Based on a close reading of the very first issue of The Dial (July 1840, item hvd.32044054766902-01), the origin of the journal's name is explained in the opening essay, "The Editors to the Reader" — a manifesto written (in all likelihood) by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. The passage that names the journal appears near the end of the essay:
"And so with diligent hands and good intent we set down our Dial on the earth. We wish it may resemble that instrument in its celebrated happiness, that of measuring no hours but those of sunshine. Let it be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics. Or to abide by our chosen image, let it be such a Dial, not as the dead face of a clock, hardly even such as the Gnomon in a garden, but rather such a Dial as is the Garden itself, in whose leaves and flowers and fruits the suddenly awakened sleeper is instantly apprised not what part of dead time, but what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving."— item hvd.32044054766902-01 (July 1840)
This single passage is extraordinarily dense and reveals at least four layers of meaning in the name The Dial:
The primary image is that of a sundial — an instrument that measures time by the shadow cast by the sun. A sundial has what the essay calls "its celebrated happiness, that of measuring no hours but those of sunshine." Unlike a mechanical clock, which ticks through darkness and storm alike, a sundial registers only the hours when the sun is shining. The metaphor is deliberate: The Dial will record only what is luminous, hopeful, and alive. It will not chronicle the darkness of convention, rigidity, and despair. It will be, as the essay says, "one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics."
The essay immediately distinguishes the dial from "the dead face of a clock." A clock measures time mechanically and indifferently — every hour is the same, whether it is lived or wasted. The dial, by contrast, measures only what is illuminated. The distinction is philosophical: the clock represents the dead, quantitative time of convention and routine, while the dial represents the living, qualitative time of spiritual and intellectual growth. The Dial will not be a mere timekeeper of literary events but an instrument that registers the light of thought.
The essay then extends the metaphor further: "hardly even such as the Gnomon in a garden, but rather such a Dial as is the Garden itself." The gnomon is the physical pointer of a sundial — a mere instrument. But the garden is a living thing, whose "leaves and flowers and fruits" are themselves a kind of dial, registering not the passage of "dead time" but "what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving." The metaphor thus escalates from instrument to organism: The Dial is not a tool that measures life from outside but a living thing that embodies and expresses life from within. The journal itself is the garden; its essays, poems, and reviews are the leaves, flowers, and fruits by which the reader can apprehend the state of the spirit.
The passage addresses "the suddenly awakened sleeper" who is "instantly apprised not what part of dead time, but what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving." The sleeper is the reader — or perhaps the nation — awakening from the slumber of convention to discover that a new spiritual life is already underway. The dial does not tell the sleeper what time it is; it tells the sleeper what is growing. This is a quintessentially Transcendentalist conception: time is not a sequence of empty moments but a process of organic development, and the purpose of the journal is to make that development visible.
The naming passage comes at the end of an essay that frames the entire project of The Dial. The essay begins by announcing "a new design" and describes "a revolution" in thought that is already underway in New England:
"Those, who have immediately acted in editing the present Number, cannot accuse themselves of any unbecoming forwardness in their undertaking, but rather of a backwardness, when they remember how often in many private circles the work was projected, how eagerly desired, and only postponed because no individual volunteered to combine and concentrate the free-will offerings of many coöperators."— item hvd.32044054766902-01 (July 1840)
The essay describes a movement that has "no external organization, no badge, no creed, no name" but is united by "a common love of truth, and love of its work." It is "a protest against usage, and a search for principles." The Dial is to be the expression of this movement — not its organ or its manifesto but its recording instrument, its dial:
"As we wish not to multiply books, but to report life, our resources are therefore not so much the pens of practised writers, as the discourse of the living, and the portfolios which friendship has opened to us."— item hvd.32044054766902-01 (July 1840)
The journal will not produce literature in the conventional sense but will "report life" — and the dial is the instrument of that reporting. It will measure not the dead hours of literary production but the living hours of spiritual sunshine.
In the same first issue, Bronson Alcott's "Orphic Sayings" contain a striking parallel use of the dial metaphor:
"Thou art, my heart, a soul-flower, facing ever and following the motions of thy sun, opening thyself to her vivifying ray, and pleading thy affinity with the celestial orbs. Thou dost the livelong day Dial on time thine own eternity."— item hvd.32044054766902-01 (July 1840)
Here the heart itself is a dial — a soul-flower that follows the sun and measures not temporal time but "thine own eternity." The passage echoes the naming passage's central insight: the dial measures not mechanical time but the inner time of the soul's growth toward the divine. Alcott's Orphic Saying thus complements the editorial manifesto: the dial is not merely the journal's name but its philosophical principle — the idea that true time is the time of the spirit, and that the purpose of the journal is to register that time.
The Dial takes its name from the sundial — an instrument that measures only the hours of sunshine. But the name carries a triple significance: the dial is (1) an instrument that registers only what is luminous and alive, not what is dark and dead; (2) a living thing rather than a mechanical device, more like a garden than a clock; and (3) a means by which the awakened soul can perceive not the passage of empty time but the state of spiritual growth that has "arrived and arriving." The name is thus a compressed statement of the journal's entire Transcendentalist philosophy: that life is not measured by the clock of convention but by the dial of the spirit, and that the purpose of the journal is to record the hours of that dial — the hours when the sun of truth and beauty shines upon the mind.
One might ask: did the later Dial — the Chicago literary review of 1885–1929 — retain any awareness of this original meaning? Or did the name become merely an inherited title, detached from the sundial metaphor that gave it philosophical significance? A search of the later volumes for references to the naming passage could reveal whether the Transcendentalist origin of the name was remembered or forgotten across the journal's long history.