This article offers a summary of the movements beliefs, although the Transcendentalists didn't call themselves a label at the time, such as the concepts surrounding self-reliance and nature. They point out several key figures of the movement like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The article talks about the significance of the movement such as their affects in their day and the legacy of the movement such as passive resistance in the Civil Rights Movement in 1965.

It explains what Transcendentalism is, who was a part of it, and what inspired the movement such as democracy and aestheticism.

The key to self-reliance is the prioritization of the inner-voice to come to one's own conclusions about subject matters without considering societal expectations and external authority. You make your own personality instead of conforming to other people.

Transcendentalists believed that one could connect to the divine through nature, because nature is a direct expression of God's creation. They believed you could access spiritual truths from nature and have a religious experience from it.

The point of Thoreau's experience in Walden was to be in the present moment. He talks about the importance of solitude in his experience because it gives someone independence of thought. He talks about his experience with living on his own and doing work on his own.

This is feminist Transcendentalist thought. She applies the idea of self-culture: developing oneself through education and work to the lot of women. That women should be able to work and get an education. Self-culture is a combination of self-reliance, connection to nature, and spiritual development such as living by your values.

This is an abstract work of Douglass' that centers his life. It is about how Douglass is a self-made man intellectually, spiritually, and morally. It talks about how Douglass learned about the abolitionist movement which reflects self-culture.