Answer to Question 1
The Romantics focus on nature, unspoiled and unpolluted, revealed their ideas of the oneness between God and the universe. This pantheistic outlook, more typical of Eastern than Western religious philosophy, came to pervade the literature of European and American Romantics. The American transcendentalists, in particular, found sympathetic ideals in such mystical philosophies as Neoplatonism, and in the religions of East Asia, introduced into the Boston area in the early nineteenth century. From Hinduism and Buddhism, they adopted a holistic philosophy based in pantheism and in the ideal of a universal brotherhood shared by humanity, nature, and God. Ralph Waldo Emerson had great admiration for Asian philosophy, and Hinduism in particular, derived from his familiarity with the sacred Hindu texts, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita.
The same spirit of naturalism led many Romantics to idealize Native American culture. Historians who observed this culture, such as George Catlin, popularized the image of Native Americans as people who deeply respected nature and the natural world. Harmony with nature and its living creatures was central to Native American culture, which looked upon living thingsplants, animals, and human beingsas sacred parts of an all-embracing, spiritually charged environment. The Native American spirit was popularized by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the painters Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt.
Answer to Question 2
C
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