What did Thoreau and Emerson believe in as transcendentalists?

The Transcendentalists believed in a few main ideas.  Perhaps the two most important are:

• The idea that you should believe in yourself and be guided by your own conscience.  The Transcendentalists believed that blindly abiding by society's rules was the best way to destroy one's humanity.  They believed instead that each person should decide what is right for him/herself.


• The idea that humans and nature are related -- that people are connected to the universe as a whole, to a reality that transcends their own bodies.  They believed that people should seek to get closer to nature as a way of getting closer to themselves and to the Divine.