Some secular thinkers shared the Transcendentalists' view that competition, inequality, and acquisitiveness were corrupting American society.
Transcendentalists are solid adherents to the intensity of the person or power of the individual. It centers fundamentally around individual flexibility. Their convictions are firmly connected with those of the Romantics, however contrast by an endeavor to grasp or, at any rate, to not contradict the observation of science. Transcendentalists trust that society and its foundations, especially sorted out religion and political gatherings, degenerate the virtue of the person.