"Let us hope that a better philosophy than the degrading sensualism out of which most forms of infidelity have grown, will prevail, and that the minds of the rising generation will be thoroughly imbued with it. Let it be a philosophy which recognizes the higher nature of man, and aims, in a chastened and reverential spirit, to unfold the mysteries of his higher life. Let it be a philosophy which comprehends the soul, a soul susceptible of religion, of the sublime principle of faith, of a faith which 'entereth into that within the veil.' Let it be a philosophy which continually reminds us of our intimate relations to the spiritual world; which opens to us new sources of consolation in trouble, and new sources of life in death--nay, which teaches us that what we call _death_ is but the dying of all that is mortal, that nothing but life may remain." In 1840, the same powerful advocate of the transcendental doctrine, in a discourse before the alumni of the Cambridge Divinity School, declared that the return to a higher order of ideas, to a living faith in God, in Christ, and in the church, had been promoted by such men as Schleiermacher and De Wette; gave his opinion that the religious community had reason to look with distrust and dread on a philosophy which limited the ideas of the human mind to the information imparted by the senses, and denied the existence of spiritual elements in the nature of man; and again welcomed the philosophy taught in England by Butler, Reid and Coleridge; in Germany, by Kant, Jacobi and Schleiermacher; in France, by Cousin, Jouffroy and Degerando. Such words from James Walker, always a favorite teacher with young men, a mind of judicial authority in the liberal community, and at that time Professor of Moral Philosophy at Harvard College, made a deep impression. When he said: "Men may put down Transcendentalism if they can, but they must first deign to comprehend its principles," the most conservative began to surmise that there must be something in Transcendentalism. But before this the movement was well under way. In 1836, Emerson's "Nature" broke through the shell of accepted opinions on a very essential subject: true, but five hundred copies were sold in twelve years; critics and philosophers could make nothing of it; but those who read it recognized signs of a new era, even if they could not describe them; and many who did not read it felt in the atmosphere the change it introduced. The idealism of the little book was uncompromising.