Emerson admired Coleridge's ability to integrate disparate philosophical and literary traditions, particularly those that harmonized the Romantic triad of nature, spirit, and humanity without rigidly circumscribing their exact relation. While previous chapters have investigated Coleridge's and Emerson's philosophical and literary mediations of nature and humanity, this chapter is devoted to the third element of the Romantic triad: spirit. Although Emerson was not concerned with doctrine and often used secular rather than Christian language, he believed profoundly in a divine presence that was transcendent and yet present in the material world. His early contact with Coleridge's thought helped him navigate these opposing positions.

Coleridge and Emerson rejected narrow or fixed views of the Romantic triad, relying instead on a series of intuitive theological presuppositions: divine revelation, creation, and evolution. These terms described three conceptions of the divine: 1) God is pure being; 2) he creates the material world and the human mind; and 3) God's creation eventually ascends and returns to its divine source. Coleridge and Emerson resisted the more extreme conclusions of pantheism, in which nature and spirit were fused indiscriminately, and theism, in which God was remote from his material creation. Essentially, Coleridge and Emerson forged a panentheist position, which claimed that God was in all things, as a way of holding two positions at once: God was transcendent, yet also immanent in the workings of the human mind and nature. In exalted modes of intuition and faith, the transparency of the Romantic triad could be fleetingly perceived.