The Transcendentalists read the writings of both Locke and Kant. Locke's work was part of their Unitarian heritage and the college curriculum of the era. As for Kant, some of the Transcendentalists — Frederic Henry Hedge and Theodore Parker, for example — were able to read his work in the original German. Others, including Emerson, read Kant in English translation. The ideas of Kant and other intuitive philosophers were also disseminated through the writings of British and French authors. In his emphasis on spirituality, intuition, and imagination, British poet-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was influenced by Kant and, in turn, influenced the Transcendentalists. The "Preliminary Essay" to James Marsh's 1829 edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection elaborated upon the difference between intuitive and sensational knowledge (from the modern point of view, somewhat confusingly termed Reason — but not in the Enlightenment meaning of reason — and Understanding, respectively). Scottish-born essayist and biographer Thomas Carlyle, highly regarded by the Transcendentalists, celebrated intuition over rationality and wrote about Goethe, Kant, Novalis, Richter, Schiller, and other German thinkers. French philosopher Victor Cousin both espoused idealistic philosophy and also interpreted Kant and other German philosophers for a general audience.
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