christ's resurrection is emblematic of man's glorious destiny. As for secular thought, James followed the social philosophy of Charles Fourier, who argued that individualism and competition are immoral, and that true happiness and goodness come from an optimistic expression of passion. Fourier sought to establish small social units--humanistic agricultural communes which would break down the unnatural restraints of so-called civilized society.
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