We will proceed from the verbal definition and then try to set down the meanings found in usages of the expression "transcendence." The verbal meaning comes from transcendere [Latin]: to surpass, step over, to cross over to. Thus transcendence means the surpassing, the going beyond. And the transcendent means that toward which the surpassing takes place, that which requires surpassing in order to be accessible and attainable, the beyond, that which is over against. Finally, that which does the transcending is what carries out the stepping-over. The verbal meaning then includes the following: 1) an activity in the broadest sense of the term, a doing, 2) in the formal sense, a relation: the crossing over to X, from Y, 3) something which is to be surpassed, a limit, a restriction, a gap, something "lying between." These are only part of a general clarification of the range of our notions when we understand the meaning of "transcendence."
We must now describe its word usage as a term in philosophy. We need not go into all its variants; it will suffice to examine two main mep' dngs from which all the others are derived, and we will treat tl-d concept of the transcendent and characterize its philosophical meaning with regard to its important conceptual contraries. The term means : 1 ) the transcendent in contradistinction to the immanent, 2) the transcendent in contradistinction to the contingent.
Regarding 1), the transcendent in contradistinction to the immanent, the latter is what remains within, by which is meant that which is in the subject, within the soul, remaining in consciousness. The transcendent is therefore that which does not remain within but is without, what lies outside the soul and consciousness. What is outside the borders and encompassing wall of consciousness has then, spoken from the innermost yard of this consciousness, surpassed the enclosing wall and stands outside. Now insofar as this consciousness has cognition, it relates to what is outside, and so the transcendent as something on hand outside is, at the same time, that which stands over against.
Here the subject is thought of as a sort of box with an interior, with the walls of a box, and with an exterior. Of course the crude view is not put forth that consciousness is in fact a box, but what is essential to the analogy and what belongs to the very conception of the transcendent is that a barrier between inner and outer must be crossed. This means that the inner is, first of all, really restricted by the barrier and must first break through it, must first remove the restrictions.
Transcendence, then, is taken to be the relationship that somehow