The transcendentalist mindset has been around since the Puritans, but it took men such as Emerson and Thoreau to popularize the concepts and beliefs of this idea. The core of transcendentalism is that it is " a philosophy that rejects the idea that knowledge can be fully derived from experience and observation; rather, truth resides in the spiritual world." In this essay, I hope to identify and explain the similarities and differences between the "optimistic" transcendentalists …showed first 75 words of 797 total…

…showed last 75 words of 797 total…that simply boggle the mind. The values that these characters possess are incredibly exaggerated, and can be found in a select few as described, but in all people in some amount. In conclusion, these writers are very different in the sense that their picture of society is either good or bad, and the same in the sense that they find happiness and knowledge through means other than books and experience, but through the spiritual world.