little directly to do with the specific tenets of theological
Unitarianism, and in fact marked a revolt against the more
prosaic and conventional pattern of English and American
Unitarian thought. But this movement, known as Transcendentalism,
would have been impossible without a preliminary and liberalizing
stirring of the soil. It was a fascinating moment of release for
some of the most brilliant and radical minds of New England. Its
foremost representative in our literature was Ralph Waldo
Emerson, as its chief exponents in England were Coleridge and
Carlyle. We must understand its meaning if we would perceive the
quality of much of the most noble and beautiful writing produced
in New England during the Golden Age.

What then is the significance of the word Transcendental?
Disregarding for the moment the technical development of this
term as used by German and English philosophers, it meant for
Emerson and his friends simply this: whatever transcends or goes
beyond the experience of the senses. It stressed intuition rather
than sensation, direct perception of ultimate truth rather than
the processes of logic. It believed in man's ability to apprehend
the absolute ideas of Truth, Rectitude, Goodness. It resembled
the Inner Light of the Quaker, though the Quaker traced this to a
supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit, while the
Transcendentalist believed that a vision of the eternal realities
was a natural endowment of the human mind. It had only to be
trusted. Stated in this form, it is evident that we have here a
very ancient doctrine, well known in the literature of India and
of Greece. It has been held by countless persons who have never
heard of the word Transcendentalism. We need go no further back
than Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic, whom we find declaring: "I