TRANSCENDENT and TRANSCENDENTAL are technical terms in philosophy. According to their etymology, (from transcendere,) they signify that which goes beyond a certain limit; in philosophy, that which goes beyond, or transcends, the circle of experience, or of what is perceptible by the senses. Properly speaking, all philosophy is in this sense transcendental, because all philosophical investigations rise above the sensual, even if they start from that which is perceptible by the senses. But philosophical inquiries are to be distinguished according as they proceed from experience, or from principles and ideas not derived from that source. The latter sort are called, in a narrower sense, pure, or transcendental. The school of Kant makes a still further distinction: it gives the name of transcendental to that which does not, indeed, originate from experience, but yet is connected with it, because it contains the grounds of the possibility of experience; but the term transcendent it applies to that which cannot be connected with experience, but transcends the limit of possible experience and of philosophizing.

As applied in this country, especially when used as a term of reproach, Transcendentalism would designate a system which builds on feeling, rather than on reason, and relies more on the imagination than on the judgment. In the main, however, the Transcendentalists are persons who hold that man has the power to perceive intuitively truths which transcend the reach of the senses; but they divide, some taking the unction of Sentimentalism, and others of Mysticism.