Transcendentalism

We can think of the literary and social movement called Transcendentalism as the American child of Romanticism because the former stems from and was engendered by the latter. They both have many ideas and perspectives in common, but Transcendentalism takes these ideas a bit further. The basic precept, or rule, of Trans'ism is : The basic truths of the Universe lie beyond the knowledge we obtain through our senses. Through senses, we learn the facts and laws of the physical world, and we can create science and technology, but there is another realm of knowledge that exists beyond what we can hear, see, or learn from books. We must use the sense of Intuition to transcend the physical world if we want to know the existence of our souls and our realation to the meta-reality beyond the physical world.
Because we cannot use our senses to understand this spiritual reality, we can only understand it through direct experience. What the Trans'ists were seeking is direct communion with the Over-Soul, which is an idea very similiar to Brahman, which is a shared universal soul that connects and includes all forms of Being- God, humanity, nature. Therefore, a Trans'ist feels ALL living beings are significant, from the smallest flea to the most important human. Everything is a significant part of this Universal Spirit the Over-Soul.