ABSTRACT
From the doctrine of the open mind that was the core of Unitarianism, came the transcendental movement that marked the full flowering of the New England renaissance. "The pale negations of Boston Unitarianism"—to use Emerson's well-known phrase— provided little nourishment for transcendental hopes. Transcendentalism, it must always be remembered, was a faith rather than a philosophy; it was oracular rather than speculative, affirmative rather than questioning; and it went to Germany to find confirmation of its faith, not to reexamine its foundations. The New England intellectuals were pretty much all Unitarians—the young transcendentalists—and largely clergymen; their primary interest was metaphysical and they had already abandoned Locke for Plato. The Unitarians had pronounced human nature to be excellent; the transcendentalists pronounced it divine. Transcendentalism may have run into its follies, but foolish in its critical judgment—blind to the gap between profession and reality—it was not.
